The
Outline Of the Beast
An Interview
With Arundhati Roy
By Arundhati Roy and Anthony Arnove
Socialist
Worker
9 April, 2003
Arnove: The Corporate
media ask the question over and over again: What can be done about Saddam
Hussein? Whats your response?
The question is disingenuous.
Lets turn it around and ask instead: What do we do with George
Bush and Tony Blair? Should we just stand by and watch while they bomb
and kill and annihilate people? Saddam Hussein is a killer, and in the
past, the U.S. and the UK governments have supported many of his worst
excesses.
The U.S. and UK have bombed
Iraqs infrastructure, fired depleted uranium into Iraqs
farmlands, blocked vaccines and hospital equipment, contributing to
hundreds of thousands of deaths of children under five. Denis Halliday,
the former UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, has called the sanctions
a form of genocide.
If you lifted the sanctions,
Iraqi society might have gained the strength to overthrow their dictator
(just like the people of Indonesia, Serbia, Romania overthrew theirs).
And if its repression,
sectarianism and human rights abuses were concerned about, lets
also turn our attention to Colombia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the
Central Asian Republics, Israel, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Burma
and, of course, America...Shall we pre-empt Saddam and bomb them all?
Then he wont have anyone left to kill.
The greatest threat to the
world today is not Saddam Hussein, its George Bush (joined at
the hip to his new foreign secretary, Tony Blair).
Bush says that hes
leading an "international coalition" against Iraq. Whats
your reaction to that?
The international Coalition
of the Bullied and the Bought is what that coalition is more commonly
called.
The important thing to keep
in mind is that it is governments that have been coerced, one way or
another. Even the major "shareholders" in the coalition--governments
of countries like Spain and Australia--dont have the support of
the majority of their people.
There have been some interesting
studies showing the nature of the regimes of some of the countries in
this "coalition." Many of them are high up on the list of
human rights violators--and have no business to criticize Saddam Hussein
given their own reputations.
Bush also says that this
war is "defensive," and that it would be "suicidal"
not to attack Iraq.
That's like an elephant taking
a long run-up to smash an ant to death--and then saying that it was
"defensive," and that to let the ant remain alive would have
been suicidal. It would be fair to call the elephant paranoid and unstable.
Oh, and that doesnt
include the business of using the UN to disarm the ant before the elephant
attacks. Apart from calling it paranoid and unstable, you could also
call it a coward and a cheat.
In an interview on the
Pacifica Radio program "Democracy Now!" you spoke about the
"murder of language." Can you elaborate on that?
Freedom means mass murder
now. In the U.S., it means fried potatoes (freedom fries). Liberation
means invasion and occupation. When you hear the words "humanitarian
aid," its advisable to look around for induced starvation.
We all know what collateral damage means.
Of course, none of this is
new. When the U.S. invaded South Vietnam and bombed the countryside,
killing thousands of people and forcing thousands to flee to cities
where they were held in refugee camps, Samuel Huntington called this
a process of "urbanization."
The New York Times Magazine
recently ran a cover that read "The New American Empire: Get Used
to It." How is that message playing in India and elsewhere outside
the United States?
In India, there is a dissonance
between what people think of the war and the American Empire, and the
deliberately ambiguous position of the Indian government. This war against
Iraq has fuelled a lot of anger among a majority of people, but there
are the opportunists, among the elite in particular, who are rather
stupidly hoping to be thrown some crumbs in the "reconstruction"
era. Theyre like hyenas. Vultures.
No ones going to "get
used" to the American Empire--no one can. This is because that
empire can only survive and hold its position if it continues with its
agenda of mass murder and mass dispossession.
These are not things people
get used to, however hard they try. You can expect to be killed, but
you cant get used to the idea.
It will be a bloody battle,
this battle for the establishment and perpetuation of hegemony. The
world is not a static place. Its wild and unpredictable. The American
Empire isnt going to have all that easy a ride. The people of
the world will not be lining the streets raining roses on the emperor.
More than 10 million people
demonstrated around the world on February 15, including millions in
the countries leading the war on Iraq. Why do you think we are seeing
such large protests?
I think that theres
only one reason. America has been stripped of its mask. Its secret history
of brutal interventions and unforgivable manipulations is street talk.
The dots have been joined, and the outline of the beast has emerged.