Is it just me, or is the Bush Junta not much more than a goon squad of
hyper-moralistic hypocrites spewing hot gas every time they open their
forked tongued mouths?

Is it just me, or is the Bush Junta not much more than a goon squad of
hyper-moralistic hypocrites spewing hot gas every time they open their
forked tongued mouths?

A.D.
======================================

FROM BIRMINGHAM TO BAGHDAD, IMPERIALISM'S FREEDOM RIDE

By Gary Leupp


"But we should not," insisted the World's Most Powerful Woman, as
though she were dealing with an actual problem, in a speech to the
National Association of Black Journalists in Dallas August 7, "let our
voice waver in speaking out on the side of people who are seeking
freedom. And we must never, ever indulge in the condescending voices
who allege that some people in Africa or in the Middle East are just
not interested in freedom, they're culturally just not ready for
freedom or they just aren't ready for freedom's responsibilities.

We've heard that argument before, and we, more than any, as a people,
should be ready to reject it. The view was wrong in 1963 in
Birmingham, and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad and in the rest of the
Middle East."

But National Security Adviser and former Chevron Oil board member
Condoleeza Rice did not identify those who disparage Third World
"freedom" and alleged U.S. efforts to impose it. She's obviously not
targeting L. Paul Bremer III, civil administrator in Iraq, who told
the Washington Post June 28, "Elections held too early can be
destructive," adding that while there's "no blanket rule" against
democracy in Iraq, and he's "not personally opposed to it," it must
take place "in a way that takes care of our concerns" and "done very
carefully." (Is it just me, or is he saying the Iraqis "are culturally
just not ready for freedom, and just aren't ready for freedom's
responsibilities"---at least until they learn how to say "Yes, Boss!"
with genuine feeling?)

Rice is not targeting Henry Kissinger, who as U.S. Secretary of State,
following the (democratic) election of Salvador Allende in 1970,
declared, "Chile shouldn't be allowed to go Marxist just because its
people are irresponsible," and proceeded to help organize a bloody
fascist coup, producing a regime more suitable to those Latinos down
there.

She's not trying to chasten Vice President ***** Cheney, who as a
Wyoming representative in Congress in 1986 voted against a resolution
urging the apartheid government of South Africa (which then-President
Reagan pronounced America's "closest friend" in Africa) to release
Nelson Mandela---freedom fighter, democrat---from prison.

No, no, no. Condi's saying: Those criticizing the U.S. occupation of
Iraq are the moral equivalents of the KKK. The implicit allegation is
bizarre. It is also both wise and stupid. Politically wise, because
the American people, due to many decades of struggle, have come to see
the Civil Rights Movement, the moral authority of which she seeks to
appropriate in pursuit of Bushite global ambitions, as a good thing.
So she can, maybe, for awhile, exploit the widespread, decent
sentiment in support of racial equality to generate sympathy for what
is in fact an inherently racist crusade.

The administration tries to draw on that moral authority in other
connections, too. A senior lawyer in the administration of (well-known
former big-time substance abuser) George Bush claimed recently that
California's flouting of federal drug laws (by allowing sick and dying
patients to use marijuana) is equivalent to the southern states' past
defiance of civil rights laws. Those drug laws have resulted in the
selective incarceration of more college-age Black males than go to
college in this country. Does the analogy make sense?

No, it's stupid. And so is Condi's tortured analogy, because freedom
is something grasped from oppressors, not conferred by them. If we
really want to make apt comparisons, we should link the occupation
regime with the segregationists, and the Iraqi resistance with the
civil rights activists (who ironically made the careers of Rice and
other African-Americans in the administration possible).

Condi's also saying, unmistakably: The U.S. will actively promote
political change ("freedom") in Africa and the Middle East. That has
to mean strong-arming, if not overthrowing, long-standing allied
governments in Cairo and Riyadh, as well as non-compliant governments
in Damascus and Tehran. She wants the American people to see an
unending series of U.S.-sponsored regime-changes as somehow a
continuation of Project C in Birmingham in 1963.

Very stupid. But (especially if prominent Blacks leave the "diverse"
rogues' gallery that is the Bush Administration), we might find it
more and more cynically deploying the righteous anti-racist struggles
in our own past (to which its key figures contributed nothing), and
donning the mantle of Martin Luther King, to prettify its struggle for
geopolitical mastery. It's that administration, rather than unnamed
"condescending voices" that, lacking justifications for imperial
expansion acceptable to the American masses, must make use of racism,
religious intolerance, and the fear such feelings can generate. The
premise for the invasion of Iraq was: "The Arabs (Muslims, ragheads,
those people, bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, whatever) attacked us. We
must counter-attack them." Condi and her neocon and oil-baron
colleagues are deliberately, shamelessly using racism and ignorance to
foment even more.

Contrast Dr. King, once viewed by the power structure as a dangerous
pariah. New York City, April 4, 1967: "[The Vietnamese] must see
Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed
their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese
occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were
led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration
of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to
recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its
reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the
Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and we again fell
victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the
international atmosphere for so long [emphasis added]. "

That's the general historical pattern, seen from Vietnam to Iran to
Nicaragua: denial of freedom and independence (unless some skewed
interpretation of such concepts corresponds with U.S. corporate and
geopolitical interests). Condi, who isn't stupid, surely knows it.
That makes her Dallas talk, and exploitation of the African-American
liberation struggle to seek support for American imperialism,
especially shameful.



Gary Leupp is an an associate professor in the Department of History
at Tufts University and coordinator of the Asian Studies Program.

He can be reached at: