AN ACTIVIST RESPONSE TO WAR
Murray Horton
This is an extract from the speech “New Century,
Old Battles: An Activist Response To Globalisation, War And The Election”,
delivered by Murray in the course of a national speaking tour in April, June
and July 2002. The full speech is available upon request and is online at www.converge.org.nz/watchdog in Foreign
Control Watchdog 100, August 2002. Ed.
…Until 2001, the pendulum had swung most markedly in the direction of the huge
anti-globalisation movement and the billions of people that it represents.
Things
changed again, in the most dramatic way possible, with the terrorist atrocities
of September 11 and the US-led war in response to them. This has provided the
already very reactionary Bush government with the excuse to swiftly implement a
police State apparatus in the US, and to revert to an extremely old form of
globalisation – imperialism, backed up by naked military force. This has taken
two parallel courses – one has been to emphasise the most oppressive functions
of the State, namely an apparently endless and borderless “war on terror”,
backed by a massive increase in the resources and powers lavished on the
military, cops and spies. The second course has been to demonise all dissent,
including the anti-globalisation movement (undefined “terrorists” have replaced
“Communists” as the 21st Century’s bogey men) and to argue that the
only way to “defeat the terrorists” is to ram through the globalisation agenda.
Thus the US House of Representatives gave Bush fast track authority to
negotiate trade and investment agreements, a measure that had been languishing
for years. For its part, the Labour/Alliance government tried to ram through
repressive new laws with no debate, laws such as the Terrorism Suppression Bill
*, and has none too subtly tried to link its sending the Special Air Service
(SAS) into Afghanistan and the value of NZ spybases such as Waihopai, with its
chances of getting a free trade and investment agreement with the US. The
trigger happy unilateralism of the US, drunk on its own perceived might, is its
own worst enemy and will increasingly alarm and alienate the allies riding on
its coat tails. *You can read ABC’s submission on this Bill on the Submissions page
The State as an institution is suddenly back in fashion, but, unfortunately,
for reactionary reasons – to fight wars, to exact revenge, kill and torture enemies,
and to frighten and bullshit people, including its own, into acquiescent
silence. The transnational corporations (TNCs) see this huge mobilisation of
State violence as being an essential aid to seizing resources, principally oil,
for private profit. It is an old, old alliance, that between emperors and
pirates, working for their mutual enrichment.
There is, of course, nothing new about war as an essential part of both
capitalism and especially of its logical development, imperialism. It is just
that it has been presented in the First World as something that doesn’t affect
us, but something that we do to “them”. Thus we have had the daily bombing of
Iraq, coupled with the decade of genocidal sanctions that have killed hundreds
of thousands of Iraqi children. Countries such as Colombia, Angola and Sudan
have had decades of relentless war, with millions dead. Sometimes these
fringedwellers of Empire become of strategic importance and suddenly we are
told that what happens there is of vital significance to us. In an obscene sort
of beauty pageant, their wars become “fashionable”. Thus, Indochina was the
obsession of the 60s and 70s and Central America of the 80s. When was the last
time you saw a TV news report from either of those regions? The world is now
paying the price of having ruined Afghanistan as an expendable pawn in the
1970s and 80s Cold War. I take an interest in the Philippines – since the 1980s
the local military, with US backing, has practised “low intensity conflict”, a
military model first tried out on Central America. The use of death squads,
terror and large counter-insurgency tactics are the distinguishing
characteristics. Of course, there have been some long-running small wars in the
First World, such as Northern Ireland, and these have been fully exploited to
train for urban counter-insurgency and its accompanying police State.
September 11 changed this hands-off policy, so after a quarter of a century of
the “Vietnam syndrome” (i.e. a singular reluctance for US troops to be put in
harm’s way, a reliance solely on air power, and a preference for the dead
bodies to be those of non-American allies), the US is now directly engaging in
a multitude of small wars – in Afghanistan, the southern Philippines, Yemen,
and throughout Central Asia and the Caucasus. The potential is very high for
Uncle Sam to come a gutser in one or more of these “Bush wars”, maybe in
several simultaneously. And they are highly alarming to even the most servile
of American allies, who didn’t sign up to fight the rest of the world in
perpetuity. They don’t share Bush’s war comic phraseology about an “axis of
evil”. Even prior to Bush’s ascendancy to the Presidency the US military
had adopted a policy of “full spectrum dominance”. That slogan applied to war
from, and in, space – Bush has enthusiastically adopted the bizarre Star Wars
concept – and that mindset, of nakedly violent global dominance, is now the
openly practised obsession of the US, virtually to the exclusion of all else.
Undeniably, we the activists have suffered
a setback in the wake of the backlash from September 11, with the US and its
satellites waging an old fashioned imperialist war against anyone they don’t
like, and Western “democracies” adopting the trappings of the police State,
using the excuse of “anti-terrorism”. But the current anti-globalisation
movement sweeping the world is the most hopeful development in decades. That mass movement will continue to grow, mature
and strengthen and it will also be an anti-war movement. Indeed, the first
major post-September 11 anti-globalisation protests took place, most
appropriately, in New York, in early 2002, in opposition to the meeting of the
World Economic Forum. The enemy is now in plain sight and the battles will be
that much more sharply defined. The naked militarism and imperialism of
the US presents a challenge at one level; on the other hand, it does us a
favour by stripping away any illusions people may have about the essential
nature of capitalism: Do as you’re told or we’ll kill you.
So, what is the activist response of New Zealanders to “the war on terror”?
Simple, all of us, in whatever campaigns with which we’re involved, need to
incorporate an anti-war position; we need to work together to build an anti-war
movement that is part and parcel of the anti-globalisation movement. The
Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) grew out of the anti-war
movement of the 1960s and 70s; so, in many respects, we are returning to our
roots. It feels good. And if you want a specific New Zealand anti-war campaign
to get your teeth into, then join the Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) in fighting for
the closure of the Waihopai spybase*. I am the Organiser for both CAFCA and the
ABC. Usually, in CAFCA talks, I don’t mention my ABC work. No longer. It is part
and parcel of what CAFCA and the broader anti-globalisation movement is
campaigning about.* You can read about Waihopai, Echelon and the UKUSA
Agreement in the Waihopai page
More than any token commitment of SAS troops to Afghanistan, Waihopai is New
Zealand’s key contribution to the American military and Intelligence Empire.
Basically it is an American spybase operating from New Zealand, flying a New
Zealand flag, staffed by Kiwis and paid for by New Zealand taxpayers. ABC has
been fighting it since it was first announced, in 1987 (under the previous
Labour government). We might be nuclear free and out of ANZUS but that
essentially symbolic situation matters little while we are such a key part of
the American-led Intelligence network. New Zealand is one of only five
countries to belong to the UKUSA Agreement, which operates the notorious
Echelon electronic spying project – many much bigger US allies aren’t part of
this inner circle and NZ actually helps the US spy on them, as well as
whichever enemy is the current target. So that’s what must be New Zealanders’
unique contribution to the global anti-war movement – close the Waihopai
spybase…
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