In Focus: Orientalism's local allies Arab liberals discredited themselves when they embraced foreign invasion in the name of domestic rights, writes Galal Nassar Six years ago, 9/11 launched the US down a course of pre-emptive war, a strategy that smacks of Orientalism albeit in a new form. Listen to what Bush and Rumsfeld are saying. Listen to them talk of the need to attack terrorists in their lairs, before they strike against US cities. This is Orientalism in action. Its central claim is that Muslim Arab culture is responsible for 9/11. This being the case, the US went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to defend democracy, introduce modernisation, and stamp out despotism. Sounds familiar? Well, the same arguments were made almost a century ago by another generation of colonialists. The history of Orientalism is inseparable from that of colonialism in the Arab world and beyond. Orientalists take it upon themselves to interpret the spiritual, social and cultural traits of the Arab world. And colonialists use that interpretation to march into the region. Orientalism was part and parcel of the expansion of European imperialism in the 19th and early 20th centuries. And the same is true today. Today, there is a hysterical and belligerent drive in the West to twist the facts, the neo-cons being the obvious example. The aim, today as before, is to pave the way for aggression. The recent wave of Orientalism coincided with the end of the Cold War and the rise of the US as the world's superpower. The occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the unbridled belligerence that accompanied this act, must leave us in no doubt. In his book, Post-Orientalism: The US Invasion of Iraq and the Return of White Colonialism, published by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies, Professor Fadel Al-Robei uses the term post-Orientalism to describe the assault of aggressors on the national and cultural identity of nations coming under aggression. The US occupation has orientalised the East, so to speak, and it has revived much of the traits of good old Orientalism in the process. The war fought by the US administration in Iraq illustrates -- in its slogans, methods, and excessive use of force -- the way in which Orientalism functions. The US war, as President Bush once said, is a continuation of the crusades: it is a war against the East; it is a war against "terror" coming from the East; it is also a war aimed to protect the innocent back home in the US from perils abroad. The war is thus a denouncement of the brutality of "others". It is also an act of denigrating the history, culture, and spiritual beliefs of perceived foes. Just as the first Orientalist writings gave the West reason to invade the East, neo-Orientalist writings supported the invasion of Iraq through a fictionalised account of reality. In this account, Iraq had a nuclear programme and links with Al-Qaeda. Somehow, Iraq was lumped together with Afghanistan, a totally different country with a totally different mental terrain. Two entirely different countries were merged into one and then presented as the source of all evil. A fiendish picture was drawn of the enemy. And that enemy was portrayed as a legendary monster, tentacles extended, spitting its venom in both Baghdad and Kabul. That's exactly what old-fashioned Orientalism once did to support British colonialism. Decades ago, Iraq was portrayed as an extension of British India, simply to justify its invasion. What unifies old and new Orientalism is their invariable complicity with colonialist policies. Orientalists are not just people who talk culture. They are providers of a cultural, psychological and media image that promotes subjugation and hegemony. They give cultural ammunition to the invaders. The mental image created by the Western media for Afghanistan and Iraq is practically the same. The two wars have one budget. One death toll is lumped together. Photos of dead soldiers, vetted in advance by the Pentagon, make it hard to know whether they died in Afghanistan or Iraq. Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib blend into one. Coffins coming from Iraq or Afghanistan look the same. The Quran gets desecrated in Guantanamo just as in Falluja. And both Iraq and Afghanistan, as President Bush would remind us, are fronts in the global war on terror. According to Orientalists, old and new, Iraq was not invaded; it was liberated, first by the British in the early 20th century and then by the Americans in our time. The occupation of Iraq was nothing but a step towards modernity, and an invitation to progress, or so we are told. The British once wanted to make Iraq a geographical and cultural extension of India. The Americans made it an extension of Afghanistan. General Maude in Iraq in the early 20th century presaged Civil Administrator Bremer in Iraq in this century, both peddling liberation and democracy while enforcing occupation and repression. Then as now, the need for progress and modernisation was twisted into something else. Then as now, talk of democracy camouflaged the assault on freedom and rights. The locals were not fooled in the past and they're not fooled today. It doesn't take a stretch of imagination to know that colonialism is not about freedom or modernity, but about control of wealth and strategic resources. With every wave of colonialism, the deceit becomes more obvious. And yet again, some people are fooled, for example Arab liberals. They supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, hailing it as liberation. Their hopes were soon dashed and their misjudgement exposed. The inherent contradiction between the interests of the occupiers and the aspirations of the common people in the invaded countries is undeniable. Right now, a certain brand of Arab liberals has run out of argument. The West is back again. The invaders are here, not to enjoy the esoteric legacy of the East, not to savour the romanticism of Scheherazade, not to bring about reform or human rights, but to promote hardcore strategic interests, while pursuing a messianic zeal for the Promised Land. A new generation of liberals fell into the same old trap. Once again, they believed that domestic reform could come about through Western invasion. Once again, they bought the argument that military intervention could save us from ourselves. How wrong can one be? How wrong are those who dream of peace with the Zionists and forget that such a peace can only spell doom to the Palestinians and the loss of Jerusalem? The Zionist project, as conceived by the Orientalists, is all about implanting a Western entity in our midst. It is all about imposing the ideas of Orientalism on the Arab system of beliefs. It is all about imposing a distorted vision of history on another people. The advent of the invader is a dual act of stealing and fictionalising, the aim being to redraw the political map of the region. Unfortunately, Arab liberals fell for the propaganda and thus became a tool of post-Orientalist schemes. Shall one hope for an awakening, however belated, of Arab liberals? Shall one hope for such an awakening before things get worse?
