Posted on August 28, 2013 by Alexandra Valiente
The war on Syria and racist and colonized understandings of democracy
By Amal Saad-Ghorayeb
Aside from Syrian traitors wildly cheering on and urging the West for more than “cosmetic” attacks on their country from the luxury of Western capitals, there is no greater “moral obscenity” than John Kerry’s usage of the term “moral obscenity” to refer to one the most flagrant cases of fabrication. Forget the West’s audacity in scrubbing the UK Mail Online leaks piece published in January 2013, which revealed a “U.S. backed plan to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria and blame it on Assad’s regime”.
Just look at the audacity behind the “legal” basis for the now imminent strikes on Syria in US officials’ discourse:
-US Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel: “I THINK the intelligence will conclude that it wasn’t the rebels who used it, and there’ll PROBABLY be pretty good intelligence to show is that the Syria government was responsible. But we’ll wait and determine what THE FACTS AND THE INTELLIGENCE bear out.” ….”
-US Secretary of State, John Kerry: “I also want to underscore that while investigators are gathering additional evidence on the ground, OUR UNDERSTANDING of what has already happened in Syria is GROUNDED IN FACTS INFORMED BY CONSCIENCE and AND GUIDED BY COMMON SENSE….. and despite the excuses and equivocations that some have manufactured, it is undeniable.”
There it is comrades: the US, in Hagel’s words, is “ready to go, just like that” based on a presumption of guilt that has yet to be substantiated (“I think”), and a mere “probability” of culpability, yet to be determined by “pretty good” (suggesting that the evidence may not be conclusive) facts and intelligence. Notice here how he doesn’t specify WHOSE intelligence or WHOSE facts the US is relying on, lest the UN investigation produce results deemed inimical to US strategic interests. Indeed, a NATO official admitted as much to RT when he said “NATO supports the ongoing investigation of the UN inspectors, but will continue to closely monitor developments and review the evidence that is presented both by the UN and from“other sources.”
And then we have Kerry’s novel contribution to what constitutes reality, facts and empirical evidence. Even though the investigators are supposedly conducting a professional and impartial investigation, the US believes it is entitled to reach its own prematurely conceived conclusions on the investigation, specifically, “our understanding”, about the results of their as yet, incomplete fact-finding mission. See, although the White Man claims he alone knows how to separate his objectivity from the human proclivity to subjectivity, his entirely subjective “understanding” (as opposed to knowledge) of facts is as good as objectivity because he is the White Man after all. And his notion of objectivity has always boiled down to little more than an inter-subjective understanding reached amongst fellow White [imperialist] Men.
Equally insulting to the non-White, oppressed peoples, intelligence is Kerry’s reversal of the Western scientific tradition which is rooted in the fact-value split: Kerry effaces this split that is forced down our non-White throats in every single social science course we study. Now, we are told to take as empirically valid, “facts informed by conscience”, a not so veiled acknowledgement that the imperialist’s conscience (an oxymoron that is surely not lost on many) informs and shapes his reading of facts. To put it in layman’s terms, these are facts The White Man deems to be facts because he says they are so.
And then of course the classic appeal to “common sense”, otherwise known as “enforcement reality” or “consensus reality”, whereby the hegemonic power imposes his version of reality on the rest of the world, such that anyone who dares challenge it, is accused of indulging in irrational fantasies. This is alluded to by Kerry’s qualification that “despite the excuses and equivocations that some have manufactured, it is undeniable.” See all the Syrian government’s carefully constructed, convincing and rational arguments, as presented today by Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem, and by many western experts who have questioned both the nature of the attacks and the Syrian government’s motives for launching them, are just irrational “equivocations” which defy the “undeniable” reality set forth by the ultimate arbiter of “common sense”: the invading White Man.
To sum up: Syria is guilty until proven innocent, by those who have already staged its guilt. And it is going to pay the price (with, ironically, far more casualties than the toxic weapons attacks inflicted) for this pre-determined guilt for a crime it most likely did not commit. If that isn’t the crudest form of intellectual/methodological imperialism and moral obscenity combined, I don’t know what is.
So, despite the fact that majorities in the US and the UK oppose military intervention in Syria, the US and British governments are going to war anyway. And yet even the most progressive amongst us, continue to view these systems as democracies. There is something fundamentally hypocritical and cynical about viewing western liberal political systems as democratic solely on the basis of how much they respect the human rights of their own citizens, are responsive to majority public opinion on domestic matters, and abide by the rule of law, while violating the human rights of people outside their countries, ignoring majority public opinion on foreign policy matters and dismissing international law altogether. This tendency can only be described as naked racism on the part of western liberals and self-hating, internalized racism on the part of colonized natives.
The “moral obscenity” of the pretexts for attacking Syria
By Amal Saad-GhorayebAside from Syrian traitors wildly cheering on and urging the West for more than “cosmetic” attacks on their country from the luxury of Western capitals, there is no greater “moral obscenity” than John Kerry’s usage of the term “moral obscenity” to refer to one the most flagrant cases of fabrication. Forget the West’s audacity in scrubbing the UK Mail Online leaks piece published in January 2013, which revealed a “U.S. backed plan to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria and blame it on Assad’s regime”.
Just look at the audacity behind the “legal” basis for the now imminent strikes on Syria in US officials’ discourse:
-US Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel: “I THINK the intelligence will conclude that it wasn’t the rebels who used it, and there’ll PROBABLY be pretty good intelligence to show is that the Syria government was responsible. But we’ll wait and determine what THE FACTS AND THE INTELLIGENCE bear out.” ….”
-US Secretary of State, John Kerry: “I also want to underscore that while investigators are gathering additional evidence on the ground, OUR UNDERSTANDING of what has already happened in Syria is GROUNDED IN FACTS INFORMED BY CONSCIENCE and AND GUIDED BY COMMON SENSE….. and despite the excuses and equivocations that some have manufactured, it is undeniable.”
There it is comrades: the US, in Hagel’s words, is “ready to go, just like that” based on a presumption of guilt that has yet to be substantiated (“I think”), and a mere “probability” of culpability, yet to be determined by “pretty good” (suggesting that the evidence may not be conclusive) facts and intelligence. Notice here how he doesn’t specify WHOSE intelligence or WHOSE facts the US is relying on, lest the UN investigation produce results deemed inimical to US strategic interests. Indeed, a NATO official admitted as much to RT when he said “NATO supports the ongoing investigation of the UN inspectors, but will continue to closely monitor developments and review the evidence that is presented both by the UN and from“other sources.”
And then we have Kerry’s novel contribution to what constitutes reality, facts and empirical evidence. Even though the investigators are supposedly conducting a professional and impartial investigation, the US believes it is entitled to reach its own prematurely conceived conclusions on the investigation, specifically, “our understanding”, about the results of their as yet, incomplete fact-finding mission. See, although the White Man claims he alone knows how to separate his objectivity from the human proclivity to subjectivity, his entirely subjective “understanding” (as opposed to knowledge) of facts is as good as objectivity because he is the White Man after all. And his notion of objectivity has always boiled down to little more than an inter-subjective understanding reached amongst fellow White [imperialist] Men.
Equally insulting to the non-White, oppressed peoples, intelligence is Kerry’s reversal of the Western scientific tradition which is rooted in the fact-value split: Kerry effaces this split that is forced down our non-White throats in every single social science course we study. Now, we are told to take as empirically valid, “facts informed by conscience”, a not so veiled acknowledgement that the imperialist’s conscience (an oxymoron that is surely not lost on many) informs and shapes his reading of facts. To put it in layman’s terms, these are facts The White Man deems to be facts because he says they are so.
And then of course the classic appeal to “common sense”, otherwise known as “enforcement reality” or “consensus reality”, whereby the hegemonic power imposes his version of reality on the rest of the world, such that anyone who dares challenge it, is accused of indulging in irrational fantasies. This is alluded to by Kerry’s qualification that “despite the excuses and equivocations that some have manufactured, it is undeniable.” See all the Syrian government’s carefully constructed, convincing and rational arguments, as presented today by Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem, and by many western experts who have questioned both the nature of the attacks and the Syrian government’s motives for launching them, are just irrational “equivocations” which defy the “undeniable” reality set forth by the ultimate arbiter of “common sense”: the invading White Man.
To sum up: Syria is guilty until proven innocent, by those who have already staged its guilt. And it is going to pay the price (with, ironically, far more casualties than the toxic weapons attacks inflicted) for this pre-determined guilt for a crime it most likely did not commit. If that isn’t the crudest form of intellectual/methodological imperialism and moral obscenity combined, I don’t know what is.