[spectre] Arundhati Roy: The Algebra Of Infinite Justice

[Lorenzo Taiuti]

Dear Inke & spectres.
the writing of Arhundati Roy it's a a wonderful piece of thought ( it
appeared in cuts here and there in Italy) and what i like most it's the
Bhopal example.
It links very well with the interview with Susan Sontag where she develops
and clarify her first and very much criticized statement. (appeared on
italian newspaper "Repubblica" but i don't remember where it was published
originally).
But the problem with what is going on now is that we do not face a terrorism
that is only provoqued by the old mistakes and horrors of american foreign
policy.
The terrorists we are facing are not Guevara, Mandela, Arafat, etc...the
popular heroes representing the needs of theyr own people.
They represent particular power groups of people convinced of the
superiority of their own culture and obsessed by the inferiority of their
power to buy.
Their culture (Taleban) for instance  is based on repression of all cultural
and psychological needs we consider basical for individual life and living.
The terrorists are not symbolic representations of all wrongs happened
between west and the World.
They are doing their own thing.
So Arhundati Roy says again what all the socio/cultural movements have been
sayng in the last fifty years.
Different global politics.
Different relatonships between rich west and poor societies.
Did we ever stop to say that?
Has jurgen Habermas recently said "...war cannot be the exclusive answer,
even if it presents itself as a necessity..."
Ciao
Lorenzo Taiuti


----- Original Message -----
From: "Inke Arns" <inke@snafu.de>
To: <spectre@mikrolisten.de>
Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2001 3:53 PM
Subject: [spectre] Arundhati Roy: The Algebra Of Infinite Justice


>
> [Apologies to Nettime & Reader-list subscribers who already know this; I
> just read Arundhati Roy's text which is the best I have read on the
subject
> in a long time. Sincerely, Inke]
>
>
> From: Jeebesh Bagchi <jeebesh@sarai.net>
> Organization: Sarai
> Subject: <nettime> The Algebra Of Infinite Justice
> Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 14:55:21 +0530
>
> Dear readers (apologies to subscribers in reader-list for cross posting),
>
> Am forwarding an essay by Arundhati Roy that looks askance at the
> mobilisation for war. Arundhati Roy is the author of `God of Small Things`
> and the `Greater Common Good`
>
> Jeebesh / Sarai
>
> --------------------------------
>
> The Algebra Of Infinite Justice
>
> Arundhati Roy
> (Guardian, September 29, 2001)
>
> In the aftermath of the unconscionable September 11 suicide attacks on the
> Pentagon and the World Trade Center, an American newscaster said: "Good
and
> Evil rarely manifest themselves as clearly as they did last Tuesday.
People
> who we don't know, massacred people who we do. And they did so with
> contemptuous glee." Then he broke down and wept.
>
> Here's the rub: America is at war against people it doesn't know (because
> they don't appear much on TV). Before it has properly identified or even
> begun to comprehend the nature of its enemy, the US government has, in a
> rush of publicity and embarrassing rhetoric, cobbled together an
> "International Coalition Against Terror", mobilised its army, its
airforce,
> its navy and its media, and committed them to battle.
>
> The trouble is that once America goes off to war, it can't very well
return
> without having fought one. If it doesn't find its enemy, for the sake of
> the enraged folks back home, it will have to manufacture one. Once war
> begins, it will develop a momentum, a logic and a justification of its
own,
> and we'll lose sight of why it's being fought in the first place.
>
> What we're witnessing here is the spectacle of the world's most powerful
> country, reaching reflexively, angrily, for an old instinct to fight a new
> kind of war. Suddenly, when it comes to defending itself, America's
> streamlined warships, its Cruise missiles and F-16 jets look like
obsolete,
> lumbering things. As deterrence, its arsenal of nuclear bombs is no longer
> worth its weight in scrap. Box-cutters, penknives, and cold anger are the
> weapons with which the wars of the new century will be waged. Anger is the
> lock pick. It slips through customs unnoticed. Doesn't show up in baggage
> checks.
>
> Who is America fighting? On September 20, the FBI said that it had doubts
> about the identities of some of the hijackers. On the same day, President
> George W. Bush said: "We know exactly who these people are and which
> governments are supporting them." It sounds as though the President knows
> something that the FBI and the American public don't.
> In his September 20 address to the US Congress, President Bush called the
> enemies of America "Enemies of Freedom"
>
> "Americans are asking why do they hate us?" he said. "They hate our
> freedoms - our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to
> vote and assemble and disagree with each other." People are being asked to
> make two leaps of faith here. First, to assume that The Enemy is who the
US
> government says it is, even though it has no substantial evidence to
> support that claim
>
> And second, to assume that The Enemy's motives are what the US government
> says they are, and there's nothing to support that either.
>
> For strategic, military and economic reasons, it is vital for the US
> government to persuade the American public that America's commitment to
> freedom and democracy and the American Way of Life is under attack. In the
> current atmosphere of grief, outrage and anger, it's an easy notion to
> peddle. However, if that were true, it's reasonable to wonder why the
> symbols of America's economic and military dominance - the World Trade
> Center and the Pentagon - were chosen as the targets of the attacks. Why
> not the Statue of Liberty? Could it be that the stygian anger that led to
> the attacks has its taproot not in American freedom and democracy, but in
> the US government's record of commitment and support to exactly the
> opposite things - to military and economic terrorism, insurgency, military
> dictatorship, religious bigotry and unimaginable genocide (outside
America)?
>
> It must be hard for ordinary Americans so recently bereaved to look up at
> the world with their eyes full of tears and encounter what might appear to
> them to be indifference. It isn't indifference. It's just augury. An
> absence of surprise. The tired wisdom of knowing that what goes around,
> eventually comes around. American people ought to know that it is not
them,
> but their government's policies that are so hated. They can't possibly
> doubt that they themselves, their extraordinary musicians, their writers,
> their actors, their spectacular sportsmen and their cinema, are
universally
> welcomed.
>
> All of us have been moved by the courage and grace shown by firefighters,
> rescue workers and ordinary office-goers in the days and weeks that
> followed the attacks.
>
> America's grief at what happened has been immense and immensely public. It
> would be grotesque to expect it to calibrate or modulate its anguish.
> However, it will be a pity if, instead of using this as an opportunity to
> try and understand why September 11 happened, Americans use it as an
> opportunity to usurp the whole world's sorrow to mourn and avenge only
> their own. Because then it falls to the rest of us to ask the hard
> questions and say the harsh things. And for our pains, for our bad timing,
> we will be disliked, ignored and perhaps eventually silenced.
>
> The world will probably never know what motivated those particular
> hijackers who flew planes into those particular American buildings. They
> were not glory boys. They left no suicide notes, no political messages, no
> organisation has claimed credit for the attacks. All we know is that their
> belief in what they were doing outstripped the natural human instinct for
> survival or any desire to be remembered. It's almost as though they could
> not scale down the enormity of their rage to anything smaller than their
> deeds. And what they did has blown a hole in the world as we know it. In
> the absence of information, politicians, political commentators, writers
> (like myself) will invest the act with their own politics, with their own
> interpretations. This speculation, this analysis of the political climate
> in which the attacks took place, can only be a good thing.
>
> But war is looming large. Whatever remains to be said, must be said
> quickly. Before America places itself at the helm of the "international
> coalition against terror", before it invites (and coerces) countries to
> actively participate in its almost godlike mission - Operation Infinite
> Justice - it would help if some small clarifications are made. For
example,
> Infinite Justice for whom? Is this America's War against Terror in America
> or against Terror in general? What exactly is being avenged here? Is it
the
> tragic loss of almost 7,000 lives, the gutting of 5 million square feet of
> office space in Manhattan, the destruction of a section of the Pentagon,
> the loss of several hundreds of thousands of jobs, the bankruptcy of some
> airline companies and the dip in the New York Stock Exchange? Or is it
more
> than that?
>
> In 1996, Madeleine Albright, then US Secretary of State, was asked on
> national television what she felt about the fact that 5,00,000 Iraqi
> children had died as a result of US economic sanctions. She replied that
it
> was "a very hard choice", but that all things considered, "we think the
> price is worth it." Madeleine Albright never lost her job for saying this.
> She continued to travel the world representing the views and aspirations
of
> the US government. More pertinently, the sanctions against Iraq remain in
> place. Children continue to die.
>
> So here we have it. The equivocating distinction between civilisation and
> savagery, between the 'massacre of innocent people' or, if you like, 'a
> clash of civilisations' and 'collateral damage'. The sophistry and
> fastidious algebra of Infinite Justice. How many dead Iraqis will it take
> to make the world a better place? How many dead Afghans for every dead
> American? How many dead women and children for every dead man? How many
> dead mujahideen for each dead investment banker?
>
> As we watch mesmerised, Operation Infinite Justice unfolds on TV monitors
> across the world. A coalition of the world's superpowers is closing in on
> Afghanistan, one of the poorest, most ravaged, war-torn countries in the
> world, whose ruling Taliban government is sheltering Osama bin Laden, the
> man being held responsible for the September 11 attacks.
>
> The only thing in Afghanistan that could possibly count as collateral
value
> is its citizenry. (Among them, half a million maimed orphans. There are
> accounts of hobbling stampedes that occur when artificial limbs are
> airdropped into remote, inaccessible villages.) Afghanistan's economy is
in
> a shambles. In fact, the problem for an invading army is that Afghanistan
> has no conventional coordinates or signposts to plot on a military map -
no
> big cities, no highways, no industrial complexes, no water treatment
> plants. Farms have been turned into mass graves. The countryside is
> littered with landmines10 million is the most recent estimate. The
American
> army would first have to clear the mines and build roads in order to take
> its soldiers in.
>
> Fearing an attack from America, one million citizens have fled from their
> homes and arrived at the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. As
> supplies run outfood and aid agencies have been asked to leavethe BBC
> reports that one of the worst humanitarian disasters of recent times has
> begun to unfold. Witness the Infinite Justice of the new century.
Civilians
> starving to death, while they're waiting to be killed.
>
> By contributing to the killing of Afghan civilians, the US government will
> only end up helping the Taliban cause.
>
> In America there has been rough talk of "bombing Afghanistan back to the
> stone age". Someone please break the news that Afghanistan is already
> there. And if it's any consolation, America played no small part in
helping
> it on its way. The American people may be a little fuzzy about where
> exactly Afghanistan is (we hear reports that there's a run on maps of
> Afghanistan), but the US government and Afghanistan are old friends. In
> 1979, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA and Pakistan's ISI
> (Inter-Services Intelligence) launched the largest covert operation in the
> history of the CIA. Their purpose was to harness the energy of Afghan
> resistance to the Soviets and expand it into a holy war, an Islamic jehad,
> which would turn Muslim countries within the Soviet Union against the
> Communist regime and eventually destabilise it. When it began, it was
meant
> to be the Soviet Union's Vietnam. It turned out to be much more than that.
> Over the years, the CIA funded and recruited almost 1,00,000 radical
> mujahideen from 40 Islamic countries as soldiers for America's proxy war.
> The rank and file of the mujahideen were unaware that their jehad was
> actually being fought on behalf of Uncle Sam.(The irony is that America
was
> equally unaware that it was financing a future war against itself).
> By 1989, after being bloodied by 10 years of relentless conflict, the
> Russians withdrew, leaving behind a civilisation reduced to rubble. Civil
> war in Afghanistan raged on. The jehad spread to Chechnya, Kosovo and
> eventually to Kashmir. The CIA continued to pour in money and military
> equipment, but the overheads had become immense, and more money was
needed.
> The mujahideen ordered farmers to plant opium as 'revolutionary tax'. The
> ISI set up hundreds of heroin laboratories across Afghanistan. Within two
> years of the CIA's arrival, the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderland had become
> the biggest producer of heroin in the world, and the single biggest source
> on American streets.
>
> The annual profits, said to be between 100 and 200 billion dollars, were
> ploughed back into training and arming militants.
>
> In 1995, the Talibanthen a marginal sect of dangerous, hardline
> fundamentalistsfought its way to power in Afghanistan. It was funded by
the
> ISI, that old cohort of the CIA, and supported by many political parties
in
> Pakistan. The Taliban unleashed a regime of terror. Its first victims were
> its own people, particularly women. It closed down girls' schools,
> dismissed women from government jobs, enforced Sharia laws in which women
> deemed to be 'immoral' are stoned to death, and widows guilty of being
> adulterous are buried alive. Given the Taliban government's human rights
> track record, it seems unlikely that it will in any way be intimidated or
> swerved from its purpose by the prospect of war, or the threat to the
lives
> of its civilians.
>
> After all that has happened, can there be anything more ironic than Russia
> and America joining hands to re-destroy Afghanistan? The question is, can
> you destroy destruction? Dropping more bombs on Afghanistan will only
> shuffle the rubble, scramble some old graves and disturb the dead.
>
> The desolate landscape of Afghanistan was the burial ground of Soviet
> Communism and the springboard of a unipolar world dominated by America. It
> made the space for neo-capitalism and corporate globalisation, again
> dominated by America. And now Afghanistan is poised to be the graveyard
for
> the unlikely soldiers who fought and won this war for America.
>
> And what of America's trusted ally? Pakistan too has suffered enormously.
> The US government has not been shy of supporting military dictators who
> have blocked the idea of democracy from taking root in the country. Before
> the CIA arrived, there was a small rural market for opium in Pakistan.
> Between 1979 and 1985, the number of heroin addicts grew from zero to one
> and a half million. There are three million Afghan refugees living in
> tented camps along the border.
>
> Pakistan's economy is crumbling. Sectarian violence, globalisation's
> Structural Adjustment programmes and drug lords are tearing the country to
> pieces. Set up to fight the Soviets, the terrorist training centres and
> madrassas, sown like dragon's teeth across the country, produced
> fundamentalists with tremendous popular appeal within Pakistan itself. The
> Taliban, who the Pakistan government has supported, funded and propped up
> for years, has material and strategic alliances with Pakistan's own
> political parties. Now the US government is asking (asking?) Pakistan to
> garrot the pet it has hand-reared in its backyard for so many years.
> President Musharraf, having pledged his support to the US, could well find
> he has something resembling civil war on his hands.
>
> India, thanks in part to its geography, and in part to the vision of its
> former leaders, has so far been fortunate enough to be left out of this
> Great Game. Had it been drawn in, it's more than likely that our
democracy,
> such as it is, would not have survived. Today, as some of us watch in
> horror, the Indian government is furiously gyrating its hips, begging the
> US to set up its base in India rather than Pakistan. Having had this
> ringside view of Pakistan's sordid fate, it isn't just odd, it's
> unthinkable that India should want to do this. Any Third World country
with
> a fragile economy and a complex social base should know by now that to
> invite a superpower like America in (whether it says it's staying or just
> passing through) would be like inviting a brick to drop through your
> windscreen.
>
> In the media blitz that followed the September 11 events, no mainstream TV
> station thought it fit to tell the story of America's involvement with
> Afghanistan. So, to those unfamiliar with the story, the coverage of the
> attacks could have been moving, disturbing and perhaps to cynics,
> self-indulgent. However, to those of us who are familiar with
Afghanistan's
> recent history, American television coverage and the rhetoric of the
> "International Coalition Against Terror" is just plain insulting.
America's
> 'free press' like its 'free market' has a lot to account for.
>
> Operation Infinite Justice is ostensibly being fought to uphold the
> American Way of Life. It'll probably end up undermining it completely. It
> will spawn more anger and more terror across the world. For ordinary
people
> in America, it will mean lives lived in a climate of sickening
uncertainty:
> will my child be safe in school? Will there be nerve gas in the subway? A
> bomb in the cinema hall? Will my love come home tonight? Already CNN is
> warning people against the possibility of biological warfaresmall pox,
> bubonic plague, anthraxbeing waged by innocuous crop duster aircraft.
Being
> picked off a few at a time may end up being worse than being annihilated
> all at once by a nuclear bomb.
>
> The US government, and no doubt governments all over the world, will use
> the climate of war as an excuse to curtail civil liberties, deny free
> speech, lay off workers, harass ethnic and religious minorities, cut back
> on public spending and divert huge amounts of money to the defence
industry.
>
> To what purpose? President George Bush can no more "rid the world of
> evil-doers" than he can stock it with saints. It's absurd for the US
> government to even toy with the notion that it can stamp out terrorism
with
> more violence and oppression. Terrorism is the symptom, not the disease.
> Terrorism has no country. It's transnational, as global an enterprise as
> Coke or Pepsi or Nike. At the first sign of trouble, terrorists can pull
up
> stakes and move their 'factories' from country to country in search of a
> better deal. Just like the multinationals.
>
> Terrorism as a phenomenon may never go away. But if it is to be contained,
> the first step is for America to at least acknowledge that it shares the
> planet with other nations, with other human beings, who, even if they are

> not on TV, have loves and griefs and stories and songs and sorrows and,
for
> heaven's sake, rights. Instead, when Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence
> Secretary, was asked what he would call a victory in America's New War, he
> said that if he could convince the world that Americans must be allowed to
> continue with their way of life, he would consider it a victory.
>
> The September 11 attacks were a monstrous calling card from a world gone
> horribly wrong. The message may have been written by Osama bin Laden (who
> knows?) and delivered by his couriers, but it could well have been signed
> by the ghosts of the victims of America's old wars.
>
> The millions killed in Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia, the 17,500 killed when
> Israel - backed by the US - invaded Lebanon in 1982, the 2,00,000 Iraqis
> killed in Operation Desert Storm, the thousands of Palestinians who have
> died fighting Israel's occupation of the West Bank. And the millions who
> died, in Yugoslavia, Somalia, Haiti, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the
> Dominican republic, Panama, at the hands of all the terrorists, dictators
> and genocidists who the American government supported, trained, bankrolled
> and supplied with arms.
>
> And this is far from being a comprehensive list. For a country involved in
> so much warfare and conflict, the American people have been extremely
> fortunate. The strikes on September 11 were only the second on American
> soil in over a century. The first was Pearl Harbour. The reprisal for this
> took a long route, but ended with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This time the
> world waits with bated breath for the horrors to come.
>
> Someone recently said that if Osama bin Laden didn't exist, America would
> have had to invent him. But, in a way, America did invent him. He was
among
> the jehadis who moved to Afghanistan in 1979 when the CIA commenced
> operations. Osama bin Laden has the distinction of being created by the
CIA
> and wanted by the FBI. In the course of a fortnight, he has been promoted
> from Suspect, to Prime Suspect, and then, despite the lack of any real
> evidence, straight up the charts to being "wanted dead or alive".
>
> From all accounts, it will be impossible to produce evidence (of the sort
> that would stand scrutiny in a court of law) to link Osama bin Laden to
the
> September 11 attacks. So far, it appears that the most incriminating piece
> of evidence against him is the fact that he has not condemned them.
>
> From what is known about the location and the living conditions from which
> Osama bin Laden operates, it's entirely possible that he did not
personally
> plan and carry out the attacksthat he is the inspirational figure, 'the
CEO
> of the Holding Company'.
>
> The Taliban's response to US demands for the extradition of Osama bin
Laden
> has been uncharacteristically reasonable: Produce the evidence, we'll hand
> him over. President Bush's response is that the demand is
"non-negotiable".
>
> (While talks are on for the extradition of CEOs - can India put in a
> side-request for the extradition of Warren Anderson of the USA? He was
> Chairman of Union Carbide, responsible for the Bhopal gas leak that killed
> 16,000 people in 1984. We have collated the necessary evidence. It's all
in
> the files. Could we have him, please?)
>
> But who is Osama bin Laden really?
>
> Let me rephrase that. What is Osama bin Laden?
>
> He's America's family secret. He is the American President's dark
> doppelganger. The savage twin of all that purports to be beautiful and
> civilised. He has been sculpted from the spare rib of a world laid to
waste
> by America's foreign policy: its gunboat diplomacy, its nuclear arsenal,
> its vulgarly stated policy of "full spectrum dominance", its chilling
> disregard for non-American lives, its barbarous military interventions,
its
> support for despotic and dictatorial regimes, its merciless economic
agenda
> that has munched through the economies of poor countries like a cloud of
> locusts. Its marauding multinationals who are taking over the air we
> breathe, the ground we stand on, the water we drink, the thoughts we
think.
>
> Now that the family secret has been spilled, the twins are blurring into
> one another and gradually becoming interchangeable. Their guns, bombs,
> money and drugs have been going around in the loop for a while. (The
> Stinger missiles that will greet US helicopters were supplied by the CIA.
> The heroin used by America's drug-addicts comes from Afghanistan. The Bush
> administration recently gave Afghanistan a $43 million subsidy for a "war
> on drugs"...) Now they've even begun to borrow each other's rhetoric. Each
> refers to the other as 'the head of the snake'. Both invoke God and use
the
> loose millenarian currency of Good and Evil as their terms of reference.
> Both are engaged in unequivocal political crimes. Both are dangerously
> armed - one with the nuclear arsenal of the obscenely powerful, the other
> with the incandescent, destructive power of the utterly hopeless. The
> fireball and the ice pick. The bludgeon and the axe. The important thing
to
> keep in mind is that neither is an acceptable alternative to the other.
>
> President Bush's ultimatum to the people of the world"If you're not with
> us, you're against us"is a piece of presumptuous arrogance.
>
> It's not a choice that people want to, need to, or should have to make.
>
>
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