 Atrocities, Imperialism, Hypocrisy: A Hypothetical
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Jan. 4th, 2007 @ 11:38 am 
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In the United States the intellectual priesthood will focus on the atrocities of official enemies while ignoring or downplaying the atrocities and act of terror that are committed by the state they support. The following hypothetical was constructed in such a way as to try to imagine the moral situation of a person in an imperial country, who is deeply moved by the suffering of an oppressed minority, but at the same time cannot see the much larger suffering that her actions support. The immediate context of the hypothetical was a debate over how and when we in the U.S. might have moral authority to criticize human rights violations in Cuba.
The hypothetical:
Julius Caesar is in Gaul, slaughtering whole villages, and killing people by the thousands for his own glory and the glory of Rome.
In the course of Caesar's human hecatomb in Gaul, Vercingetorix surrounds a village and kills or expels all of the Romans in that village. Vercingetorix also suppresses Roman ecstatic mystery cults and their sexual practices in the areas of Gaul he still controls. Julius Caesar writes home to the Senate and the People of Rome about Vercingetorix atrocities. Because Caesar is particularly open minded, he includes in his report the suppression of the Roman mystery cults and its sexual practices.
Meanwhile back in Rome is a leader of the Bacchic cult. The cult and its practices has been occasionally suppressed and persecuted by the Roman patriarchal rulers, but now is continuing in relative openness, because significant members of the ruling classes and their wives belong to the cult.
Now the leader of the Bacchic cult , is outraged at reading the contents of Julius Caesar's letter. How dare Vercingetorix suppress the Bacchic cult and its sexual practices! How dare this evil and closed minded regime even exist! It is what she talks about when she talks to people who oppose Caesar's war against Gaul. It is what she talks about when she speaks to senatorial orators who support Caesar's war of slaughter and massacre in Gaul. She is for solidarity with the all of the practitioners of the feminine mystery cult. The mystery cult cuts across class lines and undermines patriarchal values everywhere, and that is why its sexual practices are being repressed by the war lord Vercingetorix. She believes that this war lord must be stopped.
Meanwhile Julius Caesar continues his slaughter and expands it. His slaughter shows a salutary equality of treatment. The people murdered by Caesar are murdered only because they resist the Roman suppression of Gaul and it doesn't matter to him if such people they have the sexual practices of the mystery cults or not. This is called bringing Roman values to benighted Gaul.
Thousands murdered in Gaul. And back in Rome our leader of the mystery cult talking to the perpetrators of these murders about the suppression of her mystery cult in Gaul. All of this is an amazing exercise in solidarity with the people of Gaul and a wonderful example of a political moral choice in how best to stop atrocity.
Why a hypothetical?
Hypotheticals often clarify moral situations. The idea is to abstract certain conditions and events from the political contentions of the time and to ask what is the proper moral choice in a particular circumstance.
Not only is the moral situation often made obvious by the use of hypothetical situations; but how the moral situation intersects with power politics can come to the fore. I set this hypothetical in ancient Rome in hope that the distance of time, place, and culture, would abstract the situation from current ideological confusions. If the "human rights intellectuals" in the United States can't answer the questions in my hypothetical, it is not because they don't understand their point it is because they don't want to reflect on themselves and their own preening and posturing about "human rights."
For instance it is reported today that National Intelligence Director John Negroponte will resign to become deputy secretary of state. The news is delivered to us by the New York Times in proper and serious tones. The only question that is considered important to address is whether Negroponte is being "redeployed" because of the Bush Clique's disappointment with his job as National Intelligence Director. In other words the main pointman in the "war on terror" is being transferred to the State Department. No where is it mentioned that Negroponte is/was himself a leading terrorist... or perhaps it is better to call him a war criminal. Let me point out here something that is rarely mentioned in the U.S. War crimes are considered more serious than acts of terrorism and for good reason. Terrorism can be massive and atrocious, but they are crimes committed against individuals. War crimes are committed against whole nations and peoples. There is a good argument that Negroponte is a war criminal.
In the 1980s Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras. As ambassador he presided over the largest CIA station in the world and the second largest U.S. embassy in Latin America. Why was this huge "ambassadorial" complex located in the small Central American country of Honduras? Because the Honduras embassy was the U.S. terrorist base for Central American operations. Negroponte, as ambassador to Honduras, condoned, covered-up, and lied to Congress and the U.S. people about massive atrocities committed by the Honduran military against its own people -- atrocities that should be compared to Saddam Hussein's atrocities against the Kurds, during the time period we were supporting Hussein. The Honduras military was funded and supported with U.S. tax dollars, so the responsibility for the Honduran government's large-scale state terror is, in some good part, our responsibility. The reasons for Negroponte's support of Honduran state terror are also interesting. They of course had to do with U.S. support for a favored regime in Honduras, a regime that was completely malleable to the U.S. government and corporations. But the main reason was because Honduran support was crucial to running a terrorist army to attack Nicaragua, an army that was instructed by the CIA to attack "soft targets" such as clinics, farm cooperatives, and undefended villages.
Not a few days ago it was reported that Saddam Hussein was executed. His war crimes and his crimes against humanity were reviewed in obituaries and editorials. Today it is reported that John Negroponte will move from his post as National Intelligence Director to the State Department. Will their be any mention in the national press, that by any objective legal standards, he is a terrorist and a war criminal? Is it even within the range of acceptable thought that such a thing is possible, that our leaders are terrorists and war criminals? Why is it so easy to "see" the war crimes, the crimes against humanity, and the terrorism of our enemies, but we can't seem to even acknowledge the possibility of those we commit, support, or fund, or those committed by our "leaders"?
In the meantime we have supported and committed massive terrorist acts against Cuba. We support and still harbor people who blew up Cuban civilian airliners; we have distributed biological agents in Cuba to destroy crops and live-stocks; we have invaded Cuba and threatened invasion several times; we have attempted to assassinate its leaders many times over. If the same acts were committed against the United States what would be considered the legitimate response by our leaders?
All of those who live in the U.S. and criticize human rights in Cuba are in the same moral and political situation as my hypothetical Roman. The inability to confront the intersection of morality with politics is the classic situation of the emergence of hypocrisy from ideological thinking. Human rights intellectuals in the U.S. who cannot even conceive that criticism of Cuba might actually perpetuate or even increase the atrocities committed by their own government in Cuba, and elsewhere, are simply playing games of hide and never seek with reality. Human rights intellectuals in the U.S. who don't even admit to themselves that their government is a major perpetrator of terrorism in the world, including terrorism in Cuba, are unable to understand that their first responsibility is to stop the terrorism that they help to perpetuate and that they fund. Unless we can understand our own responsibilities and for whom and for what we are responsible, it is no use taking on the useless and empty burden of criticizing some foreign government whose people we are attacking. It should be simple. But it is not.
Jerry Monaco
New York City
4 January 2007
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
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| From: | (Anonymous) |
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| Date: |
March 16th, 2007 08:38 pm (UTC) |
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confused
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(Link) |
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Not sure how to use this feature. I posted yesterday, but now I cannot find it to see your response. But I love the poetry. Have you published anything that I can find in a bookstore? How is your mother, Franny?
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