White guilt makes our Third World enemies into colored victims, people whose problems--even the tyrannies they live under--were created by the historical disruptions and injustices of the white West. We must "understand" and pity our enemy even as we fight him. And, though Islamic extremism is one of the most pernicious forms of evil opportunism that has ever existed, we have felt compelled to fight it with an almost managerial minimalism that shows us to be beyond the passions of war--and thus well dissociated from the avariciousness of the white supremacist past.

Anti-Americanism, whether in Europe or on the American left, works by the mechanism of white guilt. It stigmatizes America with all the imperialistic and racist ugliness of the white Western past so that America becomes a kind of straw man, a construct of Western sin. (The Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons were the focus of such stigmatization campaigns.) Once the stigma is in place, one need only be anti-American in order to be "good," in order to have an automatic moral legitimacy and power in relation to America. (People as seemingly disparate as President Jacques Chirac and the Rev. Al Sharpton are devoted pursuers of the moral high ground to be had in anti-Americanism.) This formula is the most dependable source of power for today's international left. Virtue and power by mere anti-Americanism. And it is all the more appealing since, unlike real virtues, it requires no sacrifice or effort--only outrage at every slight echo of the imperialist past.

Today words like "power" and "victory" are so stigmatized with Western sin that, in many quarters, it is politically incorrect even to utter them. For the West, "might" can never be right. And victory, when won by the West against a Third World enemy, is always oppression. But, in reality, military victory is also the victory of one idea and the defeat of another. Only American victory in Iraq defeats the idea of Islamic extremism. But in today's atmosphere of Western contrition, it is impolitic to say so.

- White Guilt and the Western Past by Shelby Steele

It's the first time I've heard it suggested that race is a factor which is working against the US in Iraq.

A recent study has concluded that there has been over a million civilian deaths in Iraq since the invasion.

http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=67

Whatever the true number of casualities, would you say that these deaths are given more or less pominence in the mainstream media, than a similar number of white deaths would be given?

Hint: If you are having trouble answering this question, take a look at the treatment, in the American mainstream media, of the New Orleans casualities after Hurricane Katrina. I would say that the consensus of opinion is that the US Federal government would have been slightly more concerned to pick up the bodies if they'd been white.

Comrades Bill and Lupin3,

The race arguent is  just a red herring. The British army faced similar frustrations in Northern Ireland against an enemy which was racially almost identical and spoke the same language. They had the technical ability to wipe out the IRA in a matter of months, but, for obvious political reasons they couldn't.

Let's get back to the basics of the conflict. Since when has the Iraqi war been about Al Qaeda or Islamic extremism? I know the Bush administration has been desperately trying to find links, but as the CIA, and others, have repeatedly told them, there really weren't any. The original justification, in case we have all forgotten, was WMDs. Later on the story shifted that the US were staying to help the Iraqis build democracy. The snag with this argument is that the majority of Iraqis don't want them there and are of the opinion that the presence of American forces makes the security situation in Iraq worse not better.

So why do they stay? Leaving aside all official US lines and arguments, we've learned in the last four years they follow one discredited lie with another,  we, as Marxists,  have to look a little more at the economics of the situation. Is it possible that the fighting isn't so much about religion  and sectarian differences, as we are led to believe, but more about the control of Iraq's oil assets? The presence of Al Qaeda may be tolerated, for now, by the Iraqis, but only so long as they are useful militarily. 

PS I've made this point before. The left, which includes many Americans of course,  aren't anti-American, per se. More precisely, we oppose American (USA)  capitalist imperialism.

Comrade Anita,

I don't disagree, in principle, with what you saying about Al-Qaeda. Their popular support in Iraq, such as it is, is small and decreasing. However, this is not what the mainstream US media are actually saying. We shouldn't be surprised that they are trying to mislead rather than inform of course.

I suspect this article may well be getting close to the the truth. http://www.alternet.org/story/62042/?page=2
It analyses the Iraqi conflict in terms of the differences between separatists and nationalists. The nationalists want a strong central secular government but with no privatisation of Iraqi oil fields. The separatists are more motivated by religious and sectarian differences.

This puts the Americans in a difficult position and, faced with the prospect of losing 'their' oil profits , they've opted to support the separatists including  al-Maliki and Al-Qaeda!

Cyberman, Anita, The Sectarian violence in Iraq suits the US. It allows the US to claim that if they leave the situation will get even worse. It opens up the prospect of a weak and divided Iraq with huge oil reserves that will be even easier to plunder. Also, of course it allows the US to claim that the "brown people" are clearly unable to govern themselves, the white mans burden writ large- once again.

Dalek 

Comrade Dalek,

I don't think it does suit the Americans. They would have been hoping that the oil and profits would have been flowing freely by now, but instead production has been crippled by sabotage and security problems.

Given general level of optimism that preceeded the invasion, the "cakewalk" comments etc, you'd have to conclude that the US administration has completely miscalculated.

It's quite ironic that they've now realised that they are being forced to , in effect side with Al Qaeda and the separatists, to avoid the alternative of setting up a government which was strongly central, secular, and believed in the nationalisation of the means of production! 

PS I've made this point before

The Sectarian violence ... allows the US to claim that the "brown people" are clearly unable to govern themselves, the white mans burden writ large- once again

Comrade Bill,

I'm not quite sure why you accused me of going off topic. My previous contribution was very much dealing with this point made in your opening post.

"Only American victory in Iraq defeats the idea of Islamic extremism."

Which, apart from not being directly about race, is just nonsense of course!

To be fair to the Americans, and that's not a phrase I like to use too often , I don't think they are being racist either. They just want their oil profits! The left aren't being any more racist either in supporting Iraqi independence any more than we were in supporting Vietnamese independence. There's no point in arguing about the invasion any more . We can't change history. What matters now is that over 70% of Iraqis want the Americans to either leave immediately or make an orderly withdrawal over the next 12 months. If the Americans do believe in democracy..........

Was it "white guilt" that allowed Shelby Steele, Condolissa Rice, Colin Powell and a host of other black Americans to rise from the  swamp of oppression in the 60's? Maybe; but are we now supposed to believe that the US has abandoned its old Imperial ways, it's white supremacist world view and suddenly embraced global democracy? Certainly Capitalism requires that the old feudal regimes be destroyed and this is a good thing. The problem that I have is that while it enforces a form of democracy abroad the US is flat out eroding internally the very democratic principles that it pretends to uphold. The same democratic principles that have allowed the Steels, Rices, Powells et al to rise up out of the swamp. Steels answer seems to be to use even more state power and military force on the "inferior races" in the name of a "war on terror" while he carefully closes the door behind himself.

Dalek

"white guilt" that allowed Shelby Steele, Condolissa Rice, Colin Powell and a host of other black Americans to rise from the  swamp of oppression"

Bill, show me one place where I even mentioned "affirmative action" why are you so desperate that you will conflate basic human rights with "affirmative action". The rights that were won by black Americans were the basic rights to not ride in the back of the bus, to go to any school they want and even the vote all the stuff that you take for granted and all the democratic rights that you say you want for all the world. WTF has "affirmative action" to do with this? Or in your universe is any concession of rights to a black person affirmative action?

For the record I too believe that the affirmative action programs that were put in place in the US in the 70's were basically bad policy.

Dalek  

Was it "white guilt" that allowed Shelby Steele, Condolissa Rice, Colin Powell and a host of other black Americans to rise from the  swamp of oppression in the 60's? Maybe

Steels answer seems to be to use even more state power and military force on the "inferior races" in the name of a "war on terror" while he carefully closes the door behind himself.

1. He is often making general points but not supporting them with detail, a formulaic approach.
   
2. He often repeats himself, over and over
   
3. He posts very frequently so that visitors to the site are often exposed to his repeated, generalist waffle and have to make an extra effort to discover more substantial material.
   

"...The Arab Self is alienated and the agent of alienation is none other the Arab Other that uses culture and religion to maintain its stranglehold on the Arab Self.

This view goes beyond strict economic and political conceptualizations of class conflict and elite-mass relations and antagonisms because it puts the onus on culture – portraying Arabs as not just any normal group of oppressed Third Worlders. They belong to an extended family that they identity with - the Arab ‘nation’ and Muslim umma - and their elites use these abstract notions as political tools to deny them their cultural and intellectual rights. That is, the rights to avail of Western modernity and allow them to think for themselves, decide what their opinion is on matters as diverse and critical as Islam, constitutions, human and women’s rights, Arab sovereignty and human rights supervision, cultural globalization, capitalism, republics vs. monarchies, etc. etc.

It was the Arab Other who aided and abetted the Americans, whether the neo-cons or the oil lobby, to the detriment of the Arab Self. More to the point, what Palast’s work makes clear is that Arab reformers and revolutionaries, the genuine ones, are stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand the neo-cons actually want to liberate them from their oppressive regimes (for whatever reasons) yet are the same people who will certainly wreck their economies. On the other hand, the oil lobby, which is comfortable enough with oppressive regimes, is willing to share the economic cake with the common-folk, even bolstering the anti-American ideological cushion that helps prop up these regimes, giving the masses some sense of identity and authenticity in a world awash with American-dominated cultural signifiers."