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This last Wednesday, Barack Obama, President of the United States of America addressed graduands of the US Military Academy located at West Point. The academy, I am told, is US equivalent of British Sandhurst, a place for elite skills, hatchery for elite dominance in national and world affairs. That speech has largely gone unnoticed by the local media, again stressing the local media’s inability to read local implications on developments that may be far afield. Of course that does not stop those spatially remote ideas or events from influencing our country and nation anymore as does sinking your head in sand — ostrich style — stop a sandstorm.

Where our core interest demands . . .
Rarely for better and mostly for worse, America enters our bedrooms, the bedrooms of we, small peoples, small nations, enters regardless. America does not require moral justification to do so. Or even a UN resolution. Not even any invitation. In case the reader is in doubt, one key pronouncement from West Point read: “The United States will use military force, unilaterally if necessary, when our core interests demand it: when our people are threatened; when our livelihoods are at stake; when the security of our allies is in danger.” The shibboleth of American interventionism could not have been clearer, presented with greater honesty: threats to American lives who must never die, except by the hand of God; America’s hallowed means to livelihoods, which must never diminish, and which need not be confined to within her own borders; and when her buddies are in danger, as is the case with Israel for whose occupation safety the Palestinians must continue to die. Time was when American security and livelihoods demanded that chrome comes from settler colonial Rhodesia. America traded in that commodity — unilaterally —against a standing UN Resolution against UDI. It gave us a bodily feel of how American interests do override any other consideration.

Barack Obama

Good coups, bad ballots
But America might just not intervene, again unilaterally, for the sake of her core interest. And West Point gave us this other logic to American interventionism. Turning to Egypt, Obama said: “In countries like Egypt, we acknowledge that our relationship is anchored in security interests, from peace treaties to Israel to shared efforts against violent extremism.” These security interests, he added, prevented America from “cutting off cooperation with the new government”. And what he terms “the new Government” is a military government which “couped” a democratic one led by one Morsi, in the process laying a formidable precedent to what might happen in Libya, quite soon. Morsi, in the eyes of “just” America, deserved to be “couped” because he belonged to a brotherhood America regards as too radical and Islamist to be allowed to govern, even with the ballot. Through Egypt, America has taught us there are good coups, bad ballots!

The village witch who looked righteous
Much painful to an African, any African, were references to Africa, references which seasoned Obama’s speech. One such paragraph was particularly poignant. It read: “America continues to attract striving immigrants. The values of our founding inspire leaders in parliaments and new movements in public squares around the globe. And when a typhoon hits the Philippines, or schoolgirls are kidnapped in Nigeria, or masked men occupy a building in Ukraine, it is America that the world looks to for help. So the United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century past, and it will be true for the century to come.” Of course I don’t care about the Philippines. I don’t care about reference to Ukraine. American presidents always draw from polar corners of the world to suggest cosmic reach. But I care, care hugely, about reference to schoolgirls in Nigeria, Africa’s foremost symbol. I was concerned, very concerned when this foremost African state – by population, by economy, by history, by linkage – called in outsiders to pacify restive sections of her population whose ugly, warted face is Boko Haram. See how that ill-fated invitation is now being used to make the village witch righteous! America has not come in to look for or save the kidnapped girls who, anyway, continue to emancipate themselves through risky escapes. She has come in to add one more line and example to her sense and claim of legitimacy, to her gratuitous claims on world governance and dominance. Today she looks much needed and requested by the world. Cry the beloved continent.

To cut and run
Obama’s speech reads confident, bespeaking of formidably assured power. But that is only an impression created by words. In the vehemence of asserting that power lies its doubtfulness. Back in the village, we all know a man who vauntingly soliloquises about his felling fist hides mortifying scars from wifely beatings. This is not meant to rationalise Obama’s speech; it is to read history as it unfolds. In the first place the speech was a rejoinder to an internal America debate on his presidency which is viewed as dogged by the wimpy factor. American might is thought in doubt now, thanks to Obama’s reluctance to put it to test in world hotspots. Secondly, the speech admits that the 2,5million combat Americans who have gone into Iraq and Afghanistan since the commencement of America’s double aggression in those lands, have not made a difference. America is having to cut and run. And in Ukraine, the masked men seem to be stamping their authority, making it virtually impossible to make any deal on Ukraine without the involvement of Russia. Obama’s claim he has mobilised the world against the Kremlin sounds boisterous. All these suggest a severe stricture on American power. In any case the speech also acknowledges the rise of alternative powers: foremost China, India, Brazil and Russia itself. Maybe not so much of threats singly, but a veritable threat as BRIC, even without the “S”. So, American power comes across as severely diminished, in spite of Obama and his high-notes speech.

The day Lady Liberty wept
For me there is another dimension, deeper if you ask me, of appreciating America and her convoluted power as presently configured. That, dear reader, is my subject matter this week. Afore-quoted was a paragraph that vaunted America as a continual “attraction to striving immigrants”. The claim, like all propaganda claims, recklessly forgot the back-shuffle that Edward Snowden personifies, so uncomfortably, all to the detriment of America’s claim to be the shoreline of human freedoms. That plucky young American pokes holes into the false monolith Obama is delighted to paint. Accused of leaking American secrets (why is that possible to a formidable power?), and facing prospects of real persecution at home, Snowden fled to Russia, Russia of all places! He stays there to this day, safe and leaving many of us to wonder why America’s tested tradition of rendition will not work on this one, so he is long abstracted by omniscient and omnipotent America. Lady Liberty must be weeping and mourning her loss of luster, the French doubting whether their forbears were ever correct to betroth her to Vespucci! We now have, it would seem, a new  shore for “striving immigrants”.

Helping America
But Snowden is more than a person; he has become a symbol in the battle for the very values that America claims stands her apart and in global leadership. He faces charges of outing America’s secret intrusive policy that threatens civil liberties not just in America but worldwide. From safe Russia, Snowden has picked his moment to respond to charges of treason laid by his homeland Government. And so far, his argument appears stronger than the mighty American government. He does not see himself as a traitor: “My priority is not about myself. It is about making sure that these programs (by which America snoops the world) are reformed – and that the family that I left behind, the country that I left behind – can be helped by my actions.” Could that be the same country Obama is talking about?

Scandalising our memories
And the boy goes further to sink his dagger into the heart of that US propaganda pretext for aggressing the world, 9/11: “I have not told anybody this. No journalist. But I was on Fort Meade (Maryland) on September 11th. I was right outside the NSA. So I remember — I remember the tension of that day. I remember hearing on the radio the planes hitting. And I remember thinking my grandfather, who worked for the FBI at the time, was in the Pentagon when the plane hit it. I take the threat of terrorism seriously. And I think we all do. And I think it is really disingenuous for the government to invoke and sort of scandalize our memories, to sort of exploit the national trauma that we all suffered together and worked so hard to come through to justify programs that have never been shown to keep us safe, but cost us liberties and freedoms that we don’t need to give up and our constitution says we should not give up.” And he adds: “I think the most important idea is to remember that there have been times throughout history where what is right is not the same as what is legal. Sometimes to do the right thing, you have to break the law.” Asked what he has gained from his actions of leaking about 1,7million top secret government documents, he answers: “I may have lost the ability to travel but I have gained the ability to fall asleep at night and know I have done the right thing and I am comfortable with that.”

Edward Snowden

Carnival for Snowden
How many in Zimbabwe know that civil liberties in America are a matter of a stiff struggle against an obdurate State, know that beneath the myth of the First Amendment, America’s most sold and commoditised constitutional clause, are these deadly struggles being waged by small people like Snowden? Why do our American-sponsored rights NGOs present America as that land where history has ended, where rights are taken for granted, indeed sell America to us as a universal touchstone? These same NGOs which tell us human rights are universal and indivisible. How about one huge carnival for Snowden, led by Media Alliance of Zimbabwe, with Vigil and Zacras in tow? Through a smaller screen and from a small platform, Snowden has made a powerful reposte to a planetary president who comes worse off. It does infinite good to the psyche of this nation if such material, such counter-copy, is put into the public domain to put a lie to America’s most recited myth as a settled, contended democratic monolith it never has been, never will be. Quite the contrary, America is a growing source of “striving immigrants”.

Mohamed Morsi

Reversing a Libya look-alike
My penultimate example comes from Ukraine where rebels from the breakaway Eastern part of that country have shot down a helicopter, killing a handful of Ukrainian soldiers, among them, a whole general. This suggests a Ukraine hell-bent on full blown civil war, Syria style. It could very well turn out to be the first such in recent history where pro-America forces constitute the establishment under attack. Indeed the first time a Libya look-alike has been brewed against the teacher! But that is not my point. My point derives from a whining response from the US government which accuses Russia of arming the rebels with sophisticated ordnance, urging it to desist. This after what America is doing in Syria, has done in Libya and in many other countries? America is no stranger to arming insurgents with deadly weaponry. Or warring peaceful nations through well-armed proxies. Unashamedly, Obama says: “We have to develop a strategy that matches this diffuse threat -one that expands our reach without sending forces that stretch our military too thin, or stir up local resentments.” We know this strategy from the UNITA days in Angola, get it from Obama’s West Point speech. It therefore cannot be a moral point America is making against Russia when she condemns the use of proxies.

Terrorism brewed in American pot
Much worse, it makes America a pathetic opportunist ruled on double-standards, never a shoreline of human freedoms. Even its whole argument built around the myth of terrorism is increasingly sounding hollow. Yesterday issue of New York Times admitted in far-reaching proportions that both Europe and America are sources of terrorists prosecuting jihads in the Middle East, quite often with western arms! America gave the Middle East an estimated 70 terrorists. All told, about 3 000 westerners — or three battalions — are in Syria fighting that shadowy war. This is a far cry from the well-fed myth, well choreographed myth which says bad Muslims are hatched in Arab womb!

When a Field Marshal polices
My last point I make with great hesitation. It relates to an African country and an African process. Egypt is concluding an election which General Sisi is fated to win. This is a poll from a coup, something sure to taint it inherently. But it has America’s unconditional support, consistent with America’s pursuit of security interests for itself and for its allies, Israel in this case. The poll was meant to cleanse America’s condonation of goings-on in Egypt by giving the results of the coup some patina of democracy. That was the intention; it is not the out-turn. The poll has been boycotted by outraged forces from different shades of Egypt’s variegated politics. The turnout is not exactly stellar –  a mere 46 percent which saw staggeringly high count in spoilt votes, 1,7million. The turnout cannot beat that for elections of 2012, elections which yielded the very regime which the current winner deposed. Much worse, some fake ballot papers have been found, throwing into utter doubt the integrity of the ballot. “A theatrical play which did not convince anybody”, said Tariq al-Zumar of the Brotherhood. But it is a process which America has to embrace for the sake of the security of her ally and for her own interests. The world shall be left dumbfounded, asking questions, seeing beneath the makeup of democratic claims and presidential speeches.

The dripping water that hollows a stone
Was it the questioning Lucretius who captured long-term corrosion from seemingly innocuous water drops on hard rock? I think he it was, memorably adding: “Dripping water hollows a stone. A curved ploughshare, iron though it is, dwindles imperceptibly in the furrow. We see the cobble stones of the highway worn by the feet of many wayfarers. The bronze statues by the city gates show their right hands worn thin by the touch of travellers who have greeted them passing. We see that all these are being diminished, since they are worn away. But to perceive what particles drop off at any particular time is a power grudged  to us by our ungenerous sense of sight.”  Drip, drip, drip.

Icho!

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