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Monkeyfist.com -- January 17, 2002
For the past few months the media has been using the [2]term
"war on terror" as though it were a neutral description of U.S.
military action in Afghanistan or of U.S. threats of future attacks
elsewhere. On its face, the "war on terror" -- or even "war
on terrorism" -- is at best a misnomer. How, exactly, does one
declare war on a concept, on a tactic, and how would such a war be won?
Even if we assume that what Washington really means when it says "war
on terror" is "war on terrorists", the term is deeply
problematic.
A terrorist, according to [3]conventional definitions, is
someone who uses terror, or threats of terror, to coerce a government or
population into granting demands. Clearly, leveling the World Trade
towers, thus killing several thousand people counts as terrorism, though
it's unclear what the terrorists in question were trying to coerce the
U.S. to do, apart from provoking it to war. But what about bombing
Afghanistan, thus killing several thousand (4,000 by the best
[4]estimates) innocent civilians over an eight week period? Which does not
include the number of people maimed by the same bombs or the number of
undocumented casualties; the fact that it's customary to bury the dead
before sundown in Afghanistan, coupled with the fact that the Pentagon
retroactively [5]bought up all available civilian satellite photos, which
would have allowed for accurate estimates, also make it seem likely that
that figure is conservative.
Before the attacks began, UN officials warned that, in addition
to the 2.5 million Afghan refugees dependent on aid, an [6]additional 1
million could starve if aid workers were forced to evacuate (again, a
conservative estimate). The attack proceeded and aid workers were forced
to leave. US air drops of food did little to compensate; when aid workers
had been on site, 700 tons of food had been getting into the country
daily; air drops managed to deliver the same amount over three weeks.
Pentagon officials routinely boast of [7]psy-ops and brag about the
"shattering" psychological effect of the "[8]daisy
cutter", a massive bomb that incinerates everything within 600 yards,
producing a shockwave felt for miles. Recently, 98 civilians were killed
when the U.S. bombed a village. A Pentagon [9]spokesperson said that
"those people are dead because we wanted them dead", ostensibly
because they were Taliban supporters.
Surely such actions count as terrorism. U.S. tactics are
explicitly designed to "shatter" the opponent in order to
further the pursuit of political goals. What do we risk by using terrorism
as a tactic to fight a war on terrorism?
Some say that states, by definition, cannot commit acts of
terrorism. Even if true, and U.S. foreign policy is merely horrifying and
illegal, but not terrorism per se, the term "war on terror" is
incoherent. Part of this "war on terror" -- a term so ubiquitous
that it's difficult to find a replacement -- has been to censure, to
punish, to threaten the use of force against countries which enable
terrorists to operate, financially or otherwise. Yet there has been no
word from Washington to end IRA fundraising in the parishes of Boston, New
York, Chicago; and anti-Castro terrorists continue to operate out of
Miami, with neither fear nor threat of law nor force. "[10]Plan
Colombia", by which Washington aims to hand the Colombian government
$1.5 billion and several heavily subsidized arms deals, was justified by
that country's "good human rights record". Despite the fact that
activists and candidates from the only opposition party to be formed there
have been [11]murdered and tortured by the hundreds.
Not so many years ago the U.S. supported, trained, and funded
muhajideen like of Osama Bin Laden, cold war pawns whom Reagan called the
moral equivalents of the founding fathers, even "freedom
fighters". The U.S. supported Saddam Hussein, another potential
target in the "war on terror", not too long ago, and stood
idlely by while, in the last gasps of the Gulf War, he brutally put down a
rebellion of Kurds which the U.S. had prompted. That the Bush
administration has neither acknowledged nor expressed regret at these
prior affiliations is certainly cause for some doubt as to the motives of
this self-righteous war.
So perhaps the "war on terror" is more aptly named the
"war on terrorists who attack the United States and on anyone who
happens to live near the people who support those terrorists" -- more
verbose and more accurate. Yet that's still not quite right. The U.S. --
and the U.K. and Canada, both of which have signed on wholesale -- still
calls Saudi Arabia an ally in this war, despite the fact that most of bin
Laden's funding likely originates there. Maybe the "war on terrorists
that can be killed without messing up any major trade deals, sources of
oil, or political connections" is even more apt.
Indeed, the closer one looks, the more one sees that the "war
on terror" is mostly a convenient cover for the U.S., and its junior
allies in London and Riyadh and Ottawa, to pursue with abandon its global
interests. While "War on Terror" does not accurately refer to
any US military policy, the practices that it describes do make sense in
the historical context of the use of terror to further US policies
overseas. A 1995 document, "[12]Essentials of Post-Cold War
Deterrence", authored by the U.S. Strategic Command, exhorts thus --
"That the U.S. may become irrational and vindictive if
its vital interests are attacked should be a part of the national persona
we project to all adversaries...It hurts to portray ourselves as too fully
rational and cool-headed".
There are [13]plenty of examples of this kind of policy being put
into practice. State terrorism exists and works, which is to say that it's
effective for the U.S. to be a rogue state, but only when no concern
whatever is given to justice or fairness or the truth.
Just as we say that "gold is the corpse of value", or
that words on a page are only meaningful in some interpretive context, so
democracy is only democracy in a meaningful sense when citizens can
communicate all of the relevant facts to each other. When people stop
telling the truth and accounting for the facts in the press, in the rooms
of the powerful, and in everyday conversation, democracy stops being
democracy. What is needed to keep democracy alive is clear enough; it's
following through that is difficult.
Democracy is only meaningful when based on the truth. The
assumption that we can ignore some actions of our governments, submit to
the government's propaganda, and still be able to act competently, fairly,
justly -- as a country or as individuals -- is one that should always be
questioned.
_________________________________________________________________
See also Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan
[14]http://monkeyfist.com/articles/800 This is The "War on
Terror": Sense and Nonsense
[15]http://monkeyfist.com/articles/806
© Copyright 1999-2002 The Monkeyfist Collective
References
1.mailto:dojy@mta.ca?subject=The%20%22War%20on%20Terror%22%3A%20Sense%20and%20Nonsense
2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/in_depth/world/2001/war_on_terror/
3. http://www.undcp.org/terrorism_definitions.html
4. http://www.cursor.org/stories/civilian_deaths.htm
5. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4278871,00.html
6. http://www.dawn.com/2001/10/14/int14.htm
7. http://www.time.com/time/columnist/waller/article/0,9565,179827,00.html
8. http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/blu-82.htm
9. http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/central/11/01/ret.afghan.village/
10. http://www.soaw-ne.org/Pccrops.html
11. http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/aireport/ar98/amr23.htm
12. http://www.nautilus.org/nukestrat/USA/advisory/Essentials95.txt
13. http://monkeyfist.com/articles/807
14. http://monkeyfist.com/articles/800
15. http://monkeyfist.com/articles/806
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