In his recent editorial A Declaration Of Empire, writer and Boston Globe columnist James Carroll warns us that proposed changes to the National Defense Authorization Act would vastly expand the boundaries of the U.S. military mission.
The House of Representatives is debating a new definition of America’s military mission in the world, replacing the mandate adopted immediately after 9/11. Instead of merely authorizing the president to make war against those who “committed or aided” the 2001 attacks, the proposed National Defense Authorization Act expands the notion of America’s enemy to include forces “associated” with named antagonists like Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
According to its critics (including numerous House Democrats who asked last week that such language be dropped), this seemingly innocuous expansion would, in effect, license an open-ended bleeding of the American battle away from Iraq and Afghanistan to any location in which such vaguely defined associates operate. The two present wars could become three, four, or five, and could shift from the Middle East to Africa, South Asia, or anywhere that a photo, say, of Osama bin Laden hung in the barracks.
But wait a minute. Doesn't the United States already attack/kill/maim/imprison/torture anybody anywhere who it believes is "associated with" named terrorists? Sure we do!
But wait a minute. For most of a decade, the US military has already operated against an amorphous, transnational terrorist enemy under the broadest possible reading of its 9/11 authorization. Drones, cruise missiles, special-ops, and mercenary forces have hit targets with impunity well beyond the officially acknowledged battle zones. The Obama administration, otherwise so different from its predecessor, is freelancing militarily, just as the Bush administration did.
So why is an expanded mandate needed now?
Though the language in the proposed legislation simply affirms what has become White House and Pentagon practice, more than policy is at stake. The law after 9/11 made an implicit claim to global force projection based on an emergency; the new legislation would explicitly reject any time or place limitations on that force. In other words, a seemingly subtle shift marks a movement from the exceptional to the threshold of normal. There is a word for the realm into which that threshold opens: The legislation is a step toward an open declaration of American empire.
The proposed change would simply make it official that the United States reserves its exclusive right to attack/kill/maim/imprison/torture anybody anywhere who it believes is "associated with" named terrorists. But what about this "open declaration" of American Empire?
For a time in the Bush era, officials and public intellectuals promoted the idea of American empire, declaring it the duty of the United States to maintain planet-wide dominance through military force for the sake of political order and economic well-being — not only of Americans but of the world. This virtuous purpose would make America, in a phrase of the historian Niall Ferguson, “an empire by invitation.” The arrival of terrorism as a mass threat made this hegemonic mission seem inevitable. At some point, the word “empire” fell out of fashion, even on the right...
Out of fashion? Not here at DOTE.
... Yet the structures and ideology — and bases — of world-wide dominion reproduced themselves, and soon enough the central assumption of empires embedded itself in American consciousness — the idea that the global rules of order apply to every nation except the one that enforces them.
By my reckoning, the advent of the National Security State (1947) under President Harry S. Truman marks the beginning of the Empire.
A fourth feature of a National Security State is its obsession with enemies. There are enemies of the state everywhere. Defending against external and/or internal enemies becomes a leading preoccupation of the state, a distorting factor in the economy, and a major source of national identity and purpose.
Carroll goes on to condemn American exceptionalism.
America’s war on terrorism, up to and including its climactic assault on the bin Laden compound, has lain bare this superpower double-standard. Washington is simply above the law.
What would Americans make of pilotless drone attacks coming in from Mexico to target, say, drug kingpins holed up in mansions in the hills above San Diego? After the 1979 bombing-murder of Lord Mountbatten, what would Americans have made of British commandos launching a raid in IRA-friendly New York to kill or capture the fugitive Provo chief responsible? No such interventions would be tolerated for a moment.
Why then does Washington sponsor their equivalents elsewhere? Because that’s what empires do.
Yes, that's what empires do. I don't often talk about this stuff. I take it for granted, and I assume my readers do, too. Is that a mistake? You tell me. It is remarkable how Americans have so effectively shielded themselves from the terrible crimes carried out in their name. It is as if Americans have a psychological disorder called dissociative amnesia in so far as they can't remember any of the details of those past crimes.
When W was attacking/killing/maiming/imprisoning/torturing "towel heads" after 9/11, liberals were outraged once the shock of the attack wore off. Where's the outrage now? Barack Obama, as if over-compensating for his liberal blackness, has been even more ruthless, even more assiduous, even more obsessed with enemies in pursuing the war on "Terrorism" all over the world.
The recent killing of Osama bin-Laden was definitely viewed as a feather in Obama's political cap. From community organizer to Great Warrior! Never mind that it took the all-powerful United States 10 years to kill that bastard. Remind me again why we're fighting a war in Afghanistan against the Taliban. (The original mission was to kill or capture bin-Laden.) Oh yeah, I remember now—the Taliban were and are "associated with" named terrorists.
You can't of course have a war on an abstract noun. As an exercise, try to come up with a definition of "terrorist organization" that includes al Qaeda but excludes the United States. It can be done, but not without making irrelevant distinctions (e.g. al Qaeda is not a nation-state).
Having attained great heights of common sense—"Washington is above the law"—Jim Carroll reveals his utter confusion at the end.
That the common good requires such exceptionalism has been so taken for granted as to not need acknowledgment, though now the Congress aims to convert informal understanding into official legislation. “Associates” beware! Bin Laden is gone, but the American war party rides high.
But is this the only way? Let’s grant that “invited” US imperialism is mainly benign (which requires leaving aside questions of unfair economic structures abroad, and dehumanizing effects of garrison culture at home). Let’s grant also that contemplated expansions of Pentagon belligerence may successfully defang terrorism (instead of sparking it).
American imperialism is mainly benign (if we ignore almost everything we know). Expanded belligerence may defang terrorism (instead of creating it). Having given away the store, Carroll arrives at his hard-hitting conclusion.
Even so, the more far-reaching consequence of 21st-century American empire will be the final destruction of authentic internationalism — nations bound by the power of agreed democratic law, cross-border systems of checks and balances, all abiding by the same rules, mutually enforced. The destruction, that is, of the only world with a hope of real peace and justice.
I've got news for you, Jim, and here it is: the American Empire has been in decline for 30 years. It is being destroyed from within. It's current need to indiscriminately strike out at named terrorists (properly defined) and their "associates" everywhere all the time is a sign of Imperial weakness. It is this very weakness, its powerful military, and its unaccountable, arrogant, power-crazed rulers that makes the United States very dangerous to any perceived enemy or threat to its waning economic power in the 21st century. That's what we need to worry about now.
As for your hopes for a world full of real peace and justice, I suggest you go to Disneyland.
I guess I don't get it. Are we acting out, getting sassy, we need the Boss to show us again whose in charge? Is that why they need to reiterate that they can do anything anywhere to anybody?
Posted by: JC | 05/24/2011 at 10:26 AM