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September 11 and Beyond
SOME SUGGESTED TALKING POINTS
(updated December 10, 2001)by Geov Parrish, Nonviolent Action Community of Cascadia, Eat the State!
Immediate Issues:
- As the U.S. military effort to displace the Taliban and disrupt Al-Qaeda winds down, with or without their leaders dead or in custody, some Bush Adminitration officials, Pentagon planners, elected officials, and media pundits are agitating for an expansion of the military part of the War On Terrorism to other countries. At the top of this list is Iraq, where, we’re told, we need to “finish the job” because we did not kill or otherwise remove during the Gulf War.
- There are many problems with the idea of attacking Iraq. There is no known link between Iraq and the attacks of September 11. Present and former United Nations officials believe Iraq to be effectively disarmed, and not even a threat to its neighbors, let alone the United States. The weapons inspections demanded by the U.S. were discontinued in 1998 when Iraq discovered that the U.S. was putting its spies on to U.N. inspection teams. The Bush Administration itself argues, in refusing to support the Chemical Weapons Convention draft protocol, that weapons inspections (when applied to the U.S.) prove nothing and are a violation of sovereignty; Saddam taking the identical stance is scarcely a rationale for war. Finally, eleven years of brutal attacks on Iraq — first during the Gulf War, and then with over a decade of economic sanctions that have killed at least a million people, the majority of them children — have punished Iraq’s innocent citizens but only made Saddam’s regime stronger. An invasion adds further to civilian suffering — without any obvious replacement available for Saddam — at a time when the death toll has already been horrific and the Islamic world in particular already considers U.S. policy toward Iraq as genocidal. An attack would not only be morally unconscionable, but would be a diplomatic disaster and a spur to the creation of still more terrorists from among Islam’s 1.2 billion enraged people. If any change in U.S. policy should be made toward Iraq, it is the complete lifting of economic sanctions combined with immediate support for the Iraqi democratic groups the U.S. has shunted aside for decades.
- Iraq is not the only country at risk of invasion. African media is speculating heavily about the Sudan and especially Somalia; Syria, Libya, and others have also been mentioned. The Bush Administration has essentially declared a permanent war, and the mentality that fighting terrorism necessarily requires invading at least one country at any given moment must be challenged and stopped. These invasions create far more terrorism than they stop.
- There are many other, better ways to combat terrorism other than a military response. Stress them. A military response may seem appropriate; but, in fact, it is not only less effective, not only ineffective, but counter- productive in that it creates far more terrorism than it eradicates. You cannot conquer a tactic; what is needed is persuasion, and that is an area in which the United States is failing spectacularly — and all the fancy military hardware in the world cannot help.
- Back in Afghanistan, millions of innocent civilians are still at risk of starvation this winter. The snow and bitter cold has arrived, and while U.S. bombing has ended, aid deliveries have still been sporadic due to security problems with various warlords and armed factions stealing food and supplies, hijacking convoys, and even killing aid workers. These factions are almost all associated with the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance, and the hunger situation in Afghanistan — a product of poverty, drought, war, and the current lawlessness — is still the worst seen anywhere in the world in decades. If there is widespread death this winter, much of it will be considered preventable by Muslims and others, and the U.S. will be held responsible — again, giving fuel to terrorist recruiters. Starvation would thus be not only a catastrophe in its own right, but would help cement a world-wide level of anti-Americanism — and terrorism against American citizens and targets — never before seen. The U.S. must counter that image by rededicating extensive efforts to both feed and rebuild a country that was devastated once by U.S.-trained mujahadeen, and again by U.S. bombs.
- In generating its international coalitions to combat terrorism, the U.S. is, once again, inspiring future terrorism, by allying itself with despots widely resented throughout the Islamic world: the tyrannical and corrupt Saudi royal family; the military rulers of Pakistan; Uzbekistan’s dictator; and the mass rapists and thugs of the Northern Alliance, whose rule of Kabul from 1992-96 was so brutal that citizens welcomed the Taliban to restore order and security. The U.S. has also been directly responsible for civilian misery; British, European, and Asian media have repeatedly reported that Afghan civilian casualties have been far more extensive than the U.S. or its media have acknowledged.
- Sep. 11 was not an act of war. It was a crime — just as hijacking one jet plane has always been a crime — even though the consequences were horrific. Wars are fought by nation-states, or armies that want to control nation-states, against other states, for control of a defined geographic area. The Bush Administration has once again flouted international convention and law by unilaterally using its military to retaliate, without working through the legal system to bring the surviving perpetrators to justice.
- Targetting countries who “harbor terrorists” is unjustifiable. Unless those terrorists have been there since Sep. 11 or have committed prior crimes, whole countries are at risk of being punished for “permitting terrorism” before a crime was committed.
- Nationalism is the conviction that one’s compatriots are uniquely virtuous — almost certainly the same attitude that fueled the Sept. 11 attack.
- Our civil liberties are at great risk — especially, but not limited to, freedom of speech, assembly, our right to dissent, and our physical and on- line privacy. The recently passed “anti-terrorist” legislation is in flagrant violation of the Bill of Rights, particularly in its provisions allowing law enforcement officials, without meaningful judicial review, to conduct “Sneak and Peek” operations. To “sneak” (breaking and entering) and “peek” (looking at or taking disks, hard drives, or other evidence) is exactly what is prohibited by the 4th Amendment (banning unreasonable search and seizure). A number of other provisions that are already or may soon become law are similarly flawed. Executive orders and regulatory actions taken directly by George Bush and John Ashcroft have been equally worrisome — including military tribunals, intercepted lawyer/client communications, the possible use of torture, law enforcement “interviews” with 5,000 profiled Middle Eastern men, the proposed lifting of restrictions on FBI investigations of groups due to their political or religious beliefs, and numerous actions taken against non-citizens.
- Some 600 people are still detained after three months by the U.S.; almost none have been charged with any crime, and they face a newly capricious and draconian legal system stacked against them. These are the actions of a police state, and beyond such immediate cases, they set a chilling precedent. Spain has refused to extradict terrorist suspects without White House assurances that they won’t be tried in military courts; other European countries are likely to follow suit, rendering U.S. investigations less complete. More importantly, when the land of Franco and the Spanish Inquisition is lecturing the U.S. on how to run a democracy, we’re in deep trouble.
- U.S. media coverage has been awful. On any given day, comparing newspapers even in Britain (the main U.S. military ally in this war) with even more detailed publications like the New York Times or Washington Post suggest that American media is living in an alternate universe. Effectively, the American public has less information on how this war is actually being waged, and how the world is responding to it, than almost anywhere else in the world. Demand that mainstream U.S. media cover the news more fully and objectively, and seek out and publicize alternative news sources.
Long-Term Issues:
- To prevent future terrorism, we must both neutralize those people who have committed or are planning to commit terrorist acts, and even more importantly, ensure that they do not have popular support, so that more terrorists don’t replace them in the future. The task of the U.S. is not to conquer, but to persuade.
- To this end, the United States must more consistently work for the ideals of freedom, democracy, economic opportunity, and self-determination that it claims to chamion. In the Islamic world alone, a whole host of U.S. policies — its support for Israel, Iraq sanctions, military bases in Saudi Arabia, support for brutal dictatorships in Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and elsewhere, arms sales, and the like — must be reviewed. The U.S. must also address the grinding poverty throughout the region, poverty which allows people to become desperate enough that the bin Ladens of the world become appealing. That means reversing the policies of instititutions like the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and other forces that are making the gap between rich and poor ever greater. As a first, cost-effective step in persuasion, the U.S. should take the resources and creativity used to bomb Afghanistan, and try feeding the country instead.
- September 11, 2001 must mark the end of America’s cultural isolationism. While the government, military, and corporations that act in our name commit horrors abroad, most of us have remained willfully oblivious. While the world has gotten smaller, ordinary Americans have ignored it. Now that the world’s grimmer realities have come home, everyone, regardless of ideology, must start paying closer attention to what is done in our name overseas, and demanding that those acting in our name do so in a way consistent with our ideals of freedom, self-determination, and democracy.
- National Missile Defense (“Star Wars”) must die. It is now breathtakingly obvious that its premise is preposterous, far down the list of possible threats to the U.S. Mythical intercontinental missilies from some country unable to repair its typewriters isn’t how we’re at risk.
- Our military failed to prevent this attack because for years, national defense hasn’t been the purpose of our national defense. Terrorism cannot be fully prevented, but the Department of Defense needs to stop conquering the world and start defending us. Every other country in the world manages to promote its “economic interests” without trying to run the world. And the money saved could then be used to strengthen and promote opportunity and justice in our own society — a far more effective form of national security.
- The “War on Terrorism” is likely to be at least as dangerous an indefinite pretext for abuse of power, at home and abroad, as the “War on Drugs” has been. It will almost certainly be used as a pretext to demand additional U.S. control of other countries’ sovereignty.
- We must combat the inevitable backlash against immigration. Terrorism is committed by people because they are murderers — not because they are foreigners. Ask Timothy McVeigh’s victims.
- The blank check being written in response to this attack — when Bush’s tax cut for the rich, military spending, and an economic downturn had already eliminated the federal budget surplus — is likely to mean raiding (and privatizing) Medicare and Social Security; further draconian cuts in social spending; additional tax cuts for the wealthy; and wasteful, unnecessary new Pentagon toys. The aviation and insurance and insurance industries are receiving massive bailouts, but the workers they are laying off aren’t seeing a dime of it. If the government claims it doesn’t have enough money, here’s an idea: tax the rich and big corporations fairly.
- It’s more important than ever that alternative energy and conservation be promoted to reduce our dependence upon foreign oil, and that Alaskan oil be reserved for domestic use. Republicans are pushing quick passage of not only the Cheney/Bush energy plan (including ANWR drilling), but unrelated issues like fast track authority in the name of “uniting behind the President.”
There’s plenty more. The important thing is to act now — through protest, lobbying, letters, e-mails, talk shows, public education — before political elites use our panic and rage to win outrages they’ve dreamed of for years.
JUSTICE — NOT WAR!!
War Resisters League
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Believing war to be a crime against humanity, the War Resisters League, founded in 1923, advocates Gandhian nonviolence as the method for creating a democratic society free of war, racism, sexism, and human exploitation.