Cain et Abel postmodernes, avec le péché originel

En quelques jours s’est déroulée une tragédie qui nous renvoie aux références bibliques. Ainsi en juge James Carroll (dans le Boston Globe du 18 décembre), dont on connaît la profonde religiosité. Il s’agit des jours où, GW Bush, rejetant le rapport Baker de l’ISG, en vint à décider que les USA augmenteraient l’intensité de la guerre. Au lieu de la reconnaissance de ses effets et de l’évitement de ses horribles conséquences, cet acte à renchéri sur le “péché originel” que les USA ont commis au Moyen-Orient.

Selon la formule consacrée, que Dieu nous protège…

«Instead of the originating sin of parents, the Cain-and-Abel combatants of today's Middle East (from the insurgent parties in Iraq, to the warring factions of Lebanon, to the antagonists in Israel and Palestine, now including the fratricidal Palestinians) are burdened by the fatal flaw of the United States of America. The indispensable nation, it turns out, proves indispensable only for the spread of chaos. The grievances of the Middle East are ancient, but so is the capacity for fragile balance, now upset. Iraqis, Lebanese, Israelis, and Palestinians all make violent choices and bear the weight of violent consequences, but the immediate context within which those choices are being made has been overwhelmingly established by violent choices made in Washington.

»The Bush administration embraced the cult of war when it did not have to. Bush re-legitimized that cult, and sponsored it anew. In this, he was supported by the American people, its press and its political establishment. In the beginning, the nation itself re affirmed war as the way to justice-and-peace. We did this. The first fallacy lived. By now, even Washington's one self-proclaimed ‘victory’ has led to further defeat. The ‘good’ war in Afghanistan put in place structures of oppression that promised an inevitable resumption of savagery, which has begun.

»After murdering Abel, Cain justified his act, and his parents denied their responsibility for it. Otherwise, the dread pattern of accusation and recrimination would have been checked right there. Humans have been enslaved by this dynamic ever since. Does that vindicate the United States with a ‘realist’ claim to inevitability? No. Because historic moments of ethical recognition regularly present themselves, and one just did. The Baker commission, whatever its faults, defined the folly of any further American pursuit of ‘victory’ in Iraq. Yet, with Bush's mantra of ‘prevail,’ other ‘studies’ commissioned to dilute Baker's, and fresh Pentagon talk of brutal escalation, the aim of victory through mass violence is being reaffirmed. The unoriginal sin, by now, but more deadly than ever.»

Mis en ligne le 22 décembre 2006 à 08H24