FRIDAY
DISCOURSE WITH DR. ALIYU TILDE
America
and the World
aliyutilde@yahoo.com
Among
the best books written in the aftermath of 911 is Why Do People Hate
America written by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies in 2002.
The book is an international bestseller which drew favourable comments
from notable publishers and scholars. Noam Chomsky, said it “contains
valuable information and insights that we should know, over here, for
our own good, and the world’s.”
The
horrible event of 9-11 provoked my thought: Why this level of hate for
America
and not for any other country of the world? And what do we do about it?
The book is the first to contain a satisfactory analysis on the issue.
“Our purpose in this book”, wrote the authors, “is to argue that
hatred is the worst possible basis for human relations, especially
relations between nations… Hatred is never simply one-way traffic. It
is a relational, reactive condition. It affects how judgements are made
about what actions are permissible, appropriate and warranted on both
sides of the divide of distrust. It can become a mutually sustained
cycle of defensive reaction, a self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating
prophesy.
“So,
we need to go beyond hatred”, the authors continued. “The problem of
America
is everyone’s problem. Finding an answer depends on making visible the
nature, conditions and dimensions of the problem so that new debates,
new constituencies of
dissent that bridge the divide between America and the rest of the
world, can be built.”
What
I have for my readers today is obviously not the whole book, but what I
consider as its most essential part: “The four main reasons for
objecting to the
USA
.” But before the presentation, it is important to clarify one thing,
that is, people do not hate Americans, as the authors rightly said.
“What most people hate,” they wrote, “is America, the political
entity based on authoritarian violence, double standards, self-obsessed
self-interest, and an ahistorical naivety that equates the Self with the
World.”
As
the reader will see, the reasons given by the authors for the hatred
that exist between America and the rest of the world lies outside the
diversionary ones given by the American political establishment, which
says America is hated by others because of its freedom and democracy.
The causes, as noted by the authors, are more fundamental:
“1.
The first reason is existential. The
US
has simply made it too difficult for other people to exist. In economic
terms, this is a stark reality for the majority of the world’s
population. As we have seen, the
US
has structured the global economy to perpetually enrich itself and
reduce non-Western societies to abject poverty. ‘Free markets’ is
simply a euphemism for free mobility of American capital, unrestrained
expansion of American corporations, and free (unidirectional) movement
of goods and services from America to the rest of the world… couple
this with the US control of international financial institutions such as
the IMF, World Bank and WTO, and we see how the world economy functions
to marginalise the less-developed world. We are moving towards a world
in which global markets in such basic things as healthcare, welfare,
pensions, education and food and water are supplied and controlled by
American corporations. The ability of developing countries to provided
universal access to basic social services has been systematically and
ruthlessly eroded.
“Politically,
two simultaneous processes are reducing the choices and freedoms of the
rest of the world. The process of enlargement, the expansion of the
reach and influence of
America
– through trans-national economic regimes and multinational capital as
well as aggregation of power from supposedly multilateral institutions
such as the World Bank, IMF and WTO to the
United States
is simultaneously, in effect, a process of hierarchical integration of
the rest of the world. The world is being integrated in the shape of a
rigid, iron-clad pyramid. Those at the bottom of the pyramid are not
just economically excluded, they are also politically contained. So
their political existence is as perilous as their economic reality.
“Moreover,
American-led globalisation has also shrunk cultural space. Even the most
economically and politically disadvantaged people seek cultural
expression and fulfilment. But the pyramid-shaped globe allows little
room for other cultures to exist as such, let alone permit the full
expression and flowering of the non-Western cultures.
“2.
The second major reason for objecting to
America
is cosmological. In the conventional cosmological argument for God, is
derived originally from Aristotle, God described as the cause of
everything; this is why some versions of this argument are called the
‘first cause’ argument. In today’s globalised world,
America
is seen as the prime cause of everything. Nothing seems to move without
America
’s consent; nothing can be solved without
America
’s involvement. Only
America
can resolve the conflict between
Palestine
and
Israel
; only
America
’s intervention can lead to some sort of resolution between
India
and
Pakistan
over Kashmir; and it was
America
’s involvement in
Northern Ireland
that brokered a political settlement. Without American ratification, the
Kyoto Treaty on carbon dioxide emissions is not worth the paper it is
written on; without American nod, nothing moves at the WTO or World
Bank; and without
America
, the UN ceases to be a United Nations. At the global level,
America
is both the first cause and the sustaining cause.
“The
cosmological grounds for resentment also relate to the ‘gigantism’
of
America
itself. A Chinese proverb says that the tallest tree attracts the most
dangerous winds during a typhoon. As a tree with branches that touch
every corner of the globe,
America
is a natural target. But this is compounded by the hubris that is an
integral part of the cosmological structure that
America
cannot see. Western empires – Roman, Spanish, British – were
concerned with sustaining and enhancing their control of subject
populations.
America
has taken this principle to a new quantum level: American empire is a
colonisation of the future that becomes a total consumption of all space
and time – rewriting history, changing the very stuff of life in our
genetic structure, shifting weather patterns, colonising outer space,
indeed changing the course of evolution itself! It is this height and
breadth of arrogance that startles and, not surprisingly, terrifies most
of the world. If there are no limits, what is there to stop the
US
from actually consuming the non-American people of the world? Inducted
in the cosmological structure of
America
, the rest of the world will vanish…
“3.
The third main reason for anti-American feeling is ontological – that
is, relating to the very nature of being. Once again, this takes us back
to standard arguments for God. The ontological argument for God’s
existence, attributed to St Anselm, goes something like this: God is the
most perfect being; it is more perfect to exist than not to exist.
Therefore, God exists. It is, of course, a circular argument.
Ontological arguments infer that something exists because certain
concepts are related in certain ways. Good and evil are related as
opposites. So, if evil exists, there must also be good.
America
relates to the world through such circular, ontological logic: because
‘terrorists’ are evil,
America
is good and virtuous; the ‘Axis of Evil’ implicitly positions US and
its allies as the ‘Axis of Good’. But this is not simply a binary
opposition: the ontological element, the nature of American being, makes
America
only good and virtuous. It is a small step then to assume that you are
chosen both by God and history. How often have we heard American leaders
proclaim that God is with them; or that history has called on
America
to act?
“By
appropriating goodness to one’s self, and then doing evil, spells
hypocrisy to others. Bruce Tonn, Professor in the Dept of Urban and
Regional Planning at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, notes:
‘People around the world constantly ask why the US says one thing and
does something totally opposite; why the standards it wants to impose on
others do not apply to the
US itself. How can the
United States
claim to be the repository of Goodness yet have such disdain for the
poor and deny them the basic right to food and water? People dying of
AIDS in sub-Saharan
Africa
wonder why Americans can afford super computers and stealth bombers but
cannot help them afford AZT and other drugs… European cannot fathom
why the
United States
does not support global environmental protection, land mine treaties, or
strong provisions to control biological and nuclear weapons or why the
United States
insist on selling Europeans meat and grains that are tainted with
steroids and the result of genetic engineering… Russians and East
Europeans do not understand why
America
insists on imposing economic measures on their countries that increase
inequality by every criteria known to humanity. Canadians rue the impact
of American culture on their own society.’
“Then
there are hypocritical elements of American society itself. The O.J.
Simpson trial highlighted the institutionalised lying that forms the
basis of American trial law for the entire world to see… The
Clinton
impeachment trial demonstrated the hypocrisy of the political
establishment: conservative politicians, many of whom were also guilty
of sexual ‘misconduct’ had no qualms in their attempt at political
assassination. The
Florida
election debacle highlighted
America
’s hypocrisy concerning democracy: not counting everyone’s vote is
only an egregious sin if it occurs in fledgling democracies of the
developing world. All the people of the world duly noted that the US
Supreme Court decided the outcome of the election by finding reasons not
to recount all of the votes.
“4.
The fourth major reason for hostility towards
America
has to do with definitions.
America
is not just the lone hyperpower – it has become the defining
power of the world. America defines what is democracy, justice, freedom;
what are human rights and what is multiculturalism; who is a
‘fundamentalist’, a ‘terrorist’, or simply ‘evil’. In short
what it means to be human. The rest of the world, including Europe, must
simply accept these definitions and follow the American lead (which, in
most cases,
Britain
does faithfully). But
America
defines all these things in singular terms – in terms of American
self-identity, history, experience and culture, and, more often than
not, in term of American self-interest. So when President Bush, for
example, says in his 2002 State of the Union address, ‘America will
lead by defending liberty and justice because they are right and true
and unchanging for all people everywhere’, he takes it for granted
that American ideas of liberty and justice are the only ones that there
are. There is no scope for these values to be interpreted and practised
in different ways; no sense that the history and experience of other
cultures may have generated their own notions of freedom and justice.
“We
can see this most clearly in terms of human rights issues. The Western,
liberal notion of human rights equates it solely with individual
political and civil freedoms. The
US
has reduced it further and redefined it in terms of market forces and
‘free trade’. Despite enormous efforts by developing countries for
over two decades, the
US
refuses to acknowledge that the right to food, housing, basic sanitation
and the preservation of one’s own identity and culture are far more
important than the preservation of market forces…
“But
the American definition of human rights is not immutable; it is a
moveable feast. Thus, the
US
considered the struggle of Muslims in East Turkistan against
China
as a ‘human rights issue’, yet it rejects the proposition that the
struggle of Chechen Muslims against
Russia
has anything to do with human rights…
“The
much vaunted universal precept of ‘freedom of the press’ gets
similar treatment. When it comes to other countries, it is defined as a
universal imperative. When freedom of the press ends up with criticism
of
America
, it becomes dangerously subversive. So the
US
went out of its way to stop Qatar-based Al-Jazeerah… from broadcasting
from
Afghanistan
. It placed enormous pressure on
Qatar
to ‘rein in’ Al-Jazeerah, and eventually bombed its office in
Kabul
…
“The
uniquely self-interested way in which
America
defines and redefines human rights and then uses them as an instrument
of its foreign policy, sends a dual message to the world. It suggests
that, on the one hand, abiding by the constraints imposed by human
rights is mainly for others, not for
America
; while on the other hand, it delivers a clear message to developing
countries: adopt economic policies recommended by
America
, even at the expense of human rights. Nor surprisingly, this approach
generates a great deal of hatred for the
US
.
“The
power to define also extends to representation:
America
defines the way in which other people should be seen and characterised.
The
US
is the storyteller to the world. For the most part, the stories it tells
are either based on its own experience or, if appropriated from other
cultures, given a specifically American context. This power to define
others in terms of American perceptions and interests often leads to the
demonisation of entire groups of people. Consider the way in which all
Arabs are seen as ‘fundamentalists’, all those who question the
control of science by American corporations as anti-science, or those
who question American foreign policy as ‘morally bankrupt’,
‘nihilists’ or ‘idiots’…
I
will conclude this page by quoting from the last words of the authors:
“The key to viable and sane future for us all lies in transcending
hatred. Since
America
is both the object and the source of global hatred, it must carry the
responsibility of moving us all beyond it.
America
needs to unwrap itself from the flag, and envelop itself in the prayer
of St Francis of
Assisi
:
“O
Master, grant that I may never seek/ so much to be consoled as to
console/ to be understood as to understand/ to be loved, as to love,
with all my soul.”
We
will return next week to discuss the self-succession of Obasanjo.
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