What's Never Trending on Twitter: U.S.
Has Killed Way More People than the LRA's Joseph Kony
04 March 2012
By Juan Cole
Unless you live under a rock, you've seen Invisible
Children's Kony 2012 YouTube video which has now gone
viral:
We posted it ourselves on LoonWatch. We wondered what
if Joseph Kony, a self-avowed Christian leading a
group called the Lord's Resistance Army, had been a
Muslim with the name Yusuf Qani? What if he was
leading a group called Allah's Resistance Army?
The article generated a healthy discussion, and we
benefited from the input of Ruth DeSouza, who posted a
link to a very thought-provoking article she wrote:
The documentary repeats the colonial imperative for
Africa to be saved by white people. This video smacks
of yet another colonial "civilising" project, where
the old binaries of colonialism are revived. These
frame Africa as backward, while the west is modern;
"we" are positioned as free while "they" are oppressed
and so on. In this binary of good and bad, Africans
are represented on the not so good side of the binary.
Therefore, the solution must be a good one, a white
one, and in this hierarchy Africans lose out. Local
efforts and voices go unacknowledged in favour of the
white saviour complex, which as Teju Cole suggests
"supports brutal policies in the morning, founds
charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the
evening"…
I abhor the white saviour narrative, where vulnerable
children or women of colour must be rescued from men
of colour by "culturally superior" white men or women.
Her complaint with the documentary is most certainly
valid. The documentary could have benefited from
featuring some local African protagonists, of which
there exist no shortage of. In fact, I would hazard a
guess that the people most involved in the effort to
protect the local population would be from within the
community itself.
Dispatches' documentary on Africa's child witches
managed to give a more balanced picture of the
situation by including African heroes alongside Gary
Foxcroft, such as Sam Itauma. By so doing, they
decreased the chances of sending the wrong message.
One must be cautious in this regard, especially in the
backdrop of a long history of colonial
humanitarianism. The West has–and continues to–use
humanitarian "concerns" to imply their superiority
over darker peoples, as well as to justify military
occupation.
Having said that, I do not think one can be too
critical of Invisible Children's documentary. They
were in a bit of a damned-if-you-do,
damned-if-you-don't situation. If they depicted the
suffering of Africans, they could be accused of
portraying Africa as backward. If they ignore African
plight, then they could be accused of racism (do you
only care about white people dying?).
Even so, it is very true that Westerners, especially
Americans, have a much easier time seeing a black
African like Joseph Kony as the ultimate villian.
Certainly, Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)
have killed thousands of individuals, abducted tens of
thousands, and displaced countless more innocent
people. No reasonable person could deny the wickedness
of Kony or his cohorts.
Yet, all of this pales in front of the crimes
committed by the leaders of the United States, most of
whom are "good, white Judeo-Christian folk." I know
even the thought of this seems offensive to all
Serious, Decent People, who would be quick to cast
this off as some sort of conspiracy theorist talk.
But, the evidence speaks for itself. The Christian
Science Monitor estimates that the LRA has "killed an
estimated 2,500 people" over an 18-month period. I
couldn't find a cumulative tally for the last two
decades, but it seems safe to say that we're talking
about thousands or at most tens of thousands.
Meanwhile, "a reasonable upper bound for Muslim
fatalities [caused by the United States]…is well over
one million." That's just Muslim victims.
Who then is the greater villain? Pure numbers would
indicate the United States. Admittedly, there are
other considerations, but the huge disparity in
numbers of corpses speaks volumes.
It's unlikely that a YouTube video calling to stop the
United States from its history of virtually non-stop
war and killing would ever go viral like the Kona 2012
documentary did. Granted, it's harder to criticize
one's own nation, but it seems more reasonable to
channel one's energy towards one's elected government.
As our generation's most important intellectual Noam
Chomsky said in an interview:
My own concern is primarily the terror and violence
carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one
thing, because it happens to be the larger component
of international violence. But also for a much more
important reason than that; namely, I can do something
about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2
percent of the violence in the world instead of the
majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be
primarily responsible for. And that is a simple
ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one's
actions depends on their anticipated and predictable
consequences.
Furthermore, pointing to the atrocities committed by
people of other nations while remaining silent about
one's own country's crimes reeks of hypocrisy of the
worst order. As Chomsky said:
It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone
else. That has about as much ethical value as
denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th
century.
The point is that the useful and significant political
actions are those that have consequences for human
beings. And those are overwhelmingly the actions which
you have some way of influencing and controlling,
which mean for me, American actions.
For most citizens, however, the situation is exactly
reversed. Indeed, American interest in human rights
abuses falls into one of three categories:
1. They are most vocal about the inequities of their
enemies, especially when there is a national interest
involved and the villain is a Muslim (i.e. Iran).
2. They are generally silent about (or merely pay lip
service to) the human rights abuses committed against
people belonging to nations where no national benefit
can be expected (i.e. many parts of Africa).
3. They are wholly ignorant about, adamantly deny, or
justify the crimes committed by their own government
(i.e. the United States) or stalwart allies (i.e.
Israel).
As George Orwell famously said:
All nationalists have the power of not seeing
resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British
Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and
oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency.
Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own
merits, but according to who does them, and there is
almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of
hostages, forced labour, mass deportations,
imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination,
the bombing of civilians — which does not change its
moral colour when it is committed by ‘our' side. . . .
The nationalist not only does not disapprove of
atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a
remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
We always wonder how it was that the Germans claimed
not to know what Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were
doing. Yet, how similar is our general state of apathy
today toward what our own government commits on a
daily basis. The reality is that the American can
never come to grips with the wickedness of the crimes
his nation commits.
American indifference and willful ignorance of the
hundreds of thousands of lives our government brings
to an end is also due to the fact that we don't
witness the effects of what we're doing. Whereas
Europe and Russia experienced the horrors of war
firsthand, the United States has remained relatively
safe and secure on the North American continent, not
having seen war on its shores for a very long time.
War to Americans means little more than increased gas
prices–not bombs dropping from the skies while filling
gas.
The victims of American foreign policy reside some
hundreds and thousands of miles away in countries and
continents we've never seen. The dead remain nameless
and faceless. Even our soldiers oftentimes don't see
who they kill. Imagine if a pilot of a bomber plane
had to actually attend the funerals of the peoples'
lives he extinguishes with the press of a button? This
situation has become even worse with the advent of
remote-controlled drones. Americans are becoming
increasingly protected and distant from the violence
that they spread throughout various parts of the
globe. Our way of killing is just cleaner (and more
efficient).
But, it hardly matters to a victim if his relative
died from being hacked to pieces by a machete or
having a bomb dropped on his head from the skies. The
result is the same: death.
There is of course another issue: those "bad guys" we
criticize, like Joseph Kony, look like villains.
Meanwhile, the perpetrators of American crimes wear
suits and ties, look and talk in a courteous, cool,
and calm manner. As Glenn Greenwald put it:
There are all kinds of people who advocate extremely
heinous ideas, but do so in a very soft-spoken and
civil manner. Bill Kristol comes to mind, John Yoo, as
well. These are people who can go on and be extremely
polite in conversation.
Their mannerisms do not change their deeds, which are
heinous. The U.S. presidents have killed more Muslims
than Kony has killed Africans. Noam Chomsky opined:
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every
post-war American president would have been hanged.
How much easier it is to express indignation over
Joseph Kony or, better yet, some Muslim villain?
The writer Danios was the Brass Crescent Award
Honorary Mention for Best Writer in 2010 and the Brass
Crescent Award Winner for Best Writer in 2011.
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EsinIslam.Com
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