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Sajjad Khan
Editor: New Civilisation
sajjad.khan@newcivilisation.com | |
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Four years after the War on Terror was launched and despite centuries of western interventions in the Muslim world, western nations remain in control but out of sorts. Over two centuries after the enlightenment, secular free market liberals dominate just about every important nation in the twenty first century, yet the western enlightened agenda has stalled. Cynicism has surged. A sense of a strong society is dead. And when voters are asked about their political rulers, the sense of apathy is electric.
In America, Congress and the President have approval ratings of less than 50%. In the United Kingdom, Tony Blair gained power comfortably in 2005 with an “overwhelming” minority of 22% of the popular vote. In the Muslim world over two thirds of respondents cite the US and Israel as the two countries that pose the greatest threat to them.
For supporters of a movement that is supposed to be winning the battle of ideas, western secular liberals are in a mess.This is not to say that in the battle of ideas those that advocate alternatives have managed to succeed either, but for many people western specific ideas of secularism, capitalism, individualism and materialism are the only games in town. So what has gone wrong?
Firstly, most of the issues that attracted people to secular enlightenment principles have been addressed. Most people were attracted to liberalism because they feared the communist threat from the Soviet Union, wanted to gain economic prosperity and sought to gain more individual freedom from the state. With the demise of Communism, an era of unparalleled consumerism and popular acceptance for western states to curtail civil liberties in the War on Terror, many of these issues are no longer as burning as they once were.
Secondly, democracy, the chosen system of the enlightenment, has been semi-absorbed into the politics of the corporate trough. When Enlightenment thinkers such as Montesquieu and Locke were in their most creative phase, there was meant to be a distinction between the executive and the oligarchs. Politicians pursued policy ideas and were meant to be motivated by public service, while oligarchs and business elites pursued wealth and were motivated by avarice. However in the modern democracies of today, that distinction has become blurred. The corruption and bribery scandals currently engulfing the US Congress and the Indian Parliament are another example of the incestuous relationship between politicians and corporations. Paul Krugman commenting in the New YorkTimes about the corruption scandals affecting politicians and think tanks, states the real question as being 'Who else is on the take? Or has the culture of corruption spread so far that the question is,Who isn't?'
Many former politicians after leaving office immediately metamorphosed into corporate lobbyists or gained senior executive roles; this is not just confined to the United States where ethics today seem to have taken an extended vacation. Gerard Schroeder, after a fortnight's break from being Germany's Chancellor, has gained a senior role in a Russian-German gas consortium thus paraphrasing General MacArthur's famous dictum that old politicians never die, they just fade into boardrooms. In addition, democracies consistently duck the major issues, deficits, energy security, global warming, healthcare, competitiveness, farm subsidies, pensions, social decay as politicians manage to an electoral horizon of four years instead of taking the tough decisions. No wonder Thomas Friedman the NY Times commentator rightly covets an 'envious' eye to the Chinese political system's ability to get things done in an Op Ed he wrote on 11 November 2005. Most politicians today know that challenging vested interests the barriers to solving these issues would be tantamount to electoral suicide. Is there any wonder that today's robotic western politicians fail to inspire their citizens or are able to address the big issues.
Thirdly, foreign policy has illustrated not just the unacceptable face of western imperialism but the true face of western states. The indomitable pursuit of profits, raw materials and cheap labour drive the inhumane policies of debt, trade and political support for dictators and tyrants around the world.The results are clear; 3 billion people on less than $2 a day, while the west continue to take billions from the developing world in debt interest and pay billions more in subsidies to their own rich corporate farming entities thus monopolising world trade. State socialism may have died when the Soviet Union collapsed but in the Mid West of the United States of America and rural France the people's republic's control over state production is alive and kicking. For most people minor concessions at international summits may gain the applause of ex pop singers, but they do not substantively transform the imperialistic heart of international policy.This harsh neo-liberal world order not only oppresses the developing world but has caused chasms to appear in western societies, where tens of millions have rejected neo-liberal free market capitalism by joining the growing band of counter political movements.
Fourthly, western states have today lost their moral authority. In 1989, when the Berlin Wall collapsed, western states had not needed to fire a shot in anger and were considered shiny beacons on the top of a hill by the oppressed citizens of Eastern Europe.Today, in the aftermath of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, torture, 'extraordinary rendition' (illegal kidnapping and torture to you and me),secret detention facilities, the wanton use of white phosphorous and depleted uranium and the reversal of Habeas Corpus, western nations are considered more a part of the problem than part of the solution. The situation is so bad that even Iraqi supporters of the United States like Shiite lawyer Abdul Wahab al-Unfi,part of a high powered delegation on a visit to the United States to learn about American democracy, cut short his visit to the US abruptly with his delegation in disgust at the US's position on torture.Unfi justified his disgust with the following statement.
“Virtually every extended family in Iraq has someone who was tortured or killed in a Baathist prison. Yet, already, more than 100 prisoners of war have died in U.S. custody. How is that possible from the greatest democracy in the world? There must be no place for torture in the future Iraq. We are going home now because I don't want our delegation corrupted by all this American right-to-torture talk.”
Indeed a recent Zogby/University of Maryland poll of citizens in six Middle Eastern states echoed Unfi's sentiments, in finding oil (76%), protecting Israel (68%), domination of the region (63%) and weakening the Muslim world (59%) were cited as the main objectives of America in the Middle East, compared to only 6% who agreed with President Bush and Prime Minister Blair's view that their objectives are to merely spread human rights and democracy. This distrust is not confined to the Muslim world but is found globally from Caracas to Seoul with people in all continents looking at new models of governance and rule. It says something that even in Europe, a dictatorship like China currently enjoys a more favourable image than the United States.
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