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{:Sidebar}

Definitions:

"Terrorism" is when Muslims kill thousands of Americans.

"Terrorism" is when America is threatened with bombings.

"A new kind of war" is when Afghanistan is threatened with bombings.

Blowback:

An Editorial from the Boston Globe

Looking past the Taliban

American forces are heading toward Afghanistan, hideout of Osama bi Laden, the prime suspect in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. If the mission of those forces were only to capture or kill bin Laden, it would be less risky and less complicated than the actual mission: driving from power the reactionary fundamentalist warlords known as the Taliban.

Sadly, both the Taliban and bin Laden terrorist network, Al Qaeda, owe their perch on power in Afghanistan to reckless American past policies. The foreign Islamicist fighters that were imported into Afghanistan to battle Soviet infidels in the ‘80s were the pride of the Central Intelligence Agency. They received financial backing from the Saudis that was apportioned to the most fanatical groups by Pakistan’s military intelligence.

The CIA handlers of this multinational “Islamic legion” were unconcerned with their political projects – overthrowing secular regimes in their own countries. In CIA jargon, the calamities that ensued were an unfortunate example of “blowback,” the boomerang effect of unintended consequences.

But for the people of Afghanistan – particularly for Afghan women and girls – the consequences of blowback included human suffering and cruelty on a scale that is almost unimaginable to comfortable Americans.

Because bin Laden and the Taliban are inextricably entwined – with at least 1,500 of the Suadi terrorist’s best troops fighting for the Taliban against the Northern Alliance, according to Jane’s intelligence review – there was never a realistic chance that the Taliban would turn bin Laden over to his pursuers.

Given that reality, the only way to deprive bin Laden of Afghanistan as a staging area for more mass murders here in the United States is to topple his Taliban protectors from power.

This time U.S. policy makers must avoid the blunders of their predecessors, who ignored the human and political dimensions of an alliance with bin Laden and his like. The result was the inferno in lower Manhattan and the execution of women in the Kabul soccer stadium for breaking Taliban rules.

This time, if the United States intends to liberate the Afghans from the Taliban, Washington should back the United Nations special representative for Afghanistan in his efforts to form a decent government representing all currents of Afghan society. The many anti-Taliban groups could be brought together in a traditional tribal council, called a Loya Jirga. Before initiating any military action, the United States and its allies should pledge long-term generous assistance for the reconstruction of Afghanistan and for neighboring countries willing to cease their bloody interference in Afghan politics.

If it is true that war is politics by another name, then as policy makers prepare for a war against terrorism they should remember also that politics is war by another name.

__________________________

FOLKS OUT THERE HAVE A "DISTASTE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION AND CULTURAL VALUES"

Edward S. Herman

http://www.zmag.org/ZNET.htm

One of the most durable features of the U.S. culture is the inability or refusal to recognize U.S. crimes. The media have long been calling for the Japanese and Germans to admit guilt, apologize, and pay reparations. But the idea that this country has committed huge crimes, and that current events such as the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks may be rooted in responses to those crimes, is close to inadmissible. Editorializing on the recent attacks ("The National Defense," Sept. 12), the New York Times does give a bit of weight to the end of the Cold War and consequent "resurgent of ethnic hatreds," but that the United States and other NATO powers contributed to that resurgence by their own actions (e.g., helping dismantle the Soviet Union and pressing Russian "reform"; positively encouraging Slovenian and Croatian exit from Yugoslavia and the breakup of that state, and without dealing with the problem of stranded minorities, etc.) is completely unrecognized.

The Times then goes on to blame terrorism on "religious fanaticism...the anger among those left behind by globalization," and the "distaste of Western civilization and cultural values" among the global dispossessed. The blinders and self-deception in such a statement are truly mind-boggling. As if corporate globalization, pushed by the U.S. government and its closest allies, with the help of the World Trade Organization, World Bank and IMF, had not unleashed a tremendous immiseration process on the Third World, with budget cuts and import devastation of artisans and small farmers. Many of these hundreds of millions of losers are quite aware of the role of the United States in this process. It is the U.S. public who by and large have been kept in the dark.

Vast numbers have also suffered from U.S. policies of supporting rightwing rule and state terrorism, in the interest of combating "nationalistic regimes maintained in large part by appeals to the masses" and threatening to respond to "an increasing popular demand for immediate improvement in the low living standards of the masses," as fearfully expressed in a 1954 National Security Council report, whose contents were never found to be "news fit to print." In connection with such policies, in the U.S. sphere of influence a dozen National Security States came into existence in the 1960s and 1970s, and as Noam Chomsky and I reported back in 1979, of 35 countries using torture on an administrative basis in the late 1970s, 26 were clients of the United States. The idea that many of those torture victims and their families, and the families of the thousands of "disappeared" in Latin America in the 1960s through the 1980s, may have harbored some ill-feelings toward the United States remains unthinkable to U.S. commentators.

During the Vietnam war the United States used its enormous military power to try to install in South Vietnam a minority government of U.S. choice, with its military operations based on the knowledge that the people there were the enemy. This country killed millions and left Vietnam (and the rest of Indochina) devastated. A Wall Street Journal report in 1997 estimated that perhaps 500,000 children in Vietnam suffer from serious birth defects resulting from the U.S. use of chemical weapons there. Here again there could be a great many people with well-grounded hostile feelings toward the United States.

The same is true of millions in southern Africa, where the United States supported Savimbi in Angola and carried out a policy of "constructive engagement" with apartheid South Africa as it carried out a huge cross-border terroristic operation against the frontline states in the 1970s and 1980s, with enormous casualties. U.S. support of "our kind of guy" Suharto as he killed and stole at home and in East Timor, and its long warm relation with Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, also may have generated a great deal of hostility toward this country among the numerous victims.

Iranians may remember that the United States installed the Shah as an amenable dictator in 1953, trained his secret services in "methods of interrogation," and lauded him as he ran his regime of torture; and they surely remember that the United States supported Saddam Hussein all through the 1980s as he carried out his war with them, and turned a blind eye to his use of chemical weapons against the enemy state. Their civilian airliner 655 that was destroyed in 1988, killing 290 people, was downed by a U.S. warship engaged in helping Saddam Hussein fight his war with Iran. Many Iranians may know that the commander of that ship was given a Legion of Merit award in 1990 for his "outstanding service" (but readers of the New York Times would not know this as the paper has never mentioned this high level commendation).

The unbending U.S. backing for Israel as that country has carried out a long-term policy of expropriating Palestinian land in a major ethnic cleansing process, has produced two intifadas-- uprisings reflecting the desperation of an oppressed people. But these uprisings and this fight for elementary rights have had no constructive consequences because the United States gives the ethnic cleanser arms, diplomatic protection, and carte blanche as regards policy.

All of these victims may well have a distaste for "Western civilization and cultural values," but that is because they recognize that these include the ruthless imposition of a neoliberal regime that serves Western transnational corporate interests, along with a willingness to use unlimited force to achieve Western ends. This is genuine imperialism, sometimes using economic coercion alone, sometimes supplementing it with violence, but with many millions--perhaps even billions--of people "unworthy victims." The Times editors do not recognize this, or at least do not admit it, because they are spokespersons for an imperialism that is riding high and whose principals are unprepared to change its policies. This bodes ill for the future. But it is of great importance right now to stress the fact that imperial terrorism inevitably produces retail terrorist responses; that the urgent need is the curbing of the causal force, which is the rampaging empire.

http://www.zmag.org/ZNET.htm

__________________________

WHO TERRORIZES WHOM?

Edward S. Herman and David Peterson

One of the marks of exceptional hegemonic power is the ability to define words and get issues framed in accord with your own political agenda. This is notorious at this moment in history as regards "terrorism" and "antiterrorism." Since the September 11 attacks, two truths have been indisputable and universally reported. One is that the hijacker bombings of the World Trade Center and Pentagon were atrocities of a monumental and spectacular scale (and media coverage of that day's events alone may have generated more words and graphic images than any other single event in recent history). A second truth is that the bombings were willful acts of terrorism, accepting the basic and widely agreed-upon definition of terrorism as "the use of force or the threat of force against civilian populations to achieve political objectives." And let us also recognize that "sponsorship of terrorism" means organizing, and/or underwriting and providing a "safe harbor" to state or nonstate agents who terrorize. But there is a third indisputable truth, although much less understood, let alone universally reported: namely, that from the 1950s the United States itself has been heavily engaged in terrorism, and has sponsored, underwritten, and protected other terrorist states and individual terrorists. In fact, as the greatest and now sole superpower, the United States has also been the world's greatest terrorist and sponsor of terror. Right now this country is supporting a genocidal terrorist operation against Iraq via "sanctions of mass destruction" and regular bombing attacks to achieve its political objectives; it is underwriting the army and paramilitary forces in Colombia, who openly terrorize the civilian population; and it continues to give virtually unconditional support to an Israeli state that has been using force to achieve its political objectives for decades. The United States has terrorized or sponsored terror in Nicaragua, Brazil, Uruguay, Cuba, Guatemala, Indonesia/East Timor, Zaire, Angola, South Africa, and elsewhere. And it stands alone in both using and brandishing the threat to use nuclear weapons. It has for many years provided a safe harbor to the Cuban refugee terror network, and it has done the same for a whole string of terrorists in flight from, among other places, El Salvador, Haiti, Vietnam, and even Nazi Germany (see Christopher Simpson's Blowback). Even in its response to the September 11 terrorist events the United States resorted instantly to its own terrorism. Ignoring legal niceties--despite its supposed devotion to the "rule of law"- -the United States immediately began to threaten to "take out" states harboring terrorists, threatened the Afghans with bombing--itself an act of terrorism--and by such threats succeeded in blocking the flow of food supplies to a starving population, which is yet another act of terrorism, and a major one. (A spokesman for Oxfam International stationed in Islamabad recently stated that "Prior to this crisis, the World Food Program, with the help of Oxfam and other groups, was feeding 3.7 million [Afghan] people. But with the onset of the bombing campaign, this has stopped as the aid workers have been force to withdraw. The airdrops will--at their very best--feed 130,000 people," or only 3.5 percent of those facing winter and starvation). On October 7 the United States then began to bomb this impoverished country--not just a further act of terrorism, but the crime of aggression. All serious observers recognize that the U.S. actions against Afghanistan have and will cause many, many more deaths than the 6,000 killed in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. But U.S. power and self-righteousness, broadcast and justified to the whole world by a subservient media machine, assure that what the United States does will neither be called terrorism, nor aggression, nor elicit indignation remotely comparable to that expressed over the events of September 11--however well its actions fit the definitions. The same bias extends to other Western countries, diminishing in scope and intensity from Britain to the others, and weakening further in the Third World. In the Middle East, for most of the population the bias disappears and U.S. terrorism is called by its right name, although the U.S.-dependent governments toe their master's line, if nervously. In these more remote areas the press speaks a different language, calling the United States a "rogue state par excellence repeatedly defying international rulings whether by the World Court or by U.N. resolutions when they have not suited its interests" and a "bandit sheriff" (The Hindu, India), and speaking of this as an "age of Euro-American tyranny" with tyrants who are merely "civilized and advanced terrorists" (Ausaf, Pakistan). But another sad fact is that in this country, and Britain as well, even the Left has trouble escaping the hegemonic definitions and frames. Leftists here regularly discuss the terrorism issue starting from the premise that the United States is against terrorism and that the issue is how the U.S. government can best deal with the problem. They are worried that the United States will go about solving the problem too aggressively, will seek vengeance, not justice. So they propose lawful routes, such as resort to the United Nations and International Court of Justice; and they urge seeking cooperation from the Arab states to crush terrorists within their own states. They discuss how bin Laden money routes can be cut off. Some of them even propose that the United States and its allies intervene not to bomb, but to build a new society in Afghanistan, engage in "nation-building", as the popular phrase puts it, in the spirit of the Kosovo "new humanitarian" intervention. While some of these proposals are meritorious, we haven't seen any that discuss how a "coalition of the willing" might be formed to bring the United States under control, to force it to stop using and threatening violence, to compel it and its British ally to cease terrorizing Iraq, and to make it stop supporting terrorist states like Colombia, Turkey, Indonesia, and Israel. Or to make U.S. funding of its terrorist operations more difficult! The hegemon defines the main part of the agenda--who terrorizes--and the debate is over how he and his allies should deal with those he identifies as terrorist. A good illustration of this Left accommodationism is displayed in the "New Agenda to Combat Terrorism," recently issued by the Institute for Policy Studies and Interhemispheric Resource Center in their Foreign Policy in Focus series. Nowhere in this document is it suggested that the United States is itself a terrorist state, sponsor of terrorism, or safe harbor of terrorists, although it is acknowledged that this country has supported "repressive regimes." "Repressive" is softer and less invidious than "terrorist." The report refers to the "destructive and counterproductive economic sanctions on Iraq," but doesn't suggest that this constitutes terrorism. In fact, "destructive" sounds like buildings knocked down and fails to capture the fact of a million or more human casualties. The recent publicity given the U.S.'s deliberate destruction of the Iraqi water supply also suggests something more than "destructive and counterproductive" is needed to properly describe U.S. policy toward that country (Thomas Nagy, "The Secret Behind the Sanctions: How the U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply," The Progressive, September 2001). Nowhere does the IPS/IRC document mention Colombia, Turkey or Indonesia, where the United States is currently supporting "repressive regimes." This practice of leaning over backwards to downplay the U.S. terrorist role merges into serious misreadings of ongoing events: for example, the New Agenda claims that one effect of September 11 was that "defense policy was redefined as defending America and Americans rather than as force projection." This takes as gospel official propaganda claims, when in fact September 11 has given the proponents of force projection just the excuse they need to project force, which they are doing under the guise of antiterrorism. As John Pilger notes, "The ultimate goal is not the capture of a fanatic, which would be no more than a media circus, but the acceleration of western imperial power" (New Statesman, Oct. 15, 2001). And discussing the Bush administration's non-negotiable demands on the Taliban, Delhi University professor Nirmalangshu Mukherji points out that "it is hard to believe that thousands are going to be killed and maimed, entire nations devastated, regional conflicts allowed to take ugly turns, the rest of the world held in fear--all because the dead body of a single, essentially unworthy person is given such high value." On the contrary, she proposes, as does Pilger, that "in the name of fighting global terrorism, the US is basically interested in using the opportunity to establish [a] permanent military presence in the area" that is notable for its geo-political importance "Offers of Peace," . Calling for "reorienting U.S. policy along the lines of respecting human rights," the New Agenda report states that "the unnecessary projection of U.S. military abroad, represented by the archipeligo of overseas military bases, often serves as a physical reminder of U.S. political and military support for repressive regimes." This claim that such bases are "unnecessary" completely ignores their ongoing important role in facilitating the global expansion of U.S. business, and, amazingly, ignores the fact that the United States is right now in the process of building new ones in "repressive" states like Uzbekistan, with 7,000 political prisoners and in the midst of a low-intensity war against Islamic insurgents ("U.S. Indicates New Military Partnership With Uzbekistan," Wall Street Journal, Oct. 15, 2001). Such bases are only "unnecessary" to analysts who are unable or unwilling to confront the reality of a powerful imperialism in fine working order and in a new phase of expansion. These analysts seem to believe that the United States can easily, perhaps with Left advice, be dissuaded from being an imperialist power! The reasons for this Left accommodation to what we must call the Superterrorist's antiterrorist agenda are mainly twofold. One is the power of hegemonic ideas, so that even leftists are swept along with the general understanding that the United States is fighting terrorism and is only a victim of terrorism. Some swallow the New Imperialist premise that the United States is the proper vehicle for reconstructing the world, which it should do in a gentler and kinder fashion. Thus Richard Falk takes this for granted in declaring the U.S. attack on Afghanistan "the first truly just war since World War II" (The Nation, Oct. 29, 2001), although claiming that its justice "is in danger of being negated by the injustice of improper means and excessive ends." Though writing in the liberal Nation magazine, it never occurs to Falk that the rightwing Republican regime of Bush and Cheney, so close to the oil industry and military-industrial complex, might have an agenda incompatible with a just war. Apart from this, as the attack was itself a violation of international law, and was from its start killing civilians by bombs directly and via its important contribution to the already endemic mass starvation, Falk makes the war "just" despite the fact that its justice was already negated at the time he made his claim. (By Falk's logic, an Iraqi attack on the United States would also be a highly just war, though its justice might be endangered by dubious means and excessive ends.) This is imperialist apologetics carried to the limit. The other reason for leftist accommodation is pragmatic. Thanks to the effectiveness of the U.S. propaganda system, U.S. citizens by and large are caught within the epistemic bind of NOT KNOWING THAT THEY DO NOT KNOW. Thus, leftists understand that people will have difficulty understanding what they are talking about if they start their discussions of controlling terrorism with an agenda on how to control Superterrorist's terrorism. If one wants to be listened to quickly and possibly influence the course of policy right now--and be far safer personally and professionally--it is better to take the conventional view of terrorism as a premise and discuss what the United States should do about it. Maybe this way one can help curb extremist responses. On the other hand, by taking it as the starting premise that the United States is only a victim of terrorism, one loses the opportunity to educate people to a fundamental truth about terrorism and even implicitly denies that truth in order to be practical. We find that we can't do that. After one of us (Herman) authored books entitled The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism (with Noam Chomsky) and The Real Terror Network, the latter featuring the gigantic U.S.-sponsored terror network that emerged in the years after 1950, and after following U.S. policy for years thereafter in which terrorism has been very prominent, he (and we) consider the notion of the United States as an antiterrorist state a sick joke. We believe it is of the utmost importance to contest the hegemonic agenda that makes the U.S. and its allies only the victims of terror, not terrorists and sponsors of terror. This is a matter of establishing basic truth, but also providing the long- run basis for systemic change that will help solve the problem of "terrorism," however defined. Others see things differently, and very good articles have been written in the pragmatic mode. But we want to call attention to the fact that there is a cost to using that mode, and those that work in it should do this understanding what they are taking for granted and its costs. Given the current trajectory of world events, we believe that we need a greater focus on ALL the terrorists and sponsors of terror, and less pragmatism.