Imperial overstretch : two years 9/11

After the attacks the United States was promoted to the status of victim and launched what is called the war on terrorism. Not withstanding the fact that the US is the most involved country in the world in military conflicts and the country that has cost humanity the most of its misery and suffering, and not withstanding facts, hard facts like for instance the genocide toll of the Anglo-American embargo against Iraq that cost the lives of 8000 Iraqi children every month between 1991 and 2003, in other words 3 times 11th of September every month committed by the US.

Not withstanding all this, the US gain the sympathy of most of the western world and its right to retaliate and to avenge its dead was recognised, even if this meant the dissipation of the last existing illusion about an international right order based upon international law. The US redefined under the impulse of the neo-conservatives and the Christian-right its strategic doctrine and introduced the concept of pre-emptive strike into the world. The fact of the matter is that the US since 1991 reasoned with this logic since it is related to the Unipolarity structure of the international system that was established after the fall of the eastern-bloc. But now it was official, the US did not need to prove that a country is hostile, or that a country represents a clear and present danger, it had only to suspect a country of having the intention to be a threat and that would be enough to attack that country and to kill its population or subdue it. By adapting this logic the US declared itself officially as the dictator of the world and installed its own version of despotism on the international level.

After the immediate attack on Afghanistan and the personification of all the Evil in the image of Ussama Bin Laden, and the repeated declaration of George Bush that he will nail Bin Laden, despite the fall of the Taliban regime morally and symbolically the US was defeated. They could not arrest Bin Laden and it is very symbolic that yesterday Al-Jazeera showed recent footage of him and Ayman Al Zawahari wandering in the mountains of Tora Bora in full defiance of the US efforts to find them.

Not only that, Al Quaeda the ghost organisation that represented the Evil enemy of the American crusaders according to the messianic vision of the Bush clan and its Christian fundamentalist allies, was still active and hitting back in other parts of he world. So the dreamed victory parade with Bin Laden or his dead body dragged behind an American Tank into Times square could not take place, an in the time when war is a kind of mediatized sport if you do not have a parade and a trophy you do not have a victory.

In face of this failure, the US was looking for its victory and tried to get it in Iraq . Saddam Hussein the old enemy of the Bush family had to be reinvented in order to substitute its real enemy that evaded it. Saddam had to be presented as dangerous and threatening or at least as having the potential to be so. And in order to do that all the possible techniques of lying and deceiving were put into action. So Iraq was invaded and Saddam ousted, but did the Americans get their victory? I think everybody knows that the answer is no. the situation in Iraq is a fiasco on all levels for the aspiring empire that is already overstretching by its own inability of defining its interest rationally.

Not only the Americans could not even get Saddam yet, they worked themselves into a quagmire of hostility and resistance that they will not be able of escaping without a defeat whether militarily or morally. As a matter o fact the moral defeat is already taking place, the US who acted so arrogant before the war and refused to discuss with any country that rejected the war, the US that was so certain of its victory, is now almost begging other countries to help it out of Iraq .

The Us might indeed have a technological military superiority allowing it to defeat any army and occupy any country, but like Genkiz Khan once said, you can conquer the world from the saddle of your horse but you can not govern it from it. But even more disturbing for the US and its doctrine, if occupation is rejected by the population, and it is almost always the case, it is inevitable that resistance will break out. And the most efficient form of resistance is Urban Guerrilla. Guerilla in general is hard for a regular army to deal with, but Urban Guerilla is invincible. It is not depending on supplies routes, it is not depending on logistic cells in the city linking up with guerrilla fighter in the forest, it is self-sufficient and flexible. The people go in the day to their work or activities, they might even be police officers helping th Americans to organise traffic in Baghdad , and at night they organise attacks.
This kind of guerrilla warfare will bring America to its knees in Iraq like it brought Israel to its knees in Lebanon .

An American defeat in Iraq will have to mean a change of approach in the self-definition that the US has. Yes they can win wars against regular armies, and yes they can do that alone, but more than that is needed and obviously the Americans do not have that extra thing to be a real superpower. An empire that is counting on poor immigrant mercenaries to form its army of occupation (40 thousand of the US soldiers in Iraq have no American nationality and are mainly recent Latino immigrants) is clearly losing its fighting spirit, and already overstretching.

All these defeats are making the Americans even more nervous, their allies like Aznar (who is arresting journalists of Al-Jazeera in the good tradition of the inquisition), Berlusconi, Blair (who is driving people so depressed that they kill themselves) and Sharon who is having the same illusion of being able of defeating an Urban Guerrilla and will soon be reminded by reality that his own defeat is imminent, all these people are getting more nervous by the day as their imperial master is getting more into trouble. And that master haven’t seen anything yet, in Afghanistan the Taliban are regrouping, Al Quaeda is reactivated, and in Iraq the Shiaa majority haven’t really entered the struggle yet but he young and radical Moktada Al Sadr is now the only leader of the Shiaa and is awaiting the moment to launch the Jihad to liberate Iraq from the American tyrants.

If we look at it this way, the 11th of September was the start of the era of defeat of the US , it was an invitation to war, a call for a duel in a language that the American cowboys who terrorised the world and massacred millions of innocent people could understand. The only language that they understand.

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)