The Price of Empire
December 28, 2010
It is anywhere from difficult to impossible, to be an imperial power and also have a free citizenry in your home territory. The oppressive tactics you use on the dominated “Other” eventually come home to be used on those who threaten the power of those who run the empire.
Bradley Manning’s mistreatment in his confinement is a very worrying sign that this process may be accelerating.
Discuss.
Advertisement
25 Comments
Comments are closed.
Thucydides:
It depends. I think one must analyze the concept of inner imperialism within the empire itself. There were slaves in Rome itself, after all. In this country, I think the “American way of life” has always come at the expense of the inner colonization of others (blacks, Mexicans, Native Americans, Asians, etc.). The ghetto is not the affluent suburb, the barrio is not the rural white homogenous small town, and so on. The myth is that the antagonism comes from the outside: the Mexican crossing the border, the communist agitating our Negroes and making them uppity, the indigenous heathen who gets in the way of our Manifest Destiny, the socialist agitator who ruins the class harmony in the factory, etc. The other myth is that these antagonisms were smoothed out spontaneously by the benevolence of the white middle class and not through the labor movement, the Civil Rights Movement, the dreaded judicial activism, etc.
In other words, the borders of the empire are always dynamic. There is an inner colonialism on the inside just as there is a client ruling class, a lumpenbourgeoisie, on the outside.
Arturo – you make a lot of sense. Chris Hedges has said that the torments being endured by Manning “are the staple form of control in our maximum security prisons where the corporate state makes war on our most politically astute underclass—African-Americans.”
Doin’ time in Babylon is obviously the pits.
Some who try to get out of Babylon, such as the US Iraq War Resisters who came to Canada seeking refuge from militarism, soon discover that “the empire” already has its long tentacles and talons deeply embedded in every one of its trading partners and allies, particularly those who are geographically close and strategic collaborators, neighbours who are entranced, addicted and even wedded to the heart of its imperial prowess and hegemonic strutting on the world stage.
Walter Bruegemman tells it like it is in his latest book, which is called “Out of Babylon”:
“The temptation to use shameless force aflicts all empires that are always trying to prove that violence in the empire’s hands (and it’s hands alone!) is a good thing.”
As Walter Wink has also written so prophetically in his trilogy on the task of naming and engaging the powers, this militarism and imperialism which we experience is evidence of the “principalities and powers” at work in human history.
Unfortunately, despite the horrific and sordid lessons of history, far too many humans today continue to believe in the ancient myth of redemptive violence. Religious fundamentalists are particularly prone to this perennial temptation.
This problem is compounded by U.S. American exceptionalism, the concept that manifest destiny has chosen America to lead the world as the custodian of divine election and some kind of promised land. Forgetting, of course that the Jewish People are God’s the Chosen Ones. Stanley Hauerwas insists that Christians are called to be witnesses to that fact.
America is not the Promised Land. In fact, it behaves more and more like the new Babylon.
Bradley Manning deserves our support for helping to blow the cover on this Great Lie.
“Bradley Manning deserves our support for helping to blow the cover on this Great Lie.”
What Bradley Manning has done has made it a tad harder to do things through diplomatic means. I am baffled why people find him such a hero. As Woodward so well said on Larry King “this is not the Pentagon papers”.
Let me expand on what Woodward was saying. What exactly has Manning exposed with the majority of these cables? The problem the wikileaks people and I guess the average person does not get is there is no wider context to this cables.
These are just one building block of information that is paired with other information that eventually gets to the Sec of State and then perhaps the President.
People see one cable and go LOOK that is the USA viewpoint. Well maybe but maybe not.
I saw an example of this early on when the Ppess announced the USA was caught unaware by Benedicts election to Pope. However that was very very false.Just 6 months before our envoy has issued his brief where he thought Benedict was the likely choice. In fact he told Bush. , Rice, and Clinton that very thing on the way to John Paul the II funeral.
I use that as a small example of just something I happened to catch because I happened to watch C-Span where they had a seminar on Holy See / USA relations.
What Manning has done not only has endangered our ability to get information that is vital but he has now given a wrong impression to peoples around the world what their GOVTS might be doing.
These are bits of information and just because a Embassy staff person thinks does not make it Gospel. But because it is wrote down then it must be true.
This is what Woodward was talking about
Woodward says “It’s not the Pentagon papers” simply because it wasn’t Woodward this time who uncovered the information and got it published. What Woodward is really saying is “Julian Assange ain’t no Bob Woodward.”
As for Bradley Manning, it is doubtful that he is any danger to anyone. Keeping him in solitary confinement, particularly prior to trial, and given the fact that he is not a violent or dangerous person by any account, can only be seen as punitive and inhumane.
But, that said, we aren’t “better than that” and never have been. What did you expect?
Back to Matt’s original thesis on the apparent antithesis between empire & freedom of citizens, I have two fundamental questions which emerge while considering this topic of “The Price of Empire”:
1. What do we mean by Freedom?
2. Are the citizens of an imperial power ever really free people?
These are fundamental questions because the treatment of prisoners Bradley Manning or Omar Khadr will ultimately prove a much more accurate indicator to these questions than any argument or debate which we might have here or in any other arena of social discourse.
The proof will be found in the dignity and liberty of the common citizens of our human community wherever they are, in relation to the imperial power.
Those are both excellent questions, Larry.
To answer them:
1. What I mean by freedom and what the Powers That Be mean by freedom are two different things, in my judgment.
When president Bush said, on 9/11/2001, that “Freedom was attacked today…and freedom will be defended” – that made and makes no real sense to me, at least from a civil rights perspective. There is virtually no sense in which my or any ordinary citizen’s “freedom” (in the bill-of-rights sense) was in any way affected by the attacks of that morning.
The only sense I can think of in which Bush’s words could be understood as true is if we “fill in the blanks” in his words:
2. The answer to your second question is probably “no” – because those running the imperium need to exercise control over the home population; whether that control takes the form of bread-and-circuses or secret police, the ultimate end is the same; either buying or coercing the acquiescence of the non-elites.
I think one might reasonably take it to mean that “freedom” in the sense of “liberal democracies which support secular societies offering a broad range of personal liberty” as opposed to “a theocracy or new Caliphate which rigorously enforces perceived religious law”.
Now, one can certainly argue that 9/11 was highly ineffective in destroying secular democracy and spreading theocracy (though my impression from your argument is that you may think it was somewhat effective, in a backward sort of way) but I think it’s relatively easy to see that this is what Bush was attempting to convey with his quoted phrase.
I think one might reasonably take it to mean that “freedom” in the sense of “liberal democracies which support secular societies offering a broad range of personal liberty” as opposed to “a theocracy or new Caliphate which rigorously enforces perceived religious law”.
The attacks were clearly aimed at symbols of American dominance – economic (the World Trade Center) military (the Pentagon) and political (flight 93 was headed for the the White house, with the alternate target being the US Capitol building). Power was attacked that day, not freedom.
I hear a lot of people say that, but I tend to think they’re reading their own opinions into the actions of Al Qaeda rather than looking at what it actually seems to be interested in. It doesn’t look to me like Al Qaeda has a principled objection to power — they have an objection to a country like the US having power rather than the sort of leaders and society they approve of having power.
Now, is saying “Freedom was attacked today” a rhetorical flourish which chooses to focus on the most positive aspects of that which was attacked in order to generate greater sympathy and agreement? Of course!
But then, saying that it was “power” which was attacked that day is also a rhetorical flourish which seeks to apply a congenial interpretive context to the terrorist attacks. One could just as well (and I think more truthfully) say that it was simply an attempt to attack some of the most visible landmarks within a country which serves as the anti-thesis of much of what Al Qaeda wants. Nor do other subsequent attacks (the failed “underwear bombing” for instance, or the attempted and actual attacks in the UK and Spain) follow a patter of attacking power so much as attacking highly visible things within society in order to attract maximum attention.
It’s all very well to get worked up at what you perceive, for whatever reason, as the oligarchy. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone who acts against what you percieve to be similar enemies shares your concerns. I suspect that, all in, you’d find much more in common with the average member of the “oligarchy” than you would with the average member of Al Qaeda.
At the risk of increasing my reputation for cynicism:
I think it’s reasonable to ask whether the treatment of people like Manning represent in 2010 represents any significant reduction in freedom in the US — and thus any correllation to an increase in US imperial power.
Picture, if you will, that a private in the US army had stolen and published internationally several hundred thousand secret government documents in the US in the following years:
1950
1900
1850
1800
Can we really convince ourselves that the treatment of such a person would have been significantly different in a more human direction in any of these eras? I’m pretty certain that in some it would have been worse. But I have a hard time believing, given the actual records of how political dissidents were treated during those periods, especially when they had taken action directly against the US government in such a flagrant way (and even more so while a serving in the military), that we’re at any sort of a new low. If anything, we may be in a somewhat more tolerant time than during most of our history.
This argument is made very well in the book Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime: From the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism by Geoffrey R. Stone. It was written in 2004 and so does not have the full Bush presidency under scrutiny (and indeed, his conclusions are somewhat tentative and I get the sense he is pulling his punches because he does not yet have historical perspective). Nevertheless, I recommend this book as a thorough overview of how the US has treated dissent in wartime and the way in which it has slowly evolved and improved.
Thanks David, for the reference to Stone’s book and for raising the specific issue of free speech during wartime.
I am also quite alarmed and concerned about the freedom of dissent within the Catholic community at this time.
During the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican and immediately following Vatican II there was a healthy and growing respect within Catholicism for the valuable and necessary perspective of those who differ or dissent from the traditional orthodox position on things.
We rediscovered as a community that the Christian faith is a dynamic reality, which evolves and develops over time, always deepening and clarifying our understanding of the truth found in Divine Revelation.
Because of the institutional church and it’s tradition of support for the “just war theory”, I am deeply concerned as well about how the church has treated dissent in wartime.
We must note how certain ecclesiastical authorities have been attempting to silence progressive theologians, forbidding them to teach, and even resorting to declarations of Excommunication for those who refuse to toe the party line.
In my opinion, this trend represents a totalitarian and dangerous mode of fascism which is contrary to the teachings of the ancient prophets and the Gospel of Peace.
Where would we be today if the teachings of Amos, Isaiah and Micah were forbidden and silenced in their time? Where would we be if the apostle Paul had been excommunicated when he confronted Peter on the inclusion of Gentiles in the church community?
Freedom of speech is rooted in our Judeo-Christian faith tradition. To deny it now or at any time of history, would be a blasphemy and a sacrilege, as I see it.
Matt brings us back inevitably to focus on 9/11/2001. And the peculiar words of President Bush on that very day, as he attempted to frame or define that day in terms of a challenge to freedom.
Is this the new icon of an age of empire? Does the clock or calendar of empire turn on such events? Perhaps so, maybe not. We shall have to see. But the facts on the ground are not looking good until now.
The global and cultural significance of the events which occurred in New York City on Sept 11, 2001 has yet to be interpreted adequately.
In just a few days, we will be celebrating a New Year – 2011 according to our Western (Christian) calendar.
Coincidentally, we will also begin marking the tenth anniversary of that event which has so galvanized our political leaders in a mad pursuit of regime change elsewhere which has consumed a vast portion of our geopolitical resources as well as human energies in an obscene pursuit of what passes for security these days.
A kind of deep hermeneutic of history is needed here.
In order to understand or interpret the chain of events which led up to and have followed that crucial event in 2001, we must acknowledge the significant connection between the World Trade Organization and American foreign policy. Furthermore, there is clearly a connection with globalization and the inevitable blowback of exploitation by whatever means: military or socioeconomic imperialism is pretty much one and the same thing.
Thus the wisdom of poets and prophets may be more helpful than economists and corporate power brokers in pursuit of freedom, justice and peace for the human family.
It looks like we’re all doin’ time in Babylon; it just so happens that the treatment in confinement of individuals like Bradley Manning and other whistleblowers will directly affect all of us and even determine whether we have a future or not. Such is also the ambivalent Price of Empire.
I hope and pray for holy Wisdom to help us face the collective future of life on this beloved planet we call our home in the vast universe. Left to the unchecked forces of Empire, I fear the worst.
Blind guides have never been good leaders before. Better to follow the wisdom of Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and the teachings of the Beatitudes.
With due deference to Occam’s razor may I suggest there is a simpler explanation to the complaint than the one you are proposing.
If one is an attorney and has a client who is flat out open and shut guilty how do you defend him. One way is to move the discussion to the political sphere and change the subject in the hope of having external pressure influence the legal process. His client doesn’t have much hope otherwise.
There was a general order that nothing from the secure net be downloaded. Documents from the secure net were on his laptop. Everything else is a legal irrelevancy. Going to political pressure is the only possibility for a successful defense.
I do not know PFC Manning’s imprisonment conditions, but given the sensitivity of the case the worst part is likely a string of outside checkers documenting the law and regulations are being followed. BUT his attorney would make the same charges in any case: his duty is to his client not the truth.
As for Manning, I frankly wouldn’t be surprised if he was entrapped. The odd behavior of Wired magazine concerning the chat logs between himself and Lamo, Poulsen’s role in all of this, and the shadowy presence of Lasch (sic?) behind all of this needs to be clarified.
More generally, I think that when you have the degree of interaction between corporate and government entities that you do in the U.S. it makes it extremely difficult for there to be a legitimately “free” press: a press that can inquire about whatever it likes, voice whatever opinions it likes, etc. This is because the “interest” of the press is subservient to the interest of the corporation owning it, and the interest of the corporation, when it is big enough, is not too far from the interest of the State.
Indeed, the whole point of Manning’s detention (he is being treated far worse than is warranted by comparison with other individuals who have been charged and convicted of similiar crimes–let’s not forget, he’s not been charged nor convicted of anything)…anyway, the whole point of his detention is to get him to testify against Wikileaks. *THAT* is the real target here. As neither the “Press” nor the State wants a legimitately free and influential journalistic entity. The only difference bewteen Wikileaks and Woodward/NYTimes is that these latter figures are *part* of the in-group (and so when *they* reveal classified info it is o.k.) and Wikileaks is not. You can’t prosecute the one without the other, unless you can drum up some charge against Assange on the basis of Manning’s testimony, which is what the detention is supposed to persuade him to do.)
Why should be surprised at any of this? Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and our State is no different from any other State in seeking to consolidate and maintain power. The insitutions which used to resist that State are all eroded or are quickly eroding, and we live in a state of manufactured political debate whose parameters are defined at the outset by the parties already in control.
We live in a state of manufactured political debate whose parameters are defined at the outset by the parties already in control.
Well, there’s your problem right there, WJ…
Go to the business pages of your local paper. Got them open? Good.
Now, please go to the “Labor” section. Go ahead – I’ll wait.
I’m rereading the Long Loneliness, and one of the things that’s striking about that book is the sense you get of the extent and complexity of the labor movement in America prior to and during WWI. Lots of competing presses and groups, a willingness to protest and agitate, etc. One of the I.W.W. papers, if I remember correclty, had an extended interview with an Irish Jesuit on Rerum Novarum, etc. This kind of movement is entirely absent from America today. Why? One answer is that things are so much better for labor now than then that there is no need or incentive for such energy on that front; another answer is that the capitalists have discovered how to keep the masses in a kind of deluded (dis)contentment. I think the answer is probably a mixture of the two.
I should probably do a post some time on the decline of labor in the US – my sense of things is that complacency in the movement became pervasive in the long golden era in the post-war period, which Reagan and the Republicans (who have always been The Management Party) took full advantage of, especially in the PATCO strike of 1981.
I think there is another reason for the decline of the US Labor Movement. Any large rganization has tendency to deviate from it’s stated pupose to tending it’s interest as an organization or the interests of the organiztion’s staff.
The potential membership is losing (has lost) confieence that it will actully represent them.
Have you ever been a member of a bargining unit that misrepresents it’s membership? SInce the union is the sole representative of the workers workers in that situation have less rights than if there no union.
I agree with Larry Carriere’s remarks above. I think that Ron Paul was trying to make much the same argument during the last Presidential election to many of those who falsely label themselves “conservatives.”
And to those of you who, like me, became deluded into believing that an Obama Presidency would be different, in terms of ceasing to invite “blowback,” I strongly advise you to read this article:
http://nationalinterest.org/article/imperial-by-design-4576?page=show
Obama is as much of an “American exceptionalist” and an “imperialist warmonger” as any of his predecessors. The argument that some of us could ignore “babykilling” in favour of stricter adherence to “just war teachings” no longer holds, I am ashamed to admit.
Whether our current national leader may be called president, or prime minister or even something rather quaint like king or queen, today’s liturgical solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord is a reminder that the rule or reign of God is the ultimate standard for those of us who live the Christian tradition.
What seems more remarkable to me, especially from the scripture readings of today, is the revelation that we are bound together intentionally, with our sisters and brothers in a global Abrahamic communion, which is called to be a light for the nations.
What poignancy surrounds the tragic news reports from Egypt and the Middle East these days, particularly in light of these fundamental texts and insights from our great Judeo-Christian and Muslim faith traditions.
This is more of the “price of empire” than we can really afford, given the technology we now possess today, and the potential for total annihilation of the sacred community of life on our beloved planet.
Who and where are the “wise ones” – women and men of our modern age who can see the light and not only follow, but will lead us by their example to wisdom incarnate once again?