Cam Walker is the campaigns coordinator for Friends of the Earth in Melbourne. We spoke on March 28th at the F.O.E. office.
FASOTE: Let's launch in - what is your perception of the political or spiritual state of the U.S. today?
CW: I guess the thing that concerns me most is the U.S. turn towards unilateralism across the board - unilateralism with this war in Iraq but also with other things, like U.N. conventions on racism or climate change or almost any of the multilateral environmental agreements. Basically, the United States has clearly decided what it wants to do, and it has no interest in collaborating with the broader, global community around making things better, across the board, from things like social justice to environmental responsibility. It's very clear to me it's decided it will be very unilateral in its actions - they have also vetoed something like 70 U.N. resolutions, but were outraged when France and Germany wanted to use their veto with this Iraq war. So, I think there is a strong sense of unilateralism and a strong sense of hypocrisy, because the United States does all these things and then gets really morally outraged when other people do the same thing. I think that many people around the world increasingly see them as doing one thing, talking a talk, but that there is no sense of realness to it and I think that that doesn't speak too well to people around the world. I think there is also quite a sense that the United States is only interested in the world when it is doing something in a particular place, and that if it is not engaging in a certain region, whether it be through a war or something else, the world doesn't exist to the U.S. public. You've got the government, which is very retrogressive and going back to the 1950s, so you think there must be something wrong with the public if they are not doing something about this type of government. So, in full awareness of what happened in Florida and that technically he wasn't elected president, you have to go "Well, there must be something going wrong if he is allowed to stay in there'. You could say the same thing about us, as we have John Howard and he is no better, it's just that he's not as powerful. He would probably do the same things if he could. But I think there is a sense that Americans have a very myopic world view, that it is very inward looking, and it's very driven by self interest, which is fine, but I think there is a sense of growing anger at the self interest being so wrapped in a honey-coating of democracy and freedom for the Iraqi and Afghan people when clearly that is not the case when you look at the track record of intervention and political involvement of the U.S. since the second world war. Clearly, concern for democracy, human rights, social justice, the rights of women and so on have never been paramount in U.S. foreign policy. So there is a growing sense of anger - people are sick of this hypocrisy, sick of the double standards.
FASOTE: What about the same question, but for the Islamic world. What do you think of its political or spiritual health?
CW: I think it's a hard question to answer because it is so much more diverse. The United States is a nation that has an identifiable head of government, an identifiable bureaucracy that controls it, and identifiable political groupings, the dominant two being the Republicans and the Democrats and with smaller groupings to the left and the right. When you talk of the Islamic world, you are talking ethnically and religiously as well as politically. You get that huge level of diversity, from established monarchies to places like Afghanistan, which have a more tribal or more ethnically based form of government. So it is hard to give a similar assessment, but I guess the most interesting place to look at is what is called 'moderate' Islam and how it is trying to position itself in regards to the fundamentalists. Because, clearly in the West there is a pronounced backlash, such as among the neo-conservative Christian fundamentalists, that isn't very broad based but is very powerful in driving the agenda of the Bush administration. Numerically, however, they don't seem as strong as the their equivalent in the Islamic world. I'm not sure but that's what I tend to pick up. So, I have fears, I guess, of the moderate Islamic world being increasingly marginalized and oppressed by the more radicalized people around them. You can just see the history of what happened in Iran after the revolution or what happened in Afghanistan under the Taliban - the quite ruthless repression of liberal or progressive or left wing voices under Islamic fundamentalism frightens me quite a lot. So I guess I see a community that is incredibly diverse, that has really good elements and terribly disturbing elements. I guess I can't wrap it up as nicely as I can America, but I can say that I am aware of the diversity and aware of the tensions within those communities on many issues. But, the thing that is very apparent is that in many ways the United States is not an aggrieved community - I understand that that all changed after 9/11 but prior to that no one had attacked them on their own turf. Whereas, you can't say the same thing about the Islamic world - you have the history of Palestine, you have ongoing interventions, and you have very cozy relationships between autocratic Islamic governments and the United States. So, I guess another distinction I would draw would be between the aggrieved Muslim communities and the aggressor community of the United States.
FASOTE: Do you think there is a barrier to peaceful co-existence between these two sides, or are we in a zero sum game?
CW: I can't subscribe to that - I think there is a diversity of options for the world and you just have to look for them. We can look to Latin America or Africa for that matter, but I think there is so much diversity and it is such a danger in reducing it to two absolutisms - it would be back to a Cold War era of superpowers - instead of military and economic it would be a cultural superpower in Islam and a military/economic superpower in the U.S., and this would bring nothing but friction. So yes, we can live together, but we must understand each other first. There is a perceived gulf generated through the media - the sense of fear from the threat of terrorism and the insecurity that comes with that is a only helped by the media, which in turn heighten the level of fear and widen the gap between the two cultures. But, this perceived gap is much wider in print than it is in reality.
FASOTE: So, how do you define terrorism?
CW: Terrorism is just the use of violence for political ends, so that's depleted uranium weapons being used in Basra, that's airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York City, it's economic terrorism, whether that be supporting dictatorial regimes or death squads in Columbia or supporting the Contras in Nicaragua.
FASOTE: So, by that definition, isn't all war terrorism? Isn't all war violence meant to achieve a political end?
CW: I think not. There is always terrorism and then terror in war, but war in its pure sense, or 'just' war if you will, is between identified combatants. Terrorism is indiscriminate and often applied to non-combatants. Terrorism is normally targeted at people who aren't even prepared to defend themselves because they are not aware of the threat, or are not able to because they are not organized in a certain way.
FASOTE: What do you think will be the effect of the U.S.'s War on Terrorism on humanity?
CW: Well, I think the world has been looking for balance after the end of the Cold War. I think it is interesting that after the fall of the Soviet Union there was this notion that ideology is dead, which by default meant that market economics and liberalism had won and I think that that was starting to wear thin. I think that opposition to globalization was starting to have an impact, whether through street protests or community resistance around the world. That was a really growing movement pre-September 2001. But all that is changed now, and there is a whole new program being put forth that is based around a very narrow world view which is basically about conflict between the two forms of fundamentalism - Christian fundamentalism as it is expressed through the Bush Administration and the Islamic fundamentalists who express themselves through terrorist activities. It is an interesting time where people are trying to redefine themselves, and clearly the U.S. is trying to position itself as the key and the only superpower on the planet. So, that is what I would say is the desired effect - to establish U.S. dominance for the foreseeable future.
FASOTE: What is the best thing about Australia?
CW: It's just a really fantastic place. It is very culturally mixed, even though it is very Anglo. There is very limited amount of political and ethnic and cultural violence, and I think it is because there is a great emphasis on multiculturalism and multiracialism.
FASOTE: From the government or from the people?
CW: From the people. It has been undermined a lot by the government, and of course there have always been certain racist tendencies by some of the people, and certainly many would argue that that is still the case, but in terms of if you walk out onto the street, there aren't things like ethnic ghettos. I think there is a lot of tolerance and mixing and celebration of diversity and that's what I like when I walk down the street. And, of course, in terms of the natural environment it is absolutely stunning and beautiful. When you take those two things, you have a great country.
FASOTE: Do you have any heroes, or people that you admire?
CW: People that I admire would be very broad based, and would span many writers and political figures. Classic figures such as Xanana Gusmao the East Timorese resistance leader who is now the leader of his nation. People like Nelson Mandela, people like Bob Brown in Australia, who is a really luminary political figure. I tend to like many different people - I have a of a thing where I always worry about the cult of leadership, so I tend to have a whole lot of people that I admire rather than a handful of people I adore.
FASOTE: Great - thanks for your time.
