Make no mistake: America far from innocent

I suspect 10 days ago, if George W. Bush had soberly observed the United States was engaged in a “monumental struggle of good versus evil,” the comment would have elicited howls of laughter from a wide spectrum of Americans.

After all, this esteemed President had only recently withdrawn U.S. support for the Kyoto Protocol — admittedly a flawed document, though for its limitations, not its excesses — essentially telling the international community the fate of the planet is of no concern to the United States.

He had announced his intention to dispose of the international arms control structure by proceeding with “national missile defense” and the militarization of outer space. He had followed his predecessor’s rejection of an International Criminal Court. He had jettisoned a U.N. conference seeking restrictions on the trafficking of small arms, and he had withdrawn the American delegation from a U.N. conference on racism.

He had unequivocally pledged his allegiance to the ruling butchers of Russia and Israel and he had begun filling his administration with apologists for terror like Elliott Abrams and John Negroponte. In essence, the president of the United States shouted to the world, “we” don’t care what “you” want or think.

Yet eight days ago, when George W. Bush did, in fact, proclaim “America” was engaged in a “monumental struggle of good versus evil,” the statement’s reception was rather bizarre. Following the president’s lead, a number of so-called “patriots” decided overnight it was taboo to even suggest reality was more complex than a simplistic struggle between the “civilized world” and its discontents.

To posit there might have been a reason for the events of Sept. 11, however inexcusable they were, was apparently to engage in anti-American propaganda and justify the attacks. And to remark that the events might have been grounded in the quite legitimate resentment with which most people around the world react to American hubris and violence — whether military or economic — was to render oneself traitorous, pathetic, parasitical, or an intellectual defender of terrorism.

Make no mistake: The president’s good and evil designations are not only ridiculous but dangerous. Human rights scholars have pointed to the establishment of an “us and them” binary as a psychological precondition for widespread abuses and genocide. Given the probability the United States will soon embark on a campaign that might kill thousands of civilians, I seriously question those who argue it is inappropriate or untimely to challenge the moral basis for what might become large-scale mass murder. As persons presumably concerned with the loss of life, we should be encouraging critical examinations of the United States, not denouncing or belittling them. Silently acquiescing in Washington’s march to war is not demonstrating “patriotism” or solidarity with last week’s victims; it is ensuring more innocent people will die. And one can be certain, many will die.

Over the last several days, the administration has informed the Arab world “[t]he time has come to choose sides,” threatened “ending states who sponsor terrorism,” and warned the “full wrath of the United States” will fall upon those who fail to join its crusade. The term “terrorism” must be qualified. What’s being referred to by Washington is not actually terrorism per se, but rather terrorism directed at “us.” While appropriate, it of course takes little courage to denounce the terror of one’s enemies and assert it must end. It is far more difficult, but far more necessary, to denounce the terror of one’s own government and actively work to stop it. This must be done by all Americans.

So exactly what, then, does Washington mean by “terrorism”? Certainly Washington doesn’t mean the 1988 downing of an Iranian civilian airliner by the U.S. warship Vincennes, killing 290 people. In fact, two years later, the commander of the Vincennes was given a Legion of Merit award for “exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service.”

Nor would the Administration have in mind the 1985 CIA-sponsored car-bomb attack in Lebanon that killed 80 people and injured 200. And of course they don’t mean the present strangling of Iraq, America’s nearly unequivocal support for the Saudi Arabian torture state, the destruction of Yugoslavia, the subsidizing of the increasingly brutal Israeli occupation, the billions of dollars benefiting right-wing thugs in Colombia — none of these qualify as terrorism.

No, for purposes of good and evil, terrorism can only be attacks on American and Israeli civilians.

Almost as if taking orders, the U.S. mass media have in recent days parroted countless official assertions about the reach and direction of the Al Qaeda “network” headed by Osama bin Laden. Quickly and conveniently forgotten has been the portrait that emerged during the African embassy bombings trial in New York earlier this year. The New York Times stated in a front-page report, “The trial ... revealed evidence that tended to counter long-held assumptions about Mr. bin Laden’s followers, who have long been portrayed as marching in ideological lock step, ready to pay any price, including death, for his cause”.

Contrary to the image of a highly-coordinated “network,” which the Bush
administration has been shamefully finessing, a much different view of the group was presented by government prosecutors at the trial. A former deputy director of the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism remarked, “To listen to some of the news reports a year or two ago, you would think bin Laden was running a top Fortune 500 multinational company — people everywhere, links everywhere. He continued, ”What the evidence at trial has correctly portrayed is that it’s really a loose amalgam of people with a shared ideology, but a very limited direction.“

How quickly the reporting has changed. The reason for this is not difficult to comprehend. Put simply, the evil afflicting the United States must have a face in order to become a target. Washington cannot launch a war against an unknown enemy and expect Americans to blindly go along. And the United States must go to war — we are repeatedly told.

Yet if bin Laden is indeed responsible for the events in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania — and the administration’s unverifiable assertions should not be trusted on this matter — the media has yet to highlight the incredible irony in the current logic of war. When the United States last attacked Afghanistan and Sudan, the government claimed bin Laden must know “we” will not stand for terror.

Did he get this message? If it is true he was responsible for the attacks last week, he reacted by upping the ante. And the U.S. response? Hit him again. What will he do after Washington next responds militarily? Will he lay down his arms and give up? Don’t count on it. And even if bin Laden were to be killed, would the anger that motivated his “network” disappear? If anything, the United States could expect further and escalated instances of terror.

As I heretically suggested last Wednesday (“Holistic perspective required in the aftermath,” Sept. 12), terrorism cannot be defeated militarily. As a nation, we must consider why so many people hate the United States if we hope to minimize the horrific slaughter of American civilians, not to mention the widespread suffering of people around the world.

And while it is critical the perpetrators of last week’s attacks be brought to justice, this must be done in accordance with human rights principles, humanitarian law, and international criminal procedures. It will require the cooperation of other countries. Yet the United States can expect little meaningful assistance and little resolution if it doesn’t also begin to address the extreme hypocrisy dividing American rhetoric from its global reality.

There are a number of activities on campus this week and next week that will try to make sense of Sept. 11 and what should be done about it. And Thursday there will be a rally at Northrop Plaza at 11:30 against the U.S. march to war. Keep an eye out for notices in the Daily and for flyers around campus to find out what’s happening.

Scott Laderman’s column appears alternate Tuesdays. He welcomes comments at lade0008@tc.umn.edu. Send letters to the editor to letters@mndaily.com

I am a third-year graduate student in the Program in American Studies, and my work focuses on issues of history, memory, and tourism, particularly as they relate to Indian Country in the United States and the American war in Vietnam.

Born and raised in California, I received a bachelor's degree in English, with a minor in Native American Studies, in 1994. After spending several years in the work force, I packed away everything I owned and, with my girlfriend, traveled extensively throughout Southeast Asia, the South Pacific and Mexico.

Learning of my acceptance into graduate school at the University while abroad, I made the move here in 1998. I've been slowly adapting to the colder climes of the upper Midwest, although my biggest problem has been adjusting to the absence of mountains and an ocean. One of only a handful of surfers in Minnesota, I might be the only University student to have surfed Lake Superior.

Long active in issues of peace and social justice, I hope my column will address matters pertaining to domestic politics and international relations, marginalized communities in the United States, and the social and political aspects and implications of film, television and other elements of popular culture.

An Irishman's Diary

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OPINION/Kevin Myers

One week ago, for the last day for years to come, we woke to a morning in which the world was not at war. That day is now done, and the issue before us is actually quite simple.

Which side are we on? If we show doubt, then we tell the foes of civilisation to keep pushing; the door is not locked. It's not complicated. Terrorists anywhere must now be told that finally Ireland will stand four square against terrorism.

There are no extenuating circumstances for the Manhattan and Pentagon holocausts, any more than there are extenuating circumstances for what happened to Europe's Jews, and others, 60 years ago.

To be sure, there is a history to all events; but to deploy that history as mitigation or justification or contextualisation for mass murder is to fall for the homicidal, self-pitying babble which all misanthropic psychopaths indulge in.

World freedom

Osama Bin Laden is an Islamic fascist who loathes the West, democracy, Christianity, Judaism. His every project is about the taking of human life. Of course he loathes the US. Why wouldn't he? The US is the primary defender of world freedom.

That freedom is one we enjoy. From 1941 onwards in one war, and through the many years of the colder one which followed, we lived within the American imperium; without that protection, we would today be speaking German, and no doubt ruled by Sinn Féin gauleiters, or be an Atlantic Albania, communist and pauperised.

How a visceral hatred of the US has become so chic, so commonplace in Irish bien-pensant circles is a true mystery to me. Perhaps it is political immaturity, but that alone would not explain the frequency with which we give platitudinous lectures to those who guard us and our common values.

Nor does it explain the frequency with which we not merely tolerate lies about the US, but actually revel in them: such risible canards as that the US armed Saddam, that US policies are causing Iraqi children to die of hunger, or that US policy in the Middle East has been totally one-sided.

Saddam's army was Soviet-equipped. Iraqi children die because he is diverting money to his army, which our Government once went to such trouble to provide with beef - remember? Without vast US aid, Egypt would long ago have slid into the Nile and been washed away; similarly, Jordan.

Without US diplomacy, they would still be locked in perpetual war with Israel. Until a year ago, the US was doing its best to broker a deal between the PLO and Israel; and the absolutist forces which rejected the most generous offer that any Israeli government could offer the Palestinians, and still survive the opinions of its electorate, are represented most admirably by the butchers of Manhattan.

Not a "victim"

Their leader, Osama Bin Laden, is not a "victim". Nor are his deranged followers. The people responsible for the war crimes in the US come from prosperous, well-educated Arab families; they do not come from the West Bank and Gaza. Their decision to kill thousands of people was not based on anything to do with personal experience, but simply on race hatred.

Nor is their decision to kill themselves a measure of a supposedly "Muslim" devotion to a cause, but merely another example of cultic suicide, such as we have repeatedly seen from "Christians" in recent years at Waco, in Guyana, in Switzerland.

To be sure, there are inconsistencies, failures, inadequacies in many US policies; this is because the US government is composed of human beings. But I would far rather have US policy with all its weaknesses than have to endure the sanctimonious posturing of the professional US-bashers of Irish life.

We are in morally the weakest position of any country in Europe to be making such noises: for we have deliberately chosen to have a defence policy of no-defence, and instead of staying gratefully silent beneath the umbrella of cost-free protection, we have repeatedly bawled pious homilies into our protectors' ears about the immorality of umbrellas.

This diseased and querulous neutralism has so contaminated our political life that our political leaders never dared confront it head on. That failure led to the rejection of the the Nice Treaty - to the delight, of course, of the morally lazy and intellectually torpid greens of both varieties - the tree-huggers and the kneecappers.

Essential values

More than human beings perished in last week's attacks; so too did the fence beneath us. Now we should finally accept that Europe and the US stand for the same essential values: the rule of law, of free speech, free trade, free association, free thought.

These are values not just worth defending verbally, but by military alliance as well, with all the compromises such alliances mean.

The road ahead will be hard, but it is not a road of US choosing. No major power anywhere could accept such a slaughter as Manhattan and not reply. The US is the greatest democracy in the world, under whose protection all other democracies have flourished. It is time for us to acknowledge that.

In the coming conflict, no doubt mistakes will be made - though I would trust a regime which includes such heavyweights as Powell, Cheney and Rice to make as few as humanly possible.

All the US wants to know now is that when the going gets tough, as it truly will, it will not be treated to vapid holier-than-thouisms from beyond its shores. It needs to know who its shoulder-to-shoulder friends are.

Well, here's one

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.