The world is now near-overflowing
with Osama-news. A major part of these are part of psychological warfare,
well-designed, well-timed, well-targeted. Some news announce prowess of the
mightiest war machine the world has ever seen. People turn cautious of it. A few
news, anyhow, expose some facts, facts important for the Empire itself.
It turns out from the news-torrent that Osama turned out an
enemy of the Empire. The questions follow: how many times in human history or
in history of empires, an individual turned an enemy to empires? Is it possible
for an individual to challenge an empire? What the significance is when an
individual throws challenge to an empire? At which stage of an empire similar
challenges crop up? When an empire has to target an individual? Is it possible
for an individual to stand against a system? Is not the question turns serious
when the system stands on an extensive base, when it holds intensive power,
when it can depend on a wide network of friends? And, is it that that it was an
individual’s challenge?
A number of news narrate the long journey, 10 to 15 years, to
track a fellow, Osama. (Reuters, “Special report: The bin Laden kill plan”, May
12, 2011) The journey was equipped with most sophisticated equipments and
machines. Probably, as is understood from news, some of those machines are
owned by none in this world. The intelligence machine that took the time, long
or short, depending upon the way one counts, to track Osama, now vanquished, is
considered unparallel in the world. Its analytical capacity, its tracking
capacity, its pool of intellectual resources are incomparable. During the Cold
War days, how many secrets the KGB, the intelligence apparatus of the erstwhile
Soviet Union, was able to keep hidden for 10-15 years from the eyes of the
Empire’s intelligence wing? Now, how many secrets the Chinese, busy in
enhancing their war capability, are able to hide from the eyes and ears of the
Empire? Then, how Osama could? Yes, it was not an individual’s, Osama’s act. In
that case, are his accomplices more experienced, more organized and craftier
than that KGB or the present day Chinese?
It took 10-15 years to track one Osama. If two, three Osamas
follow? Shall the time span extend to near-half a century? If two or three
Osamas emerge simultaneously? Unknown answer waits.
These are, in one sense, meaningless questions. But, from other
angles, these may appear serious issues. The reality – long time, huge
resource, an empire standing against an individual – cannot be brushed off.
Rather, the base of the reality, the causes and factors behind the reality,
deserve serious enquiry. Jubilations of murdering or assassinating an
individual helps hide the need of enquiry.
Rather, the jubilations, the extended hatred and humiliation
campaign against a community reflect a state of “mind” of a reality that, based
on teachings of history, signifies certain aspects in any empire. And, history
has not still wiped out similar examples of state of social “mind” in many
empires and their destiny. Rebel barbarians chained and paraded through the
streets of Rome lined by jubilant Romans unaware of crisis within.
If ISI’s hidden role-argument is accepted for the sake of
looking back once again, then doesn’t it appear that the intelligence wing of a
state in precarious situation played a smarter role for a certain period of
time than the mightiest intelligence arrangement? Does the ISI own more
resources, expertise and intellectual capacity than the CIA? What would have
happened to the Empire if that smarter period of time widened? What will be the
consequence if similar smarter intelligence organizations appear more in number
simultaneously and they collude with each other against the Empire? What is the
characteristic of the period when a client state can play smarter? These are
very simple and elementary questions. There are more serious questions related
to these aspects. Those questions are related to the economic and political
aspects, aspects of diplomacy, influence, interference and control, capacity to
control clients. Shall those questions lead to other geopolitical players,
players regional and international? Next age-Wikileaks, probably, shall expose
the answers.
It has been widely circulated that Osama and his co-fighters
were brought up by an intelligence organization. Why the organization then lost
grip of control over them? Why proxies turn disobedient? Is that a simple
management question? Or, are there issues related to aspirations of a section,
incapacity to accommodate the aspirations, reasons behind the incapacity? Is
there any social aspect related to the aspirations? Whom do the aspirations
represent?
Osama operation took $3 trillion. The price is more than 15% of
the US national debt incurred in the last decade. “With a fiscal mess, the US
current rate of deficit spending would add $9 trillion to the national debt
over the next decade. That’s three Osamas, right there.” (Tim Fernholz and Jim
Tankersley, “The cost of bin Laden: $3 trillion over 15 years”, National
Journal) Where the amount shall jump with three, four, five similar operations
if required in future? And if the enemy(ies) turn more powerful, more
organized, more experienced, more wide based? Has the present Osama-operation
concluded? The answer is an emphatic no. What shall be the implication in the
economy, an economy turning one of the biggest debtors in world history? The
Empire had to borrow money to fight Osama and his followers.
Let us give up the issues of increasing poverty and disparity,
the issue of infrastructure in a bad shape, the issues of unemployment and
stagnation in the debt-ridden economy in the Empire. The national debt,
according Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is the
“biggest national-security threat” of the Empire.
Just a look at education will provide some startling facts:
Nearly half of Kansas City’s schools faced closing down in late
2010, as ABC News reported in mid-March, 2010. Hundreds of Houston teachers
faced firing out. It was the largest school closing in the district’s history.
This included high schools, middle schools, elementary schools and early
childhood centers. The Kansas City school board’s decision sent shockwaves
through the country. Facing a $50 million budget shortfall, the board approved
the plan to close schools that the district deemed to be under capacity.
California Watch reported in late-September, 2010: Traditional
public schools shorten school year, increase class sizes and lay off teachers
and staff by the thousands. Many of the charter schools are cutting costs by
hiring less-experienced teachers. Charter schools have not entirely escaped
California's budget crunch. Many are making adjustments including reducing the
number of teachers.
In early-May, AP reported: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg
“unveiled a shrinking budget that would cut corners throughout New York City —
from classrooms, where public school children stand to lose one out of 12
teachers, to jails, where officials are saving pennies by cutting items like
bread, pepper and ketchup from the menu.” The budget also called for a 12% cut
to the city’s libraries and loss of 20 fire companies that would slow
firefighting response times. The mayor said: Albany and in Washington “are
keeping more of our tax dollars to close their own budget deficits.” The loss
of 6,166 public school teacher jobs would include an anticipated 4,100 layoffs.
He said elementary schools in poor neighborhoods would be affected the most.
The state Financial Control Board has warned that unless the city curbs rising
capital debt and growing pension and health care costs, residents can expect
deep reductions to services for years to come.
“Welcome back to school in budget-strapped California,” wrote
Time, “where pencils, paper and textbooks are indeed prized goods — and their
availability in classrooms is increasingly dependent upon the resourcefulness
of teachers. As a matter of financial survival, teachers share tips for
donation websites, clip coupons together … and learn how to spruce up
garage-sale items (bought with their own pennies…). They buy cheap whiteboards
and pull used worksheets out of the trash, because paper is a hot commodity.
They bring in their own vacuums and have learned how to patch up frayed
furniture. … It’s a dire time for public education in California. Nearly $17
billion has been cut from schools over the past two years, and a possible $2.4
billion more in cuts are expected in the next year. Teachers have been forced
to take pay cuts ... And thanks to the 18,000 education-department layoffs last
year. To keep their classrooms afloat, and to avoid even further out-of-pocket
expenses … many California teachers are scrambling to find fresh ways to
thriftily educate their students and maintain their physically crumbling
classrooms.” Vicki Nosanov Goldman, a teacher said: “For extra credit, I have
kids bring in fruit from their trees and veggies from their families’ gardens.”
She spends her Sundays combing sale ads, searching for grant money and
excavating garage sales for anything from computer carts to pots and pans. “I
always ask business owners if they have pens with their logo on them so that I
can distribute them to the students,” she said. Goldman, teaching for 22 years,
said: “I’ve never had to beg like this.” The report continued: “None dropped off
reams of paper. Even classroom cleanliness is often dependent on teacher’s
pocketbook and labor. Many teachers across the state can be found late into the
evening scrubbing and vacuuming their rooms with their own supplies.” Curtains
in a classroom are made of paper as window shades could not be provided. “I
hung maps of the world over the windows this year,” said a teacher. Maria
Clark, Redlands Teachers Association president, said: The teachers “are living
in a world of fear because they are afraid they [are going to be cut] next.”
Students “are starting to suffer emotionally from the severe financial drain.
‘[H]ow do you tell a 6-year-old we can’t do a beloved project because we don't
have the supplies?’” Superintendent O'Connell said: “[S]tudents will question
whether the state values public education.” (“California Teachers: Paying for
School Supplies Themselves — and More”, Time, Oct. 08, 2010)
This is a tale of frustrated and angry teachers and of students
in a near-hopeless socioeconomic reality. How far an empire can sustain and
prosper with a politics of shrinking education? Classrooms and students get
squeezed while technological feat glitters in drones shedding, on many
occasions, blood of innocents in Pakistan villages stuffed with poverty.
The National Center on Family Homelessness’ report tells: One
in 50 American children is homeless. The report America’s Young Outcasts said:
“[M]ore than 1.5 million of our nation’s children go to sleep without a home
each year.” Children without homes are twice as likely to go hungry.
Now, another picture:
Fernholz and Tankersley ask: How much Osama cost the US and how
much has been gained from the fight against him. “By conservative estimates,
bin Laden cost the United States at least $3 trillion over the past 15 years,
counting the disruptions he wrought on the domestic economy,…pushed the bounds
of civil liberty …” To compare, they cited figures: World War II defense
spending cost $4.4 trillion, the US military spending was about $19 trillion
throughout the Cold War carried for more than four decades. One-fifth of a
year’s gross domestic product, more than the entire 2008 budget of the US, has
been spent responding to Osama’s 2001 attack. His 1998 bombing of the US
embassies in Africa caused Washington to quadruple diplomatic security spending
worldwide the following year, from $172 million to $2.2 billion over the next
decade. The 2000 bombing of the USS Cole caused $250 million in damages. The
actual cost of September 11 attacks, in lost activity and growth, was between
$50 billion and $100 billion or about 0.5% to 1 percent of GDP, and caused
about $25 billion in property damage. Do these figures echo Osama’s voice: “We
are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy”?
Wastage and misuse of resources are creeping in. The
unaccounted fund in the Empire’s Iraq War is now much-known fact. The
Washington Post informed last year: 1,271 government organizations are involved
with counterterrorism missions; 51 alone track terrorism financing; they
produce about 50,000 intelligence reports each year; and many of these are not
read. But the operation appears enjoy-worthy for a few, the handful of
armaments corporations and the murky arrangement of defense contractors, a
strange arrangement for serious jobs including spy missions.
Questions hover on the horizon of the Empire: How far a
neocolonial client state disobey and deceive its master? Can it actually? Does
the Empire provide that space of autonomy? When, how and why it turns
disobedient? What role is the Empire’s comprador class in the neocolony
playing? What’s the socioeconomic basis of that role? Is that an Empire’s
incapacity? And, is that incapacity an expression of declining power? Complex
questions of political science can haunt a scientist concerned with empires’
rise and fall, spanning at times hundreds of years and at times a thousand
year.
Alternatively, the questions can be ignored on the strength of
world accumulation. Who knows that whether that will be a foolish exercise in
ignorance or not? But whether these are questioned or not, the contradictions
the ever accumulating reality generates will continue to create disharmony in
distribution, create frustration and anger, silently hollow the base that
supports the Empire. The Empire is chained to its own precinct: accumulate to
survive and create contradictions, antagonistic and irreconcilable in nature,
in home, within its social body. Wars, invasions, police actions abroad, into
far-flung corners of the world, will increase its burden that it gradually will
find difficult to bear, will diminish its capacity to attend to problems in
home.
The psychology that jubilates assassination, murder, that
germinates hatred signify last phase of a declining society that fails to win
over and co-opt minor dissenting minds, that fails to search and address causes
behind anguished minds of minority section. A blood-thirsty psychology tells
nothing but a sterile mind filled with brutality and devoid of creativity. And,
that is the limitation of an economy that fails to invest in production but
turns smarter in speculation.
Osama was an image of the Empire, craftily chiseled years ago,
in the Cold War age, as was the Contras, proxy warriors in Nicaragua. Does the
Empire search the reasons behind the acts of Osama that shed blood of thousands
of non-combatants, the peace-loving firemen, the peaceful fathers, the mother
ever eager for a peaceful world, for the betterment of their sons and
daughters? The innocent victims of Osama-onslaught were in the lands of
America, in the lands of Africa and Asia, in Pakistan and Indonesia. Does the
Empire reflect on its strategy and tactics that produce such bloodthirsty
tactics of its proxy, which was once fed with a dogma: kill the Soviets?
Taxpayers will question these another day, another vulnerability of the Empire.
Osama has exposed these.
His last moments of life will be questioned from legal aspect,
the legal basis mainstream has built up, in future. Legal structure safeguards
dominant interests and the structure is innovated and developed for that
purpose. It is a question: what is the circumstance that leads to circumvent
own legal standard to safeguard own legal interests? Even, the operation will
be reviewed from the ethical point of view mainstream upholds, propagates and
imposes on others. The doctrine related to sovereignty of state will be a major
discourse in international arena. And, this doctrine, drone- or SEAL-doctrine
the way one likes to name, will be refuted, resisted and invalidated as a
number of doctrines have already faced. Even, this may turn a boomerang with
rise of any powerful contender powered by a powerful economy.
The vanquished thus has turned powerful by creating
possibilities of more draining out of the Empire’s resources through muzzles,
explosives, superhightech weaponry the world has not come across till today.
Probably, a few has been tested in Abbottabad. But shall the Empire look at or
search for any other actors, if any, behind the Osama phenomenon. Its sole
concentration is on a single client state, a state composed with its client
class. A vulnerable point the Empire cannot circumvent.
One of the public leaders of the Empire has told that the
Empire doesn’t know defeat. Probably she has forgotten the Bay of Pigs or the
last days in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City. History fails to teach when memory
turns short and empires failed to survive as they failed to learn from history.
That was their historical incapacity. It is an intellectual incapacity fed by
arrogance of armaments. Weapons, armors and intelligence apparatus do not
decide destiny of empires.
Media manipulation, stories of combat readiness and combat
smartness fail to hide level of efficiency of a machine that took years to find
out its target. Reasons behind that level of (in)capacity is not searched when
another country is considered as reason. That’s a vulnerable point. Can an
empire pass decades with the hope that one of its allies will find out the
empire’s enemy number one? Is that a show of strength and maturity? What’s the
name of that level of perception of dependence on an ally? Why an institution
perceives in that way? What’s the basis of that perception?
Now it appears, silently creeping crises in an inner-body is
overlooked while outward show of firepower overwhelms significant part of
geopolitical moves and keeps mesmerized and assured empire leaders. The Empire
is going through this reality. Osama had a role in embarking on this path. And,
Osama was initially a product of this Empire. And, the Empire failed to control
its ally. The vulnerable points also sleep here.
[Farooque Chowdhury, a freelancer from Dhaka,
Bangladesh, contributes on sociopolitical issues. One of his books is The Age
of Crisis (shrabongraphic@yahoo.com)]