The class of 2006—and all of its most welcome family, friends, and guests-- will now come to order. Please, no reading of the Daily Cal in the back rows. Kindly turn off your cell phones and resist reaching for your iPods. Please take out your mental notebooks or laptops. It’s time for a final geography lesson. A lesson that is at once very simple and exceedingly unpleasant and difficult. It’s time for your fullest and utmost attention. For the clock is ticking. And the train is rolling on. Full speed ahead.
A truly democratic politics requires the informed consent of its citizens. If politicians act without the consent of a knowledgeable citizenry, democracy is but an empty term. If politicians act with the consent of an uninformed citizenry, democracy is without substance. If politicians act with the consent of a citizenry that has been deliberately misinformed, that has been led astray by strategically deployed silences, by words of mass deception and words of mass distraction, by the propagation of collective amnesia, and the daily repetition of phrases and messages that are meant to produce fear, then democracy is little short of a gross sham. So, how well are you prepared to contribute to the functioning of a genuinely democratic politics? How is your geography? What do YOU know? And in what ways, if any, are you prepared to put your knowledge to work?
I begin with an “easy” question. Do you know where Bagram is? And what goes on there? Do you know that it is an airbase north of Kabul which, from the time of American military presence in Afghanistan, has been used as a prison? Or that numerous of its early prisoners, many of whom were turned in so as to receive a reward, were forwarded to Guantanamo? Or that its occupants have been kept in metal shipping containers? Or that it has been alleged that “detainees are chained to the ceiling, shackled so tightly that the blood flow stops, kept naked and hooded, and kicked to keep them awake for days on end”? Or that, with Guantanamo in the spotlight, there are those who have been returned to Bagram for further animal-like keeping?
Do you know where Smithfield, North Carolina is? Or what goes on there? Do you know it is the site of an airfield from which the CIA, by way of private front companies, operates planes that fly abroad in order to pick up kidnapped or captured suspected terrorists and deliver them to secret prisons where they are held indefinitely without being charged or given access to any kind of legal representation? Or that Smithfield is far from being the only airfield in the U.S. at which such “extraordinary rendition” operations are based? Or that the CIA and U.S. military prisons to which they are flown constitute a global Gulag Archipelago? An archipelago extending from Jordan, through Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Thailand on to Indonesia? Or that the archipelago includes battleships stationed in the Indian Ocean? Or that at least for a while it included locations in Syria and Uzbekistan, and more recently, apparently in Poland and Romania? Or that as of the fall of 2004 there were well over 12,400 prisoners being held in the archipelago-- exclusive of Guantanamo? Or that the entire extraordinary rendition program, much of which has been described as a “torture by proxy” program, has all along been authorized by a so-called “secret presidential finding”?
Do you know where the site of the Office of Special Plans is? And what goes on there? Do you know that it is a Defense Department unit created in early 2002 by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his then Assistant Secretary Paul Wolfowitz with the active encouragement of Vice President Cheney? Or that it was established in the belief that the CIA “was out to disprove [any] linkage between Iraq and terrorism”? Or that it was from the outset a policy-informing unit whose goal, according to inside sources, was “to put the data under the microscope to reveal what the intelligence community can’t see.” Or that, according to a former high-ranking military staff member, what it produced “wasn’t intelligence—it was propaganda”? Or that: “they’d take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don’t belong together”? Or that this propaganda-style intelligence “found its way directly into speeches by Bush, Cheney, and other officials”? Or that, until this very day, the Pentagon and the administration have succeeded in keeping the Office of Special Plans beyond any Congressional intelligence probe on the grounds that it is a Pentagon policy unit rather than part of the government’s “intelligence community”? Or that, as a consequence, the public remains uninformed of the sources of misinformation that helped persuade so many of them to support the invasion of Iraq and the ongoing occupation?
Do you know where Natanz is? Did you know that it is the site of an Iranian underground uranium enrichment plant? Or that, despite the absence of any proof that this plant is part of a scheme to develop nuclear weapons, and despite the fact any such development probably would take at least eight or ten years, and that the country currently lacks the necessary scientific equipment and skilled personnel, the Bush administration is intent upon soon conducting a massive bombing campaign against Iran, involving 400 or more targets, in order to terminate enrichment and bring about “regime change”? Or that those most vigorously promoting an aerial assault are the very same people who pushed for the invasion of Iraq, claiming that entire operation would be a piece of cake? Or that they are as ignorant of Iran’s history and current conditions as they were of Iraq’s history and current conditions? Or that they actually are operating on the premise, according to a reliable Seymour Hersh source, that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government”? Even though U.S. military actions in neighboring Iraq are generally acknowledged to have been a major contributing factor to the surprise presidential election win of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a virulent fundamentalist reactionary plagued by another kind of historical ignorance? Did you know that the existence of Natanz has served as a rationale for numerous U.S. combat teams having been clandestinely sent into Iran in order “to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups”? Or that the White House is insisting upon the use of so-called bunker-busting nuclear weapons against Natanz and any other underground targets? Even though some members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are opposed to it? Even though all tests have shown these weapons to be more or less total technical failures, incapable of penetrating more than three meters into hard rock without self-destructing? Even though experts insist there is no way such a “tactical” nuclear weapon could be used without creating a highly toxic “hot” fallout cloud, consisting of “irradiated particles of dirt and rock” capable of killing tens of thousand of civilians? Or, perhaps many more, given the proximity of Lavizan-Shian and other targets to Tehran, a metropolis of 12 million? Do you know that only last week, when asked about the possibility of a nuclear attack on Iran, President Bush unflinchingly replied: “All options are on the table”? Or that insiders claim that he believes “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy”?
Do you know the names of the fourteen locations in Iraq where permanent U.S. military bases are either under construction or being planned for? Despite all the talk of eventual troop withdrawal? Do you know that these bases were from the outset meant “to secure energy lines of communication” in the Middle East? Or that each of them is to be the equivalent of a small city, with streets, shops, entertainment facilities, and housing for at least 20,000 troops, support personnel, private contractors, and family members? Or that, with Saudi Arabia becoming negative about a continued U.S. military presence after 9/11, the construction of such bases was one of three major motives privately voiced by those civilian neoconservatives in the Pentagon who promoted the invasion of Iraq? Or that the construction of such oil-supply guaranteeing military installations are part of the post-attack plan for Iran?
Do you know the site of the Northern Command for National Defense? Or what its purpose is? Did you know that it is a secretly formed Pentagon unit associated with the Homeland Security Department? Or that if, without Congressional approval, President Bush signs executive orders declaring a “national emergency,” the Northern Command can “send troops into American streets, seize control of radio and television stations and networks and impose martial law”? Or that General Tommy Franks, former commander of operations in Afghanistan and later Iraq, has stated in an interview, that in the event of another major terrorist attack “the Constitution will likely be discarded” and a military government established in order to avoid a repeat attack?
Do you know where in the U.S. detention camps are being built by Kellog Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, with a $385 million grant awarded by the Army Corps of Engineers in January? Do you know if these camps, each capable of holding at least 5,000 people, are to be put up in Arkansas, Oklahoma, or elsewhere? Or that these camps, being constructed for the Homeland Security Department, would, among other things, readily lend themselves to the detention of American citizens in the event martial law is declared by the Bush administration?
Allow me now to abandon this line of grim questioning and turn to the past. … It was 1940. The dark clouds that had been hanging with menace over Europe had burst. In a prolonged torrent. The juggernaut was unleashed. Nazi aggression was spreading relentlessly across the continent. The war clock had ticked down. The moment of impending danger was no more. It had become a moment of mass death, of misery and destruction beyond words, of pure hell arriving in place after place. A German Jew in exile, the brilliant cultural critic Walter Benjamin, in the process of fleeing his now beloved Paris, made the following aphoristic observation in contemplation of the concept of history: “Marx says that revolutions are the locomotive of history. But perhaps it is quite otherwise. Perhaps revolutions are an attempt by the passengers on this train—namely, the human race—to activate the emergency brake.”
If revolution is perhaps too strong a term for the collective action that this present moment of danger calls for, there can be little doubt that the war clock is once again ticking down, that a multiply motivated and ignorance-spawned nuclear assault on Iran is impending, that the train is rolling on, and that there is an urgent need for an informed citizenry. On this and other globally vital matters that I have not addressed here today. An urgent need for an informed citizenry that can put democracy to work. An informed citizenry that is capable of finding ways to activate the emergency brake.
What do YOU know?
Are YOU prepared?
To commence to take on a special responsibility?
To actively keep yourself informed by means extending beyond the corporate mass media? And to attempt to make critical analytical links?
Are YOU prepared to take advantage of what you have learned here
of the place-specific workings of global economic restructuring and the social/spatial inequalities it produces? And the undocumented migration which so often follows in its wake?
Are YOU prepared to take advantage of what you have learned here
of global warming and processes of global environmental change more generally?
Are YOU prepared to take advantage of what you have learned here
of the means by which imaginative geographies are constructed and distance is folded into monstrous Difference; the means by which Their Arab/Muslim space automatically becomes one with Their Terrorist space and Their uncivilized, subhuman barbarism?
Are YOU prepared to take advantage of what you have learned here,
in Prof. Watts words, of the complex and contradictory relationship of radical and other forms of political Islam to nationalism, capitalism and globalization?
Are YOU prepared to take advantage of what you have learned here
of the inevitable situatedness of all knowledge? Of the fact that what people do or do not know, the discourses they have or have not been exposed to, the taken-for-granteds that inform their actions, can in absolutely no way be separated from the on-the-ground, embodied and situated practices in which they have participated- or have been excluded from? To take advantage of what you have learned of the inseparability of situated knowledge and power relations? And of the situated ignorance inevitably characterizing all people? Including those in power? And ourselves?
Sometimes, despite our own inevitable situated ignorance, we already know enough. Sometimes it is not knowledge we lack. Sometimes “what is missing is the courage to understand what we know and draw conclusions.” And to put them into practice.
I think I know enough about many of you to trust that you are prepared to take on a special responsibility during this extended moment of danger, to help in everyday and other ways to activate the emergency brake.
The clock is ticking.
The train is rolling on.
I thank you.
