Categoria: English

The Dangerous Arrogance of the Empire

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

Leonardo Boff
05-13-2011

I count myself among those who were enthused by the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States, especially coming after George Bush Jr, a bellicose, fundamentalist president, of very limited intelligence. Bush Jr. believed in the imminence of the Biblical Armageddon and followed to the letter the ideology of Manifest Destiny, invented by Northamerican imperialists to justify the war against Mexico. According to this ideology, the United States would be God’s new chosen people, who were to bring human rights, liberty and democracy to the world. This belief in its own exceptionality translated into a historic arrogance, that caused the United States to assume the right to impose on the whole world, through politics or through arms, her life style, and her vision of the world.

I was hoping the new president would no longer be hostage to this dreadful and imaginary divine election, because he announced in his program multilateralism and not hegemony; but I had my doubts, because behind theYes, we can could be hidden the old arrogance. Faced with economic-financial crisis he would proclaim that the United States had shown throughout her history that it could do anything, and would overcome the present situation. Now, on the occasion of the murder of Osama bin Laden, that he ordered, the mask fell. (In a country of laws, with separation of powers, does the executive have the power to kill, or does it fall to the judiciary to issue orders to apprehend, to judge and to punish?) The atavistic arrogance could not be hidden.

The president, of humble extraction, of African descent, born outside the continent, Moslem first and then converted to an Evangelical, clearly said: «What happened on Sunday is a message to the world: when we say that we will never forget, we mean what we say», that is as if he were saying: «terrorists of the whole world, we will kill you.»

There it is revealed, clearly, all the arrogance and imperialistic attitude of being above all ethics.

This makes me remember the phrase of a theologian who served twelve years in Rome as an advisor to the ex-Inquisition. He came to show his solidarity when I was enduring the doctrinaire process. He confessed to me: «Learn from my experience: the ex-Inquisition forgets nothing, forgives nothing and takes back everything: prepare yourself.» In effect, that is what I felt. Even worse is what happened to a moral theologian, dearly beloved in all Christendom, the German, Bernhard Häring. Suffering from throat cancer that almost did not let him talk, he was subjected to rigorous questioning in the dark hall of that instance of psychological terror, as a result of some statements he made about sexuality. On leaving, he confessed: «this questioning was worse than what I suffered under the Nazi SS during the war,» what means: etiquette is of little use, catholic or Nazi, all authoritarian and totalitarian systems obey the same logic, to take revenge on all, to not forget, or forgive.

This is what Barack Obama promised and he proposes to go ahead with the terrorist state created by his predecessor, keeping the Patriot Act, that authorizes the suspension of certain rights and the preventive detention of suspects, without informing even their families, which turns it into kidnapping.

Not without reason the Norwegian Johan Galtung, the man of the culture of Peace, creator of two institutions to investigate about Peace and inventor of theTranscend method in the mediation of conflicts (a sort of win-win politics), wrote: such acts bring the United States closer to a fascist state.

The truth is that we are facing an empire. It is the logical and necessary consequence of the presumed exceptionality. It is a singular empire, based not on territorial occupation or in colonies, but on 800 military bases distributed all over the world, the majority of which are unnecessary for Northamerican security. But they are there to instill fear and to guarantee the United States’ hegemony in the world. None of that has been dismantled by the new emperor, who did not close Guantanamo as he had promised and has sent thirty thousand soldiers to Afghanistan to a war already lost.

We can disagree with the basic thesis of Samuel P. Huntington in his controversial book, The Clash of Civilizations, but there are observations worth noting, such as this: «the belief in the superiority of Western culture is false, immoral, and dangerous.» (p. 395) More: «Western intervention probably constitutes the most dangerous source of instability and of a possible global conflict in a multi-civilization world.» (p. 397) Thus, the conditions for such a tragedy are being created by the United States and her European allies.

One thing is the North American people, decent, hard working, and somehow naive, that we admire, and another is the imperial government, which does not respect the international treaties that go against its interests and is capable of all forms of violence. But there are no eternal empires. The moment will come when it will be just one more number in the cemetery of vanished empires.

Leonardo Boff
05-13-2011

There has not been justice, only revenge

Leonardo Boff5 Comentários

NOTA:Muitos amigos estrangeiros pediram a tradução inglesa e espanhola de meu texto para terem acesso ao seu conteúdo. LB

One would have to be one’s own enemy and against the minimal humanitarian values to approve of Al Qaeda’s horrendous terrorist crime of September 11, 2001, in New York City. But from all perspectives, it is unacceptable for a State, the world’s most militarily powerful, to respond to terrorism by transforming itself into a terrorist State. This was what Bush did, limiting democracy and suspending the unconditional applicability of some rights that were the pride of the country. He did more: he directed two wars, against Afghanistan and against Iraq -where he devastated one of the most ancient cultures of humanity-, in which more than one hundred thousand peope have died, and more than a million displaced.

It is worth repeating the question that very few want to ask: why did those terrorists acts happen? Bishop Robert Bowman, from Melbourne Beach, Florida, who was a military pilot during the Viet-Nam war, clearly replied in an open letter to the President, in the National Catholic Reporter: «We are the target of terrorists because, in a large part of the world our Government defends dictatorships, slavery, and human exploitation. We are the target of terrorists because we are hated. And we are hated because our Government does hateful things.»

Richard Clarke, the person responsible for combating terrorism in the White House, said the same in an interview with Jorge Pontual, for Globonews, on 02/28//2010 and repeated it on 05/03/2011. He had warned the CIA and President Bush that an Al Qaeda attack was imminent in New York. They did not listen to him. It happened shortly thereafter. That enraged him. His rage against the Government grew, when he saw that with lies and falsehoods, Bush, from a sheer imperial will to maintain world hegemony, decreed a war against Iraq that had no connection whatsoever with September 11. His rage reached the point where, for the sake of his health and decency, he resigned his post.

More forceful was Chalmers Johnson, one of the principal analysts of the CIA, in an interview with the same journalist, on May 2nd of this year. He knew from within the damage caused by the more than 800 Northamerican military bases, all over the world, that incite in the populations the rage and revolt that are the breeding ground for terrorism. He quotes the book by Eduardo Galeano, «The Open Veins of Latin America», to illustrate the atrocities the Northamerican organs of intelligence committed in Latin America. He denounces the imperial character of the Governments, founded on the use of intelligence that recommends coups d’etat, organizes the murder of leaders, and teaches how to torture. He resigned in protest, and became a professor of history at the University of California. He wrote three volumes, «Blowback», in which he foresaw, with a few months of anticipation, the acts of revenge against Northamerican prepotency in the world. He has been seen as the prophet of September 11.

That is the backdrop for understanding the present situation that led to Osama Bin Laden’s criminal execution.

The Northamerican organs of intelligence are failures. For ten years they have swept the world, hunting for Bin Laden. They accomplished nothing. Only using an immoral method, the torture of a messenger of Bin Laden, did they manage to get to his hiding place. Consequently, they have not had any merit of their own.

Everything in that hunt falls under the sign of immorality, shame and crime. In the first place, President Barak Obama, as if he were a «god» decreed the execution/murder of Bin Laden. That goes against the universal ethical principle of «do not kill» and of the international agreements that prescribe prison, trial and punishment of the accused. That was done with Hussein of Iraq, with the Nazi criminals of Nurenberg, with Eichman in Israel and with other accused. With Bin Laden, intentional execution was preferred, a crime for which Barak Obama must answer one day. Moreover, the territory of Pakistan has been invaded, with no prior warning of the operation. Subsequently, the corpse was taken and thrown into the sea, a crime against family piety, the right every family has to bury their own dead, criminals or not, because no matter how bad they have been, they never stop being human..

Justice has not been done. Revenge has been practiced, which is always condemnable. «Vengeance is Mine», says the God of the Scriptures of the three Abrahamic religions. Now we will be under the power of an Emperor on whom weighs the accusation of murder. And the necrophilia of the multitudes lessens and shames us all.

Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.