Vol. 24 No. 4 · 21 February 2002
pages 14-15 | 2576 words
The World according to Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld
Michael Byers
Sixty years ago, German soldiers shaved off the beards of Orthodox Jews. Now American soldiers are doing the same to Islamic fundamentalists captured in Afghanistan, before flying them to a detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Other aspects of the US response are similarly troubling. Hundreds of Afghan civilians have been killed or maimed as a result of careless targeting. Unexploded cluster bomblets will harm thousands more. The destruction of the al-Jazeera TV bureau in Kabul, plans for special military commissions with low evidentiary standards, the refusal to accord detainees presumptive POW status all indicate a casual disregard for international opinion and the laws of war. Most disturbing, however, are some of the threats uttered by President Bush. The assertion that ‘you’re either with us or against us’ obviates a central aspect of state sovereignty – the right not to be involved – and recasts the US as the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong. The identification of an ‘axis of evil’ between Iran, Iraq and North Korea challenges one of the 20th century’s greatest achievements: the prohibition of the threat or use of force in international affairs. The aberration may be temporary, but there are reasons to believe that something fundamental has changed.
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Letters
Vol. 24 No. 6 · 21 March 2002
From Malcolm Deas
Michael Byers writes (LRB, 21 February): 'By the end of the 19th century, the US had turned its attentions abroad. Its seizure of Cuba in 1898 provoked the Spanish-American War, which gave it control of Hawaii, the Philippines and the Panama Canal Zone.' The second sentence contains three substantial historical errors. The Spanish-American War was not caused by a US seizure of Cuba, but resulted from the US decision to intervene in the ongoing Cuban insurrection against Spain. The US did not then 'seize Cuba', though it occupied the island temporarily and for long after exercised a degree of suzerainty in Cuban affairs. The only major Caribbean territory taken by the US was Puerto Rico. Hawaii, previously independent, was finally acquired by the US by a treaty of annexation signed in July 1898, during the course of the Spanish-American War but not directly related to it. The Panama Canal Zone was granted to the US by the infant republic of Panama, newly seceded from Colombia with the aid of some high-handed US encouragement and protection, in November 1903, five years after the Spanish-American War had ended. These are all signs of the expansion of US power at the turn of the century before last, an imperialist time in which it is as well to remember that the US was something of a doubting laggard – but they are three distinct episodes.
Malcolm Deas
St Antony’s College, Oxford
Vol. 24 No. 7 · 4 April 2002
From Bernard Murchland
Michael Byers writes (LRB, 21 February) that the war on terrorism has been linked by Bush's advisers to the way Americans think about themselves. He fails to mention the most important strand of all: the tradition of Puritanism which the late Christopher Lasch called America's 'strongest reservoir of moral idealism'. On the morning of 11 September, I was teaching The Crucible. When Bush addressed the nation that evening and in subsequent speeches, I was struck by how much the rhetoric of 17th-century Puritans has become his own: the sharp distinction between good and evil; no neutral ground; retributive justice; a vengeful God who is on our side; the relentless will dedicated to rooting out a malicious enemy. As Miller's Reverend Hale says, 'The powers of the dark are gathered in monstrous attack upon us.'
Bernard Murchland
Ohio Wesleyan University
