"By identifying America primarily as a military power, by
asserting that it will pursue its perceived national interests
regardless of international laws, coalitions or treaties, by
emphasising its unchallengeable superiority over every other nation
and global institution, by claiming an unconditional moral hegemony
over any adversary he cares to identify, and by acting so blatantly
in the interests of the US business establishment, Mr Bush is
weakening America and playing into the hands of its opponents. He is
fostering the belief that America's wealth and power are
illegitimate and coercive ... The more America brandishes its
military power, the more it will be met with antagonism, revulsion
and misunderstanding... The greatest danger to America's dominant
position today is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is the arrogance of
American power." So writes Anatole Kaletsky in the conservative
Times of London.
(Top)
The algebra of Infinite
Justice
The
Algebra of Infinite Justice Arundhati Roy
Bush's almost god-like mission requires some small clarifications. For
example, Infinite Justice/Enduring Freedom for whom?
It must be
hard for ordinary Americans, so recently bereaved, to look up at the
world with their eyes full of tears and encounter what might appear to
them to be indifference. It isn't indifference. It's just augury. An
absence of surprise. The tired wisdom of knowing that what goes around
eventually comes around. The American people ought to know that it is
not them, but their government's policies, that are so hated.
Bush's
almost god-like mission--called Operation Infinite Justice until it
was pointed out that this could be seen as an insult to Muslims, who
believe that only Allah can mete out infinite justice, and was renamed
Operation Enduring Freedom--requires some small clarifications. For
example, Infinite Justice/Enduring Freedom for whom?
In 1996,
Madeleine Albright, then the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations,
was asked on national television what she felt about the fact that
500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of economic sanctions the
U.S. insisted upon. She replied that it was "a very hard
choice," but that all things considered, "we think the price
is worth it." Albright never lost her job for saying this. She
continued to travel the world representing the views and aspirations
of the U.S. government. More pertinently, the sanctions against Iraq
remain in place. Children continue to die.
So here we
have it. The equivocating distinction between civilization and
savagery, between the "massacre of innocent people" or, if
you like, the "clash of civilizations" and "collateral
damage." The sophistry and fastidious algebra of Infinite
Justice. How many dead Iraqis will it take to make the world a better
place? How many dead Afghans for every dead American? How many dead
children for every dead man? How many dead mujahedeen for each dead
investment banker?
More...
.... published in December "Progressive", posted 11/25
(Top)
Boulder examines the conscience of a country
by Pamela White (Editorial@boulderweekly.com)
As the dust settled on Tuesday's shocking terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., President George Bush vowed the United States would find and punish those responsible for the devastation.
His words resonated with stunned Americans across the country, who gathered in front of television sets and spoke out on TV programs and radio shows, some demanding a swift and brutal U.S. response.
Anger fueled by images of Palestinians celebrating the attacks in the street prompted one local caller to say it was time to "kill all the towel heads."
But scattered among the grief-stricken and angry voices were a small number of Americans asking whether the United States has done anything to provoke such violence.
It's a question many people didn't appreciate.
"I'm appalled at the lack of patriotism," said one caller, who spoke out on KGNU radio. Still, it's a question worth trying to answer.
Why is the United States despised?
John Wayne politics
Local U.S. policy experts and activists grappled with grief and shock Tuesday along with the rest of the country. While they took pains to explain that they in no way excuse or condone Tuesday's violence, some were willing to offer their insights into the reasons so many people hate America.
Understanding the motives behind terrorist attacks against the United States is hampered by the assumptions many Americans hold, said Ira
Chernus, a professor of religious studies at CU.
One of those assumptions is that U.S. intentions the world over are good, even when the government or military makes mistakes. The belief that we're only trying to help makes it hard for us to understand why anyone would do something like this to us, Chernus said.
Related to that assumption is the belief that the United States is both innocent and invulnerable, which prevents Americans from listening to the message behind such events.
"The important thing is to be able to listen insofar as we can to the people who carried out this thing," Chernus said. "We start out with the assumption that there's no point in listening to what they have to say. The general assumption is that if you listen to what they say, that endorses (the attack)."
Chernus points out that the message of terrorists on trial for other acts of violence around the world has been left out of court coverage. People never get a clear picture of what's bothering these people and why they were driven to such extremes.
While some critics claim that U.S. policy is motivated by greed or aggression, Chernus believes foreign policy since World War II has been focused on defending the country against perceived threats like communism and the Soviet Union. Those efforts to protect and defend often extend far beyond U.S. borders, however, forcing the United States into conflict with other peoples.
"We believe the only way to defend the United States is to organize the world. We step on other people's toes every day in ways we can't understand," Chernus said. "It's a stupid way to defend yourself because in the end you experience more risk."
According to David Barsamian, host of the nationally broadcast program Alternative Radio, risk to American lives comes as a result of rage generated by U.S. foreign policy and economic and cultural hegemony.
"It's directly related to its foreign policy and its perception as the primary agent and enforcer of the status quo of the global capitalist system," said Barsamian.
Barsamian sat in his Boulder home Tuesday watching coverage of the "very shocking" attacks on television.
"What's extraordinary about these attacks is the level of sophistication," Barsamian said. "Where is the CIA? Where is the FBI? Where are the tens of billions of dollars being spent?
"Starbucks closes all stores internationally. This is huge. Look at the level of panic here."
Speculation since the attacks has centered on various Islamic fundamentalist groups, particularly Saudi Arabian exile Osama Bin Laden and his followers. While pointing out that we don't know who is responsible for the attacks, Barsamian stressed there is a great deal of rage toward the United States in the Middle East.
"U.S. foreign policy is seen by many Middle Eastern people as being overwhelmingly one-sided in favor of Israel," he said. "There's tremendous anger toward the United States, and there's a tremendous irony in this. If it is traced to Bin Laden, he's a product of U.S. foreign policy."
In an effort to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, the U.S. swallowed its repugnance toward Bin Laden and men like him, who were trained and funded by the CIA in a bit of Cold War strategy that has had devastating consequences as the students turn their weapons against their teachers.
"This is an example of blowback," Barsamian said, adding, "if it can be traced to this particular group, which is not farfetched."
Joel Edelstein, professor of political science at CU-Denver and producer of programs at KGNU radio, acknowledged that Israel has legitimate concerns about its safety. Still, the struggle in the Middle East has been over land, with the United States supporting a policy that is devastating to Palestinians, he said.
"You have this ongoing degradation of Palestinians," Edelstein said. "They really were forced out of their houses. Their houses really were bulldozed."
The United States spends $3.5 billion annually on aid to Israel, which goes to support these actions and to defend Israel's continued settlement on the West Bank.
"Americans would not sit quiet if they were treated like the Palestinians are treated by the Israelis," Edelstein said.
Barsamian said Israel's policies build desperation in Palestinian people.
"If you lose your land, if you cannot feed your family, if you've been culturally humiliated, if you've been denigrated on all sides - this creates a reaction, and that reaction can take extreme forms," he said.
Terrorism, Barsamian said, is the "poor man's B-52."
But it's not just U.S. policy in the Middle East that makes the United States a target, experts agree. Nor is dissatisfaction with the United States limited to Muslims. U.S. indifference toward World Court rulings, its refusal to fulfill its financial obligations to the United Nations, and its global military presence also inspire antipathy in people around the world, including America's allies.
"To Americans it seems perfectly normal that we have military bases in scores of countries, but imagine if Thailand had bases in Canada," Barsamian said, conjuring up images of Thai fighters enforcing no-fly zones over parts of the United States.
The U.S. military presence is offensive to people around the world, he said. This is particularly true in the Middle East, which has become a sort of "floating military base," with U.S. warships continually stationed in waters surrounding the Persian Gulf.
"This is arrogance. This is imperial behavior," Barsamian said.
The "American imperial swagger" that accompanies the U.S. military only makes matters worse, Barsamian said. This swagger reveals itself in the U.S. tendency to act unilaterally, rejecting international opinion and even U.N. authority on issues like sanctions against Cuba, the Kyoto Accord, and nuclear weapons treaties.
"International treaties are not us," he said. "Bush has never met an international treaty he liked. This is John Wayne politics."
Resentment toward the United States extends to Europe, as well.
"Any top dog faces resentment, but some of it is rooted in quite strong political feeling," Barsamian said.
Europeans are mystified and outraged by American use of capital punishment and the opposition of some Americans toward abortion. And while European nations have tried to voice their opinions on U.S. decisions and actions abroad, the U.S. government has not welcomed the feedback, ignoring resolutions made by the European Parliament.
"We're a rogue nation," said Edelstein. "The European nations are looking at us in terms of putting missiles in space, refusing to sign Kyoto. Europe thinks we're crazy."
Allies that used to vote with us or abstain from voting on controversial issues of importance to the United States are now voting against us as our isolation grows, Edelstein said.
While Americans tend to view the United States as a force for freedom, justice and democracy in the world, many other peoples see the United States as an oppressor, he said.
"We are the sole hegemon. We're returning to the concept of Manifest Destiny."
A world in poverty
"Not only does the United States export foreign policy. It also exports its culture," Barsamian said. "There's not sensitivity to local culture and local traditions, particularly in the Islamic world where tradition is stronger than it is in Europe."
This culture takes the form of Hollywood movies, Starbucks, and Burger Kings on street corners in places like Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where American culture is considered suspect at best.
"We tend to view the United States as the universal culture to which all others aspire," said
Edelstein.
This is based, in part, on misconceptions Americans have of their own country, he said.
"We think we have the highest wages, which is not true," Edelstein said. "We think we are the freest country, which is debatable. We tend to think we have the best democracy, which is absurd."
Such blind faith in our own culture creates the mistaken belief that it is welcome everywhere.
In the United States, culture is intimately tied to economy, and the U.S. government promotes the latter with a vengeance. Barsamian said U.S. diplomatic policy could be summed up this way: "We're going to do what we want."
Barsamian recalls a story Vandana Shiva shared with him during an interview. Shiva, a human-rights activist from India, quoted a U.S. trade representative speaking with Indian officials as saying, "'If you don't open up your markets, we're going to break them open with a crowbar.'"
"This is how the Mafia don speaks," Barsamian said. "I often say if you want to understand U.S. policy, watch 'The Godfather.'"
Despite the effort put into the economy, global capitalism has not delivered to many people around the globe, Barsamian said.
"It has not delivered the kind of benefits that are meaningful to segments of the population. Having a Burger King around the corner is not meaningful."
Edelstein agrees.
"The U.S. government represents the wealthy in our own country," he said. "And our friends are the wealthy in other countries. You can see it in the development model we support through the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and World Bank."
This model ensures that a small percentage of people in developing countries move up financially but leaves the vast majority behind, he said.
Intense protests against the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization over the past two years indicate that some Americans are concerned about the connection between poverty and global development, Edelstein said.
Carolyn Bninski, a local activist who was arrested in April 2000 during the IMF protests in Washington, D.C., said the current model of development accounts for about six million deaths worldwide each year.
"We use economic power to impose policies on countries that benefit wealthy corporations in the United States but harm local people," Bninski said. "A lot of people die - slow deaths perhaps - as a result of those policies. I am in no way downplaying the horror (of the terrorist attacks). I think it's a horrible tragedy. But I think we need to start seeing our relationship to every life and everybody on this planet."
Scott Silber, a local community organizer who has also participated in protests against the
IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization, said people from all segments of U.S. society have become concerned about these economic policies.
"People have been able to link the symptoms they're fighting to global corporate power," Silber said.
Those symptoms include violations of human rights, workers' rights, the rights of women and indigenous people, as well as the destruction of the environment and the blind pursuit of capital, he said.
"People are suffering," Silber said. "The vast majority of the world is in poverty, and the United States is on the benefiting end of that."
A call for empathy
Bninski said she and other members of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center fear the United States will retaliate blindly in a fury over Tuesday's attack, resulting in the deaths of more innocent people.
"The United States needs to go through legitimate international channels and to try people in a court of law that's legitimate," Bninski said. "It's really important to reserve judgment and not to retaliate against people or groups of people."
She's not the only one who's concerned. Muslim students, many of whom are American citizens by birth, braced for an onslaught of hate mail, threats, and confrontations. Muslim organizations across the country reported death threats and hate mail, many pulling their Web sites to stem the tide of violent words. But at CU, where police have stepped up security and are prepared to protect Islamic students, incidents have been minor.
"We're all just holding each other," said Amina Nawaz, an American citizen and president of CU's Muslim Student Association.
Nawaz said some Muslims experienced heightened tensions in classes Tuesday. One woman, wearing the traditional hijab covering, walked into her classroom where students were talking only to have the room fall silent when people saw her.
"She could just feel everyone's hatred boring into her," Nawaz said.
But Nawaz said members of her organization are grief-stricken over the attacks.
"We're a part of the American community, and we feel it just as strongly as anybody else," she said.
Those who engineered the attacks don't reflect the values of Islam, Nawaz said.
"Shameless acts are not part of our religion," she said.
Bninski said it's time for Americans to learn to empathize with people who are suffering around the world. While they connect to the suffering of other Americans, they seem blind to the suffering of non-Americans.
"I think we have to think about every human life as being of equal value, not just Americans," Bninski said. "We need to start thinking of global citizens and think of the impact of U.S. decisions on other people."
On Bninski's mind are the deaths of an estimated six million Iraqi children since 1990 due to U.S.-imposed sanctions and the destruction in Yugoslavia brought on by 68 days of bombing.
"I think of the images of Burmese workers on (American-owned) pipelines with chains around their ankles," said
Silber. "I think of the workers I see every day all around me who are working 16-hour days to survive and feed their families. I think of the little children who are born into war-torn areas of the world where it seems like their lives are hopeless. If only war weren't profitable, these kids wouldn't have to grow up in fear and suffering."
But most Americans don't make an effort to learn about the ways in which their nation contributes to tragedies in the world around them, Chernus said.
"It's willed ignorance," he said. "There's a cultural divide in the United States. There's a segment of our population that is able to - perhaps imperfectly - empathize with suffering in the world. And there are those Americans who simply can't seem to relate."
Chernus fears Tuesday's horror will be written off as the work of "unprovoked crazies," and America will lose a chance to benefit from what could be a wake-up call.
"If things were going right, we would ask ourselves what role we may have played in the chain of events that led to this disaster. If we were doing the right thing, we would think of ourselves as part of a network of relationships," Chernus said. "It's not a question of 'our fault' or 'their fault,' but of how that network of relationships has gotten us to where we are today."
Barsamian said that discussions of U.S. foreign policy will be kept out of the response to the attacks.
"No one's going to go to the root causes, not with corporate media acting as stenographers to power," Barsamian said. "(The media will say) 'These are just genetically crazy people. They were having bad hair days.'"
The media will focus selectively on Islamic fundamentalists, leaving out mention of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, two very strict Muslim nations with which the United States has close political ties, he predicted.
A constructive response, Barsamian said, would look more like this: "Start obeying international law. Show respect for sensitivity for other cultures. Stop bullying the world. Stop acting like a Mafia don. Work with difference. Accept criticism. Radically relook at our behavior in the Middle East."
Edelstein would like to see the United States respond by turning its effort inward.
"For the American government to respond in a way that I would consider constructive would include the establishment of democracy in the United States."
And if the United States continues on its current path?
"U.S. foreign policy has not given people hope. If you rob people of their dignity and self-respect, they have nothing," Barsamian said. "That's how you can become a suicide bomber."
(Top)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Indeed, I tremble for my country
when I reflect that God is just" - Thomas Jefferson Notes from Virginia
By Eric J Ross
US Foreign Interventions and Invasions since Vietnam
Cuba 1963 - today - US blockades island for 39 years. Numerous assassination attempts against leader. Continued actions condemned by Human Rights Groups and the United Nations General Assembly.
Australia 1973-75 - CIA interferes and manipulates free election process.
Chile 1973 - CIA backed coup ousts elected president, installs military Gen.
Pinochet. Decades of human rights abuses follow.
Portugal 1974 - CIA funnels millions to destabilize and sabotage NATO ally.
Angola 1976-92 - CIA assists South Africa-backed rebels.
Afghanistan 1979-82 - US supports, arms, trains Mujahadeen rebels including rebel leader Osama Bin Laden.
El Salvador 1980-92 - US aids government condemned for gross human rights violations.
Nicaragua 1981-92 - US directs and illegally supports contra war, mines harbor. Allows open flow of narcotics into US. US actions condemned by the United Nations World Court.
Chad 1982 - US supports overthrow of government. CIA supported secret police kill and torture tens of thousands.
Libya 1982 - USA shoots down 2 Libyan jets.
Honduras 1982 -90 - US builds bases near borders, supports government that uses Death Squads against it's citizens.
Lebanon 1982-84 - US bombs and shells Muslim positions, expels PLO from territory.
Grenada 1983-84 - US military invades tiny island. 400 Grenadians killed. "Gross violation" of international law condemned by United Nations.
Iraq 1987-88 - US supports and arms Saddam Hussein's Iraq in war against Iran.
Iran 1988 - US shoots down Iranian passenger airliner, killing 290 civilians. Claims it was an "accident".
Libya 1989 - US bombs capitol Tripoli killing 55 civilians. Calls it "collateral damage".
Philippines 1989 - US supports corrupt govt of Ferdinand Marcos against citizen uprising.
Panama 1989 - US invades with 27,000 soldiers. Kills 3000+ Panamanians, kidnaps it's own installed drug-dealing leader and CIA asset. Illegal US actions condemned by nearly unanimous United Nations and Organization of American States.
Kuwait 1991 - US invades Middle East, contradicting its position by intervening in inter-Arab affairs. Returns Kuwaiti Monarchy accused of human right abuses to throne.
Iraq 1990 - today - US randomly bombs civilian areas. Blockades Iraqi ports, allows no humanitarian or medical aid. est. 10,000 Iraqi's starve/die monthly as result.
Bulgaria 1991 - CIA funnels millions to destabilize one of the first freely elected governments.
Somalia 1992-94 - US sends in humanitarian aid. Becomes involved in Civil war, takes sides attacking one Mogadishu faction. Kills 500+ Somalis.
Peru 1992 - 01 - US provides military support, millions of dollars to corrupt Fujimori government. Drug kingpin Vladimir Montesino on CIA payroll while serving as Intelligence Chief. Involved directly in shooting down missionary aircraft, killing American woman and her infant child.
Colombia 1992 - present - US supports Colombian military, heavily involved in drug trafficking. 1,640 pounds of cocaine lands in Ft. Lauderdale Florida hidden inside Colombian Air Force cargo plane. Nearly 20,000 people killed by US supported military and
para-military so far.
Bosnia 1993 - US naval blockade of Serbia and Montenegro.
Haiti 1994 - US blockades island government, CIA supports military coup to remove elected President Aristide, then forcibly re-installs Aristide as President after he agrees to US conditions of rule.
Sudan 1998 - US bombs Aspirin Factory in Khartoum killing civilians.
Afghanistan 1998 - US missiles kill 28 civilians
Yugoslavia 1999 - US laser-guided bombs destroy Chinese Embassy in Belgrade killing three Chinese journalists.
Afghanistan 2001 - ?
US involvement in Foreign assassinations or attempts -- prohibited by Presidential decree since 1976 --
1960 - General Abdul Karim Kassem, leader of Iraq
1961 - Francois Duvalier, leader of Haiti
1961 - Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Congo
1961 - General Rafael Trujillo, leader of Dominican Republic
1963 - Ngo Dinh Diem, President of South Vietnam
1960s - Fidel Castro, President of Cuba , numerous attempts
1960s - Raul Castro, brother of Fidel.
1965 - Francisco Caamano, Opposition leader, Dominican Republic 1965-6 - Charles de Gaulle, President of France
1967 - Ernesto Che Guevara, Cuban leader
1970 - Salvador Allende, President of Chile
1970 - General Rene Schneider, Commander of Chilean Army
1970s, 81 - General Omar Torrijos, leader of Panama
1972 - General Manuel Noriega, chief of Panama Intelligence
1975 - Mobutu Sese Seko, President of Zaire
1976 - Michael Manley, Prime Minister of Jamaica
1980-86 - Moammar Qaddafi, leader of Libya, numerous attempts
1982 - Ayatollah Khomeine, leader of Iran
1983 - General Ahmed Dlimi, Army commander of Morocco
1983 - Miguel d'Escoto, Foreign Minister of Nicaragua
1984 - All nine leaders of the Nicaraguan National Directorate
1985 - Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanon Shiite leader 1991 - Saddam Hussein, leader of Iraq
1998 - Osama bin Laden, former US trained "freedom fighter".
1999 - Slobodan Mlosevic, President of Yugoslavia
======
(Top)
-----------------
If the attacks on America have their source in
the Islamic world, who can really be surprised?
Two days earlier, eight people were killed in
southern Iraq when British and American planes bombed civilian
areas. To my knowledge, not a word appeared in the mainstream media
in Britain.
An estimated 200,000 Iraqis, according to the
Health Education Trust in London, died during and in the immediate
aftermath of the slaughter known as the Gulf War.
This was never news that touched public
consciousness in the west.
At least a million civilians, half of them
children, have since died in Iraq as a result of a medieval embargo
imposed by the United States and Britain.
In Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Mujadeen,
which gave birth to the fanatical Taliban, was largely the creation
of the CIA.
The terrorist training camps where Osama bin
Laden, now "America's most wanted man", allegedly planned
his attacks, were built with American money and backing.
In Palestine, the enduring illegal occupation
by Israel would have collapsed long ago were it not for US backing.
Far from being the terrorists of the world,
the Islamic peoples have been its victims - principally the victims
of US fundamentalism, whose power, in all its forms, military,
strategic and economic, is the greatest source of terrorism on
earth.
This fact is censored from the Western media,
whose "coverage" at best minimises the culpability of
imperial powers. Richard Falk, professor of international relations
at Princeton, put it this way: "Western foreign policy is
presented almost exclusively through a self-righteous, one-way
legal/moral screen (with) positive images of Western values and
innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of
unrestricted political violence."
That Tony Blair, whose government sells lethal
weapons to Israel and has sprayed Iraq and Yugoslavia with cluster
bombs and depleted uranium and was the greatest arms supplier to the
genocidists in Indonesia, can be taken seriously when he now speaks
about the "shame" of the "new evil of mass
terrorism" says much about the censorship of our collective
sense of how the world is managed.
One of Blair's favourite words -
"fatuous" - comes to mind. Alas, it is no comfort to the
families of thousands of ordinary Americans who have died so
terribly that the perpetrators of their suffering may be the product
of Western policies. Did the American establishment believe that it
could bankroll and manipulate events in the Middle East without cost
to itself, or rather its own innocent people?
The attacks on Tuesday come at the end of a
long history of betrayal of the Islamic and Arab peoples: the
collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the foundation of the state of
Israel, four Arab-Israeli wars and 34 years of Israel's brutal
occupation of an Arab nation: all, it seems, obliterated within
hours by Tuesday's acts of awesome cruelty by those who say they
represent the victims of the West's intervention in their homelands.
"America, which has never known modern
war, now has her own terrible league table: perhaps as many as
20,000 victims."
As Robert Fisk points out, in the Middle East,
people will grieve the loss of innocent life, but they will ask if
the newspapers and television networks of the west ever devoted a
fraction of the present coverage to the half-a-million dead children
of Iraq, and the 17,500 civilians killed in Israel's 1982 invasion
of Lebanon. The answer is no. There are deeper roots to the
atrocities in the US, which made them almost inevitable.
It is not only the rage and grievance in the
Middle East and south Asia. Since the end of the cold war, the US
and its sidekicks, principally Britain, have exercised, flaunted,
and abused their wealth and power while the divisions imposed on
human beings by them and their agents have grown as never before.
An elite group of less than a billion people
now take more than 80 per cent of the world's wealth.
In defence of this power and privilege, known
by the euphemisms "free market" and "free
trade", the injustices are legion: from the illegal blockade of
Cuba, to the murderous arms trade, dominated by the US, to its
trashing of basic environmental decencies, to the assault on fragile
economies by institutions such as the World Trade Organisation that
are little more than agents of the US Treasury and the European
central banks, and the demands of the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund in forcing the poorest nations to repay
unrepayable debts; to a new US "Vietnam" in Colombia and
the sabotage of peace talks between North and South Korea (in order
to shore up North Korea's "rogue nation" status).
Western terror is part of the recent history
of imperialism, a word that journalists dare not speak or write.
The expulsion of the population of Diego
Darcia in the 1960s by the Wilson government received almost no
press coverage.
Their homeland is now an American nuclear arms
dump and base from which US bombers patrol the Middle East.
In Indonesia, in 1965/6, a million people were
killed with the complicity of the US and British governments: the
Americans supplying General Suharto with assassination lists, then
ticking off names as people were killed.
"Getting British companies and the World
Bank back in there was part of the deal", says Roland Challis,
who was the BBC's south east Asia correspondent.
British behaviour in Malaya was no different
from the American record in Vietnam, for which it proved
inspirational: the withholding of food, villages turned into
concentration camps and more than half a million people forcibly
dispossessed.
In Vietnam, the dispossession, maiming and
poisoning of an entire nation was apocalyptic, yet diminished in our
memory by Hollywood movies and by what Edward Said rightly calls
cultural imperialism.
In Operation Phoenix, in Vietnam, the CIA
arranged the homicide of around 50,000 people. As official documents
now reveal, this was the model for the terror in Chile that climaxed
with the murder of the democratically elected leader Salvador
Allende, and within 10 years, the crushing of Nicaragua.
All of it was lawless. The list is too long
for this piece.
Now imperialism is being rehabilitated.
American forces currently operate with impunity from bases in 50
countries.
"Full spectrum dominance" is
Washington's clearly stated aim.
Read the documents of the US Space Command,
which leaves us in no doubt.
In this country, the eager Blair government
has embarked on four violent adventures, in pursuit of "British
interests" (dressed up as "peacekeeping"), and which
have little or no basis in international law: a record matched by no
other British government for half a century.
What has this to do with this week's
atrocities in America? If you travel among the impoverished majority
of humanity, you understand that it has everything to do with it.
People are neither still, nor stupid. They see
their independence compromised, their resources and land and the
lives of their children taken away, and their accusing fingers
increasingly point north: to the great enclaves of plunder and
privilege. Inevitably, terror breeds terror and more fanaticism.
But how patient the oppressed have been.
It is only a few years ago that the Islamic
fundamentalist groups, willing to blow themselves up in Israel and
New York, were formed, and only after Israel and the US had rejected
outright the hope of a Palestinian state, and justice for a people
scarred by imperialism.
Their distant voices of rage are now heard;
the daily horrors in faraway brutalised places have at last come
home.
John Pilger is an award-winning, campaigning
journalist.
September 13, 2001
(Top)
------
FOLKS OUT THERE
HAVE A "DISTASTE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION AND CULTURAL
VALUES"
Edward S. Herman
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._
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