Roger Marshall is a computer scientist, a newly minted Luddite and a cynic.
Credit: DH Illustration
During his two terms in office, Barack Obama deported more than 3 million non-citizens, making him the president with the highest number of deportations in US history.
His drone programme represented a massive expansion compared to previous administrations, with the programme becoming a “covert war on terror” that was ten times larger than Bush’s operations. He consistently undercounted civilian casualties and treated Western and non-Western victims differently – apologising and promising investigations for Western civilian deaths while ignoring non-Western casualties – and authorised missile strikes on Iraq without congressional approval.
The late Henry Kissinger and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are well-known hawks who facilitated US support for authoritarian regimes (only the right-wing ones) and spread the imperium’s message to Latin America, China, and Southeast Asia. Kissinger was responsible for bombing much of Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War and causing political havoc involving much bloodshed in Chile and Argentina.
South Korean John Yoo, assistant deputy attorney general in the Justice Department, signed off on waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation methods” during George Bush’s war on terror following the September 11 attacks.
UN ambassador and later Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, unapologetically defended the sanctions placed on Iraq by stating that even though over half a million children died, the price was worth it and that “If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation.”
As UN ambassador, Nimrata ‘Nikki’ Haley defended the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the US from the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate agreement, and the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, who advised President Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War and served as President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, developed the Carter Doctrine, which committed the US to use military force in defence of the Persian Gulf. It is no accident that Qatar now has the largest US military base outside of the continental US.
Stephen Miller, special advisor to Trump, oversees the inhumane treatment of immigrants, legal or otherwise, and has them deported by offering monetary compensation to the accepting countries, primarily in Africa.
And Elon Musk! Need I say more?
What links the actions and comments of people like Obama, Albright, Yoo, Kissinger, Rubio, Haley, Brzezinski, and Miller is that they are all what I would label as ‘new’ Americans – first-generation naturalised Americans and their offspring, second-generation Americans who carry forward the message of Empire.
Add to the above list of new Americans some of the biggest names in the IT sector – Pichai (Google), Nadella (Microsoft), Krishna (IBM), Sankar (Palantir) – people who have meekly accepted their role in the war on democracy by Trump to protect their businesses.
Before he was elected President in 1960, John F Kennedy authored Profiles in Courage, a book which detailed the courageous acts of eight US senators who, despite public condemnation and disapproval, reined in the autocratic powers of the House Speaker, spoke out against arming US merchant ships during the US’ neutral period in World War I, and supported the presidential campaign of a Catholic in a predominantly Protestant country.
If one were to write a sequel to Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, it would have to be titled Profiles in Cowardice, and Indian IT leaders in the US would figure prominently. The list would also include PM Modi for not challenging Trump’s decision to deport over 300 Indians, all of whom were manacled and shackled, to Amritsar in US Air Force planes. Sadly, money trumps all.
Contrast Albright’s comments with those of noted British author and biographer Margaret Drabble: “My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness. I now loathe the United States and what it has done to Iraq and the rest of the helpless world.” She condemned “American imperialism, American infantilism, and American triumphalism about victories it didn’t even win” and recalled George Orwell’s words in Nineteen Eighty-Four about the intoxication of power and “the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever”.
Will the newly elected mayor of NYC, Zohran Mamdani, whose father was expelled from Uganda during the Idi Amin regime, soon join the august company of Kissinger, Haley, and Obama? You bet.