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by Peter A. Belmont / 2010-02-27
© 2010 Peter Belmont
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In a most civilized and universalistic lecture, the late Edward Said shows that civilizations are not monolithic, have much in common, and don’t in fact clash. The idea of a clash is, however, important inasmuch as it is used as an instrument by power elites in militarized countries—an instrument to justify (perpetual) war and military imperialism.
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Anyone with an hour to spare should experience the marvellous
Edward Said video which debunks the idea that the so-called “Clash of Civilizations” is a myth-of-explanation [’there IS a clash’] and shows that it is, in fact, a myth-of-self-justification [to justify a war we need a ‘clash’ and therefore must manufacture a ‘clash’].
Of course, nowadays, “great powers” (notably the USA, Israel) are ruled (substantially in the first instance, perhaps totally in the second) by enormous military systems— armaments research, armaments manufacturing, armies available for use, armies actively in use—and these are not unsurprisingly unwilling to disappear or even diminish. To the contrary, they desire to expand. There is money to be made in militarism, ahem.
In the service of the very expensive and culture-transforming expansion and USE of large militaries, it is necessary to have a myth of a clear and present danger to justify it all. Hence the myth of the ‘clash of civilizations’ (replacing ‘manifest destiny’ to justify the USA’s military excesses) and various myths (Arabs rather grandiosely seen as Hitler redux, Arabs rather dismissively seen as less than human, Arabs irrationally seen as irrational, Jews seen as grantees of divine real estate agent, etc.) to justify Israel’s incessant, intended-to-be-unending war of dispossession against the Palestinians.
Arguing that the myths of justification for militarism are wrong, devious, etc., is a mere beginning in the work of de-militarization. The wealth and political control of the military (in the US often called the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex) is overwhelming. The problem of reducing it is indeed overwhelming. There is no ‘great power’ (unless it be China exercising some sort of economic pressure on the US) which could supervene.[1] In the case of Israel, the US could supervene any time it wanted to. In the USA, “we” (as Edward Said said—calling to my mind the joke about Tonto’s remark to the Lone Ranger when both were being chased by hostile Indians, “what do you mean ‘we’, white man?”—’when you hear someone say “we” its time to head for the hills’) do not happen to desire to exercise that sort of supervision in this long moment that began in 1967 and has no end in sight.
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[1] Recall, however, that the USSR ‘fell’ after it overspent in emulation of the US military. I suppose the daily-proved-mindless US Congress could overspend the US into a similar ‘fall’.
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