[PEN-L:30672] Arundhati Roy

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

COME SEPTEMBER
ARUNDHATI ROY

To call someone `anti-American', indeed, to be anti-American, (or for that
matter anti-Indian, or anti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it's a failure
of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those
that the establishment has set out for you: If you're not a Bushie you're a
Taliban. If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not Good you're Evil.
If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists.

Last year, like many others, I too made the mistake of scoffing at this
post-September 11th rhetoric, dismissing it as foolish and arrogant. I've
realised that it's not foolish at all. It's actually a canny recruitment
drive for a misconceived, dangerous war. Every day I'm taken aback at how
many people believe that opposing the war in Afghanistan amounts to
supporting terrorism, or voting for the Taliban. Now that the initial aim of
the war - capturing Osama Bin Laden (dead or alive) - seems to have run into
bad weather, the goal posts have been moved. It's being made out that the
whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan
women from their burqas. We're being asked to believe that the U.S. marines
are actually on a feminist mission. (If so, will their next stop be
America's military ally Saudi Arabia?) Think of it this way: In India there
are some pretty reprehensible social practices, against `untouchables',
against Christians and Muslims, against women. Pakistan and Bangladesh have
even worse ways of dealing with minority communities and women. Should they
be bombed? Should Delhi, Islamabad, and Dhaka be destroyed? Is it possible
to bomb bigotry out of India? Can we bomb our way to a feminist paradise? Is
that how women won the vote in the U.S.? Or how slavery was abolished? Can
we win redress for the genocide of the millions of Native Americans upon
whose corpses the United States was founded by bombing Santa Fe?

[snip]

Meanwhile, down at the Mall there's a mid-season sale. Everything's
discounted - oceans, rivers, oil, gene pools, fig wasps, flowers,
childhoods, aluminum factories, phone companies, wisdom, wilderness, civil
rights, ecosystems, air - all 4,600 million years of evolution. It's packed,
sealed, tagged, valued and available off the rack. (No returns). As for
justice - I'm told it's on offer too. You can get the best that money can
buy.

full at:
http://www.flonnet.com/fl1920/stories/20021011003106500.htm