The cultural roots of interventionism in the U.S.

• Date: 22 March 2003
• Author: Martinot, Steve
• Published date: 22 March 2003
• Author: Martinot, Steve

The Attack Sequence

ON OCTOBER 7, 2001, THE U.S. LAUNCHED A MASSIVE MILITARY ASSAULT ON Afghanistan that effaced its political structure and created an enormous refugee situation. From the middle of 2002, the U.S. threatened to do the same thing to Iraq, running through a spectrum of reasons that changed as each previous argument collapsed. After giving up on efforts of U.N. inspectors to find weapons of mass destruction in that country, the Bush administration's inability to do so dissolved that pretext as well. The assault on Afghanistan, mounted in response to the events of September 11, 2001, was part of a two-decade-long series that included Grenada (1982), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991), and Yugoslavia (1999). Each assault had its own peculiarity, and violated certain principles of democracy and international law; yet, each received overwhelming support in the U.S., at institutional and popular levels. Though its moments differ, they reveal a common structure and the series as a whole poses an enveloping question concerning its general acceptability.

To discern the structure of these assaults, let us begin with September 11, 2001, when two hijacked planes were flown into the World Trade Center in New York City, causing those buildings to collapse, killing around 3,000 people. A third plane flown into the Pentagon left it in flames for days; a fourth crashed in Pennsylvania. All were ostensibly hijacked, all within hours of each other. Though no one took credit for this coordinated act of destruction, the U.S. government immediately claimed, without evidence, that a Saudi expatriate allegedly living in Afghanistan was responsible, and that 19 men of Middle Eastern origin, whose names the FBI published two days later, had committed this act of collective suicide and mass murder. Evidence of who had taken control of the planes and turned off their transponders was lacking since all who knew died in the crashes. Osama bin Laden was ordered arrested, and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was instructed to extradite him. That regime was then militarily driven from power for refusing to comply. The Taliban was declared guilty by association, and the nation of Afghanistan punished as a result.

There is something amiss with the "bare-bones" scenario that befits a judicial style consistent with a warrant for bin Laden's arrest. In reality, nothing unfolded in this manner. Though in violation of international law (the Geneva Accords and U.N. Charter), the military assault on Afghanistan constituted the first act in what was declared to be an "endless war." (1) The massive bombing of Afghanistan created a civilian death count considerably beyond that of the World Trade Center; whole villages were obliterated, and an already critical refugee and starvation situation was exacerbated, stretching well into Pakistan. In place of the Taliban organization, an interim government was invented. Though objection to this assault in the U.S. was small, it was repressed: public figures who spoke against the attack were vilified, people were fired, students suspended from school, social programs closed, university professors sanctioned, etc. (2) All to arrest one man.

The assault on Afghanistan, according to military experts, would have required at least three months of logistical preparation; indeed, plans for the assault had begun the previous July. (3) If so, the arrest of bin Laden was merely a legalistic pretext for a prior political project, the change of regime in Afghanistan. As such, the idea of avenging September 11 was intended for popular consumption. A military policy predicated on the absence of evidence signified that mainstream support for the "revenge" assault required no evidence. Neither the restraint called for by the antiwar opposition, nor the horror of subjecting Afghanistan to mass destruction, had any moderating effect. More than vengeful blood lust was at stake in the context of a pre-planned assault. To the extent that a government proclamation was sufficient to marshal support, the phenomenon is cultural rather than political. (4)

This opens two domains of inquiry. The first is the use of international legalism to symbolize rather than explain or authorize an intervention, the pursuit of which violates international and U.S. law. The second is the structure of popular acceptance that likewise ignores illegality (the violation of a treaty, of international codes, and the principle of national sovereignty), and for which legalism and militarism are sufficient authorization in themselves. These, we will see, are common elements in the attack series noted above; all deploy a similar legalism, and each reveals a hiatus between policy and legitimacy.

The U.S. invaded Panama militarily to arrest a Panamanian, Manuel Noriega (the proverbial "strongman," sometimes president, sometimes not) for drug trafficking in violation of U.S. law. The invasion violated the OAS Charter, which guarantees the sovereignty of American states. (5) In an massive-scale international SWAT-team operation, Noriega was returned to the U.S., tried, and jailed. Panama was left to bury its 300 fatalities, care for its 3,000 wounded men, women, and children, tend to its 18,000 homeless, and rebuild the war-torn districts of its capital city (Physicians for Human Rights, December 1990).

Many legal arguments in support of the invasion rearticulated President Reagan's rationale for invading Grenada, namely, that it was properly the U.S. mission to rescue a people held in thrall by thugs. No less a figure than Professor Anthony D'Amato of Northwestern University Law School argued that "sovereignty," in the case of Panama, was of no legal consequence in the face of the human right of "Panamanian citizens to be free from oppression by a gang of ruling thugs." (6) D'Amato stated that treaty arguments "are far less important to international law than the actual customary-law-generating behavior of states.... The U.S. interventions in Panama and, previously, in Grenada are milestones along the path to a new nonstatist conception of international law that changes previous nonintervention formulas such as Article 18 [of the OAS Charter]." Thus, D'Amato gives certification to "unwritten" law, to a system of "precedents" in the process of being created (that is, without precedent), as an alternate international "lawfulness." In rejecting the stance that upholds treaty agreements and international accords as law, he ignores the fact that what then constitutes "precedent" outside international agreement can only be the acts of the powerful, of military might pure and simple.

Ironically, the concept of human rights to which D'Amato refers, and whose defense he recommends, invokes a strong sense of democracy. It thus poses two questions: Who judged the Panamanian desire to be relieved of Noriega, the Panamanians by vote, or Washington through distant decision? Why or how are Panamanians held accountable under laws made elsewhere, in the enactment of which they played no role, or had any democratic input? Congressman Steve Chabot of Ohio confirms the import of these questions when he states, in 2000, "American civilians who commit crimes abroad are also not subject to the criminal laws of the United States, because the jurisdiction for those laws ends at our national borders." (7) No treaty existed that would extend U.S. law to other sovereign nations. Both D'Amato and U.S. policy ignored the fact that Panama had its own laws that had been written by Panamanians for Panamanian benefit and jurisprudence. For the U.S. government and public, however, the alleged lawfulness of bringing a drug trafficker to justice overshadowed the absence of legality in doing so--as if to say, in chauvinist fashion, "we know what is best for you, or what you would have done had you known better." The actual precedent, however, if any were established, D'Amato notwithstanding, would be an arbitrary conflation of U.S. law with Panamanian law, an allegorical "internationalization" of U.S. law in the sense of a unilateral extension of U.S. jurisdiction and sovereignty over other sovereign nations--in violation of actual international law.

"Internationalization" of U.S. law was extended further by the 1991 bombing of Iraq, and later by the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia. In those cases, the person named criminal had not violated U.S. law. Nevertheless, the U.S. government chose to proclaim a violation. Saddam Hussein was charged with aggression against Kuwait, though the reality of what had transpired between the two countries was left unspoken. (8) Slobodan Milosevich was charged with human rights violations in his own country, though NATO's involvement in Serbian internal affairs was similarly swept out of sight. (9) The two interventions had similar goals: to force Iraq out of Kuwait and to force Serbia out of Kosovo. Both were manifested through inappropriate international bodies. In the first case, a U.N. peacekeeping organization was used to make war; in the second, NATO used an international treaty organization to resolve an internal matter in a non-signatory sovereign nation. The first occurred in total rejection of Iraq's willingness to negotiate its withdrawal from Kuwait (it had, in fact, negotiated its invasion of Kuwait with the U.S.); the second was promulgated through ultimatums designed to nullify Serbian sovereignty (that is, that Serbia negotiate the erasure of its existence as a negotiant). (10) Ultimately, Kuwait and Kosovo were seized and occupied militarily by the U.S. (or NATO) after enormously destructive technological assaults, as if that had been the goal all along.

In effect, international bodies designed to preserve sovereignty and oversee international peace were transformed into war councils against national sovereignty, in violation of the United Nations Charter (Articles 2, 33, and 42). Co-opted as proxies for U.S. policy, they were, in...