Republicans beat the drums of war in New York and a gang of criminals butcher impoverished Nepalese workers in Iraq. The contrived clash of civilisations is becoming all too real, warns Azmi Bishara The world seemed to have gone entirely insane over the past two weeks, but when the UN Security Council convened suddenly it was not because of this, nor for any apparent reason having to do with international peace and security. Certainly it did not meet to discuss the collapse of state and society in Iraq and Palestine, where, only last week, I was unable to get to the West Bank town of Hebron, what with the road having been blocked for nearly two years with barricades of rubble set up by the occupation army. The Security Council did meet, however, to discuss constitutional amendments in Lebanon, where there have been no military hostilities, no dead or wounded. Evil seems to be extending its dominion in the world, and the politics of war drums, hypocrisy and deception are its kingdom. It is hardly necessary to put readers through a survey of the madness; they are already turning their faces away from the television screens in disgust. However, the link between the warmongering Republican convention, Kerry's hypocrisy and dissemblance, and Chirac's familiar, if peculiarly non-political, motives for mobilising the Security Council against Syria, defies reason. Ideology, sociological paradigms and other such analytical tools have ceded to a hazy impressionism. And the impression that so overwhelms feelings as to paralyse the intellect is that the kingdom of evil is coming into its own through the popular consumption of virtually everything; through show biz and the beatific awe before the media spectacle; through the routine, automatic and axiomatic acceptance of self-interest as the prime mover of politics and of the lie as one of its main instruments; through the imposition of identity politics -- the so-called clash of civilisations -- upon the world in a manner that leaves impressionists almost believing that this war is real, and not just a fabrication or form of propaganda. I should stress, however, that what we are facing here is not so much a clash of civilisations as a clash between those who seek to impose such a confrontation and those who reject it. The clash of civilisations has not yet prevailed; what predominates is the battle over whether such a confrontation should prevail or not. To any democratically minded person, this should represent the crux of the conflict in the world today. Over there, on the side of the barricade that is bent on forcing a clash of civilisations upon the world, the Republican Party circus must have been inspired by some nightmarish Hollywood script, with confused genres; a combination of fascist war rally, a chest-thumping, jingoistic mobilisation drive and an Oscar awards ceremony, albeit in more modest dress. The prevailing rhetoric of the convention embraced lies and fabrication as legitimate political tools. So, naturally, there could be no soul-searching over non-existent WMD or the non-existent relationship between Saddam and Al- Qaeda, even as front and back row apologists hailed the liberation of Iraq from a cruel dictatorship. As with every rigid belief system, the escape route from having its lies exposed and its premises shaken is a deft verbal tap dance performed to a few simple but catchy refrains, each stacked with powerful emotive symbols and connotations guaranteed to bring all logic to a grinding halt: "True, we didn't find any WMD, but that man we dragged out from the pit in which he was hiding was the worst type of WMD." A cheap literary device, but not all that different from some of the pronouncements we hear from the Left, which neither construct an argument or refute others, but rather use metaphor and image to hit directly at the visceral and stultify the intellect. Here's another oft-repeated refrain from the Republican conference: "Maybe there is no relationship between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, just as there was no relationship between Nazi Germany and Pearl Harbor." Try to come up with an answer to that one. If you succeed, please turn to the following: "Perhaps we had no immediate cause to go to war, but America has to choose between war on its own land and war on their land." Here we have an obvious campaign ploy that plays on fear and, specifically, on the division between "us" and "them". Take another that deceptively plays on the "us" versus "them" dichotomy: "They understood that America will not take terrorism lying down. They understood that the fate of Saddam Hussein is the end. That's why Libya disarmed." Such was the tenor of a convention clamouring for the perpetuation of war, in spite of the fact that some of the speakers propelled to the podium during prime time were billed as "moderate". Among these were "Arnie" -- Arnold Schwarzenegger, who else? -- who conjured up takes from his films in an "objective" portrayal of the war on terrorism, starring Bush. It will not have escaped the astute reader that the Herculean Bush had used his father's strings to keep from going to Vietnam. But that little fact would never bother a convention that had long since buried the relationship between truth and politics as one buries a dead donkey's malodorous and putrefying corpse. There is no such relationship, declared the convention whose moral substance consisted of no more than fodder for the paranoiac "us" versus "them". The Bush campaign team deftly succeeded in convincing people that Kerry, a Vietnam War hero who took part in the anti-war demonstrations after he was discharged, was a lily-livered coward, while casting Bush, who evaded combat, as a stouthearted hero. So up steps sliver screen star Arnie, from the Republicans' arsenal of PR tools, to say, as though reciting the lines from one of his films: America is back from the terrorist strike and the economic strike... thanks to a single man: the 43rd president of the United States... He is a man of internal strength. He doesn't blink, he doesn't flinch, he doesn't back down. He knows that talking to terrorists rationally and logically doesn't work, and that he has to defeat them. Was this not a Hollywood promotional short complete with the sonorous voice-over as action shots flash across the screen? For all his "moderation," Schwarzenegger, who has said that terrorism is worse than communism, was not an exception to the rule in that convention of saber-rattling against "them" and of the glorification of "us", albeit the latter was occasionally played down with a charming self-effacing wit. The victorious can afford a little fun-making when it's all in the family. Indeed, this is what must have inspired the idea of getting the twin daughters up to the podium right after their father's acceptance address to say, "Isn't he awesome?" -- a line they delivered in the tone of the wide- eyed adolescent female admiring muscle-bound masculinity with a touch of flirtatious mock awe. From their opening words to the end of their speech, the twins embodied the light-hearted mirth that is now permitted in modern conservative circles as a way to prove that conservatives have evolved. The twins were the Republican convention's potent answer to Vanessa and Alexandra Kerry's presentation of their father. Their speech consisted of a series of cute sarcastic remarks of the sort children tell about grownups, thereby earning themselves indulgent pats on the head from the sober and respectable subjects of their barbs. And the girls' jabs at their elders' unfamiliarity with the latest pop screen stars and singers, and their discomfort about sex were oh so side-splittingly funny: "Our grandmother Barbara thinks that Sex in the City is what married people do but don't talk about." Ha! Ha! Ha! Doesn't this make for a nice, light dose of teenage insolence that can be sprayed into the conference hall like so much air-freshener? Of course, there is always the danger that you spray too much, which can also produce another brand of head-splitting stink. What you need is cute insolence that stops seconds short of causing embarrassment or shock. It transpires that the correct dosage and timing for the twins' "extemporaneous" comedy routine was scripted to order by none other than Bush's adviser, the not so young Karen Hughs. But, cheap taste reached its peak -- or rather its depth -- when Laura Bush and Lynne Cheney ascended to the podium at the end of the convention. One wore a red dress, the other a blue one, in the same bold hues as the American flag. Germany's leaders during WWII had clearly lacked such imagination. The good wives of the Republican running mates are not just supposed to be adoring fixtures at their husbands' sides, speakers at charities and family value gatherings, and testifiers to their husbands' abundant milk of human kindness, of which Laura Bush tried to convince her audience in her convention speech, also ghost written by another Bush adviser. No, they must also serve as the physical embodiment of the patriotic veneration of the American flag, and in the most blatantly literal and flagrantly kitsch manner imaginable, through their colour-coordinated outfits. These are the trappings of patriotism, the esthetics of war. Perhaps readers might recall the other no less embarrassing and no less crude face of this particular symbolism. It is to be found on the other side of the civilisational clash, where speakers' trample on the American flag on their way to and from the podium -- minus, of course, all the coloured spotlights, balloons, glitter and elephant heads. On the "other side" -- the " us vs them" -- a gang of criminals, who have hijacked Islamic symbols and idiom, murdered 12 Nepalese. They recited religious formulae while slaughtering innocent people, in spite of the Islamic prohibition against murder. It is as though a new religion is being created to the tune of the clash of civilisations, one that has no bearing whatsoever on the Islam millions of people know, a mock Islam that sanctifies ritual murder. Because, why else would these thugs recite "God is great" while slaughtering fellow human beings in front of video cameras? Over the action-packed past two weeks, one's tired mind could only reel at the brutality and bloodthirsty callousness; at the hypocrisy and perfidy that went along with them. Twelve Nepalese were murdered -- only the Devil knows why. One had his head cut off, the others were shot. These Nepalese workers, who had been sent to Iraq by a Jordanian firm to work for a Japanese company, make up almost half of the 26 hostages who have been executed in Iraq since the beginning of the occupation, although the horrifying images suggest a higher toll. What distinguishes the deaths of the Nepalese is the silence; their murder was as quiet as is their native country in international affairs. Nepal is a very poor country. It has a per capita annual income of $1,200. It has a Maoist revolutionary movement, a constitutional monarchy and widespread abject poverty. Perhaps the last time readers came across Nepal in the news was when the whole royal family was killed during an attack on the royal palace on 1 June 2001. Barely a word was uttered in response to the horrifying slaughter of the 12 Nepalese workers, although Katmandu was quickly placed under curfew because angry popular demonstrations erupted against Islam and Muslims, during which the city's mosque was set on fire and police killed two demonstrators. Why did no one speak out, in even so much as a whisper? Why were there no appeals for mercy made to the kidnappers? National leaders, Islamic movements and even Palestinians in Israeli prisons issued appeals to the kidnappers to spare the lives of the French journalists. Why did not a single movement that claims to defend the oppressed and downtrodden issue an appeal on behalf of the poor Nepalese workers? Because, in the context of the clash of cultures and civilisations the movements supposedly championing the poor and downtrodden do not have a particle of the liberation morality that characterised liberation movements in the past. How one misses, in today's contexts, the political and even ideological rhetoric of the democratic and progressive movements of the past. Many who came to the defence of the kidnapped French journalists maintained that their stance was based on the fact that France is a friend of the Arabs. It did not occur to them to base their stance on the moral ground that it is simply wrong to kill another human being, and especially one who is helpless, innocent and at the mercy of his captors. Are we to understand that the citizens of countries that are friends to the Arabs should enjoy some form of immunity while the citizens of countries who are not are legitimate bait for kidnapping and murder? The inability or the refusal to distinguish between the citizen and the state is one of the salient traits of the wars of identity and the clash of civilisations. Advocates of the rights of the South against discrimination by the North, of resistance against Western imperialism and occupation, are shooting themselves in the foot if they believe that death has a value only when the victims are Western or white, or the citizens of powerful nations whether black or white. Meanwhile, it appears Nepalese or Egyptian workers and the like have no value, in death as in life, from the perspective of these movements that claim that France is the Arabs' friend. Nepal is not an enemy of the Arabs and France is not just a friend of the Arabs. Above all, what does any of this have to do with the life or death of a French or Nepalese citizen who has been taken captive? The image of the corpses of the Nepalese workers tossed carelessly face down into a pit has cast everything into a profound nihilistic gloom. It is amazing the extent to which America's war of civilisations has won, and what a horrifying victory it has been. Could someone please tell us how resistance against the occupation has taken the form of a knife against the throats of poor workers from the East? It is very difficult to connect the dots between the US occupation and imperialism and the death of 12 Nepalese, who were neither combatants nor caught by accident in the vicinity of an explosion, but deliberately and brutally murdered with their hands tied behind their backs. Twelve Nepalese not only met meaningless and gruesome death; they were treated as little more than animals, by their kidnappers and by Arab public opinion, including the self-proclaimed leaders of the battle against the various forms of colonialism and occupation. Elsewhere, some 400 students along with some of their captors were killed in a school in Beslan in North Ossetia. Once again, the hostage takers hid behind innocents, as was the case with the siege of a Moscow theatre three years ago. Once again, too, Putin, the Russian-style Republican, demonstrated that great nations could be ruled by gangs of thugs who have no respect for human life, place no value on human death and have no regard for the fate of the individual. Putin's forces attacked the school, but not with the poison gas that killed all the 133 dead in the Moscow theatre in October 2002, apart from two who were shot. Putin has committed major crimes -- the destruction of Grozny and Chechnya in general wrought nothing less than wholesale genocide. Nevertheless, rather than being regarded as a war criminal he is hailed by leaders throughout the world as an important fellow leader. On the other hand, what were supposed freedom fighters doing in a children's school at the beginning of the scholastic year? They were being transformed into barbarians. They were transforming their struggle into tribal warfare. They were reaffirming the neo-con culture-clash premise by mimicking the very image that the proponents of that clash ascribe to them. One of the greatest challenges faced by any self- respecting democratic force, Arab or non-Arab, Islamic or not Islamic, is to bring a halt to this process by which people are being transformed into mimics of their ascribed roles in a putative clash of civilisations. Failing this, they might well wake up to find that the clash of civilisations has become all too real, and it is they that have become putative human beings.
