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August 12, 2003
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August
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Bush's Progress
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Indicting DNA
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Civil Liberties and Uncivil Super-Patriotism
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Who Will Save Abu Mazen?
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California's Glorious Recall!
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Landau
Bush and King Henry
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Leupp
On Terrorism, Methodism, "Wahhabism"
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Paul de
Rooij
The Parade of the Body Bags
Michael
Egan
History and the Tragedy of American Diplomacy
Rob Eshelman
A Home of Our Own
Daoud
Kuttab
Life as an ID Card
Philip
Agee
Terror and Civil Society: Instruments of US Policy in Cuba
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Marc Racicot: Bush's Main Man
Walt Brasch
Schwarzenegger, "Hollyweird"
and the Rigtheous Right
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush, Bribery and Berlusconi
Josh Frank
Mean, Mean Howard Dean
Elaine
Cassel
Will the Death Penalty Ever Die?
Sean Carter
Total Recall
Poets'
Basement
Hamod, Engel, Albert
August
8, 2003
John
Chuckman
What the US Says Goes
Roberto
Barreto
Defend the Vieques 12!
Bruce Gagnon
Iraq War Emboldens Bush Space Plans
Elaine
Cassel
The Reign of John Ashcroft
Dave
Lindorff
Snoops Night Out
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Zero Boy
August
7, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
It the US a "Terrorist Magnet?"
Toni
Solo
Neo-liberal Nicaragua: a New Banana
Republic
Adam Lebowitz
Hiroshima Commemorated: the View from Japan
Hanan
Ashrawi
When the Bully Whines
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Conscience Takes a Holiday
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Lets Slip: Iraq Not Behind 9/11; No Ties to Al-Qaeda
Mike Kimaid
What's the Score?
Elaine
Cassel
The Smell of VICTORY: Ashcroft's Latest Stinkbomb
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
August 6, 2003
Steve
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause: It's Not
Easy Confronting King Coal
David
Krieger
Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Robert
Fisk
The Ghosts of Uday and Qusay
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's War on the National Forests
Elaine
Cassel
No Fly Lists
Stan
Goff
Military Equipment and Pneumonia
Hugh Sansom
An Open Letter to Nicholas Kristof on the Nuking of Japan
August
5, 2003
Uri
Avnery
The Prisoner of Ramallah: Arafat at
74
Forrest
Hylton
Terrorism and Political Trials: the
View from Bolivia
Ray
McGovern
"We Cook Estimates to Go"
David
Morse
Poindexter's Gambit
Edward
Said
Orientallism: 25 Years Later
George
W. Bush
My Darn Good Resumé
Hammond
Guthrie
It's Incremental, Watson!
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National Prayer Day
August 4, 2003
Bruce
K. Gagnon
Another Peace Activist Detained by
Airport Cops: My Story
David
Lindorff
Fear-Mongering About Social Security
Mark
Zepezauer
George F. Will: Descent into Self-Parody
James
Plummer
Tracking You Through the Mail
Mickey
Z.
Marriage Insecurity from Sharon to Bush
Bruce
Jackson
News that Isn't News: How the NYT's
Pimps for the White House
August
2 / 3, 2003
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
August
1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Stopping Prison Rape
Alex Coolman
Who Moved My Soap: Trivializing
Prison Rape
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Stan Goff
Injury and Decorum: The Missing Wounded in Iraq
Wayne
Madsen
Europe Unplugs from the Matrix
Robert
Fisk
Wolfowitz the Censor
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Loses Big in Puerto Rico
Website
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Stop Prisoner Rape
July
31, 2003
Ray
McGovern
The Prostitution of Intelligence
Brian
Cloughley
Wolfowitz's Operative Statement
Sheldon
Hull
The RIAA's Jihad:
The Devil's Music (Industry)
Elaine
Cassel
The Next Time You Crack a Lawyer Joke, Think of These Attorneys
Sheldon
Rampton
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True Lies: Propaganda and Bush's
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Hammond
Guthrie
Speculation Blues
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Army of One?
Congratulations
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July
30, 2003
David
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Poindexter the Terror Bookie
Marjorie
Cohn
Why Iraq and Afghanistan? It's About
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Elaine
Cassel
How Ashcroft Coerces Guilty Pleas
in Terror Cases
Zvi
Bar'el
The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War
Lisa Walsh
Thomas
Killing Mustafa Hussein: Death of a Child, Birth of a Legend?
Sean
Carter
Pat Robertson's Prayer Jihad: God, Sodomy and the Supremes
ND Jayaprakash
India and Ariel Sharon
Steve
Perry
Bush's Top 40 Lies
Standard
Schaefer
Correction about Bloomberg and Outscourcing
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Bring Them Home Now!
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Dardagan,
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CounterPunch Exclusive:
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True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
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Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
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Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
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August
12, 2003
The Incantations of
Empire
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
By WILLIAM BLUM
It dies hard. It dies very hard. The notion that
terrorist acts against the United States can be explained by
envy and irrational hatred, and not by what the United States
does in and to the world -- i.e., US foreign policy -- is alive
and well. The fires were still burning intensely at Ground Zero
when Colin Powell declared: "Once again, we see terrorism,
we see terrorists, people who don't believe in democracy ..."
[1]
George W. picked up on that theme and
ran with it. He's been its leading proponent ever since September
11 with his repeated insistence, in one wording or another, that
"those people hate America, they hate all that it stands
for, they hate our democracy, our freedom, our wealth, our secular
government." (Ironically, the president and John Ashcroft
probably hate our secular government as much as anyone.)
One of Bush's many subsequent versions
of this incantation, delivered more than a year after 9-11, was:
"The threats we face are global terrorist attacks. That's
the threat. And the more you love freedom, the more likely it
is you'll be attacked."[2] In September 2002, the White
House released the "National Security Strategy", purported
to be chiefly the handiwork of Condoleezza Rice, which speaks
of the "rogue states" which "sponsor terrorism
around the globe; and reject basic human values and hate the
United States and everything for which it stands."
As recently as July of this year the
spokesman for Homeland Security, Brian Roehrkasse, declared:
"Terrorists hate our freedoms. They want to change our ways."[3]
Thomas Friedman the renowned foreign policy analyst of the New
York Times would say amen. Terrorists, he wrote in 1998 after
terrorists attacked two US embassies in Africa, "have no
specific ideological program or demands.  Rather, they are driven by a generalized
hatred of the US, Israel and other supposed enemies of Islam."[4]
This idée fixe -- that the rise of anti-American terrorism
owes nothing to American policies -- in effect postulates an
America that is always the aggrieved innocent in a treacherous
world, a benign United States government peacefully going about
its business but being "provoked" into taking extreme
measures to defend its people, its freedom and democracy. There
consequently is no good reason to modify US foreign policy, and
many people who might otherwise know better are scared into supporting
the empire's wars out of the belief that there's no choice but
to crush without mercy -- or even without evidence -- this irrational
international force out there that hates the United States with
an abiding passion.
Thus it was that Afghanistan and Iraq
were bombed and invaded with seemingly little concern in Washington
that this could well create many new anti-American terrorists.
And indeed, since the first strike on Afghanistan there have
been literally scores of terrorist attacks against American institutions
in the Middle East, South Asia and the Pacific, about a dozen
in Pakistan alone: military, civilian, Christian, and other targets
associated with the United States, the latest being the heavy
bombing of the US-managed Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia,
the site of diplomatic receptions and 4th of July celebrations
held by the American Embassy.
The word "terrorism" has been
so overused in recent years that it's now commonly used simply
to stigmatize any individual or group one doesn't like, for almost
any kind of behavior involving force. But the word's raison d'etre
has traditionally been to convey a political meaning, something
along the lines of: the deliberate use of violence against civilians
and property to intimidate or coerce a government or the population
in furtherance of a political objective. Terrorism is fundamentally
propaganda, a very bloody form of propaganda. It follows that
if the perpetrators of a terrorist act declare what their objective
was, their statement should carry credibility, no matter what
one thinks of the objective or the method used to achieve it.
Let us look at some actual cases. The
terrorists responsible for the bombing of the World Trade Center
in 1993 sent a letter to the New York Times which stated, in
part: "We declare our responsibility for the explosion on
the mentioned building. This action was done in response for
the American political, economical, and military support to Israel
the state of terrorism and to the rest of the dictator countries
in the region."[5]
Richard Reid, who tried to ignite a bomb
in his shoe while aboard an American Airline flight to Miami
in December 2001, told police that his planned suicide attack
was an attempt to strike a blow against the US campaign in Afghanistan
and the Western economy. In an e-mail sent to his mother, which
he intended her to read after his death, Reid wrote that it was
his duty "to help remove the oppressive American forces
from the Muslims land."[6]
After the October 2002 bombings in Bali,
Indonesia, which destroyed two nightclubs and killed more than
200 people, one of the leading suspects told police that the
bombings were "revenge" for "what Americans have
done to Muslims." He said that he wanted to "kill as
many Americans as possible" because "America oppresses
the Muslims".[7]
In November 2002, a taped message from
Osama bin Laden began: "The road to safety begins by ending
the aggression. Reciprocal treatment is part of justice. The
[terrorist] incidents that have taken place ... are only reactions
and reciprocal actions."[8] That same month, when Mir Aimal
Kasi, who killed several people outside of CIA headquarters in
1993, was on death row, he declared: "What I did was a retaliation
against the US government" for American policy in the Middle
East and its support of Israel.[9] It should be noted that the
State Department warned at the time that the execution of Kasi
could result in attacks against Americans around the world.[10]
It did not warn that the attacks would result from foreigners
hating or envying American democracy, freedom, wealth, or secular
government.
Similarly, in the days following the
start of US bombing of Afghanistan there were numerous warnings
from US government officials about being prepared for retaliatory
acts, and during the war in Iraq, the State Department announced:
"Tensions remaining from the recent events in Iraq may increase
the potential threat to US citizens and interests abroad, including
by terrorist groups."[11]
Another example of the difficulty the
Bush administration has in consistently maintaining its simplistic
idée fixe: In June 2002, after a car bomb exploded outside
the US Consulate in Karachi, killing or injuring more than 60
people, the Washington Post reported that "US officials
said the attack was likely the work of extremists angry at both
the United States and Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf,
for siding with the United States after September 11 and abandoning
support for Afghanistan's ruling Taliban."[12]
George W. and high officials of his administration
may or may not believe what they tell the world about the motivations
behind anti-American terrorism, but, as in the recent examples
just given, other officials have questioned the party line for
years. A Department of Defense study in 1997 concluded: "Historical
data show a strong correlation between US involvement in international
situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United
States."[13]
Jimmy Carter told the New York Times
in a 1989 interview:
"We sent Marines into Lebanon and
you only have to go to Lebanon, to Syria or to Jordan to witness
first-hand the intense hatred among many people for the United
States because we bombed and shelled and unmercifully killed
totally innocent villagers -- women and children and farmers
and housewives -- in those villages around Beirut. ... As a result
of that ... we became kind of a Satan in the minds of those who
are deeply resentful. That is what precipitated the taking of
our hostages and that is what has precipitated some of the terrorist
attacks."[14]
Colin Powell has also revealed that he
knows better. Writing of this same Lebanon debacle in his 1995
memoir, he forgoes clichés about terrorists not believing
in democracy:
The USS New Jersey started hurling 16-inch
shells into the mountains above Beirut, in World War II style,
as if we were softening up the beaches on some Pacific atoll
prior to an invasion. What we tend to overlook in such situations
is that other people will react much as we would.[15]
The ensuing terrorist attacks against
US Marine barracks in Lebanon took the lives of 241 American
military personnel. The assault upon Beirut in 1983 and 1984
is but one of many examples of American violence against the
Middle East and/or Muslims since the 1980s. The record includes:
the shooting down of two Libyan planes
in 1981;
the furnishing of military aid and intelligence
to both sides of the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88, including materials
for chemical and biological warfare to Iraq, so as to maximize
the damage each side would inflict upon the other; the bombing
of Libya in 1986; the bombing and sinking of an Iranian ship
in 1987;
the shooting down of an Iranian passenger
plane in 1988;
the shooting down of two more Libyan
planes in 1989;
the massive bombing of the Iraqi people
in 1991;
the continuing bombings and sanctions
against Iraq for the next 12 years;
the bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan
in 1998, the latter destroying a pharmaceutical plant which provided
half the impoverished nation's medicines;
the habitual support of Israel despite
the routine devastation and torture it inflicts upon the Palestinian
people;
the habitual condemnation of Palestinian
resistance to this; the abduction of "suspected terrorists"
from Muslim countries, such as Malaysia, Pakistan, Lebanon and
Albania, who are then taken to places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia,
where they are tortured;
the large military and hi-tech presence
in Islam's holiest land, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the Persian
Gulf region;
the support of anti-democratic Middle
East governments from the Shah to the Saudis.
"How do I respond when I see that
in some Islamic countries there is vitriolic hatred for America?"
asked George W. "I'll tell you how I respond: I'm amazed.
I'm amazed that there's such misunderstanding of what our country
is about that people would hate us. I am -- like most Americans,
I just can't believe it because I know how good we are."[16]
To what extent do Americans really believe
the official disconnect between what the US does in the world
and anti-American terrorism? One indication that the public is
somewhat skeptical came in the days immediately following the
commencement of the bombing of Iraq on March 20 of this year.
The airlines later announced that there had been a sharp increase
in cancellations of flights and a sharp decrease in future flight
reservations in those few days.[17]
In June, the Pew Research Center released
the results of polling in 20 Muslim countries and the Palestinian
territories that brought the official disconnect into question
even more dramatically. The polling revealed that people interviewed
had much more "confidence" in Osama bin Laden than
in George W. Bush. However, "the survey suggested little
correlation between support for bin Laden and hostility to American
ideas and cultural products. People who expressed a favorable
opinion of bin Laden were just as likely to appreciate American
technology and cultural products as people opposed to bin Laden.
Pro- and anti-bin Laden respondents also differed little in their
views on the workability of Western-style democracy in the Arab
world."[18]
The Washington mentality about alleged
terrorist motivations also manifests itself in current US occupation
policy in Iraq. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld has declared
that there are five groups opposing US forces -- looters, criminals,
remnants of Saddam Hussein's government, foreign terrorists and
those influenced by Iran.[19] An American official in Iraq maintains
that many of the people shooting at US troops are "poor
young Iraqis" who have been paid between $20 and $100 to
stage hit-and-run attacks on US soldiers. "They're not dedicated
fighters," he said. "They're people who wanted to take
a few potshots."[20] With such language do American officials
avoid dealing with the idea that any part of the resistance is
composed of Iraqi citizens who simply do not like being bombed,
invaded, occupied, and subjected to daily humiliations, and are
demonstrating their resentment.
Some officials convinced themselves that
it was largely the most loyal followers of Saddam Hussein and
his two sons who were behind the daily attacks on Americans,
and that with the capture or killing of the evil family, resistance
would die out; tens of millions of dollars were offered as reward
for information leading to this joyful prospect. Thus it was
that the killing of the sons elated military personnel. US Army
trucks with loudspeakers drove through small towns and villages
to broadcast a message about the death of Hussein's sons. "Coalition
forces have won a great victory over the Baath Party and the
Saddam Hussein regime by killing Uday and Qusay Hussein in Mosul,"
said the message broadcast in Arabic. "The Baath Party has
no power in Iraq. Renounce the Baath Party or you are in great
danger." It called on all officials of Hussein's government
to turn themselves in.[21]
What followed was several days of some
of the deadliest attacks against American personnel since the
guerrilla war began. Unfazed, American officials in Washington
and Iraq continue to suggest that the elimination of Saddam will
write finis to anti-American actions.
Another way in which the political origins
of terrorism are obscured is by the common practice of blaming
poverty or repression by Middle Eastern governments (as opposed
to US support for such governments) for the creation of terrorists.
Defenders of US foreign policy cite this also as a way of showing
how enlightened they are. Here's Condoleezza Rice:
[The Middle East] is a region where hopelessness
provides a fertile ground for ideologies that convince promising
youths to aspire not to a university education, a career or family,
but to blowing themselves up, taking as many innocent lives with
them as possible. ... We must address the source of the problem.[22]
Many on the left speak in a similar fashion,
apparently unconscious of what they're obfuscating. This analysis
confuses terrorism with revolution.
In light of the several instances mentioned
above -- and others can be given -- of US officials giving the
game away, in effect admitting that terrorists and guerrillas
may be, or in fact are, reacting to perceived hurts and injustices,
it may be that George W. is the only true believer among them,
if in fact he is one. The leaders of the American Empire may
well know -- at least occasionally when they're sitting alone
at midnight -- that all their expressed justifications for invading
Iraq and Afghanistan and for their "War on Terrorism"
are no more than fairy tales for young children and grown-up
innocents.
Officialdom doesn't make statements to
represent reality. It constructs stories to pursue interests.
And the interests here are irresistibly compelling: creating
the most powerful empire in all history, enriching their class
comrades, remaking the world in their own ideological image.
As I've written elsewhere: If I were
the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United
States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize --
very publicly and very sincerely -- to all the widows and orphans,
the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions
of other victims of American imperialism. Then I would announce
that America's global military interventions have come to an
end. I would then inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st
state of the union but--oddly enough--a foreign country. Then
I would reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the
savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage
from the many American bombings, invasions and sanctions. There
would be enough money. One year of our military budget is equal
to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ
was born. That's one year. That's what I'd do on my first three
days in the White House.
On the fourth day, I'd probably be assassinated.
William Blum is
the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions
Since World War II, Rogue
State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc
Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.
He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com
NOTES
1. Miami Herald, September 12, 2001
2. Agence France Presse, November 19,
2002
3. Washington Post, August 1, 2003, p.4
4. New York Times, August 22, 1998, p.
15
5. Jim Dwyer, et al., Two Seconds Under
the World (New York, 1994), p.196; see also the statement made
in court by Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who planned the attack, New York
Times, January 9, 1998, p.B4
6. Washington Post, October 3, 2002,
p.6
7. Washington Post, November 9, 2002;
Agence France Press, December 23, 2002
8. Los Angeles Times, November 13, 2002,
p.6
9. Associated Press, November 7, 2002
10. Ibid. 11. Voice of America News,
April 21, 2003
12. Washington Post, June 15, 02
13. US Department of Defense, Defense
Science Board 1997 Summer
Study Task Force on DOD Responses to Transnational Threats,
October 1997, Final Report, Vol.1., p.31
14. New York Times, March 26, 1989, p.16
15. Colin Powell with Joseph E. Persico,
My American Journey (New York, 1995), p.291
16. Boston Globe, October 12, 2001, p.28
17. Washington Post, March 27, 2003
18. Ibid., June 4, 2003, p.18
19. Pentagon briefing, June 30, 2003
20. Washington Post, June 29, 2003
21. Ibid., July 24, 2003, p.7
22. Ibid., August 8, 2003, p.13
Weekend
Edition Features for August 9 / 10, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
California's Glorious Recall!
Saul
Landau
Bush and King Henry
Gary
Leupp
On Terrorism, Methodism, "Wahhabism"
and the Censored 9/11 Report
Paul de
Rooij
The Parade of the Body Bags
Michael
Egan
History and the Tragedy of American Diplomacy
Rob Eshelman
A Home of Our Own
Daoud
Kuttab
Life as an ID Card
Philip
Agee
Terror and Civil Society: Instruments of US Policy in Cuba
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Marc Racicot: Bush's Main Man
Walt Brasch
Schwarzenegger, "Hollyweird"
and the Rigtheous Right
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush, Bribery and Berlusconi
Josh Frank
Mean, Mean Howard Dean
Elaine
Cassel
Will the Death Penalty Ever Die?
Sean Carter
Total Recall
Poets'
Basement
Hamod, Engel, Albert
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