December 8, 2001	Saturday	Ramazan 22, 1422

NEW YORK: The United States is a civilization of liberty at home. But ever since President James Monroe laid down the cornerstones of American foreign policy in 1823 this love for liberty within its own borders has co-existed with a compulsive imperial role abroad.

And in the course of the 20th century one part of the world became increasingly as important to the United States as Latin America had been earlier. The new Latin America was the Middle East. The original Latin America was valued for its proximity to the United States. The Middle East was valued for its petroleum and location.

The single most explosive cause of anti-American terrorism is the perceived alliance between the United States and Israel to control the Middle East. If that problem is not solved injustice will persist, as will the cancer of globalized terrorism — with or without Osama bin Laden, the man blamed for the 11 September attacks on the US.

The world needs a coalition to seek a permanent solution to the Middle Eastern conflict.

However, Palestine is not the only item on the US imperial agenda in the Muslim world. Was the Gulf War fought to liberate Kuwait or to consolidate US military presence in the region? Is the US military base in Saudi Arabia to protect Saudis against external enemies or against an internal revolution?

But while terrorism has been in the process of globalization, the concept of an ‘act of war’ has by no means found a global standard. How many Americans would acknowledge that the Anglo- American no-fly zones imposed on Iraq for the last decade are a continuing act of war?

Iraqis are not allowed to fly planes in their own air space — and yet the no-fly zones over Iraq have no United Nations authorization or legal validation.

But then, every American president since Franklin D. Roosevelt has engaged in some act of war or another. Roosevelt was inevitably embroiled in World War II; Harry Truman helped to initiate the Korean War; Dwight Eisenhower ended the Korean War but started planning for the Bay of Pigs operation in Cuba; John F. Kennedy unleashed Bay of Pigs and helped to initiate the Vietnam War; Lyndon Johnson escalated Vietnam; Richard Nixon bombed Cambodia; Gerald Ford sent the Marines in a disagreement with Cambodia; Jimmy Carter attempted to thwart the Iranian revolution; Ronald Reagan perpetrated acts of war in Lebanon, the Caribbean and Libya; George Bush invaded Panama and is most famous for Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf; Bill Clinton led military action against Yugoslavia over Kosovo and bombed Sudan and Afghanistan; George W. Bush has already inherited a decade of bombing Baghdad and subsidizing half a century of Israeli militarism against Palestinians. Now this younger Bush has embarked on what he calls a “crusade against terrorism”. Yet the US hardly ever calls these engagements “acts of war”. Even the war in Vietnam, which cost nearly 60,000 US and millions of Vietnamese lives, was never officially declared by the United States.

The events of September clearly demonstrate that US liberty at home may never again be completely safe if US imperialism abroad continues unabated. There is no Statue of Dignity in the Muslim world — but the value of dignity is very potent.

A clash of cultures did occur when President George W. Bush used the macho language of ultimatum and no negotiation over surrendering Osama bin Laden: “Just hand over Osama bin Laden and his thugs. There is nothing to talk about.”

Bush simply was not interested in saving lives by permitting the Taliban room for surrendering Osama with some semblance of dignity. The old Chinese concept of ‘saving face’ has its Islamic equivalent of dignified surrender. If the Western world has a nexus of liberty, its centre in the course of the 20th century became the US. The Muslim world has always had a nexus of dignity — and the centre of the Muslim world has for centuries been the Middle East.

The Western world is powerful. “The vices of the powerful acquire some of the prestige of power.” The West is not only a target of terrorism from time to time. The West has also been a role model of violence across the generations. In the last 100 years many millions more people have been killed by the Western world than by any other civilization in human history.

It is time for real peace. And that is not possible without a synthesis of three values: dignity, justice as well as liberty. —Dawn/Gemini News Service.