By Himani Bannerji

When the terrible attacks took place on the 11th of September, taking the lives of thousands living and working in the United States, there were instantaneous responses and images accompanying them.

Though the events were unprecedentedly new, the images and responses were not. We recognized them instantly, for we had lived with them in "peace" times. They were produced through a lens of racism, of racializing cultures and peoples, and through the wellÐentrenched language of war and terror. Who did these terrible acts was already a foregone conclusion. The media and the people it sought out knew "who" they were. Yet even today, in spite of Osama bin Laden's bragging gestures of appropriation, we have no real proof or indication of who the perpetrators exactly were.

In their depiction of the tragedy the media gave a certain colour to death, that of whiteness. Those who died were "Americans", officially owned and acknowledged as such, and they could not be represented by anyone else. In this colour coded death scene, it took sad pleas by people from "other(ed)" communities to bring even a casual glance to over one thousand people dead from West, Central, and South Asia, together with hispanic and other communities.

This whitening of the face of death also established the same hierarchy on the value of life upon which American foreign policy has conducted itself for more than half a century, as well as its domestic policy (from the days of the founding fathers) - of colonialism, genocide and slavery.

Within moments, the identity of the terrorist was established as ÔArab/muslim'. And now, as the bombs are raining ceaselessly on Afghan people, we still have no evidence that would pass muster in a court of law. Experts on international law declare this war to be illegal (see CBC's Counterspin, October 9th; Michael Mandel's Oct. 9th article in The Globe and Mail).

But based on rumours of Arabs in red bandannas with box cutters, an unsigned document of jihadi creed (written in a christian discourse) and stolen identities whose actual owners continue to be alive in Saudi Arabia, there is a brazen refusal to make any information public in the name of "security".

Bush has promised us a roving, total war creating flashpoints here, there and anywhere in perpetuity. He had even named it in terms of infinity. For its vital legitimation, the Bush administration has fallen back upon a carefully nurtured racist ethnicism - a tried and proven device put together by everyday racism, the state, news media, Hollywood, scholars and experts.

The calculus of culture, race, ruling and hate is actually very simple: Arabs=muslims=fanatics=terrorists. The belief and image apparatus was already in place in some respects in the Western/Northern hemisphere, as Edward Said pointed out in Covering Islam. Boosted through the era of the OPEC oil crisis in the 1970s, elaborated through the desperate struggle of Palestinians in the occupied territories, honed during and after the Gulf war, this lethal concoction reached its perfection. The "terrorist" in U.S./Western imagination became mainly, if not solely, an Arab and always muslim.

Who is this generic ÔArab'? To be an ÔArab' is also to be Iranian, Kurd, Afghan, Pakistani or just simply South Asian. The levelling logic and body blow of racism or racist ethnicism is such that in a spree of revenge, there are attacks against Sikhs, hindu temples and any muslim-named person of South Asia. In a sense, it makes an Arab out of anybody from West and South Asia.

Now a whole reign of terror is being unleashed upon populations living "inside" the U.S. and Canada, while bombing Afghans, whose plight has been shown in repeated documentaries on CNN and Canadian TV stations. The much vaunted strategic strikes have turned out to be on "soft targets" namely civilians. This again wouldn't have mattered if four UN officials had not been killed and others injured. Shades of bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade? The mercy of this "civilizing" mission combines bombs with food, which even "neutral" aid agencies call "public relations".

The campaign of internal terror and external war is based on the same legitimation device - racism. This includes an official multiculturalism which speaks in a language of civilization and savagery, of modernity and tradition and applies it "internally" and externally. What is tragic is that this colonialÐracist, orientalist language is proudly embraced, then internalized by certain groups of people from these Ôothered' worlds.

The word "civilized" has justifiedfor far too long now, the most uncivilized deeds. The ultimate barbarism is in the setting up of fundamentalist religious forces such as that of Osama bin Laden (through Cold War logic), thereby destroying both Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir. "Bearded men" (mullahs) with their unimaginable misogyny and hatred of secularism brought these societies into a state of continual violence. And now it is Afghans who bear the cost of bin laden's removal by the U.S.

"Culture" reduced to a static, religiously essentialized, antiÐsocial, nonÐhistorical state has provided the alibi for setting up antiÐsocialist, antiÐdemocratic forces everywhere the U.S. has geo-policitcal interests in oil and profits. Now in the graveyards of socialism, all sorts of monsters are stalking, consorting with and confronting their U.S. creators. The "terror" of bin Laden is a part of the long existing U.S. foreign policy and Asia has had to suffer the weight of both.

It is curious to have listened to both G.W. Bush and Osama bin Laden give essentially the same speeches. Using the language of patriots and traitors, they exhort their followers to ride with them into this death combat. Bin Laden called upon God and tradition while Bush combined God with civilization and modernity.

It is useful to note that Americans and surrogate Americans living in Canada, Britain and other "civilized" countries, are more responsive to this fanatic call to war, than are "muslims" anywhere. The proÐTaliban war-hysteria of men in the streets is negligible compared to the combination of Bush's military state apparatus and patriotic "Americans". It is ironic that this war should finally be named operation "Enduring Freedom". The world has been forced to endure America's Ôfreedom' for a very long time now - a Ôfreedom' written in the neon light of nuclear bombs and napalm. But who does this Ôfreedom' help more than U.S. imperialists and other allied imperialists? For them it spells freedom from the growing tide of antiÐglobalization and antiÐimperialist protestors, who have now become Ôterrorists', a sort of `Arab' of the western world.