[WCUSP] New Orientalism's 'barbarians' and 'outlaws'

[Kate Zaidan]

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=5&article_id=7
5230

New Orientalism's 'barbarians' and 'outlaws'

By Alastair Crooke
Commentary by
Tuesday, September 05, 2006

It's unconscious. It slips out almost inadvertently. It is not deliberate
but, rather, a reflex: an Israeli commentator discusses options for clearing
Hizbullah from the area south of the Litani River in the context of the war
in Lebanon. After reviewing the options he adds, in an almost despairing
note, that probably whatever Israel does, almost certainly a "Hizbullah
terrorist will pop up somewhere on the back of a donkey with a rocket."

The imagery is clear, but paradoxical. Clear because his report implies a
grudging and bemused respect for a foe that unexpectedly is not being
crushed by the Israeli onslaught (as every Western and Israeli analyst had
assumed), paradoxical, because whatever the force that was frustrating this
mighty military machine, it was certainly something more than "a man on a
donkey." Why the donkey? Because this foremost proponent of modern
asymmetrical guerrilla warfare - Hizbullah - must nevertheless somehow be
associated with obscurantism, with a reaction against Western modernity and
a desire for a return to a pre-modern age. It's just how we see things.

Edward Said rightly identified this Western unconscious prejudice as
"Orientalism." He suggested that the West sees the Orient as that mysterious
"Other" that eludes rational analysis. Western academics and observers
continue to see the Orient, and to define it, in polar opposites: We in the
West are rational, the Orient is violent and inexplicable; we are moderate,
they are extreme; we practice good administration, they live under
oppression and tyranny.

This flawed Western analysis is entirely self-serving: The language of
Orientalism, Edward Said noted, was a construct of power. For the previous
300 years, Europeans have regarded the Treaty of Westphalia (an agreement
that shattered the Christian "caliphate" in secular nation states) as laying
the foundations of modernity. The separation of church and state, the belief
in the inevitability of progress through science, a faith in reason as a
solution of social problems, everything that we think of as the
"Enlightenment" ideal, became our mantra however much European reality
differed from this ideal.

The Enlightenment grew from a simple concept to become, irretrievably, a
synonym for "modernity" itself; the Orient became its antithesis. The ideals
we believe are reflected in the Enlightenment became the device that allowed
us to use the language of European modernity not only as a tool to
"domesticate" the Orient but also as an interpretative template from which
to offer a critique of the Orient's "backwardness." The Enlightenment
mindset of European modernity became sedimented in Western thinking at the
same time that it served Western colonial and economic interests.

In the years since Edward Said published his classic, the West has elevated
Orientalism into something more serious: an inexorable self-fulfilling
reality. The global "war on terror" has allowed Western leaders to cast
"our" struggle as one for civilization itself - "we" have values, they have
none, we want to spread democracy, they hate our freedoms. The West is now
defined by its opposition to terrorism and as a defender of civilization.
The war on terrorism has transformed orientalism, from a European-based
vision of modernity that could be used to "domesticate" non-Europeans, into
a program that establishes a frontier between "Civilization" and "the new
Barbarism".

The new "Orientalism" offers us new political tools. Since the "new
barbarians" live outside of civilization, civilized rules no longer apply to
them: if "they" win elections they can still not be part of "us" - office
holders and parliamentarians can be abducted and interned without a murmur;
members of "barbarian" movements can be arrested and taken away for
imprisonment and torture in other countries, and barbarian leaders, whether
or not legitimately elected, can be assassinated at the pleasure of Western
leaders. They "abduct" us, we "arrest" them.

The underpinning of our worldview is based on our idea of what constitutes
the legitimate use of power - and, therefore, on the use of violence. It is
the bedrock of the Enlightenment. Violence practiced by the nation state is
legitimate; violence used by non-state actors is a threat to civilization
and the existing world order. The barbarians do not have resistance
movements, they are not for liberation, and they are not fighting
oppression. To admit so is to admit that we are oppressors, and that cannot
be. They are not fighting for their homes: they are "unauthorized armed
groups."

Non-state actors who use violence - defined now as "terrorists" in the new
lexicon of the Bush-Blair world view - face a double proscription: Not only
are they outside of civilization and undeserving of having civilized
standards applied to them (such as respect toward elected representatives),
they are excluded from international law too. Their challenge to "our"
Westphalian rules on the use of violence permits us to cast them as
barbarians and outlaws. Nor are we constrained by our own rules of war in
the military struggle to be waged against them. Why are we bombing them?
Because they don't have our values.

As these "Others" - these barbarians - find themselves isolated and excluded
from civilization, as well as from the safeguards of international law, they
respond by assuming the characteristics we attribute to them. If we do not
apply civilized standards to them, and use unrestrained military force
against them, is it any wonder that they respond in kind? And so this "new
Orientalism" becomes self-fulfilling: Since their violence is "terrorism"
and our violence is "self-defense," we propound a reasonable solution - we
get to keep our guns, but they must disarm.

[Alastair Crooke is a founder and director of Conflicts Forum. He was
formerly an EU mediator who facilitated a number of cease-fires with
Islamist movements. This text is reprinted with permission from
bitterlemons-international.org, where it first appeared.]

-- 

Kate Zaidan
Program Coordinator
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, US Section
1213 Race Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
215-563-7110
www.wilpf.org

The Israeli prime minister in a live speech has just said that they are fighting the enemies of peace of Lebanon. I see. So those children that have been incinerated in Lebanon by Israeli bombing must have been enemies of peace. I will try to inform their parents.

As'ad'Abukhalil
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/