While acts of terrorism of the weak against the powerful must be condemned, the far more prevalent case of terrorism of the powerful against the weak must also be exposed, resolutely condemned, and vanquished. Yet the latter is unmentionable. –
Abu SpinozaTerrorism has been
defined as “ideologically or politically motivated violence directed against civilian targets.” Substituting the word “innocent” for “civilian” also provides a good definition. The mere thought of terrorism is enough to strike fear (or terror) into the hearts of millions of people throughout the world. And it is justifiably condemned by the great bulk of the world’s people.
Evidence of its condemnation can be found in a great body of international law:
Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter says that the U.N. Security Council “shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations… to maintain or restore international peace and security.” And there are numerous U.N. conventions and resolutions for the purpose of protecting innocent people against violence, including the Convention for the
Suppression of Terrorist Bombings, the
Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, the
Geneva Conventions for the treatment of Prisoners of War, the
International Criminal Court, the
Conventions Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and many others. A major purpose of the United Nations and the body of international law that it sponsors is the
prevention of war itself. And the Constitution of the United States addresses the issue by providing a whole array of legal protections against arbitrary arrest and imprisonment (
5th and
6th amendments) and against cruel and unusual punishment (
8th amendment).
The near universal antipathy towards and fear of terrorism explains why George Bush’s “War on Terror” was initially so popular in the United States, and why a sizable minority of Americans continue to support it even today, despite widespread evidence after nearly six years that it has created much more harm than good. And it also explains why Republicans had much success – until the 2006 mid-term elections – in stigmatizing or even branding as traitors anyone who challenged or criticized the way that George Bush carries out his “war”.
Yet, Americans who have the courage, good sense, and vision to view Bush’s “War on Terror” through the eyes of most of the rest of the world have noticed a much darker side to Bush’s “war”. And that is that the United States of America itself is today the major perpetrator of terror in the world.
U.S. sponsored terror in IraqWhat is so obvious to Iraqis and the rest of the world is simply ignored or denied by many or most Americans, with the aid of a complicit corporate news media that isn’t much interested in discussing such things.
In assessing the use of terror by the U.S. military in Iraq, two of the most basic facts to consider are: 1) Given that George Bush’s excuses for perpetrating the war all
turned out to be lies, it is evident that the real reasons for the war were a combination of baser motives, including
control of Iraqi oil supplies, the
expansion of American military power, and
war profiteering; and 2) Hundreds of thousands of
Iraqi civilians have died as a result of our invasion. Nor are those hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths mere accidents. As
noted by Michael Schwartz:
The architects of American policy in the Middle East tend to keep escalating the level of brutality in search of a way to convince the Iraqis (and now the Iranians) that the only path that avoids indiscriminate slaughter is submission to a Pax Americana. Put another way, American policy in the Middle East has devolved into unadorned state terrorism.
The brutality described by Schwartz is evidenced in numerous different ways: The U.S. military does not hesitate to attack heavily populated Iraqi cities, with
predictable results:
The US Coalition has used overwhelming military force to attack Iraqi cities on grounds that they were “insurgent strongholds.” The offensives, involving air and ground bombardment and armored assaults, have resulted in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, large civilian casualties and colossal destruction of the urban physical infrastructure, making affected cities at least partly uninhabitable.
Frequent
aerial bombing of Iraq has resulted in numerous civilian deaths. The use of
chemical weapons by the U.S. military has undoubtedly resulted in especially gruesome deaths and injuries of many civilians. And as frustration mounts on the ground, “Day after day, scores of Iraqi civilians are
being massacred in concerted offensives aimed at terrorizing the population and stamping American control over the country…”, while the U.S. government
implausibly maintains that the atrocities are merely the work of “a few bad apples”.
George Bush continues to maintain that we are fighting this war for the benefit the Iraqi people. But how are we benefiting them in a way that would make up for the hundreds of thousands dead and the millions displaced, terrorized or tortured? The infrastructure of Iraq has been devastated by our war, with the availability of electricity in Baghdad as low as
2.4 hours a month and 84% of Iraq’s institutions of higher learning “
burnt, looted or destroyed”. Yet, the corporate sponsors of the Bush administration, after receiving billions in no-bid contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, have utterly failed to make decent progress in repairing the infrastructure that we’ve destroyed, and they are
not held accountable for that failure.
But we’re fighting for their freedomEarlier this week on C-SPAN or NPR, I heard a guest whose name I didn’t catch comparing our war in Iraq with the American Civil War. He pointed out that the American Civil War, though it was enormously costly in blood and treasure, was nevertheless a great victory for the cause of freedom; and he predicted that the same thing will someday be said about the Iraq War if only we have the fortitude to see it through. There was just one major problem with that analogy however: Unlike our former slaves, the Iraqis, in overwhelming numbers, DO NOT WANT US to “fight for their freedom”. According to a September
2006 World Opinion Poll, 71% of Iraqis want U.S. forces to get out of their country within a year, and another 20% want us out within 2 years. The remaining 9% say that we should only withdraw as the security situation permits. 78% say that our presence in Iraq is “provoking more conflict than it is preventing”. And 61% go so far as to say that they approve of violent attacks against U.S. forces.
Judged by the virtual blackout of this issue by our corporate news media, one would think that Iraqi opinions on the occupation of their country are not worth considering. But if one considers the Iraqis to be actual
people whose opinions mean something, and if one takes seriously the “commitment” we owe them (which the Bush administration often uses as an excuse for our continued presence in Iraq) then it is extremely difficult for me to see how we can justify our continued occupation of Iraq. And there is only one conclusion that can be drawn from Bush’s unshakable insistence that we remain there – that we are there for our own imperialistic purposes, and any talk about fulfilling our “commitment” to the Iraqis by continuing to occupy their country is the height of hypocrisy.
George Bush’s use of terrorism to conduct his “War on Terror”Beyond our wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, and our threatened war against Iran, George Bush conducts his “War on Terror” using a variety of illegal, brutal, and cowardly means: We capture thousands of “terrorist suspects” through a variety of means, most commonly by
paying bounties for them; we
render thousands of them into the custody of tyrannical regimes to be tortured; thousands of others we hold
indefinitely in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Guantanamo Bay, or various
secret CIA prisons, without even charging them with a crime; we allow them no access to legal counsel or their own families, who aren’t even notified of their disappearances; we
torture them repeatedly; and for those who are tried for crimes, we don’t allow them to see the evidence against them or to contest that evidence. According to Stephen Grey, award winning journalist for Excellence in Human Rights Reporting for Amnesty International, in “
Ghost Plane – The True Story of the CIA Torture Program”, we have done such things to about 11,000 human beings since September 11, 2001.
Why do I call this terrorism? The definition I cited at the beginning of this post defined terrorism as violence against civilians. Well, many or most of these people
are civilians, or if not, they were merely fighting in defense of their country against George Bush’s invasion. Just as important, it is highly likely that the good majority of them are innocent of any crime. Such were the conclusions of
Major General Antonio Taguba, who investigated our torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. And such were the
conclusions of the International Red Cross.
But even if we didn’t have investigations like that to demonstrate the innocence of most of our victims, as a civilized nation we should
presume their innocence, merely by virtue of the fact that the good majority of them have neither been tried nor charged with a crime, and also by virtue of the fact that our government does everything it can to keep the whole sordid program as secret as possible. Are we to take comfort from the fact that our nation tosses into prison men (and boys) brought to us by bounty hunters? Are we to take the word of George Bush and Dick Cheney that these men are the “
worst of the worst”, even though they’ve never been tried for a crime? Unlike George Bush, we aren’t blessed with a direct line of
communication to God. So how are we to decide?
But are such tactics justified by virtue of the fact that we’re fighting against a brutal and ruthless enemy? Well,
all terrorists justify their terrorism in that manner. George Bush’s use of terrorism is no more justified than the terrorism perpetrated by any other terrorist. Perhaps it is less justified, given the unprecedented military power at his disposal. And what exactly is George Bush protecting us against? The only terrorism perpetrated against U.S. citizens in the almost six years since George Bush proclaimed his “War on Terror” has been the terrorism perpetrated by George Bush himself (many of whose victims are American citizens) and that practiced against U.S. soldiers in occupied Iraq or Afghanistan – which isn’t terrorism at all, since it is targeted against an invading army.
James Carroll, in his book, “
House of War – The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power”, suggests a way that a civilized nation – the kind of nation that we once were – should be handling its terrorism suspects:
The International Criminal Court, fulfilling the desire to replace revenge with adjudication, had its origin in the America-sponsored Nuremberg trials after World War II. Nothing embodied the genius of postwar American statesmanship more completely than this new court, and it would have been the best place to make world-historic cases against Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, and anyone else who defied the norms of international order. George W. Bush, in one of his first acts as president, “
unsigned” the ICC Treaty…
The motivations of the Bush administration can be seen clearly in the writings of the Neoconservatives who compose much of his administration, many who are members of the “
Project for a New American Century” (PNAC). Their chilling (for anyone who abhors imperialism) document, “
Rebuilding America’s Defenses”, written long before the 9-11 attacks on our country, sheds much light on George Bush’s “War on Terror”.
The primary theme of “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” is that our military must be much stronger than the militaries of any nation or combination of nations that might oppose our ambitions, in order that we may “shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests”, “boldly and purposefully promote American principles abroad” and maintain an “order that is uniquely friendly to American principles and prosperity”. More specifically, we now have new “missions” which require “defending American interests in the Persian Gulf and Middle East” by “deterring or, when needed, by
compelling regional foes to act in ways that protect American interests and principles”.
No wonder that even our allies consider George Bush to be a threat to world peace, as demonstrated by a
November 2006 international poll which showed that 83% of Mexicans, 78% of British citizens and 74% of Canadians consider George Bush to be a severe or moderate threat to world peace.
This article sums up the situation as well as any I’ve seen:
The U.S. is fiercely aggressive toward its neighbors, undaunted by international law, armed to the teeth and dangerous. Increasingly, it is isolating itself from the community of nations in pursuit of unfettered sovereignty and the consequent economic and political power its wealth gives it. If it abrogates treaties, or simply refuses to be involved in any kind of multinational agreements that limit its powers, it will be uncontrollable. In short, a rogue nation.
Just substitute “terrorist” for “rogue”, and you have a capsule summary of George Bush’s “War on Terror”.
If Americans are really serious about combating terrorism they will demand that their own government stop perpetrating it. And assuming that George Bush and Dick Cheney fail to comply with that demand, the American people will demand that their Congress make use of the only remaining remedy at their disposal – the impeachment and removal from office of the most lawless President and Vice President our nation has ever known.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
