Unprecedented, unexpected, but also uncanny; there is something amiss in Washington's contrition, writes M Shahid Alam* "There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self- govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily ... are a different color than white can self-govern." -- George Bush, April 30, 2004 This happens rarely -- very rarely. An apology from the president of the United States, not for personal lapses but for a slippage in the workings of America's virtuous, divinely blessed, civilising mission to the benighted world. Most Americans truly believe -- take it to be self- evident -- that the United States is not only the world's greatest country, but it has always been the last great hope of earth; that Americans have always been willing, more than any other Western power, to take on the White Man's burden; to bring life, liberty and happiness to the rest of mankind. This is a testament to the power of American media, that it can claim to be the world's freest and yet control -- like no other "free" media -- what an overwhelming majority of Americans know and believe about their country. What they know and believe is America the free, pure and virtuous. Day after day, mandarins and the media in this country work tirelessly, cleverly, to project an image of an America that protects freedoms at home and abroad, an America that has time and again shed its blood to rid foreign lands of murderous tyrannies, an America that cares, that responds with alacrity to famines and calamities abroad, an America that contributes men, money and ideas to bring prosperity to the backward races, an America that has patiently served as an honest broker in the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians. As a result, year after year, most Americans are kept in the dark, unaware of the actual, real America -- the only kind seen by much of the rest of the world. This is the America that daily employs its might to mangle the lives of hundreds of millions, that pushes a globalisation that devastates the economies of the Third World, that instructs and arms foreign tyrannies to terrorise their own people, that aids and abets an Israeli machine that is determined to extirpate the Palestinians. This America acts in the name of freedom -- in any way that it sees fit and necessary -- to keep the world safe for American capital. This dark side of America, however, is nearly always, nearly completely, whitewashed by the myth-making powers of America's elites. Occasionally, this myth-making machine will let slip a few snapshots of the real, the actual America. In fact, such slippages are functional: they serve to validate the trust of the duped and faithful in our "free" media. Generally, these revelations appear long after the fact. They are also quickly explained away. When they cannot be explained away, they are described as unavoidable lapses, human failings of a few. These lapses remind the faithful to be thankful that the system works well nearly all the time. No apology is tendered. None is demanded. Yet the matter of the torture of Iraqi prisoners has quickly produced a storm of indignation from mandarins and the media. It has led to calls for investigations, demands for the resignation of the secretary of defence, two television appearances by the president before Arab audiences, and -- incredibly -- even a feeble presidential apology. In the words of Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, "The president is sorry for what occurred and the pain it has caused." I am assuming the "pain" in question is that inflicted by Americans on Iraqis, as well as that of anyone who feels the anguish of the Iraqi victims. Or is the president talking of America's pain over the actual, the real America, now irrevocably, unforgettably caught on camera? In any case, that's quite decent for starters. Remarkably, the name of a sitting American president has been linked to the subject of Arab pain, a pain that has an acknowledged American provenance. It must be a first, both for any American president and perhaps any Western leader. We are speaking of the pain of the "natives" -- inferior sand niggers, in this case -- the pain of whose miserable lives could never earn our sympathy. We do not share in the pain of the natives. Has the president undergone another conversion? If he truly and sincerely feels the pain inflicted by a few Americans on their Iraqi victims, will he follow up by acknowledging the Iraqis killed and maimed to advance the interests of Zionists and oil corporations? Will he also set up museums to commemorate the deaths of a million and a half Iraqi civilians killed in a previous American war that targetted their civilian infrastructure and followed it up with death-dealing sanctions? Is it just possible that at last the president will begin to recognise Palestinians as humans, and atone for the pain that he and his predecessors have inflicted on them for more than 50 years? Apart from the faithful, no one believes that the president's apology is sincere. In fact, it looks comical -- comical because it is based on false premises. We are behaving as if the sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners is the first outrage inflicted by the United States on Muslims. It is unlikely that Muslims have forgotten, or soon will, the hundred lacerations inflicted upon them by America's conjugal embrace of the Israeli occupation, by its support for corrupt monarchies and dictatorships in the Islamic world, by the genocidal first Gulf war, by suffocating sanctions against Iraq that took the lives of three- quarters of a million Iraqi children, and by the routine demonisation of Islam by preachers close to the present US administration. It is comical when a tormentor inflicts a hundred wounds on his victim and then sees it fit to apologise for stepping on his toes. The apology is comical because the United States has hitherto acted on the premise that the Arabs only respect a hefty stick. This is the advice that the Zionists have regularly dished out to their American pupils. In part, this was the advice on which President Bush launched his invasion of Iraq. Topple Saddam, the Arab strongman, and all the Arabs will instantly acknowledge US-Israeli hegemony as the greatest gift to them since the descent of the Qur'an. So, isn't it a bit comical so soon after the invasion to come apologising to the Arabs? Actually, it is worse than comical. It has to be stupid. It will surely be read by many Muslims -- not least those who are active in the Islamist resistance -- as a sign of weakness; an admission that America's belligerent approach isn't paying off, that the world's only superpower is afraid of Arab outrage. The president's apology is also targetted at domestic audiences. The pictures of American liberators sexually torturing Iraqis do not make the best commercials for America's high civilising mission. Some quick action was necessary. Americans were assured that the cases of torture were local, not systemic; that the perpetrators were being punished. There was nothing to worry about. America's civilising mission could not be derailed by the actions of a few rogue elements. It must continue to march forward through the jungles, swamps and deserts of the Third World, bringing freedom, hope and prosperity to the inferior breeds who cannot yet manage their own affairs. The civilising mission is the sacred trust of the White Man. Still, we must ask, if there isn't an element of panic in the White House response to the scandal of Iraqi prison torture. The whole administration is apologising, and doing so repeatedly, promptly and with little urging from anyone. The sight of the United States -- usually swaggering, contemptuous of others, unilateralist -- apologising, somehow, makes an eerie sight. Does this suggest that after all the damned lies told to cover for the war, after all the bluster blown as these lies were exposed, this administration is finally loosing its nerve, loosing its cool? Could it be that they too fear that the game they started in Iraq -- at the cost of American and Iraqi lives -- is over? * The writer is professor of economics at Northeastern University. His last book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations, was published by Palgrave in 2000.
