No Terrorists Here

            Randy Martin, author of Empire of Indifference: American War and the Financial Logic of Risk Management, addresses the cause of the lingering conflicts in Afghanistan by linking the United States’ military strategies with its economic strategies.  Specifically, financial risk is broken down, parceled out, and capitalized on by being sold as a commodity, or derivative, in itself (rather than being resolved between the two original parties).  The wars on terror of late are intended to function in much the same way.  American forces break down and strategically engage potential threats under the pretense of spreading freedom and democracy, and by increasing social and political chaos, risk and effects can be calculated and capitalized on.  Martin explains, “The decomposed nation would leave a colonial substrate that would spin off endless conflicts and opportunities.  The old imperial ambition was to consume the colonial whole; the new aspiration attaches to less, while making more if its partial attentions” (123).  The U.S. effectively starts and spreads conflicts without actually achieving any of the “goals” it purports to pursue.  Not only do wars not end, they offer more and more opportunities to achieve desired effects through future conflicts.  So, just as debt is broken down according to calculated risk, parceled out, and re-sold, so, too, are wars now sustained indefinitely while they constantly spawn new conflicts which can then be capitalized on for political and economic purposes.

            One of the U.S. military’s strategies, according to Martin, is in dubbing its actions in Iraq and Afghanistan responses to terror.  Martin explains, “the war on terror allows nations and populations to be marked with the occult motives and shadowy intention that have long characterized racial loathing,” and in doing so “racialize(s) [the terrorist] as the bad other or object of risk—risks to freedom, liberty, ways of life, and identity” (165).   These risks must be objectified and managed, and in order to do this, there “is a splitting of a single race into a superrace and a subrace” where the subrace embodies all the darkness and ugliness of the larger race (Martin 135). 

There is ample evidence of this strategy throughout American mass media.  As Martin mentions, the descriptions of Saddam Hussein, bin Laden, and “the hooded torture victims of Abu Ghraib,” all render these men animalistic, vicious, and inhuman.  This is no surprise after years of being inundated with the rhetoric of terror and terrorists in an effort to build and sustain support for a disingenuous war.  What was slightly surprising was that, even after so many years and one of the wars supposedly being over, this strategy has evolved to a whole new level of manipulation. 

As I read the recent Los Angeles Times article, “Afghan Massacre a Hard Case for Army,” I was flooded with mixed feelings.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-kandahar-massacre-20121105,0,4945123.story

Murphy and Parker present two distinct threads in their coverage of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales’ alleged murdering of sixteen Afghani villagers.  The first is “whether there is sufficient evidence to hold [Bales] for a court-martial on charges of premeditated murder” (A4); the second thread draws from witness interviews to make explicit the victims’ and survivors’ suffering, incredulity, and anger.  This is undoubtedly a horrific experience for all involved, and the intensity of the witness accounts, at first, seems to highlight the atrociousness of the antagonist’s actions.  But there is a subtext which overrides the poignant depiction of these villagers’ suffering. 

Although there is no explicit mention of “terror,” Bales’ alleged actions, had they been undertaken by a member of al-Qaeda, would no doubt be attributed to terrorism: according to witness accounts, “he shot and stabbed people as they rose sleepily from their beds, dragged one woman by her hair and leveled his weapon at a shrieking baby’s mouth” (A1).  All signs seem to point to an excellent opportunity to divest the term “terrorist” of its racializing and “othering” effects; to show that anyone can terrorize and anyone can be a victim of terror; and, thus, to show the injustice of basing an entire occupation and war on an invented subrace of “terrorists.” 

Disturbingly, though, even here, those who have been terrorized are the ones indirectly turned into terrorists, and the alleged harbinger of terror, Staff Sgt. Bales, is all but exculpated.  This reversal functions subtly and smoothly.  For each mention of Afghani suffering, the writers hedge against developing too much sympathy for them by playing into American consciousness and values.  For instance, immediately after detailing the body count, Murphy and Parker not so discreetly imply that if prosecutors have any trouble convicting Bales, it will be the Afghanis’ fault.  It will be their fault that they buried the bodies too soon, and that mostly women and children survived and their husbands and fathers are reluctant to have them testify (A4).  In so many words, the writers describe the American justice system as being obstructed by this foreign culture—if only they were more like us, we would be able to do our jobs.

There are two other means by which the authors, as presenting the American military’s perspective, deflect the status of terrorist back to the Afghanis.  Bales’ lawyer, John Henry Browne, explains, “It is not possible to pass judgment on what Bales did or didn’t do in time of war without also looking at what the war did to Bales.” He goes on to say, “I believe we all have a responsibility to Sgt. Bales, and to all these soldiers” (A4).  Here, Sgt. Bales’ alleged actions are not only naturalized and possibly even justified, but, further, the implication is that he is a victim.  If he is the victim, then who is the terrorist?  Conveniently, the blame for this single-handed act is now shifted back to the third party of al-Qaeda and subsumed as a tragedy of the war on terror.  There are no terrorists here, then, and if, by chance, one of “us” undertakes a terrible deed, it is only because he has been terrorized himself.  Has anyone asked whether we can pass judgment on bin Laden for what he did or didn’t do without looking at what his environment and circumstances did to him?  I doubt it.  Nor do I think anyone should.  His actions, just like Bales’ alleged actions, speak for themselves.  Enough said, but the double standard is striking.

Toward the end of the article, the writers bolster the vision of Bales as a victim by quoting one of the victims’ threatening declarations.  In response to the U.S. government’s provision of “$50,000 for each death and $10,000 for each of those injured,” a childless father and widower explains, “If your child dies, what would you expect? Money? No.  Will you expect prison? We don’t want prison… If the court doesn’t go the way we want, we will not accept the decision of the court” (A4).  With this, the inversion of blame and victimhood is made complete; this widower must be a terrorist for not respecting the American justice system, and Bales, in being threatened obliquely, is now even more of a victim. 

Martin, Randy.  Empire of Indifference: American War and the Financial Logic of Risk

Management.  Durham: Duke UP, 2007.  Print.

Murphy, Kim, and Ned Parker.  “Afghan Massacre a Hard Case for Army.”  Los Angeles Times. 

5 Nov. 2012: A1+.  Print.