Fighting for our Minds
by Rahul Mahajan
Dissident Voice
January 3, 2003
As the Bush war
machine attempts to plant the flag of imperium wherever its over-sized jackboot
takes it, Americans must fight to reclaim that most precious ground, ceded to
the forces of the right after long wars of attrition: our minds.
No less than the
collective fate of humanity hangs in the balance.
The struggle is
as easy or as hard as we make it. It’s hard because in a sense, we start
already defeated; in the absence of an affirmative campaign to reclaim our
minds, we think the master’s thoughts: he rules us as a colonial power. In the
absence of a concerted, irreverently irredentist campaign to reclaim the
territory that is rightfully ours, we are slaves in our own houses and our
slavery removes the most fundamental check on the colonizer’s desire to find
new worlds to conquer (with the attendant toll of human degradation, suffering,
and death.)
But its easy too
because the moment we start the battle, the moment we acknowledge the simple
fact that our minds have been colonized, the colonizer’s modes and methods, its
purpose, its theology become ever so clear.
Lets look at the
case of Iraq and the stentorian bleats for war emanating from Washington. I
think what we’ll find is an enemy (the colonizer from D.C.) made clumsy by
years of success. The time is now to capitalize on this fact and to kick him
out forever.
For more than a
year now, the Bush administration has been calling for war on Iraq, claiming
that this forlorn and broken country poses an immediate and fundamental threat
to the safety of the world’s citizens.
Saddam, their
argument goes, is flush with materiel and is busily enhancing his already
formidable stockpile of Weapons of Mass Destruction; moreover, he is willing to
use them. How this is true despite a brutal bombing war 11 years ago coupled
with the most onerous sanctions in the history of the modern world – sanctions
that have kept Iraq not only under the microscope but in the viselike grip of
the West, poor, destitute—they don’t tell us. Another obvious question that
they don’t even dare to answer is why a military attack would work this time if
the might U.S. military machine couldn’t “do the job” last time.
The colonizers’
argument is pathetic, clumsy, obfuscatory, and entirely dependent on our mental
inaction. A couple examples of arguments that might seem compelling until we
start fighting for our minds: 1. In a news conference, Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld claimed that Iraq could be 12-18 months away from developing a nuclear
weapon. He went further to mention that, apparently, Saddam has been trying to
develop nukes for the last twenty years.
Okay, Saddam
Hussein with a nuclear weapon. Sound scary? It may be until we look a tiny bit
deeper.
What went
unsaid? 1. Iraq has no delivery capability for nukes; 2. Iraq has NO incentive
for using nukes even if it had them; 3. This stems DIRECTLY from what Rumsfeld
himself said in the second part of his argument: if indeed Saddam Hussein has
been trying to develop nukes for 20 years, then why on Earth would we will
think this macabre task would reach fruition in year? If indeed he has been trying
for 20 years, it would appear that Iraq is totally inept or has no access to
fissionable material.
In order to
start asking these questions, one need not be an expert on nuclear weapons. In
fact, all one really needs to be armed with is the knowledge that in producing
an argument, the colonist is driven by his need to conquer new lands. The
moment we realize this, we become skeptical of just about anything he claims
since in a mad rush for power, people and institutions become utterly
mendacious. Once we are skeptical, we are in luck because the colonizer has
become sloppy: his arguments are easily dissected, easily seen to be repugnant,
and are thus easily rejectable.
Another argument
the colonizer has recently been making requires us to believe that Iraq
accepting the UN Weapons inspectors and pledging to give them unfettered access
is a bad thing. Since the day Hussein pledged to comply, Washington and the
fulsome private media have been talking of deception, game playing,
obfuscation, and the general mendacity of the Arab leader.
Sounds pretty
bad doesn’t it? It does until one considers what the reaction would have been
if Iraq decided not to comply. Most of us would be indignant wouldn’t we? And
war would be imminent, wouldn’t it? Iraq had two choices in front of it: one,
to comply and two, not to comply. If non-compliance proves intransigence and
compliance proves both intransigence and utter mendacity, what is left for the
poor nation to do? Sound confusing until one realizes that the colonizer wants
war and has to have it. Once we understand this, everything they say about
Iraq’s WMD and Hussein’s hiding weapons in palaces and in the “vast desert
Kingdom that is Iraq” seems suspect.
The arguments
put forth by the colonizer are ever changing and specious. Once we start the
battle of reclamation, we see them for what they are. And once we see them for
what they are, we must resist the colonizer with all the forces we can muster.
The importance
of this battle is not academic. Its about two very important, very real things-
freedom and humanism.
The freedom to
be able to think, to be logical and just in our thoughts. The freedom for us to
live in a society that represents our morals, desires, and strong feelings of
amity for fellow humans.
The humanism
that holds clearly that empires are evil.
Dismantling
empires has always started with the crucial and epic struggle for the one
territory that is truly ours: our minds.
Rahul Mahajan is a member of the Nowar Collective and serves on the National Board of Peace
Action. He is the author of The New Crusade: America’s War on Terrorism,
(http://www.monthlyreview.org/newcrusade.htm). His other work can be found at: http://www.rahulmahajan.com. Email: rahul@tao.ca