Last night I watched The New American Century, a documentary about the neoconservative movement and its influence on American foreign policy. There are things in the film I didn’t agree with—for example, its assumption that September 11 was an “inside job”—but it got me thinking.

Leo Strauss, grandfather of the neoconservative movement, felt that modern life is vulgar and trivial. Moral relativism had made America soft, and we were on the road to decadence and decline. To combat this, we needed to be united by a common enemy, even an imaginary one, to give us a sense of purpose in the fight of good against evil. This enemy was at first the Soviet empire, but after its decline, a new enemy was needed to justify American dominance of the entire world. Ultimately “radical Islam” was chosen.

Michael Ledeen, a key neoconservative theorist, feels that “creative destruction” is the force of progress, and traditions are mere obstacles to be swept away. He feels that Italian fascism was “revolutionary,” though it was betrayed by Mussolini who suppressed its “youthful creativity and virility.” Fortunately, the U.S. is now in a position to play the same role, one in which economic and cultural structures are continually smashed so as to build them anew.

Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity…. Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do not wish to be undone. […] They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission.

This is how the Manichean worldview drifts into nihilism. “The end of history” or “the end of ideology” really means the triumph of a particular history, a particular ideology, in which all others have disappeared from view. This is absolutist and also nihilist. It must not be forgotten, however, that such dreams depend for their realization on the availability of cheap energy to fuel the machine of infinite progress—so they are ultimately dreams of conquest.

Halliburton was reimbursed for all its expenses in Iraq, and rewarded with a profit in proportion to the money they spent. They were actually encouaged to destroy their own equipment, and did so, so they could spend more and earn more. They burned trucks when they got a flat tire, and bought new ones. They deliberately ordered the wrong item so they could throw it away and order again. This is “creative destruction” in the extreme, and it was applied to Iraqi society as well, as recounted in “Baghdad Year Zero” by Naomi Klein.

A country of 25 million would not be rebuilt as it was before the war; it would be erased, disappeared. In its place would spring forth a gleaming showroom for laissez-faire economics, a utopia such as the world had never seen…. They came to imagine the invasion of Iraq as a kind of Rapture: where the rest of the world saw death, they saw birth—a country redeemed through violence, cleansed by fire. Iraq wasn’t being destroyed by cruise missiles, cluster bombs, chaos, and looting; it was being born again.

The Iraqi invasion was a utopian-libertarian-nihilist project, and it resulted in mass death. Faced with what was done to the Iraqi people in the name of the radical ideology of “creative destruction,” cynicism is a feeble response. Indignation is needed—or more than indignation, justice. Only bringing those responsible to justice will restore the principle that despite illusions of infinite power, we are all accountable for our the effects of our actions on other people. But too many crimes will go unpunished in this case.

We live in a world run by others, for their own private interest. Obama may have won the Nobel Peace Prize simply for being there, but whether he likes it or not, he is the new face of an old system. He may help to restore a sense of realism to the debate, by reminding us that actions should be measured by their effects on other people’s lives, but until the principle of justice is restored, nothing will change. Brushing the past under the carpet as he wants to do—sending it to the memory hole and moving on from there—is a moral failure.

The Bush administration is pressuring the Iraqi government to sign an agreement in which they will be trampled forever by American troops.

A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the U.S. presidential election in November. … Under the terms of the new treaty, the Americans would retain the long-term use of more than 50 bases in Iraq.

The deal would give American forces the right to detain Iraqis at will, while Americans including private contractors would not be accountable for their actions under Iraqi law. How logical is that? Logical from the point of view of an occupying power dictating its own terms.

American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for U.S. troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government.

The Iraqi prime minister knows this deal will be hugely unpopular with the Iraqi people, but he depends on American backing to stay in power, so he is willing to sign it.

Mr. Bush is determined to force the Iraqi government to sign the so-called “strategic alliance” without modifications, by the end of next month. … Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is believed to be personally opposed to the terms of the new pact but feels his coalition government cannot stay in power without U.S. backing.

Like all good things, the deal is being pushed in secret by the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Iraqi government wants to delay the actual signing of the agreement but the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney has been trying to force it through.

The agreement is, in effect, a treaty between two nations, which must be ratified by the U.S. Senate according to the Constitution. But it is being presented as something less than that, so that Bush can sign it on his sole authority without a Senate vote.

President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the U.S. presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw U.S. troops if he is elected president in November.

The final irony is that none of this is being reported in the American press, but by Patrick Cockburn in Britain’s Independent.

UPDATE: Helena Cobban has a piece today in which she discusses the secret accord, or Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). She had the opportunity to ask Sheikh Khalaf al-Ulayyan, an Iraqi parliamentarian visiting the U.S., what he thought of it and he had this to say.

We learned about the text being proposed by the U.S. only through the media, and we’ve seen that it’s very unfair for the Iraqi people. Whoever sees it will see that Iraq would become not just under U.S. occupation but as if it were part of the U.S.! It allows the U.S. to use Iraqi territory and U.S. military bases in Iraq for a very long time, and to use them to attack any country around the world from there. And it gives the U.S. troops and civilians complete immunity from prosecution in the Iraqi court system. The U.S. could do anything it wanted in Iraq without being accountable to anyone!

Clearly, for anyone, it would be impossible to enter into an agreement with another party while being threatened by the other person’s weapons. Therefore the SOFA can’t be concluded as long as there are foreign troops on Iraq’s territory.

I hope parliamentarians like Sheikh al-Ulayyan will stand firm, and give President Bush a lesson in how things work in a democracy.

According to the new memoir Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story by now-retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, this is what George W. Bush told his national security team in the aftermath of the killing of four U.S. contractors in Fallujah in 2004:

Kick ass! If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! …

There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!

He sounds a bit “unstrung,” like a playground bully who is used to always getting his way, until suddenly someone says no.

That reminds me that during a certain period around 2003–2005, the Iraqi resistance was the only group anywhere in the world that dared to stand up to American imperial ambitions. The Democratic Party wasn’t doing it. The American media weren’t doing it. The European powers weren’t doing it. In those days the Bush administration planned “full spectrum dominance” of the globe through the end of the 21st century, and a “permanent Republican majority” to control American politics for another generation. For quite a while, only one thing arose to challenge these twin illusions: the Iraqi resistance that began in Fallujah.

By exposing Bush’s war as morally bankrupt and based on lies, the Iraqi resistance eventually eroded the confidence of the American people in the truth-telling abilities of the Bush administration and the Republican Party, setting up the Democratic congressional victory of 2006 and likely propelling Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008. If Bush had been able to portray his war as the quick, easy victory it was originally intended to be, both the American global empire and the Republican dominance of American politics would still be intact today.

Is it too farfetched for Americans to thank the Iraqi resistance for giving us back our democracy? The first time I had this thought was back in November 2005, when I was living in Morocco. At the time, it felt like a radical idea. Today, less so.

I’ll just go ahead and say it. In the end, it will prove to be the courage of the Iraqi resistance that saved democracy in America. That and all the others who said no: the majority of nations who balked in early 2003 when asked to pull the trigger in Iraq, the Turks who refused to permit transit of ground troops through their territory, the ranks of policy experts who went public with their grievances…the foreign peoples who forced their governments to unshackle themselves from American interests as a result of this war. But it was the Iraqi resistance itself that best exposed the lie.

A friend of mine claims that if the war in Iraq had gone better for the Americans, we would still be happy with our president. Unfortunately he is right…but a war this out of touch with reality can’t go better than it has. We were promised music and flowers. Instead we got kidnappings and roadside explosions. … The Iraqi resistance is a result of this flawed policy: it is the reality piercing the illusion. It will remain that way until democracy reawakens in America, and reason is restored to the halls of government.

Recently Michael Schwartz, writing for the progressive website TomDispatch.com, expressed similar ideas in his essay, “River of Resistance: How the American Imperial Dream Foundered in Iraq.” In his conclusion, he points out that our work isn’t done until the imperial ambitions behind Bush’s war are rejected not only by the Iraqi resistance, but also by the American people themselves.

As the occupation wore on, the Bush administration found itself swimming against a tide of resistance of a previously unimaginable sort, and ever further from its goals. … Because of the Iraqis, the glorious sounding Global War on Terror has been transformed into an endless, hopeless actual war.

But the Iraqis have paid a terrible price for resisting. The invasion and the social and economic policies that accompanied it have destroyed Iraq, leaving its people essentially destitute. … Whether consciously or not, they have sacrificed themselves to halt Washington’s projected military and economic march through the oil-rich Middle East on the path to a new American Century that now will never be.

It is past time for the rest of the world to shoulder at least a small share of the burden of resistance. … Unlike the Iraqis, after all, the citizens of the United States are uniquely positioned to bury this imperial dream for all time.

This story is a week old now, but it’s been vexing me.

In case you ever doubted whether the U.S. presence in Iraq is an occupation, President Bush is hoping to write imperial privileges into Iraqi law before leaving office.

With its international mandate in Iraq set to expire in 11 months, the Bush administration will insist that the government in Baghdad give the United States broad authority to conduct combat operations and guarantee civilian contractors specific legal protections from Iraqi law….

The American negotiating position for a formal military-to-military relationship…also includes less controversial demands that American troops be immune from Iraqi prosecution, and that they maintain the power to detain Iraqi prisoners. […]

In no other country are contractors working with the American military granted protection from local laws. Some American officials want contractors to have full immunity from Iraqi law, while others envision less sweeping protections. These officials said the negotiations with the Iraqis, expected to begin next month, would also determine whether the American authority to conduct combat operations in the future would be unilateral, as it is now, or whether it would require consultation with the Iraqis or even Iraqi approval.

What this means is that if the Bush administration gets its way, Americans will be untouchable under Iraqi law, whether they are in uniform or not. Meanwhile, American troops will have the authority to roam the country at will, engaging in combat and arresting Iraqis, answerable to no one except their commanders. Isn’t this the very definition of injustice?

Fortunately, this plan must first be approved by the Iraqi parliament, and if they have any dignity they will never allow it. It will be a test of their independence. Meanwhile, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have joined forces in an effort to force President Bush to also get the approval of the American Congress. Bush is claiming the right to negotiate the deal on his own, without Congressional approval, even though it is a treaty—yet another breach of the Constitution.

I expect this deal will eventually fall apart, and it will be left to the next President to work out America’s long-term relations with Iraq. However, it makes me sad that such ideas are even proposed. When war in Iraq began, the Bush administration at least pretended to be liberators, not that anyone outside the U.S. believed it. Today, they claim absolute authority and absolute legal immunity within Iraq—a statement to the world that Iraq has no sovereignty whatsover.

Thanks to a book I am reading, Full Spectrum Disorder by Stan Goff, I decided to look up a quote online by Aimé Césaire, the poet and anticolonial thinker, and found to my dismay just how keenly his cry of protest against mid-20th century French colonialism fits the moment we are living now. Change a few place names, and you will find that he is describing American behavior in Iraq and Afghanistan, or Israeli behavior in Palestine and Lebanon, and its corrosive effect on our own souls.

First we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism; and we must show that each time a head is cut off or an eye put out in Vietnam and in France they accept the fact, each time a little girl is raped and in France they accept the fact, each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France they accept the fact, civilization acquires another dead weight, a universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to spread; and that at the end of all these treaties that have been violated, all these lies that have been propagated, all these punitive expeditions that have been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied up and “interrogated,” all these patriots who have been tortured, at the end of all the racial pride that has been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a poison has been instilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely, the continent proceeds toward savagery.

And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific reverse shock: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers around the racks invent, refine, discuss.

Speaking of torturers, let’s revisit what Mitt Romney said last May at a Republican presidential debate in South Carolina. He was responding to an imaginary scenario in which terrorists have exploded bombs in three American cities, and are taken to Guantanamo before they can carry out a fourth attack.

First of all, let’s make sure… that scenario doesn’t ever happen. And the key to that is prevention. We’ve all spent a lot of time talking about what happens after the bomb goes off. The real question is how do you prevent the bomb from going off…. Now you said the person is going to be at Guantanamo. I’m glad they’re at Guantanamo. I don’t want them on our soil. I want them on Guantanamo where they don’t get the access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil. […] Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo… and there’s no question but that in a setting like that, where you have the ticking bomb, that the President of the United States… has to make the call, and enhanced interrogation techniques have to be used. Not torture, but enhanced interrogation techniques.

Back to Aimé Césaire and his Discourse on Colonialism, which has been called a “third world manifesto.” He is talking about what happens once people in “civilized” nations discover that the techniques they have used on others are being turned on them.

People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind—it’s Nazism, it will pass!” And they wait, they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, but the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples….

Yes, it would be worthwhile to study clinically, in detail, the steps taken by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, very humanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the twentieth century that without his being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon, that if he rails against him, he is being inconsistent and that, at bottom, what he cannot forgive in Hitler is not crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of man as such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the blacks of Africa.

Today the U.S. is falling into the same trap. When U.S. soldiers come under fire in Baghdad, they call in air strikes that inevitably cause the deaths of civilians—women and children and even whole families—because they are fighting in a residential neighborhood. We may see a headline that says 49 people were killed in such a confrontation, but we don’t even read the article because we don’t want to think about it. Girls are raped as Aimé Césaire says, prisoners are tortured, and boastfulness is displayed by our leaders. Yet we in the West are not outraged, because these crimes are not being done to us, they are being done to “the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the blacks of Africa.” Instead, journalists wring their hands about how to restore U.S. prestige in the world, or what should be done in Pakistan as if it were our job to write the script.

What has changed in the 50 years since Aimé Césaire wrote his words, besides a few names and dates? We still have the same smug conviction that we can do no wrong, because by accident of birth we live in a privileged nation. We still think we are exempt from our own standards of decency when dealing with the rabble outside our gates. And we are still just as blind to it, and the way it corrodes us.