America, The Rogue
America’s unequivocal support for Israel stems from its own legacy of imperialist interventions and war crimes in the Global South.
Illustration: Jamhoor
Since October 7th, as the United States has aided and abetted a genocide of the Palestinian people, an increasingly disillusioned and enraged American population has taken to the streets in the millions to condemn Israel.
On full display for all to see have been President Biden’s dehumanizing language for Palestinians, the supremacy granted to Israeli lives, the unconditional $14.5B in US military aid to an aggressor who has openly declared its genocidal intent, and the depths to which Zionist ideologies have been baked into American institutions and culture.
Echoes of the Bush-Obama Era
For those old enough to remember the post 9-11 mood, the political class and media’s rhetoric to justify the genocide feels eerily similar to that used to license America’s war on “terror.” The use of half-truths and propaganda to manufacture consent for Israel’s brutal aggression harkens back to the Bush-Obama era and its reckless wars.
“Bush asked the world to make a decision: ‘Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.’”
In 2001, George W. Bush galvanized an overblown, vindictive response with “Bushspeak”: those being bombed were “enemies of freedom,” those bombing them were fighting “civilization’s fight.” Bush asked the world to make a decision: “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.” He painted terrorism abstractly and broadly, such that there was “no distinction between terrorists and those who harbor them.”
This is strikingly similar to Biden’s words in the last few weeks, as well as to the extremist language used by Benjamin Netanyahu, who called the occupation a “struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness,” and Yoav Gallant, Israeli Minister of Defence who said of the Palestinian people: “We are fighting human animals.” Genocide scholars call this language of dehumanization a necessary step in genocide.
In 2003, in a paranoid frenzy, Bush declared that it would be “suicidal” for the United States to not invade Iraq, as if a bombed, besieged and starved people were going to annihilate the mighty America. Having used this rhetoric to manufacture consent for war, the U.S. went on to invade, bomb, commit war crimes, establish hundreds of new military bases and expand drone warfare. Twenty years later, Nancy Pelosi mirrors this fear mongering when she tells the American public that if Israel ceases to bomb Gaza, it will be “a gift to terrorists.” All the while, the U.S. is supplying Israel with F-16s, F-35s, F-25s, missiles and shells to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.
America’s "Operation Iraqi Freedom" burning Baghdad in 2003. Image: Getty Images.
Also familiar is the demand by news anchors and mainstream media that Brown folks and Muslims prove their “good-Muslim” credentials before they speak. They are interrogated, not interviewed; they must unequivocally condemn Hamas and pledge their allegiance to its extermination, following the same with-us-or-against-us narrative. Meanwhile, corporate media has yet to ask Israeli officials or Zionist guests to condemn the 16 years of siege on Gaza, the 56 years of ruthless occupation of Palestinian territories, or the ongoing settler terrorism in the West Bank. These double standards are familiar to Muslims who, in the wake of 9-11, were asked to prove that they were not a threat by proclaiming their allyship to America’s wars.
A crucial reason for the current popular support for Palestine is this legacy of wars and recycling of rhetoric. This is a protest against not only the present, but also the past. This is a cry of frustration by people that have seen this reel play before.
From One Aggressor to Another
Of the relationship between America and Israel, historian Rashid Khalidi says that Israel is a colony, and America its metropole: “If you believe that this is a settler colonial project, then you are in the metropole of that colony, here in the United States.”
Furthermore, America providing cover for Israeli atrocities is a nod of approval from one aggressor to another. In this context, it is useful to remember that America itself has such an egregious and consistent record on war crimes that in Israel, it is simply supporting an extension of its own foreign policy. American aggressions across Asia, South America and the Middle East in the name of “freedom” and “democratic values” have created a lengthy roster of countries ravaged by its wars.
At home, America's extermination and dispossession of native Americans, and enslavement of African-Americans are among its founding crimes. Today, it routinely puts migrants in camps, the inhumane conditions of which are in violation of humanitarian law. It also devises unusual and cruel techniques to let migrants die on their dangerous journeys.
Globally, very few parts of the world have been untouched by America’s imperial overreach.
In East Asia, America’s military operations consist of a century of occupation and violence. The atrocities of the Vietnam War are now widely recognized. But take Cambodia, where America dropped close to 3 million tons of bombs—more than the total dropped by the Allies during all of World War II—making it the most heavily bombed country in history. Or, America’s proxy war in Korea, its colonization and torture of Filipinos, or its firebombing and atomic bombing of Japanese cities.
U.S. aerial bombing devastating Cambodia in 1974. Image: Christine Spengler.
Take America’s invasion of Iraq. Premised on the lie of Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, it has been called one of the worst crimes of the 21st century. Over eight years, America killed one million Iraqis. In Fallujah, 7000 US marines broke into the general hospital, and unleashed 1200 tons of depleted uranium munitions on the city which, to this day, cause birth defects and cancers that epidemiological studies call “the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied.”
“The U.S.-led war in Iraq destroyed a 7000-year old civilization that produced the world’s first writing, first calendar, first library, and first city.”
The U.S.-led war in Iraq destroyed a 7000-year old civilization that produced the world’s first writing, first calendar, first library, and first city. Writing about the desecration of Iraq’s national museum and the plundering of its libraries and mosques, Arundhati Roy says that “an ancient civilization has been casually decimated by a very recent, casually brutal nation.” But, she reminds us, “when it comes to Empire, facts don’t matter.”
Take America’s expansion of drone warfare in Pakistan's North Waziristan region, which operated under such non-transparency that it came to be called Obama’s secret war. Obama authorized 542 drone strikes that killed close to 4,000 people, in violation of the Laws of Armed Conflict. Because drones can circle and hover visibly in the sky for hours, sometimes days, before striking to unleash fire at any moment—they have created a culture of terror in the local population that is described by researchers as strikingly similar to death squad activities in Central America in the 1980s. Journalists documenting evidence of attacks were mysteriously killed. Amnesty International’s reports from Pakistan document victims like elderly women blown to bits as they tended to vegetables on their farm, or a couple of dozen laborers killed in a tent while having their evening meal.
Iraqi National Museum Deputy Director Mushin Hasan holds his head in his hands as he sits on destroyed artefacts in Baghdad in April 2003. Image: Mario Tama/Getty Images.
Take Afghanistan and Syria—two particularly horrific examples of America’s forever-wars that have devastated local populations and the economy, and ushered in inescapable spirals of terror, militarism, in-fighting and political instability. Journalist Azmat Khan’s Pulitzer-prize winning investigation revealed that in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, the civilian death toll from strikes amounted to more than 31 times that acknowledged by US officials. “This is at such a distance from official claims that, in terms of civilian deaths, this may be the least transparent war in recent American history,” she reports.
Much like the Israeli aggression, these aggressions were justified as self-defence against a grave and imminent threat to American lives. Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive strike is what Arundhati Roy calls a euphemism for “The United States Can Do Whatever The Hell It Wants, And That's Official.” In what is likely one of the most damningly apt descriptions of America, she calls it:
An Empire that has conferred upon itself the right to go to war at will, and the right to deliver people from corrupting ideologies, from religious fundamentalists, dictators, sexism, and poverty by the age-old, tried-and-tested practice of extermination.
“This global war machine sustains itself with the distinctly American phenomenon of an imperialist “bootprint”: 750 bases in 80 countries, and 173,000 troops in 159 countries. ”
Take America’s unleashing of violence and state terror in South America. It terrorized Cuba for half a century by imposing an illegal embargo which was opposed by 188 UN member nations. With Operation Mongoose, the CIA conducted paramilitary operations under President Kennedy, who promised to unleash the ‘terrors of the earth’ on Cuba. In the 1960s and 70s, America helped initiate and fortify dictatorships in some of the most powerful South American nations. In Chile, it was instrumental in ushering in the particularly brutal and bloody dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. In Argentina, it provided financial assistance for human rights abuses and counterinsurgency training to a right-wing military regime. In Haiti and Honduras, the continent’s poorest nations, US interventions are directly responsible for destitution and destruction.
This global war machine sustains itself with the distinctly American phenomenon of an imperialist “bootprint”: 750 bases in 80 countries, and 173,000 troops in 159 countries. These allow the United States to “turn the whole world into its battlefield,” says Sarah Lazare. “They make conflict more likely, [..] more wars lead to more military bases in a vicious cycle of expansion and empire.”
Map of U.S. military bases around the world. Image: Aljazeera.
If anything competes with the repugnance of American war crimes, it is its leaders’ self-praise in portraying themselves as benevolent defenders of human rights and democratic values, as brokers of freedom. As Noam Chomsky puts it:
States that have power or agency in the international arena face two related tasks: to portray the targets of their punitive actions as irremediably evil and their own acts as glorious and just. The task falls to agencies of propaganda, the information (media) system, and loyal intellectuals.
Is it really a surprise that the world’s most powerful empire, with a track record of human rights violations, imperial aggressions, terror and war crimes, is the main sponsor for Israel’s crimes?
It is also no surprise that the populations and countries brutalized by the colonial empires—Black Americans, indigenous people, the Irish, South Americans, South and East Asians and Africans—are overwhelmingly calling for Israel to end its occupation of Palestine.
A History of Continuity
On October 28th, the United States stood alone among all G-20 nations in vetoing the UN Resolution calling for a ceasefire. Whereas the U.S., Israel, Hungary, Guatemala, Croatia and Austria and 6 island nations opposed the ceasefire, the rest of the world—comprised of 120 member nations—supported the resolution. Between 1972 and 2017, America has used its Security Council veto 43 times to shield Israel from international censure.
Europe and America’s unequivocal protection of Israel is rooted in a history of sponsoring the colonization of Palestine in the early twentieth century. The British Mandate and the League of Nations provided the support Zionist militias needed to break laws in service of their goal. They “damned the Zionist project to success,” as Esmat Elhalaby writes. Today, the old imperial structure of support has morphed into the UN Security Council, the European Commission, and of course, the American political machinery. Elhalaby continues,
Here we witness a history of continuity in the patent refusal of American and European politicians to even utter the word ceasefire or de-escalation even as hundreds of Palestinians are killed each day.
The United States is Looking Lonely
Defiance of international law and rejection of international conventions are defining features of rogue states. In this respect, the United States and Israel take center stage. The rest of the world is paying heed. In recent weeks, nine countries have recalled their ambassadors from Israel—Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Turkey, South Africa, Jordan, Bahrain, Chad and Honduras. In international polls, the world views the United States, not Iran or Russia, as the largest threat to democracy, peace and security.
History will not look kindly at Joe Biden and Anthony Blinken for funding a genocide. America stands isolated from the rest of the world, its imperialist policies and hypocrisy deepening the distaste of the international community.
“Its decision to protect Israel to the extent that it has resorted to proto-fascism and the erosion of rights of its own citizens, has created distrust and concern within the American people.”
Its decision to protect Israel to the extent that it has resorted to proto-fascism and the erosion of rights of its own citizens, has created distrust and concern within the American people. The clamp down on pro-Palestine groups at university campuses has been called the new McCarthyism. The institutionalization of deeper domestic surveillance, and Congress’ resolution condemning student groups advocating for ceasefire as “repugnant” and ‘sympathizing with genocidal violence against Israel’ show that America’s declarations of free speech are nothing more than a smokescreen. They also show a complete disregard for the will of the people.Of this, Ta-Nehisi Coates says: “When people start using instruments as blunt and direct as banning and censorship, they are threatened. This is the weapon of a weak and decaying order.”
Refusal and Resistance
It is clear that a majority of the American people are against more foreign wars. Since October 7th, a spectrum of actions across the country have built a rising wave of dissent to Israel’s occupation and war crimes.
At pro-Palestine rallies, hundreds of thousands of Americans have demanded that taxpayer money not be used to arm the apartheid state of Israel. They have broken through police barricades to occupy highways, train stations, the U.S. Capitol building and offices of corporate media houses. They have gathered at UN headquarters and at the homes and offices of senators. Congressional staffers are agitating for a ceasefire; senior officials at the U.S. State Department and the United Nations have resigned.
Jewish Voice for Peace holding an emergency sit-in calling for a ceasefire. Image: JVP.
Global dissent in the form of direct actions to dismantle Israel’s war machine have also gained steam. In Belgium, Spain and Italy, dockers and port workers have blocked checkpoints and refused to load Israel-bound military equipment. In the UK, activists have blockaded the gates of BAE Systems, which manufactures parts for the F-35s used to bomb Gaza. Some of these actions have roots in anti-war movements and coalitions founded in 2001 and 2003 to oppose the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, further illuminating the relationship between this moment and America’s legacy of wars.
In May 2003, following America’s invasion of Iraq, Arundhati Roy gave a historic speech at New York City’s Riverside Church—the same place where, last month, the Palestine Festival of Literature was convened. Roy’s words were an appeal for exactly the kind of resistance on display in this moment. She told her American audience that if a resistance is to succeed, it must start in America, because:
You have the power of proximity. You have access to the Imperial Palace and the Emperor’s chambers. Empire’s conquests are being carried out in your name, and you have the right to refuse.
At the Brazil’s World Social Forum in 2003, Roy gave her blueprint for resistance:
Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness — and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling—their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
Saba Gul is a tech entrepreneur, computer scientist and activist based in New York City. She is also the founder of the feminist collective Kamli, and an alumna of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.