"Like Slaves": Anthropological Notes on Occupation WARNING: Reading Ahead

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It is hard to read Reynolds discussion of Okinawa's occupation without overlaying "Iraq" where he describes Okinawa. Such retro-glosses create their own illusions and misdirections, but even with such obvious limits: there are glimmers of a parallel universe of power relations.

It would be neat and tidy if the parallels between Okinawa and Iraq were precise and endless, but they aren't. Differences in natural resources, demographics, history and culture are marked and significant; but there is a transcendent continuity birthed by the culture of occupation that emerges from the material forces of occupation.

Iraq is not Okinawa. Iraq is not Palestine, Vietnam, the Matrix, or 1939 Poland: but America is occupying Iraq in violation of international law and with a callousness that draws any number of justified comparisons. Okinawa never had the petrol-resources of Iraq, but the value of Iraq as the site for a series of permanent U.S. military bases is comparable to that Okinawa. We now know the answer to Reynolds' questions and predictions of what would become of Okinawa once the American occupation ended-though the 1972 administrative return of Okinawa to Japan did not significantly reduced America's military presence. Given America's aspiration for a permanent military base in the Middle East (as well as increasing pressure from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Emirates to remove American military forces from their countries) we can expect the establishment of an Okinawa-like military base of operations in Iraq. While we don't know what we will find in Iraq a dozen years from now we know what we won't find if America stays the course: we won't find an Iraq that has become "an example to all the Middle East of a vital and peaceful self-governing nation" as promised by President Bush on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq.

There are some contemporary anthropologists studying military occupations. While some of this work follows Israeli anthropologist Jeff Halper's heroic example of confronting and resisting occupations, most of these anthropologists are facilitating occupation rather than challenging it-though those anthropologists who work with occupiers most frequently rationalize their actions as being to reduce dangers for those occupied. Some anthropologists instruct the military and the State Department about culturally sensitive means of occupation. To some this is an open sore on the body anthropology-betraying a fundamental abandonment of ethical commitments to serve populations anthropologists study-while others see this as a way of serving these populations by diminishing the dangers for those occupied by educating the occupiers about the culture they are occupying. This latter position recalls anthropologist Walter Goldschmidt's remark concerning anthropologists working in the WRA detention camps for Japanese-Americans during World War Two, that "this was a case of rape, but the anthropologists who went into the War Relocation Authority felt that they could serve to ameliorate this situation even if they could not stop it." But rape is still rape, and at some point the act of comforting victims while rape continues transforms amelioration into abetment.


http://www.counterpunch.com/price01062004.html

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