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The United Orwellian States?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
 Toronto:
When George Orwell wrote his fictional work, "1984", he had in
his mind's eye an imaginary state, Oceania, run by the Big Brother. It was
a land haunted by fear-imagined fear-concocted and stirred by the Big
Brother to keep a terrified populace in check. Those living in Orwell's
high-tech Oceania were watched, constantly and hauntingly, by the
omniscient ‘video eye’ of the state apparatus.
Those condemned to live in Orwell's Oceania were resigned to their fate
because the Big Brother kept the state continually embroiled in war
against shifting `enemies’. Fear of the aliens invading their land was
so pervasive that the residents ceased to question the rulers. They were
so crushed and wobbled, psychologically and emotionally, that they came to
believe in whatever the Big Brother said as absolute truth. They
succumbed, passively, to the nihilistic vision of their rulers that the
" enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil."In the
end, a cowed down, thoroughly brainwashed passive people loved the acts of
war and cheered Big Brother for shielding them from " evil".
Extrapolate Orwell's Oceania to the present-day United States of America,
and you come across a chilling reality. You almost see the fictional
Oceania unfolding before your eyes.
As these lines are being written, Kabul, Kandahar and other major cities
of Afghanistan are coming under the wrath of American missiles and
bombers. It is, to a fault, a replay of the bombing of Iraq at the
beginning of the Gulf War of a decade earlier. America is at war, once
again, in defence of its ‘values’ against an ‘enemy’ presumed to
be threatening and challenging the "American values."
This may be the first war of the new century and millennium for the
U.S.but it is not the first time that it has gone to war in defence of its
"values." All through the 20th century, America went to war
repeatedly and regularly to defend its’ values and way of life.’ Every
conflict that the United States entered it did so on a moral high
platform. It entered World War I to defend its western values of liberty
and freedom against an imperialist Germany and Austro-Hungary. The same
moral argument justified its entry in Wold War II against fascist Germany,
Italy and Japan. That done, a new enemy confronted America in the guise of
communism in the Cold War, which did not remain cold for very long. The
Korean War was the first ‘hot’ manifestation of the American
‘resolve’ to combat communism globally. That was in the 50s. Quick on
its heels, in the 60s, it took on the challenge of repulsing the communist
‘onslaught’ in Vietnam, which dragged on for more than a decade and
resulted in more than 3 million Vietnamese casualties.
There were several other side-shows to these major ‘crusades’ in
defence of ‘American values.’ The Southern Hemisphere, an American
theatre of influence and interest since 1828 when President Monroe
unfurled his doctrine of America's regional supremacy, witnessed dozens of
allegedly communist-lit brushfires being put out by Washington. A most
heinous example of the Monroe Doctrine being applied with crusading zeal
and interest was the toppling of the popularly elected government of
Salvador Allende in Chile in a CIA-inspired operation on 11 September,
1973-28 years to the day before America itself was engulfed in a similarly
macabre ‘conspiracy.’ The only chink in the American protective armour,
to date, has been Fidel Castro's Cuba which the U.S.might and superior
firepower has not been able to undo, or dislodge.
But the ‘crusade’ against communism was convincingly won in the Afghan
War with the valiant assistance of the Afghan freedom fighters. The back
of the Soviet Union, the ‘evil empire’ which epitomised the global
reach of communism ,had been broken. The victory was hailed as a
gratifying triumph of ‘American values’ and the western civilization
against its greatest enemy.
However, the end of the Cold War unleashed a new ‘enemy’--a
‘fundamentalist and militant Islam’--which could not be nipped or
‘smoked out’ despite the 8- year long, and fratricidal, Iran-Iraq War
of the 80s in which the sympathies of the west, on prodding from
Washington, were manifestly with the aggressor Iraq. Therefore, America
had to girdle its loins to deal with this latest ‘menace and threat’
to the ‘American values’. The answer was the Gulf War, whose outcome
was only half a victory for America. It did result in putting Saddam
Hussain " in a box" and pulverized Iraq back to the stone age.
However, the ‘monster’ of Islamic militancy received a shot in the arm
from the unmitigated suffering and plight of the Iraqi people. The rise of
the ultra-orthodox Taliban in the post-cold war and emaciated Afghanistan
added a further menacing bite and punch to this robustly feared
‘militant Islam.’
That America is in the throes of another, periodic, war against "
evil" (in this instance personified by Osama bin Laden and his mentor
Taliban) quite fits the pattern of an Orwellian society living in a state
of perpetual war against demonic forces knocking at its portals. So it is
not surprising that George W. Bush is enjoying an approval rating of 94%
on the morning after the first blitz against Kabul and Kandahar. It is
quite evocative of the Oceania of "1984" whose inhabitants
applauded Big Brother every time an enemy incursion was checked or
repulsed.
What is even more disturbing is the halo of Big Brother acquiring
increasing acceptance and respectability in America at the cost of those
very sacred freedoms and civil liberties whose defence has , ostensibly,
been the basis of American ‘crusades’ against ‘evil’. Not that
this is the first time for the shadows of Big Brother lengthening in
America. The McCarthy witch-hunt of the 1950s, in pursuit of "
un-American activities" is still a black mark on American civil
liberties. Millions of lives were affected by that madness that swept
across America like a locust; tens of thousands of careers were destroyed,
and as many reputations sullied beyond redemption.
The scare of the Red menace creeping into America was the catalyst and
justification for the McCarthy terror. The battle cry this time is
‘terror’ menacing American security. However, what is being encrypted
on the cards in the name of ‘security’ for the American people, and
the defence of ‘American values,’ could easily pale McCarthyism into
an insignificant aberration-a mere blip on the American national radar.
A crony of George W. Bush, former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, has
been peremptorily sworn in to head a new Department (Ministry) of Homeland
Defence. Ridge will have sweeping powers to combat terrorism on American
soil as he sees fit, with armed troops and war planes and active support
of law-enforcement agencies throughout the continental United States.
There was, in George Orwell's fabled Oceania, a Ministry of Truth armed
with similar powers and paraphernalia to knock the fear of God into the
hearts of its inhabitants. Another disturbing parallel is that of a
Ministry by the same name in the pre-World War II Austria, which quickly
became a weapon of terror in the hands of the Gestapo after Hitler's
seizure of Austria.
But much more implicitly designed to cripple, if not completely snuff out,
civil liberties in the name of national security is also on the anvil.
Congress is seized of an astounding new piece of legislation, by the name
of the Patriot Bill, drafted by Attorney General Ashcroft in the wake of
terrorist attacks against New York and Washington. Not even the most
zealous defenders of the American civil liberties doubt that the bill will
sail through the two houses of Congress like a hot knife through butter.
Michael Ratner of a Washington-based rights group, the Centre for
Constitutional Rights, summed up the dilemma facing the civil libertarians
in the face : " Who could oppose that bill without being a
non-patriot?"
The bill, when approved, would make wire-tapping of people's telephones
legal. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Personal computers would
no longer remain ‘personal.’ Government snoopes and agencies would be
able to break into private e-mails and collect personal data right on- the
-line. Round the clock monitoring and surveillance would become legal, too
and have full backing of the state apparatus, evoking, hauntingly, the
spectre of the ‘video eye’ in Orwell's Oceania. Police and other law
enforcement agencies would get powers to detain a suspect for days, if not
weeks, without a judicial cover. Aliens would lose practically all rights
, and may be detained indefinitely on suspicion of being party to a crime.
The Patriot Bill would define ‘terrorism’ to suit the convenience of
the law-enforcers and overseers of a sweeping and all-pervading security
apparatus. According to a number of human rights advocates and civil
libertarians, the definition of ‘terrorism’ would become so loose-to
accommodate the enforcement apparatchiks-that a college student throwing a
brick at a store window would become liable for being hauled up as a
‘terrorist.’ The underlying spirit of the new legislation would make
it increasingly prohibiting for anyone to question the discretion, or
authority, of the law enforcers. Which has prompted many a critic to pose
the logical question: who would be there, with any leverage, to watch the
watchers ? Critics are apprehensive that all this fright-induced rush to
evolve a watertight security system would lay the foundations of a police
state. Detect signs of the Orwellian Oceania in the making in the real
world ? Completing the Orwellian parallel , i.e. a people hobbled by
draconian intrusion into their privacy ultimately succumbing to the will
and authority of the state apparatus, is the acquiescence of the American
people in whatever is being planned to curtail their freedoms on the
excuse of security. A recent CBS-New York Times survey of the public
opinion on the issue shows that 74 per cent of Americans are happy to
concede some civil liberties if it would help in getting Bin Laden and
‘enhance’ their security. American people's trust in their government
is said to be the highest in the past 30 years.
Free speech, the most sacred of individual freedoms in America, is coming
under a serious threat from the ascendant pro-establishment sentiment.
Entertainers, on radio and television, are losing their sponsors for
daring to criticise Bush or his policy. Those suspected of holding
un-American views are being summarily castigated. A robust and dangerously
chauvinistic right wing conservatism is hogging the centre stage in the
media. Vindictive sentiment is spewing out in cascades of venom. For
instance, one highly rated news commentator (Bill O'Reilly of Fox News) is
advocating that " the U.S. should bomb the Afghan infrastructure to
rubble…" and "their infrastructure must be destroyed and the
population made to endure yet another round of intense pain." Another
(Ann Coulter in the National Review) is promoting the idea that " we
should bomb them back to the Stone Age" (the same threat was made by
the then Secretary of State James Baker to Iraq's Tariq Aziz in their
meeting in Geneva before the beginning of the Gulf War, and was quickly
executed).
Even academics are losing their right to air their views without fear of
accountability or retribution. The loyalty bug is smitting people all
around North America like a contagion; it is transcending the border with
Canada, too and the syndrome is manifesting itself in all its propensity
in a show of solidarity with U.S. A university professor of South Asian
origin, Sunera Thobani, is in the line of fire for having lambasted the
U.S. for its catalogue of crimes against humanity in the world. Some
luminaries of Canadian politics have jumped to their feet to denounce her
for her " anti-U.S. rant ". Some are suggesting that she be
fired from her position on the faculty of University of British Columbia;
yet others are advising her to buy a one-way ticket to Kabul. So much for
the proud western tradition of freedom of speech and writing. Americans
are failing this test, like so many others before it. q |
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