WAR ON TERROR:ISSUING FROM CULTURE OF FEAR OR DANGER OF OMINOUS ATTACK?

Con George-Kotzabasis

The respectable and cerebrally sharp Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former National Security advisor to president Carter, mounts an intellectually and strategically disrespectful argument, in the Washington Post on March 25, 2007, that the war on terror has created a culture of fear in America, and has a pernicious impact on American democracy and its psyche, and on US standing in the world. He contends, that the war in Iraq, could never had gained the congressional support it got, without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Further, that terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare. And he caps his contention by stating, that the war on terror “defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies”, and also creates a “sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger”.

It’s apparent that Brzezinski’s points are instigated by his experience of the Cold War era and Soviet communism--of which he was an exemplary acute observer and had identified clearly the dangers emanating from Soviet expansionism--and it’s precisely for this reason that are completely inapplicable to the undeclared “Hot War” that fanatical Islam is waging against the USA and the infidel West generally. To replicate the policies that were successful in eroding Communist power and finally casting it into the waste bin of history and apply them to an “ unidentified”, shadowy, religiously inspired fanatic enemy is not merely a lapse of historical nous but a totally inept and faulty strategy against such a foe. The fact that Communism was a limpidly identified enemy and precisely dangerous, was the cause that united the countries of the West and rallied them to stand behind the leadership of the USA. In contrast, it’s precisely because our present “presumed enemies” are lacking a “geographical context” that makes them nationally unidentifiable and hence an “imprecise danger”, is the reason that disunites Western countries and makes them reluctant, if not inimical, to stand behind the American leadership and strategy against global terror. Moreover, a false and unimaginative sense pervades many European countries that they are not equally endangered by global terror, like the USA is, and that they can wriggle themselves out of this danger by not engaging in the war against it and indeed, by appeasing the Islamic fundamentalists.

Further, Brzezinski’s psychology does not pass muster with the 9/11 portentous event. The latter was not, as he argues, the “psychological linkage” between its “shock” and the “postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction” that led to war and which “had gained congressional support”, but the reasonable reaction of the Bush administration, or for that matter of any historically responsible administration, to a future ominous and more devastating attack by terrorists armed with WMD, and indeed, with “portable” nuclear weapons, supplied by rogue states such as Saddams’, on the United States. The war on terror, therefore, did not create “a culture of fear in America” (e.a.), as he contends, since this fear was an instinctual fear on the part of Americans of the great danger hovering over their lives in the aftermath of 9/11. This was illustrated by the fact that nearly ninety percent of Americans initially supported both wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and this was the basic reason why it was also almost unanimously endorsed by congress. Hence, Brzezinski’s contention that this culture of fear had a pernicious impact on American democracy and on America’s psyche is baseless. Not to mention the fact that a culture does not spring up like a crop at the first droplet of rain. His culture of fear therefore is nothing else but a figment of his exuberant imagination.

Moreover, Brzezinski sublates to use a philosophical term, he assimilates the terrorist who is a real entity into a “technique of warfare”. Averring that terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare. Who then is the enemy? Is he a disembodied being who uses this technique? Can one separate an enemy from the war technique he uses? And is the US led coalition in Iraq that is trying to deprive the terrorists of the wherewithal of this technique, i.e., factories that manufacture car bombs and IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices), not fighting an enemy? The fact is that the terrorist who is the mortal enemy of civilians knows only this technique and uses it effectively and lethally to achieve his goals, in the case of fanatic Muslims, against the Great Satan America and the infidels of the West.

Brzezinski also states that the war on terror has tarnished the US standing in the eyes of the world. But is this surprising when so many people in the world, and especially in Europe, wrongly believe and presuppose that it was American policies toward the Middle East and ultimately its “adventurism” in Iraq that fomented and increased global terror? What people under such gargantuan misconception would be congenial to US involvement in the war against global terror? And especially when US actions are perceived to be unilateral and lack the backing of other major nations and the UN? Is it conceivable that under such misperception--not to mention the serious tactical errors committed on the ground in Iraq by US strategists in the aftermath of Saddam’s defeat that justified to a certain extent the wrath of the critics of the war--that America would not have eroded its standing and tarnished its reputation? Besides, who would expect that a powerful nation such as the USA, especially being the sole superpower, in conditions of world peace when nations are not threatened by another superpower and are in no need to be protected by the US as in the past, would have the respect and affection of the rest of the world and not the enmity and hostility that rises from the curse of envy against the great and the powerful?

By all historical standards the war against global terror in the wake of 9/11 was fully justified and prescient in its aim to prevent a future ominous and much more devastating attack on the United States by terrorists, who would use weapons of mass destruction and indeed nuclear ones in their irreversible goal to destroy the Great Satan. And if America could be attacked so easily by al Qaeda and its affiliates then European nations that are saturated with Islamic fifth columnists and activated jihadists would be sitting ducks.

It’s this great existential threat to America and Western civilization that has prompted the US to mobilize its military might and its brave soldiers in a long war against global terror. But in spite the clarity and awareness of the Bush administration about the real stakes of the war, it made a grave psychological error with devastating consequences to its overwhelming public support of the war by deflecting the invasion of Iraq which was quintessential to the defeat of global terror to the issues (a) of finding the elusive weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and (b) building democracy in Iraq. When these two issues had apparently foundered and were at the same time associated with the difficulties the US led-coalition countenanced in suppressing the insurgency, the war ineluctably lost its popularity among the US electorate, and reached the levels of unpopularity of the Vietnam War. The American electorate didn’t give a damn about whether WMD would be found or not, everyone believed at the time that Saddam was in possession of them, nor had they a modicum of interest in building democracy in Iraq. What they were concerned with was their security, and on this basis they were prepared undeviatingly to support the war both in Iraq and Afghanistan and to endure the pain and sacrifices that it would entail. This was the stupendous blunder that the Bush administration had committed. By substituting the war in Iraq as an essential part of global terror with building democracy in Iraq, it lost the support of the American people in the face of the arduous and tough difficulties of the war.

However, notwithstanding the serious errors of the Bush administration its original war plan to fight al Qaeda, its affiliate bodies, wherever they raise their hydra’s head, and the rogue states that support them, remains historically unblemished and is a tribute to the strong leadership of the triumvirate of Bush, Blair, and Howard. This was a historic decision, to stand up and fight the religious fanatics that threatened the viability of Western civilization and its freedom. And not to fall to the historically and politically naïve and supine blandishments of the nipple-fed liberal intelligentsia that terrorism and its state sponsors, like the Soviet Union, could be contained or that their Allah anointed grievances could be negotiated. It’s for this reason that the judgment upon Bush, Blair, and Howard, not to mention the indomitable, but so maligned by the media, Vice-President Cheney, whether their stand against global terror and their involvement in the Iraq war was right or not, will be made by history and not by political opportunists and leadership pretenders, such as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and our own, Kevin Rudd.

MULTICULTURALISM:HOW A PET IDEA BECAME A DINOSAUR

The following paper was written on February 1996 at the request of the Australian Think Tank The Institute of Public Affairs and was published in its magazine on the same date. It's republished here for the readers of this new blog hoping they will find it to be of some interest and will enjoy reading it.

Con George-Kotzabasis

Once upon a time an amateurish "astrologer" by the name Al Grasby, who happened also to be Minister of Immigration, discovered accidentally, in the Australian firmament of immigration a new star:the Star of Multiculturalism. Al was a man who had a lot of "pets", "lay" ideas, but this one was going to be a whopper. Within a decade, it would become for wave upon wave of migrants who landed and settled in this country, their lodestar. It would provide guidance and solace for the travails they would endure in the initial stages of settlement, as well as give the celestial energy by which they would cultivate their cultures in their new homeland.

No one had suspected that this discovery of our amateur astrologer was from its beginnings a Fata Morgana and that before the end of the second decade of its chequered existence it would be a falling star. The idea that lay behind the discovery was magnanimous and filled to the brim with the ideals of humanity and the spirit of tolerance. But, like all ideas with such pe(t)digree it was impregnated with the seeds of its own destruction at its conception. This, however, was unbeknown even to its eminent founding fathers, who had spent, with such profligacy, prodigious amounts of corporeal and spiritual energy to give it wings. And it must have been a dolorous and painful experience for them to see that all that their huge efforts had led to was the tragedy of Icarus. But it would not be the first time in history that frivolity in the form of a pet idea would have had such an ending.

It would be stating the obvious to describe Australia as a country whose people are of an exotic provenance. However, to transform a descriptive term into a socio-cultural value, with which migrants would nurture and uphold their cultures in this country for the long duration, as well as transmit them to their progeny, would be an exercise in intellectual alchemy. To have believed that Australia, uniquely, could become a multicultural society was quixotic.

According to its founders, multiculturalism would not only encourage the cultivation and secure the continuation of this rich diversity of cultures, but it would also contribute to the creation of a uniquely tolerant society. In both of these two admirable aims, multiculturalism would be found to be wanting. The achievement of these grandiose aims was based on the premise that Australia somehow was chosen, by some sort of divine predestination, to break itself from the vise of history.

Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki, one of the intellectual founders of multiculturalism, who since has abandoned it, asks the historically germane question regarding the concept of "Many Cultures One Australia", as proposed by the Centenary of Federation Advisory Committee for the year 2000:"...can it represent a victory over the divisive atavism which has cursed the human experience for so long?" In other words, was it ever conceptually plausible that multiculturalism, or any of its variations, would exorcise this "curse" of history and function as equal before the cascading force of the culture of modern capitalism?

No lesser figure than Karl Marx, whom some of the protagonists of multiculturalism would be proud to consider as their mentor, predicted that the elemental force of capitalism and its culture would sweep away, on a vast scale, the dead weight of traditions and cultures that riveted their peoples to the obfuscation, ignorance, and bigotry of a hoary past. How could anyone be oblivious of the fact that the Darwinian natural selection process of the biological world also applies, with some modifications, in the cultural world, by means very often, of a ruthless competition of cultures, whose crown of victory ineluctably passes to the head of the stronger culture and to the one that is most suitable to the needs and aspirations of people living in a particular society? How could anyone with a modicum of knowledge of human history, disregard the "sanguine" fact that most wars were, whatever their other causes, at the same time wars of different cultures and religious beliefs? Even when there happened to be wars of the same culture, it was a conflict between different interpretation of beliefs, as the Thirty Year War between Protestants and Catholics in the seventeenth century illustrated. In view of the above, one must have had the "courage" of ignorance, to have considered and proposed the possibility of a multicultural Australia.

As to its laudatory goals of tolerance between different cultures and their flourishing within the strongly-established mainstream of Anglo-Saxon culture, to what extent are these goals feasible? There is no doubt that Australia has an exemplary record in its tolerance of different cultures. The strong sense of egalitarianism introduced into Australia by the early colonists, an array of judicious governmental and educational policies, and the experience of an expanding tourism in and out of Australia have combined to imbue Australians, despite some pockets of bigoted obscurantism, with a strong sense of respect and acceptance of foreign cultures.

ETHNIC CONFLICTS WITHIN AUSTRALIA

But whilst the host culture can be genial and tolerant, one cannot say the same for the "metic" cultures. The tolerance of cultures, like the characters of persons, are tested and adjudged in critical and difficult circumstances. Conflicts and historical hatreds between Arabs and Jews, between Greeks and Serbo-Macedonians, between Serbs, Bosnians, and Croats, between Turks and Kurds, have been transplanted into this country. The extent to which these conflicts can mobilize these hostile communities against each other and induce them to lobby governments in support of their countries, furnishes a striking example that multiculturalism and its ideals are a mirage.

What is more disturbing, however, is that governments, for electoral reasons, can become hostages to the "blackmailing" demands of certain ethnic communities, who have the advantage of numbers. Hence, governments in Australia can become unofficial allies of certain countries which are embroiled in hostilities, or even in war, through the pressure resident communities can exercise upon them. The reality, therefore, is that leading organizations of ethnic communities, whose countries back home are engaged in hostilities or war, can become surrogate diplomatic corps, negotiating and acting on behalf of the interests of their own countries with Australian governments.

It's obvious therefore, that a nation under the umbrella of a multicultural society, cannot be protected from the thunderbolts cast by the atavistic wrath that some nations have against each other. The idea of a multicultural society, from the day of its inception, was child's play, building castles in the sand. It was an idea that should be stillborn. But, due to a mushrooming crop of ethnic communities and councils along with their leaders' adeptness to coax and seduce politicians and governments, who felt that in return for their political favours they would be rewarded with the ethnic vote, it continued to flourish. Thus it was that ethnic community leaders were able to ensconce themselves within the precincts of political power. As a result of governments' willingness, especially that of Labour, to adopt and implement many of the schemes of the supporters of multiculturalism, a swarm of drones and mediocrities, both from the ethnic and Anglo-Saxon communities, invaded and captured ministerial and departmental positions, which were cast as the incubators from which would rise the policies of multiculturalism.

The Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA), in the Prime Minister's office under the Hawke government, was the hatchery par excellence. Thus came into existence the teeming breed of the "professional ethnic". To solidify the hold they had upon governments, they needed to have the "august" voices of academia speaking in favour of their multicultural proposals. And for those multiculturalists who entered the universities and upon whom some benign force allotted them professorial chairs, Plato's proviso for his academia, that no person without knowledge of mathematics should enter here, did not apply. It was not surprising, therefore, that nothing profound emerged from those noisy, creaking wobbly chairs. Moreover, few academics-- with some exceptions, like the courageous professor Blainey--would dare to "pluck the wings" off this flock of intellectual usurpers. Even today, despite the abandonment of the concept of multiculturalism by such eminent persons as professor Zubrzycki and Justice Gobbo, cackles about multiculturalism still can be heard in, and out of, the rooms of academia.

THE FOUR PRINCIPLES OF MULTICULTURALISM

The Gordian knot of multiculturalism was tied by its four principles, as outlined by the Australian Council of Population and Ethnic Affairs:'essential for a successful multicultural society were social cohesion; respect for cultural identity and awareness of Australian's cultural diversity; equal opportunity and access for all Australians; and equal responsibility for, commitment to, and participation in Australian Society.

The achievement of each of these principles however, depends on the acceptance of the social, economic, political, and philosophical values of Australian society, i.e. the cultural values of an advanced technological democratic society. But many of the cultures of our ethnically diverse population do not espouse these values. Therefore, if those four basic principles were to be realized, these cultures would have to debunk a great chunk of their own values and adopt the values of Australian society.

Ironically, the realization of these four basic principles would not lead to a multicultural society, but to a society of one dominant culture, which fits the requirements of a modern society, with moderate variations, however, in its original cultural milieu. As through a syncretic process, the home grown culture will absorb the best that other cultures have to offer, but like a river with many currents, it will be the mainstream, the stronger current, that will determine the meandering course of its direction. It's certainly correct to believe that the diversity of cultures enriches the experience and enlightens the minds of people. But it's erroneous to believe that you can build a society or a nation on a medley of cultures.

Al Grasby's pet idea was destined to have a transitory, but nonetheless, a grotesque existence, for it was written in its star that it would share the fate of the dinosaur.

The article was first written and published in the IPA Review (Institute Of Public Affairs) Vol. 49/2 1996

THE INTELLECTUALLY WEAK DECISION OF THE HIGH COURT ON WIK

Con George-Kotzabasis

The following article was written on November 1997, but no newspaper at the time had the gumption and the historical insight to publish it. It's published here for the first time hoping that the readers of this blog will find it of some historical interest and will enjoy reading it. Since its writing many lawyer's reputations have been irreversibly tarnished and most of all the reputations of the majority of the august justices who passed this historically ignorant, ignominious, and most unwise decision.

The High Court's decision that Native Title could coexist with pastoral leases, will remain in the annals of legal decisions as one of the most intellectually weak, matted, mechanistic, and unimaginative decisions that have ever been issued from the highest bench of the land. The decision has breached Aeolus's casks releasing the winds of controversy, that generations of lawyers will have to contend with, and be haunted by, until "atonement" day. As no less is, and will be, at stake, than the professional and intellectual integrity of present and future generations of lawyers, and, indeed, their amour propre.

The paramount, the profound importance of the Wik Case, has been conceded and acknowledged by the eminent justices themselves. By the fact that all seven of their constituent members sat and adjudicated on the case, which rarely happens, except in the most important cases that come before the court. Hence, the eminent justices were deeply conscious of the unfathomable significance of their decision. However, they were completely unconscious that their decision had the potential to be the catalyst that would raise the ugly face of racism from the atavistic miasma that afflicts parts of the country, and from which no other parts of the world are immune.

It's for this reason therefore, that the decision of the justices should not have been limited and confined only within the domain of the law, and its pros and cons should not have been debated and resolved solely by judicial arguments, without considering the widespread and portentous repercussions such a decision could have upon the country and its institutions. As it was inevitable that such judgment, on this grave and contentious issue, would "somersault" beyond the issue of "juridical" justice. And one must note, that even the strict legal arguments of the case were not clear cut to the justices themselves, as the decision was split four to three, and that in itself should have alarmed the begetters of the majority opinion and should have awakened them from a most serious lapse of cognitive awareness, since the Law itself upon which the decision rested was disputable. But there is no doubt that the majority judgment emanated from "a fine cloud of solicitous idealism," to quote the great Austrian writer, Robert Musil.

It was this "seraphic" zeal of the justices to render ideal justice to the Wik case, that has sundered the aborigines from a substantial part of the rest of the community, and is threatening to unhinge the reconciliation process--a process which, like everyone else, the justices themselves are sensitively concerned with, as by "reading the lips" of their judgment, one can easily tell that the latter "secretes" this lofty desire and aspiration for reconciliation--as the nature of the decision imperils the interests of the pastoralist, logging, and mining industries. And causing all people whose income is derived from these, to rise up in arms.

The eminent justices "shelved" in the ethereal atmosphere of their glasshouse existence, could neither imagine nor foresee the upheaval their decision would bring forth amongst the contending groups and were obliviously ignorant of the mundane interests of ordinary mortals. All they could see in the reflective glass of their craft, was the reflection of their perceived law--even if the law itself was misty and far from clear. And in their idealistic and romantic innocence pursued its shadowy beauty, and by coupling it with their unimaginative and mechanistic thinking, they hatched this cerebrally "ugly" judgment.

The judgment proved to be a veritable Pandora's box placed on the bosom of the contending groups, if not on the bosom of the country. As it was evident, that by pitting the interests of the aborigines against the interests of the pastoralists, the loggers, and the miners, the justices would unleash the destructive emotions of the cave amongst them all. Furthermore, they were unable to anticipate that their decision would passionately rally all those who care for the disadvantaged in our society behind the aborinal cause, especially the good Samaritans of the middle class. Whose involvement and concern in the plight of the disadvantaged often is, an escapist distraction from the ennui of their economic comforts, if not a sedative for their collective guilt, for their disinclination to pay higher taxes, which would be the most effective way to help the disadvantaged to cross the street of their plight. As well as all the "fief-holders" of the welfare protectorate and their hangers-on, who long ago abandoned their status of a volunteer calling and transfigured it into a profession. With all the "fixtures" (including those of the mind) of vested interests that inexorably accompany all professional bodies.

Hence the venerable justices, fugitives from reality, bondaged to their mechanistic thinking, and unfailingly callow in human affairs, committed the "caring" folly that not only divided the contending groups and their auxiliary supporters on economic and political lines, but, also, because of the pigmentation of the contestants, on racial lines too. (Despite the fact that we are all subject to the vagaries of chance for the colour of our skin, the latter always seem to have, in disputes between humans, the last word.) Therefore, the judgment of the Court has lit the fuse of a time-bomb that threatens to explode into a ferocious and ugly war fought on racist lines. Such an outcome would seriously harm the reputation of our country of being generally free from the perniciousness and woes of racial intolerance. It would diminish Australia in the eyes of the rest of the world and could damage some of our economic interests, particularly those of our tourist trade with countries in our region that are justifiably sensitive to the rise of even a semblance of racism.

ARE NATIONS CREATED BY IMMACULATE CONCEPTION?

The claim of Sir William Deane, a former Chief Justice of the High Court and presently Governor-General, that the violent settlement of the continent is a shameful aspect of our history and will 'haunt us as a source of bitterness', and if we don't come to terms with it he would 'weep for Australia', is singularly puzzling, to say the least. It would have been wiser for Sir William to weep for the un-illuminated judgment of his former colleagues of the High Court that has thrown the country into this social and political upheaval, before he considered and condescended to weep for Australia. One is tempted to ask Sir William, where in human history the "transmigration" of peoples to other areas and continents of the world has been non-violent? Does the Governor-General believe that the building of nation states has been an immaculate conception? History has been an endless "play" of violence of human beings against one another, as depicted by the great tragedians, from Sophocles to Shakespeare. If Sir William widened the horizon of his humanitarianism and religious fervour to encompass all the victims of mankind's violent history and weeped indiscriminately for all of them, his weeping would have dried the oceans of the earth. Not that such weeping of intellectual weariness, coming even from the highest office in the land, would have changed anything.

The Wik decision not only lacks, and is totally devoid of, historical and anthropological groundings, but is also an attempt to cross and hybridize Aboriginal culture with the values of Western culture. As it grafts upon the former the values of proprietary rights and possession which are totally alien to it. The aborigines have a spiritual bond with their ancient territories that is linked to their dead ancestors. But as nomadic tribes always on the move in search of food and water, this spiritual bond had no fixed territory and hence historically they never developed the sense of private or collective property. This is illustrated by the present fact, that when they are moved in more modern homely surroundings their houses are soon run-down, as a result that their occupants have no regard for private or communal property. Moreover, the question is not whether the High Court "created" these rights to property, but whether by the Wik decision it acknowledged and reinforced this figment of their imagination. The decision, furthermore, spawns among aborigines a destructive divisiveness, in the form of the sacred and the profane, i.e., between the purists who resolutely want to uphold the sacredness of their vital bond with ancestral territories, and the "less pure", the more "entrepreneurial", such as the misters ten percent of the aboriginal elite, who want to sell these sacred grounds to the highest bidder. Such a conflict was clearly illustrated by the Carpentaria's Land Council coordinator Murrandoo Yanner, who, representing the purist side, refused to sign the 1.1 billion Century Zinc project agreement, and by those other less pure representatives of aboriginal communities who were willing and desirous to sign the agreement , and hence receive their pound of flesh for the sites of their sacred bones. And one must also note, that the beneficiaries of Native Title will not be the aborigines of the woodlands, but the urban aborigines, of the "plastic mobile" elite, whose affinity with the former is becoming more and more slender and frail.

Ostensibly, the justices of the majority opinion, had a greater desire to tack the halo of "saintliness" on their "headlong" decision, than the halo of sober earthly reason. Not that the latter would have been an easy task! Since in their deliberations they had aborted prudence and reason, as a result of their abject failure to consider the events that their umimaginative decision could set in train. Being temperamentally unable to be instructed by reality, they found it easier and more congenial to their mental make-up, to be instructed by the simulacra of their idealism. "Victims" of their training and profession, the precedents of law had priority over the precedents of history. Effete descendants of Blackstone, von Gierke, justice Holmes, and our own, Sir Harry Gibbs, unburdened with the heavy weight of philosophy and history, they craved nonetheless to set an historical foundation to this most unwise judicial judgment. But to erect such a statue of their "weak" justice on Wik, is like erecting a statue of Napoleon riding a donkey. Alas, such is the fate of farcical judgments and the deconstruction of reality by idealistic simulacra.