by Mphuthumi Ntabeni

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Oh Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name! -- Madame Roland

QUEENSTOWN, SOUTH AFRICA - The reaction of most South Africans to the photograph of myself wearing an American baseball cap with a (US) flag gives me an approximate idea of the changed attitude towards the US.

Sep 11, that fated day when American glory blushed, was a tragic revelation and changed many things in ways most of us never thought probable. I find myself, now, having to justify myself for wearing the cap. Curious enough most people who ask choose to ignore the skipper (t-shirt) of human rainbow I'm also wearing on the picture. Granted things like the agitprop Colonel Powell delivered to the UN Security Council does not help my case much.

I remember the time, not so long ago, when people assumed you were for liberal freedom, civil society, human dignity and the rest of those elusive concepts that are rapidly becoming nostalgia under G.W Bush administration. Then they were associated with the American Dream. To most of us America stood for what is possible when men are put on a level-playing field; ingenuity, enterprise, versatility, tolerance and the freedom to invent oneself under God's sky. All that made the US the capital of commercial civilization and manufacturing glory. For me that photograph is a symbol of my solidarity with that America. Now the US comes across more as a nervous giant of coercive strength, from where I'm standing.

Different answers have been given, mostly in bated breath, as to why the US has shifted its footing away from the realization of the American Dream to the odious ideal of imperialistic domination called an empire. Most are either a duplicitous, uncritical hagiography of the present US government, or merciless castigators of it. Among all the reasons furnished for the floundering demise of the American DreamI lean more heavily on the triumph of wealth over wisdom and markets over morality. This has trend has propelled America to that repulsive idea of global Pax Americana.

There's no longer any doubt (if ever there was) about the US's presumptions. It considers itself an Empire, and thus the sheriff of the world. It's no coincidence that wherever you go in the globe you find stationed US forces; from Afghanistan to Kosovo to South Korea to Saudi Arabia, and so forth. The "peace keeping" by constantly preparing for war; the need to protect interests all over the world so as to maintain the lifestyle of its citizens. These are trappings of an empire.

Its sons and daughters will die in strange lands without ever really knowing what it was they were defending or attacking when the empire takes an aggressive stance against those who stand in its expansionist path.

My dilemma lies in the fact that the US is a bad empire full of good people.

I've had the good fortune of meeting some of them; sophisticated, suave, exquisitely well-travelled and so on. Mostly they were New Yorkers. At some stage they almost managed to seduce me out of South Africa myself. (I found I could hang out with them without being ingested or alienated.) In the end my yearning for independently earned security and the responsibility I feel towards my people and my country (the burden of memory) held me back.

I've since been made to understand that these people I met were not your "typical American". The typical American it seems tends to be silly, witless and uselessly decorative when eminent; dishonest and cunning when ambitious; conceitedly repetitious after acquiring a little specialized knowledge and forcefully abstract and non-comprehending when religiously fanatic. In short, a typical American is like the rest of us only with the added trappings of a puritan founding ethic worsened by a fanatic materialistic philosophy of "nothing butí" which shows its head from its carapace when under stress.

If anything, the aftermath of Sep 11 has revealed the divide between these different kinds of Americans. It has shown that, though the US is renowned as the melting-pot of nations, like the most of us, it is still not integrated in its fundamental views to life. Habit, superstition, education, vested interests, prejudice, being the usual motives behind different views.

The only advantage Americans have over the rest of us is that they share the unity of protecting what has been regarded the American Way. But it is becoming clear that there're slightly different interpretations of what the American Way actually is. Sep 11 ended all political correctness in American, indeed world, politics. It has given the vulgar side of America an excuse for to indulge its vaulting ambitions. Hyper-power imperialism with a self-absorbed speciously self-righteous unilateralism. In recent months America has tried to propagate the justice of its cause through agitprop, invoking and manipulating the worst fears of our age. Those who think patriotism makes thought unnecessary rally behind them.

Empires have always presumed it their right to conquer and subjugate other nations. "for their own good." It was hardly a surprise to hear Ms. Condeleeza Rice (the director of the US National Security Council) sanctimoniously proselytising [in South African national paper, the Sunday Times (20 Oct 2002)] about "...an expanding circle of development" as the US's ideological objective for war against Iraq.

For the imperialistic W. Churchill it was "the spheres of influence," and "trying to make a world organisation in which we and America will be quite important." Same intentions, different jargon.

Ms. Rice begins her article with "an argument between the so-called 'realistic' school of foreign affairs and the 'idealistic' school." She goes on to say the "...the realist plays down the importance of values while emphasising the balance of power as the key to stability and peace. Idealists emphasise the primacy of values and the character of societies as crucial to a state's behaviour towards other nations."

It is not absolutely clear in which school Ms. Rice considers her government belongs. But I think it's safe to assume that she sees herself and her colleagues as realists and, by inference, the critics of idealists. It'd be interesting to hear Ms. Rice's views on her statement when it's no longer euphemistically constructed as in Pasteur's "The Two Laws":

"Two laws seem to me to be in contest - the one a law of blood and death, forcing the nations to be always ready for battle; the other law of peace, work, and health, whose only aim is to deliver man from the calamities which beset him.

The one seeks violent conquest; the other relief of mankind. The one places a single life above all victories, the other sacrifices hundred of thousand of lives to the ambition of a single individual. Which law will prevail God only knows..."

Ms. Rice and her cabal would have us believe that war with Iraq is a necessary evil for greater common good, as if violent conquest ever produced any peace. Empires, of course, have always confused subjugation with peace.

Like the Roman Empire the US is creating voids all over the world and calling them peace.

Yesterday it was Afghanistan, tomorrow Iraq. The sad thing is that they seem to honestly believe they're securing future peace for the world. That's the power of denial when one is under odious influences like greed and power-mongering.

There's evidence, at least, that cynical Caesar was being ironical when he said, after sowing a trail of germinating chaos for the expansion and preservation of the Roman Empire. "With what great zeal I sought peace."

Had the Bush administration possession of half that irony we would at least be certain of their true intentions and be clear about the devil we must resist. But no, they cunningly use our fears against us for the greed of their backers.

Let loose the dogs of war then. Gamble the peace of the world on words tossed to milling crowds and insatiable profit mongering. But kindly spare us the cloying exculpations and self-justifications that fool you into your false virtue. The children are the inheritors of our misdeeds. If in the end in an American Dream we honour nothing but its idea the fault will not be ours.

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MPHUTHUMI NTABENI attended the school of Architecture in the University of Witswatersrand after High School, though he's not certain now what he was doing there. A misunderstanding occurred somewhere as he was looking for an education and all they could do was to train him. After that he left in a despairing mood for the city of Port Elizabeth where he re-invented himself. When he suspected there was nothing more to learn from the honking gulls of the sea, and he had paid off the government loan for his studies, he went back to his home, Queenstown. He now lives there under the nurturing care of his mother (no one else will have him) trying to make sense of the society he grew up in and exorcise the demons of growing under the apartheid regime. He's also waiting to grow up ad dreaming of being a member of that wretched tribe that earns its living by composing thoughts into words. This is his third article for The World's Magazine.