Tomdispatch is a US-based website set up by editor and publisher Tom Engelhardt in the wake of the US bombing of Afghanistan. The essays in this collection comprise the best of that website, and largely fall into two broad categories. The first lay bare the mechanics of the present day occupations, deception, and corruption practiced by the US state, whilst the second reveal the futility of the imperial project and start to map out the trajectory of resistance to it.

The section “Imperial Planet” opens with a debate between the editor and fellow academic Jonathan Schell over whether it is accurate to talk of a US “Empire” in the traditional sense. For Engelhardt, the answer is clear: yes it is, and it has been for sometime. For his colleague, the US is currently trying to become a true, old-fashioned, Empire, but is destined to fail before it achieves such a status. As Hobsbawm has noted elsewhere, today’s anti-colonialists, unlike those of the Victorian imperialist era, have far more than handcrafted spears with which to drive out the occupiers. And more importantly, notes Schell, “The local resistors are weak militarily but strong politically. The imperial masters are powerful militarily but nearly helpless politically. History teaches us that in these contests it is political power that prevails.”

It is this crucial point that is driven home again and again throughout the rest of the book: Whilst the US can – and will – throw its weight around in an increasingly brutal way, its political influence is irreversibly in decline.

Thus, Chalmers Johnson describes recent US attempts to remilitarize Japan and raises the specter of a resulting Sino-Japanese war. “Has the US considered this?” Johnson innocently enquires. I would have thought that was the whole point. Nevertheless, the essay serves to illustrate the growing marginalization of US influence in East Asia, especially following the US role in creating the 1997 currency crisis, as well as their blatant promotion of Japanese militarism and Taiwanese separatism(thankfully, recent events seem to confirm that the Taiwanese desire to act as US-anointed agent provocateur in the region is dwindling fast). Dilip Hiro picks up the theme of US marginalization, outlining the growing ties between developing countries which are making the USA increasingly impotent in imposing its economic will across the world. The military reflection of these evolving realities became unmistakably clear when the new Chinese-led military alliance, the Shanghai Co-operation Conference refused the US request to be granted even observer status – despite having already granted such status to both India and Iran.

In Latin America, Greg Grandin shows how the US military is busily fabricating an Al-Qaeda presence in the “lawless” tri-border region between Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina using the time-honored technique of planting stories in the local press for international media agencies to “discover”. The purpose? To justify a stepped-up counter-insurgency program across the region and a re-foundation of General Pinochet’s Operation Condor, which was responsible for the murder of thousands of “suspected leftists” across the continent during the 1980s. To achieve this, all the Congressional “checks and balances” on military aid, established in the light of the Iran-Contra scandal, are being quietly dismantled. For all that, the US strategy appears to going nowhere fast, as government after government have refused to participate in Rumsfeld’s “cross-border security force”; evidently, US military and economic blackmail does not carry the same weight as it did in the 1980s before it had been stymied by Chinese trade in the latter case, and Afghan and Iraqi resistance in the former.

Engelhardt himself focuses mostly on symbolism and historical analogy in US imperialism. Thus, the US’s charmingly named “lily pad” strategy of building military bases right across the so-called “arc of instability” from North Africa to Central Asia,(conveniently encompassing all the world’s major oil reserves) is seen as the contemporary equivalent of what was known in more candid times as “gunboat diplomacy”. But his real tour de force is an excellent piece on “the barbarism of war from the air”, which chronicles the history of both aerial warfare itself, and of the chimerical faith in the ability of such warfare to “break the will” of the enemy — a faith which has persisted in some quarters despite the countless refutations furnished by real life. Later chapters spell out the futility of aerial bombardment in more detail, with “Siege notes” — the frank war diaries of a middle class Lebanese — graphically demonstrating how the 2006Israeli invasion stirred up hitherto neglected passions of resistance and defiance against the aggressor.

Elsewhere, Noam Chomsky continues with his invaluable work of furnishing the anti-war movement with the latest statistical data to confirm and quantify the bleeding obvious –this time, for example, quoting Rand Corporation statistics suggesting a sevenfold increase in terrorism since the invasion of Iraq. His research on the huge US public opposition to their own government’s imperial bloodbaths serves to highlight a clear trend in today’s society – that it is increasingly only the most openly racist – or willfully ignorant – who will even attempt to justify the wars of aggression currently being waged or planned. It is the pro-war, not the anti-war, movement who are currently marginalized.

In “The Smash of Civilizations”, Chalmers Johnson fleshes out the details of the destruction and looting that followed in the wake of the blitzkrieg of Iraq, the largest-scale looting since the Mongol invasion of 1258, according to one Oxford professor. We all heard about the looting of Baghdad museum, but how many realized that the ancient city of Ur, “the literal heartland of human civilization” was chosen by the US military as the precise spot for two 10,000 foot runways, the construction of which “completely ruined” the area? Or that the 2,600-year old brick pavement at Babylon has now been thoroughly crushed by US military vehicles? Or that, before the invasion, a team of internationally renowned archeologists held three separate meetings with the Pentagon specifically to warn them about the dangers of looting? Obviously all this is as nothing compared to the human destruction heaped on Iraq — but nevertheless, for Iraqis, for whom “civilization” is more than just an excuse to knock people over the head, it is another body blow — as indeed it is for all of us.

That human destruction is also chronicled here. In “The Hidden War on Women in Iraq” — often hidden by the victims themselves to avoid shame — Ruth Rosen describes the epidemic of rape and forced prostitution now raging in that country, not only as a result of the imposed lawlessness of the occupation, but also as a specific interrogation technique by the occupiers themselves. Ann Jones goes on to paint a dire portrait of the position of women in NATO’s Afghanistan – with unfortunately only the briefest of allusions to the successes made by the Communist government in terms of girls education and ending feudal oppression in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Revealing historical parallels are drawn, notably between Bush’s invasion of Iraq and Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. Both were justified with the exact same troika of imperial excuses – that the offending regime was allied with the enemy, was a threat to security, and perpetrated a tyrannical rule over its people. Just like Bush, Napoleon feigned surprise at the natives’ “lack of gratitude” before suffering ignominious defeat as that ingratitude evolved into a ferocious resistance –though not before he had meted out plenty of futile brutalities against the resisting population. History repeating itself indeed.

The section on the “petro-industrial complex” opens with a comprehensive study of the recent history of Iraqi oil. In candid detail, it shows how Iraq is the archetypal example of the imperial economy trick. The trick roughly works like this: 1.Hoist an oppressive regime onto a third world country, 2. Extend billions of dollars ($120 billion in the case of Iraq) of credit to this regime to spend on your weapons to crush all real and imagined anti-imperialists, socialists, and democrats in the region, 3. When this has been accomplished, bemoan the inequality and lack of democracy in the country and use this as an excuse to invade, 4. Solemnly spell out to the newly installed “democratic government” the importance of honoring the debts incurred under your previous puppet, 5.Use the promise of “debt-relief” to force the new “democracy” to hand over all its economic sovereignty to your corporations (through “open markets,” abolition of subsidies and tariffs, and in the case of Iraq, “Production Sharing Agreements”). The same trick has been used repeatedly over the last half-century – in the Congo, in South Africa, and in countless Latin American countries – but it is Iraq that has the most room for “leverage”. With the highest per capita “debt” in the world alongside, in the words of Dick Cheney, the “ultimate prize” of its massive oil resources, the neocons are determined not to allow the reality of resistance prevent the orgy of looting they have always dreamt of.

The corporate takeover of Iraq is detailed here, as are similar activities closer to home. Just as contracts were drying up in Iraq, the very same vulture capitalist corporations started drooling over New Orleans. Nick Turse and Tom Engelhardt spell out the endemic corruption of the Bush administration, whose millionaire corporate backers have swarmed to that city “like flies to a rotting corpse” – with the most lucrative contracts going to companies connected to the former director of FEMA – the government department awarding the contracts. Unsurprisingly, a company linked to Jeb Bush was also awarded some juicy drainage contracts – and just as unsurprisingly, thirty of the pumps they provided were found to be defective. Staying on New Orleans, Rebecca Solnit urges us not to forget that the enduring “spectacle of crowds without food, water or sanitation…was the result not just of incompetence, but of malice”. She goes on to describe how the Crescent City Connection bridge was closed to those fleeing the drowning city by the police of neighboring Gretna, a rich white neighborhood who feared the fleeing hordes. She also details how all housing projects were shutdown in New Orleans, even those sustaining little or no flood damage, showing how Hurricane Katrina has been used as an excuse to evict working class communities – many of whom are still being refused the “right to return” to this day.

In one of the most thoughtful and challenging pieces of the book, “The Chauffeur’s Dilemma,” Adam Hothschild asks some hard questions about US society. The focus is on why it is that the 56% of working class men who believe that Bush’s tax cuts favor the rich, also favor those very same tax cuts. It is a thought-provoking piece and good to see elements of the US left starting to tackle this issue head on.

Overall, the compendium is a thoroughly researched and articulate guide to the current state of the US polity, and as such serves as a valuable contribution to the education of the anti-war movement.

A stunned silence from the audience. Hang on – what? Did we hear that correctly? Wasn’t Moazzam Begg just asked how he felt when he was told he was going to be sent to Guantanamo Bay? Yes, he was. “You have to understand that at that time, I was being held at Bagram.” The US base in Bagram, where Moazzam was held for a year, is notorious. This was where he had had to endure being kept awake for nights on end by the terrified screams of fellow detainees – both women and men – two of whom were beaten to death before his eyes, and where he was threatened with being sent to Egypt for extreme torture, before being hooded, shackled and beaten himself. After a year here, “I was looking forward to Guantanamo.”

Moazzam became politicized at an early age through his experiences of racism growing up on Birmingham’s Sparkhill estate. It was these experiences that led him to join anti-racist gang ‘the Lynx’, who played a part in clearing racism off the streets of Birmingham. His political consciousness deepened as he began to educate himself about international issues during the First Gulf War. Always tending to back the underdog his sympathies lay with the Iraqis, and as he read more widely he found himself broadly supportive of Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro in their struggles against US imperialism, as well as Mandela and the Palestinians in their struggles against apartheid and occupation.

His growing internationalism led him to take part in eight aid convoys to Bosnia, and finally to start work as aid worker in Afghanistan. When the US began bombing in 2001, he and his family fled to Pakistan, from where his nightmare began. Kidnapped by the Pakistani police (who were being paid by the US military for each foreign Muslim they captured), and delivered into US custody, his journey took him from Kandahar to Bagram, where he stayed one year before ending up in Guantanamo’s Camp Echo.

Once there, Moazzam was kept in solitary confinement for two years, never once being informed of any charge against him. How did he survive? “In reality, I didn’t always survive. There’s not much you can do. I often felt I couldn’t use the experience for any kind of benefit. I would dream of escape, but I would also try to memorise my copy of the Koran, and I would make lists of everything I could think of – all the foreign words I knew, all the capital cities, what I would do when I got out. I also started to write poetry.” The methods used at Guantanamo Bay – 24 hour lighting, sensory deprivation, public humiliation, half-drowning… – have been widely reported in this paper and elsewhere. I don’t want this interview to dwell on the details, but I do want to know what Moazzam believes is the purpose of this abuse. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Guantanamo/ Bagram methods, far from producing the quality intelligence the US claim is their purpose, are actually designed to break prisoners down until they admit to anything. In other words, the US torture system is designed not to extract information, but to manufacture it for dubious political purposes. In his book, Enemy Combatant, Begg notes that Ibn as-Shaykh al-Libbee was tortured into signing a ‘confession’ that Saddam Hussein had trained Al-Qaeda in using WMD, which was used as ‘evidence’ during the buildup towards the invasion of Iraq, before later being retracted. After several particularly brutal interrogations and threats, Moazzam himself “began to think that the only thing I could do to end this misery and terror was to pretend to admit to being involved in some terrorist plot… eventually I did agree to say whatever they wanted me to say, to do whatever they wanted me to do. I agreed to be their witness to whatever.”

But Moazzam believes there is also another reason for Guantanamo. “It is a stark warning to the rest of the world: this is what happens to people who dissent, or who live in countries whose governments dissent. We can pick you up, anywhere in the world, without charge, and do these things to you for as long as we want: and no one can do a thing about it.” And let’s not kid ourselves that we are talking only about the US here: Contrary to the widely propagated image of the British government as an appalled, if ineffectual, bystander in the case of the British Guantanamo detainees, in Moazzam’s case at least, they were central to the whole process of his incarceration. MI5 were present at his very first interrogation, and at several others subsequently. Indeed, it was they who had suggested to the Americans that he be picked up in the first place. Why? Their suspicions seem to have been raised by his internationalist work over the years – driving aid convoys to Bosnia, visiting, and subsequently moving to Afghanistan to work in a girl’s school set up under the Taliban – but particularly by a letter he had received from an acquaintance alleging torture and requesting legal assistance.

It seems clear that a big part of what MI5 had against Moazzam was his model of internationalism – a practicing example of aiding just struggles and supporting those less privileged than ourselves. Is part of the ‘War on Terror’ aimed at terrorizing and criminalizing the whole concept of international solidarity? The Terrorism Act 2000, by banning even symbolic support for mass resistance groups such as Hamas, certainly gives that impression…

“One of the things that people don’t recognize in this country – or seem to have forgotten – is that there was a time when Britain could well have been occupied; in fact Jersey and Guernsey were occupied. There was a counter-occupation plan drawn up by the Ministry of Defence, which included what would today be termed terrorism. It included dad’s army – the real dad’s army – taking up arms against not only the occupiers, but also collaborators. We seem to have forgotten that. How do we recognize the legitimacy of, say, the French Resistance, who were using ‘terrorism’ against the Nazis, and not recognize the right of people to defend themselves in Iraq or elsewhere? It’s a principle: are you allowed to resist occupation or not? To say that it is only legal ‘when we say so’ is to remove the principle of self defence. It is a time honoured tradition for people to resist occupation. The Terrorism Acts in this country attempt, with a series of legislation, to criminalize not only attacks against civilians – but any ability or idea to support resistance movements against occupation, whether in Iraq, Palestine, or anywhere else.”

Do people outside the Muslim community have anything to fear from the Terrorism Acts? “We’ve already seen it being used against people like Walter Wolfgang [elderly Labour Party member arrested under the Terrorism Act for heckling Jack Straw at Labour Conference]. I think it is just a beginning. Clearly they are not targeting the non-Muslim community, but I would only add the caveat “yet”. And that is because the idea of dissent is being demonized. It’s not only just the [Muslim] community that is being demonized, as much as we are, but what is really being demonized is dissent. Because we are regarded as having traitorous voices, not supporting our boys back home because we are against the war; when in fact, the reality is that the government doesn’t support them. The government, by introducing this new legislation, is beginning to try to suppress dissent. One example of this is the glorification of terror. Having a certain interpretation could very easily include situations where the British government themselves would have supported terrorism; for example during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. The Russians called the mujahadeen terrorists. The British, on the other hand, were bringing mujahadeen to Scotland and to Snowdonia to train them and sending them anti-aircraft missiles; but the Russians always maintained they were terrorists. So it’s paradoxical to recognize just how the tables have turned, but in essence the idea of criminalization will not just be limited to the Muslim community, but to wherever opposition is.”

I ask Moazzam if he sees parallels between the criminalization the Muslim community is now facing, and what the Irish community here faced in the 1970s and 1980s. “There is, and one parallel stands out in particular – the major lesson of Northern Ireland – unpalatable as it may be to some – is that the people the government need to think about talking to, are the very people they are currently demonizing.”

It turns out Moazzam has just returned from his third visit to Ireland, where a plaque bearing his name was unveiled as part of the annual Bloody Sunday commemoration. Moazzam’s activism has clearly not been blunted by his time in US custody – not even, it seems, for its duration. In Bagram, he successfully agitated to improve the prisoners’ conditions on two occasions – once to be allowed to exercise, and once for more daily water – the latter through that time-honoured Irish prisoners’ tactic of the hunger strike.

Back in Britain, what does Moazzam think is the way forward for the anti-war movement, given the fact that government are not bothered by marches? His answer is unequivocal: “I can tell you that with a lot of people I have been speaking to across the board, Muslim and non-Muslim, the idea of a campaign of civil disobedience is really starting to take off. That could well be the next step I think.”

How would the government respond? “The response would be arrests of people. I think this goes out to the crux of the matter – how much are people willing to sacrifice for the greater cause? As a lot of Americans also say, our country is now internationally hated – and I think anybody that cares about how their country appears to the rest of the world should take note of that, because whether we like it or not, we’re all British. When we go out of this country, people regard us as ambassadors to our nation. How can one be proud to say, yes, I’m British, to, not just somebody in Iraq, but in Brazil or Guatemala or anywhere else, when people regard you now as war criminals? Britain has invaded Afghanistan more times than Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan, and it continues to do so.”

Could a campaign of civil disobedience really take off? “I often get asked when I speak at universities and elsewhere, ‘what do you think should be done’? And I remember a soldier, a Southern Alabaman who served two tours of duty in Vietnam, who said, “listen, son, we didn’t lose Vietnam, it was those punk-ass kids – they’re the ones who lost us Vietnam”. So what I said at the University is: we need more punk-ass kids.”

Moazzam is clearly a serious political thinker and strategist of whom the British anti-war and anti-imperialist movement can be immensely proud. Maybe we should start doing as he suggests.