Modernity
by Jorge Vargas
Modernity is the latest craze in the world of politics, political systems, international political organizations, etc. – only in art and architecture has modernism been replaced by post-modernism, and it needs serious re-evaluations on that front.
The recent execution of Saddam Hussein was vilified across the world, coming just before a Democratic Congress took over in the United States, coming before that congress could initiate legal action to have Hussein tried in the International Court of Justice, for instance, which doesn’t provide the death penalty as punishment. Furthermore, the execution of Saddam Hussein – who, it must be admitted if only for the sake of avoiding a costly argument, was tried legally in compliance with Iraq’s judicial system, although that does beg for one to question the entire Iraqi ‘judicial’ system – came on a day of holy obligation within the calendar of Islam, one of the world’s oldest religions with the largest number of practitioners – more so than even the Roman Catholic faith of the West.
The exact words of Mr. Bush, leader of the United States of America – supposedly the leader of the free world although the free world wants to have nothing to do with him – escape me at the moment of this writing and if they mattered, one would bother to look them up, but let’s face it, we already know what they were. Something along the lines of ‘another step toward Iraqi freedom’ or ‘a victory for modernity’ or ‘a success of democracy in Iraq. We’ve been hearing those propaganda lines since 2001 – and if you want to be technical, the world has been hearing that hypocrisy since the Monroe Doctrine of the early 1820s.
A coup ousted King Faisal II of Iraq in 1958. He was replaced by ‘Abd al-Karim Qasim – nationalist leader who threatened the United States – and in 1963, he was killed during a Ba’athist coup, with CIA support, naturally. In that same year, the Ba’ath is ousted and replaced by President ‘Abd al-Salam ‘Arif – a military leadership – until he dies in 1965 – tragic helicopter accident. ‘Abd al-Rahman ‘Arif, al-Salam’s brother, takes over until another Ba’athist coup in 1968. He’s exiled. After some pressure, the Ba’athist president Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr stepped down, ceding power to Saddam Hussein in 1979. Hussein was captured following a forceful foreign invasion and subsequently hanged. The post-2003 Iraqi rulers haven’t exercised any true authority and thus don’t deserve to be called Iraqi leaders.
So Hussein followed the same fate as Qasim. Killed by an unfair system – whether Hussein deserved to die is a topic that leads one to the fairness of the death penality, or lack thereof. Now you have the facts, so answer me: Was Hussein’s execution a step toward modernity?
Iraq was debt-ridden after the Iran-Iraq war and decided to unilaterally invade Kuwait in 1990 under false pretenses. The United States was finding itself forced to demonstrate to the world that the economic model it was forcing on the Third World worked, so it unilaterally invaded Iraq using false pretenses about US security and weapons of mass destruction, when the true intention was to turn Iraq into an open market free-for-all.
Was there modernity in that?
Moving beyond the occupied territory known as Iraq and onto the more infamous occupied territory known as Palestine, let’s focus on the walls of the West Bank. Gigantic walls were set up by the Israelis to control and enclose the Palestinian Arab population. The Germans set up similar walls to create ghettoes for gypsies, gays, Jews, and Slavs, amongst others, in the 1930s and 1940s.
Certainly, that’s not modern. Or is the Israeli government going to argue that the Germans were being modern back in the years of the Third Reich?
The United States considers itself the nation chosen by God to save the poor of the Third World who are economically underdeveloped, working under the assumption that they can’t help themselves, so the US tells them what financial policies to follow. The Europeans went to Africa and Asia and told the natives that they weren’t racially efficient, and therefore that they had to follow European legal systems and moral norms if they ever wanted to amount to anything.
You already know what I’m going to write: Also not modern. You probably already think that I’m going to make an argument here that the United States and Israel, and their allies, are nations which aren’t modern, nations that follow diplomatic policies that were deemed inhuman long ago and are of no use in today’s globalized world. You’re absolutely wrong, then.
The United States is the most modern nation in the world. Cruelty, use of force, imperialism masked as benevolent hegemonism, disregard for natural resources, and arrogant and ignorant nationalistic policies are the trademark of modernity. The British have ferociously attacked the execution of Hussein, yet weren’t they also responsible for allowing that US-controlled Iraqi government to come to power, thus demonstrating to the world their hypocrisy?
We aren’t as modern as we purport to be – France, one of the leading powers of the modern EU, decried the execution of Hussein but it’s currently defending its actions in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, a genocide in which the French provided support for the Hutus who were openly carrying out the genocide. Modernity doesn’t mean advanced social norms and values, nor does it mean respect for human rights.
Modernity means that one is able to spew out rhetoric about democracy and freedom without ever intending to carry through on that promise, while having an ignorant public that will buy all of the lies. Modernity means being clever, that’s all.
So when Mr. Bush, leader of the modern world, proclaims that Iraq is moving toward joining the West in this modern world, he’s not lying. He just uses a different dictionary.
Unfortunately, with that realization, it suddenly becomes obvious that in their policies, the Germany of the Third Reich, Israel, and the United States are all extremely modern.
