|
March
3, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
War
on Terrorism for Dummies
Paul Cox
Boycott
Mel Gibson's
"We Were Soldiers"
Frederick
Hudson
Toward
a Nonviolent Africa:
Bill Sutherland's Quest
Eric Schaeffer
Dear
Christie Whitman:
Take This Job and Shove It
John Chuckman
Why
the Rest of Planet is Unnerved by America
March
2, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Sweat,
Sex, Feet and
the Working Class
March
1, 2002
Brendan
Sexton III
What's
Wrong With Black Hawk Down: an Actor Speaks Out
Terry
Diggs
Why
Twain's Pudd'nhead
Wilson Still Matters
David
Krieger
Nuclear
Terrorism
and US Nuclear Policy
February
28, 2002
James
T. Phillips
Baghdad,
Spring 1992
Gideon
Samet
Sharon
Must Go
Rep. Ron
Paul
Before
We Bomb Iraq
M. Shahid
Alam
Samuel
Huntington:
Peddling Civilizational Wars
St. Clair
/ Cockburn
Rumble
from the Jungle:
Ecuadorian Farmers Fight
DynCorp's ChemWar
February
27, 2002
Eric Hobsbawm
The
Future of War and Peace
John Troyer
About
that WTC Memorial
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Wired
for Democracy
or Business?
Alexander
Cockburn
Daniel
Pearl: Should His
Editors Have Sent Him There?
February
26, 2002
Jonathan
Steele
Kabul's
Loss
Vasily
Streltsov
The
Pentagon in
the Transcaucusas
CounterPunch
Wire
How
Corporations Use Shadowy "527" Groups to Influence
Politicians
Lt. Col.
Robert Bowman
ABM
Treaty: Alive or Dead?
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
A
Prayer for America
February
25, 2002
John Clarke
Interrogated
at US Border
Blankfort,
Poirier, Zeltzer
ADL
Blinks, Settles Spying Case
Alex Lynch
Naked
from Sin:
The Ordeal of Nahla
and Sami Al-Arian
John Chuckman
Ashcroft
Speaks in Tongues
February
24, 2002
David
Vest
Skate
Date
February
23, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Axis
of Evil and
Media Monopolies
Bahour/Dahan
Cracks
in the Occupation
February
22, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Axel
of Evil: Sex Crimes
and the Constitution
February
21, 2002
Gary Leupp
The
Philippines: Second Front in US's Global War
David
Vest
Reagan
Clone Project?
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Chicago
School and Corporate America: Rotten to the Core
February
20, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
The
Shallow Throat Document
Kay Lee
The
Prison Guard Who Never Owned Up to His Crimes
February
19, 2002
David
Orr
Waylon
Jennings, the Duke,
and the Navajo
John Chuckman
The
Devil and Georgie Bush
Prudence
Crowther
Giblet
Gravitas
Ramzi
Kysia
Caught
in the Iraq DMZ
February
18, 2002
Ron Jacobs
The
US and Iran
George
Lewandowski
Empire
in Declline
Lenni
Brenner
Life
and Death of a Folk Hero
February
17, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Lost
in a Pit of Desperation
February
16, 2002
Phillip
Cryan
Colombia
in War Time
February
15, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
From
New York to Porto Alegre
Robert
O'Brien
The
View from Porto Alegre
Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting
the Assassins
February
14, 2002
Levy and
Easton
Ante
Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans
Joan Claybrook
Dear
Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron
John Chuckman
Time
for a Woman Prez
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
February
13, 2002
Sen. Russ
Feingold
War
Powers and
the War on Terror
Tom Turnipseed
Bush's
Folly
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
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About 9/11
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Days That
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CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
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CounterPunch
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and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
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Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
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The
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by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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Reviews of Gore:
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|
March 4, 2002
Former Senior CIA
Officer:
Why the "War
on Terror" Won't Work
By Bill Christison
Bill Christison joined the CIA
in 1950, and served on the analysis side of the Agency for 28
years. From the early 1970s he served as National Intelligence
Officer (principal adviser to the Director of Central Intelligence
on certain areas) for, at various times, Southeast Asia, South
Asia and Africa. Before he retired in 1979 he was Director of
the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis, a 250-person
unit.. These remarks, which he has made available to CounterPunch,
have been recently delivered to various peace groups in New Mexico.
His wife Kathy also worked in the CIA, retiring in 1979.Since
then she has been mainly preoccupied by the issue of Palestine.
On January 15 the Attorney General of the United
States, John Ashcroft, held a press conference in order to describe
the initial criminal charges that the government would make against
John Walker, the 20-year-old American citizen who had joined
the Taliban military forces. In his talk, Ashcroft said this,
and I quote: "The United States does not casually or capriciously
charge one of its own citizens with providing support to terrorists.
We are impelled to do so today by the inescapable fact of September
the 11th, a day that reminded us in no uncertain terms that we
have enemies in the world and that these enemies seek to destroy
us. We learned on September 11 that our way of life is not immune
from attack, and even from destruction."
The guts of what Ashcroft said is
and I quote again "We have enemies in the world and
these enemies seek to destroy us." Unquote. I submit to
you that this is simply not a true statement. The evidence I've
seen shows that the real objective of the Muslim extremists led
by Osama bin Laden was to rid the Muslim world itself of American
domination and influence. They wanted NOT to destroy the United
States; rather they wanted the U.S. out of their own land. Bin
Laden and his supporters also wanted, and those yet alive still
want, to unite Muslim nations behind an extreme version of Islam,
believing that the Islamic world can thereby better control its
own future. I think they realize full well there is no possibility
they can "destroy " the United States, and their objective,
while still pretty grandiose, is considerably more limited. Their
aim, according to one recent analysis that appeared in the New
York Review of Books and I quote again "is
to create one Islamic world. .This is a call to purify the Islamic
world of the idolatrous West, exemplified by America. The aim
is to strike at American heathen shrines, and show, in the most
spectacular fashion, that the U.S. is vulnerable, a paper tiger"
Unquote.
These Islamic extremists are not nice
people. Those still alive, and other future adherents to their
cause, will continue to try to kill innocent people in the U.S.
and elsewhere. But what the extremists see themselves as trying
to do is to stop the United States from continuing its drive
for global hegemony, including hegemony over the Islamic world.
I think it's important to understand this, because if people
in the United States believe that some enemy is trying to "destroy"
the U.S. and actually has some possibility of doing so
then waging an all-out war against that enemy can be more
easily justified. But what if the U.S. is not trying to prevent
its own destruction, but instead is trying to preserve and extend
its global hegemony? In that case, I think we should all step
back and start demanding of our government a serious public debate
over future U.S. foreign policies. We should be strenuously debating
the degree to which the people in this country, given all of
our own domestic problems, want the U.S. government to continue
foreign policies intended to strengthen U.S. hegemony over and
domination of the rest of the world in the political, economic,
and militarily areas.
In short, Ashcroft's claim that enemies
are seeking to destroy the United States makes it easier for
the U.S. government to avoid any limits that might otherwise
be imposed on its "war against terrorism" by an informed
public opinion. President George W. Bush's references in his
own speeches to America's enemies as "the evil ones"
tend in the same direction. Although acts of terrorism
which I'm defining here as killings of, or other violence against,
innocent noncombatants are always inexcusable, simply labeling
perpetrators as "the evil ones" makes it easier for
the U.S. government to avoid any inconvenient discussion of ways
in which the U.S. might modify its foreign policies to reduce
the likelihood of future terrorist acts. But are all Afghans
"evil ones?" Or all members of the Taliban? Or did
only a few Taliban leaders know about the planned terrorist attacks
before September 11? In any case, is it clear that all Taliban
members were accomplices of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden? And
if they were accomplices, is it not true that the better legal
systems of the world do not punish accomplices to a crime as
severely as the criminals themselves? Is it right that in this
war the U.S. is punishing the accomplices just as much the criminals
themselves? It seems to me that the use of the term "evil
ones" is intended to avoid discussion of a lot of nuances.
My own view is that the United States
is now, almost five months after September 11, heading into an
extraordinarily difficult time, when substantial changes in our
foreign policies will be required. Yet all the polls seem to
show that up to 90 percent of the people in this country still
don't even want to listen to anyone who proposes alternatives
to our present foreign policies. So I guess that shows that only
ten percent of Americans care much about our policies toward
the rest of the world. But I'll bet that in this room right now,
a much higher proportion of you do care about the rest
of the world and do want to see changes in our foreign
policies
The first and most basic belief I have
about the current situation is that military action will never
be effective in solving the problem of terrorism against the
United States. At best it will only prevent terrorism temporarily.
As I've already mentioned, there's little doubt that the U.S.
will somehow kill or capture or otherwise neutralize Osama bin
Laden and most of his lieutenants. The U.S. has already pretty
much pulverized Afghanistan by bombing, and has incidentally
killed an unknown number of innocent noncombatants in the process.
The U.S. government, by the way, seems uninterested in even estimating
how many innocent noncombatants have in fact been killed, but
it is possible that the number is as large as or larger than
the 3,000 killed in the U.S. on September 11. Whatever the military
success of the U.S., however, a couple of years hence new extremists
just as clever as bin Laden, and hating the U.S. even more, will
almost certainly arise somewhere else in the world. That's why
we need to understand the root causes behind the terrorism. If
I am right that military action will not prevent future terrorism,
but only delay it, we should start working on these root causes
right away. We should not wait until the military actions are
finished before looking at root causes, as some people would
urge us to do.
So let's go. I'm going to list six major
root causes of the terrorism that I think are important. Either
Kathy of I will make some comments on each one and then propose
how we should change our foreign policy on each. The critical
thing you should keep in mind on all of these six issues is that
there is a great deal of disagreement in Washington and elsewhere
over the relative importance of one compared to another.
With that caveat, here are the six root causes of terrorism against
the U.S. that we've chosen to talk about. I've arranged them
in a rough order that starts with those I think are most difficult
to deal with, but the order does not necessarily reflect their
relative importance. My personal feeling is that all six are
of equal importance.
ONE: My number
one root cause is the support by the U.S. over recent years for
the policies of Israel with respect to the Palestinians, and
the belief among Arabs and Muslims that the United States is
as much to blame as Israel itself for the continuing, almost
35-year-long Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip.
My first comment on this issue is that
it is a more controversial root cause than any of the others
on our list. The government of Israel, and many supporters of
Israel in the United States, really did not want to talk about
any root causes immediately after September 11. Top leaders in
the United States, most of whom strongly support Israel, preferred
to talk only in general terms about how the terrorists
were mad and irrational, and how they had attacked "freedom
itself," out of mindless hatred. More recently, when pressured
to talk about root causes at all, the Israelis and their supporters
have gone to great lengths to reject arguments that Israel's
behavior toward the Palestinians, or U.S. support for Israel,
are in any way even a partial cause of the terrorism. When forced
to say something positive about root causes, they tend to allege
a broader Islamic religious hatred of the West and its modern
technology than I think exists. They also emphasize the internal
tensions within the Arab world, the lack of democracy and the
dictatorial rulers of Arab nations, who are depicted as trying
to distract their people from their own internal grievances by
whipping up hatred of Israel.
I need to digress for a moment. In a
situation where there are clearly multiple root causes of terrorism,
it's in the interest of any person or nation that might be blamed
for one of the root causes to emphasize instead the other root
causes. In the last couple of months, a sizable propaganda campaign
has been launched suggesting that Saudi Arabia is the most important
root cause of the September 11 terrorism. I certainly agree that
the dictatorial and decrepit Saudi government and its support
throughout the Muslim world for a harsh and immoderate version
of Islam can be seen as one but only one of the root
causes behind the recent terrorism. I'll have more to say about
this later. What I want to point out here is that I suspect supporters
of Israel are aggressively pressing this campaign against Saudi
Arabia, in the hope of persuading other world leaders that the
issue of Palestine is NOT a significant root cause. The New
York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is a leading practitioner
of this pro-Israel campaign. Both Kathy and I believe, however,
that the United States' strong support for Israel and for its
occupation and colonization of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
is indeed is a major root cause of the terrorism against the
U.S.
After I go through the rest of the root
causes, Kathy is going to talk in much more detail about the
Israel-Palestine issue and its tragic consequences. Kathy will
also give you her thoughts on changes in U.S. foreign policy
that might be necessary if the U.S. does in fact desire a peaceful
resolution of this issue a resolution that would also help
to reduce the likelihood of future terrorism against the U.S.
TWO: My number
two root cause is the present drive of the United States to spread
its hegemony and its version of big-corporation, free enterprise
globalization around the world. At the same time, the massive
poverty of average people, not only in Arab and Muslim nations
but also in the whole third world, has become more important
as a global political issue. The gap between rich and poor nations,
and rich and poor people within most of the nations, has grown
wider during the last 20 years of globalization or, more precisely,
the U.S. version of globalization. Animosities against the United
States have grown among the poor of the world, who have watched
as the U.S. has expanded both its hegemony and a type of globalization
based on its own economic system, while they themselves have
seen no or very little benefit from these changes.
This problem of poverty around the world
is so immense that it's almost impossible to grasp. Global statistics
are far from perfect, buy they show that the world's population
hit 6 billion last year. 2.8 billion people, almost half of
the world's total, have incomes of less than two dollars a day.
Here's another statistic: the richest one percent of the world's
people receive as much income as the poorest 57 percent. And
here's a final statistic: The richest 25 million people in the
United States receive more income than the 2 billion poorest
people of the world one third of the world's total population.
Can we here, sitting in this room, even comprehend the magnitude
of the injustice that these figures represent? And have no doubt
we in the United States are, rightly or wrongly, blamed
for these figures.
The catalog of reasons for animosity
toward the U.S. throughout the world includes a number of things
in addition to our overbearing assertion of both economic and
political hegemony: our arrogance in insisting that whatever
we say goes, our penchant for abrogating or ignoring international
treaties that we don't happen to like, as well as the influence
of U.S. corporations that exploit cheap labor in third world
countries to make consumer goods for Americans, Take all these
things together and you have a wide sense among the poor people
of the world of being oppressed by the United States. This in
turn made it possible for Osama bin Laden and the fundamentalists
around him to instill and spread intense hatred of us, just as
a sense of being oppressed by the Allies after World War I made
it possible for Hitler to arouse the kind of fear and hatred
among Germans that led both to the slaughter of Jews and to World
War II.
The pressures arising from the complex
and related problems of U.S. hegemony, globalization and the
immense gap in wealth will grow steadily more explosive. My proposal
is that the U.S. should immediately develop and implement, with
active participation of the U.N. and the European Union (E.U.),
a new, very large, and long-term "Marshall Plan" type
of aid program for all of the poor nations of the world. This
plan should specifically be aimed at reducing the size of the
income gap between the poorest and richest nations, and at reducing
the income gap between the rich and poor within nations.
This type of plan could contribute significantly to reducing
the likelihood of future terrorism against the United States.
It would also show a far more generous side of the United States
to people who at present see only a U.S. version of globalization
that seems to them highly selfish and beneficial largely to big
corporations and the rich of the world.
I've been talking about a massive aid
program for the world's poor since last October, when I spoke
to a number of peace groups in Santa Fe. More recently, the British
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, has proposed a similar
plan, in the amount of $100 billion for each of the next four
years. My own suggestion as to the amount is $350 billion spread
over three years. $350 billion is, after all, just about what
the U.S. military budget will probably amount to in the next
ONE fiscal year. One would think that we could find an equal
amount to spend over a three-year period for what I would regard
as a better purpose.
About now some of you are probably thinking,
how unrealistic can this guy get! He of all people meaning
me should be aware of how corrupt the governments of most
third-world nations are, and you can just see all this money
simply going down the drain. My answer is that solving the problem
of massive income inequalities around the world is absolutely
critical to the future stability of the world, and so far the
U.S. version of globalization has not improved the situation
at all. I think there are enough intelligent people in the U.N.,
U.S., Europe, and the underdeveloped countries themselves that
we could set up a planning and monitoring group to oversee the
wise use of such large funds and to hold the level of corruption
to a minimum. The United States should not run such a program
unilaterally, and the institutions set up to manage it should
not be used to perpetuate and strengthen U.S. global hegemony,
as the case now with the International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank. When you hear charges of unrealism before some new
program is even in the detailed planning stages, I think you're
entitled to ask if those making the charges aren't really opposing
the new program for some other reason. My own feeling is that
the world is in such a mess, and the inequality problem is so
severe, that maybe we should worry less about alleged "unrealism"
and more about getting on with the business of planning, followed
by real action, to do something about the problem.
THREE: The
number three root cause I want to discuss is the continuing sanctions
and lack of food and medicines for the people of Iraq, deaths
of Iraqi children, and the almost daily bombing of Iraq by the
U.S. and Great Britain. Right or wrong, the Arab and Muslim "street"
blames this on the U.S., not on Saddam Hussein.
I don't have much to comment about on
this one. The sanctions and the bombings have been in effect
for ten years, and have neither brought about the ouster of Saddam
Hussein nor significantly weakened him. And they have caused
the deaths of children variously estimated at up to or over a
million. The U.S. government's position is that Saddam himself
is to blame for the troubles of the Iraqi people, but the fact
remains that after all these years, the Iraqi people are the
ones hurt by U.S. actions, not Saddam.
My view is that simple justice argues
for an end to both the sanctions and the bombings. My proposal
is that we do precisely that.
FOUR: My
number four root cause is the continued presence of U.S. troops
in Saudi Arabia.
Ten years ago this was the principal
cause of Osama bin Laden's hostility toward the United States.
(His hostility on account of U.S. actions against Iraq and then
the massive U.S. support for Israel came later and in both cases
may be tactical an effort to broaden his own popularity
in the Arab world.) Today the thousands of U.S. military personnel
in Saudi Arabia are a constant irritant in Saudi-U.S. relations.
The Saudi people clearly do not want them there. Unless we plan
to invade Iraq again, I doubt there is any longer a vital reason
to keep men and U.S. ground-based military facilities there.
My proposal? The obvious one that
we remove the troops. I understand, of course you'd have
to be blind and deaf not to know this that some people
at high levels in the U.S. government do want to invade Iraq
again. All I can say is, I hope such people do not carry the
day. I can't think of a thing that would do more to broaden this
"war on terrorism" into a Judeo-Christian war against
Islam despite any U.S. governmental protestations to the
contrary.
FIVE: The
fifth root cause on my list is the dissatisfaction and anger
of many average and even elite Arabs and Muslims over their own
authoritarian, undemocratic, and often corrupt governments, which
are supported by the United States.
My first comment here is that Osama bin
Laden is a good example of this particular root cause. His extremist
wrath was directed as much against the Saudi government, for
example, as it was against the United States. His opposition
to what used to be his own government was probably the main reason
why he had the support of a majority of the young men under 25
in Saudi Arabia. He received similar support from many young
men in other Arab and Muslim states as well. Right now these
groups of angry young men obviously no longer have a viable leader
in Osama bin Laden, but other extremist leaders are almost sure
to arise. In addition, the next generation of leaders in at least
some of these states may well emerge from among these young men.
If any of them do come into power, their future governments
will likely be more anti-American than the present governments,
which Washington likes to call "moderate," but which
are really nothing of the sort. If we have not reduced our energy
dependence on oil in the meantime, we may face serious trouble.
In my view, this IS a truly difficult
problem. My proposal is that we should adopt draconian measures
immediately to reduce our overall energy usage, including but
not limited to cutting our dependence on Mideast oil. We should,
for example, change our tax structure to make energy as expensive
to consumers in the United States as it is in Europe and Japan.
This will require significant life-style changes in the U.S.
I think we kid ourselves if we believe that we can solve any
coming energy crunch by expanding alternative power sources or
by increasing "clean coal" usage, nuclear power usage,
and Alaskan oil usage. The shortages will be too great; so will
the long-term environmental costs; and so will the political
costs in our relationships with other nations that have already
accepted higher energy prices for consumers as a necessary burden
of 21st Century life.
We also should not count on new oil supplies
from Central Asia allowing us to forget about the need for conservation
and to stop being concerned about the stability of Saudi Arabia
or other areas of the Middle East. Even assuming that massive
supplies of oil from Central Asia become available quickly, all
we'll be doing is transferring our support from the dictatorships
of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States to the dictatorships of Central
Asia. That is not a prospect that we should blithely accept.
In my view, conservation is the route we must follow.
I think we should, at the same time,
gradually reduce the closeness of our ties with the present authoritarian
governments in Arab and Muslim states, and try to develop a better
understanding of and improved relations with groups in these
states that oppose their own present governments. We should seek
out groups that appear to be democratically inclined and "moderate"
in the true meaning of the word. Difficult? Of course it will
be. But it is the best shot we've got, in my opinion, to have
a decent relationship with many Muslim states in the future.
It's also the best shot we've got if we wish to diminish, over
time, the support for future Osama bin Ladens that arises from
the anger of Arabs and Muslims with their own governments.
SIX. The
sixth and last root cause on my list arises directly from the
U.S. "war on terrorism." It has to do with the kind
of war the U.S. is now able to fight. On three recent occasions
the Gulf War of 1990-1991, the Kosovo war of 1999 against
Yugoslavia, and the current war against Afghanistan the
United States has easily achieved victories by relying almost
exclusively on air power, on missiles launched from a great distance,
and now even on drone aircraft with no humans on board. The U.S.
has won these wars with practically no casualties among its own
forces. But while few Americans get killed, sizable numbers of
other nationalities do.
Most people in the United States are
proud both of these victories and of the low U.S. casualties
in these three wars. From the viewpoint of anyone who supports
the wars, this prowess of U.S. armed forces deserves to be honored.
But elsewhere in much of the world, especially the underdeveloped
world, this overwhelming invincibility of the U.S. military intensifies
the frustrations about and hatred of the United States. This
in turn makes future terrorist acts against the U.S. or
what is now called by U.S. strategic thinkers asymmetrical warfare
even more likely. Those in underdeveloped lands who oppose
the U.S. drive for worldwide hegemony are increasingly coming
to see no means other than terrorism as an effective method of
opposing the United States.
This is an issue that demands a lot more
discussion than it's been getting, and it goes to the heart of
our future foreign policies. For the immediate future, perhaps
the next five or ten years, it's going to be tempting for any
government of the United States to implement and enforce whatever
foreign policies it chooses by going to war, because it will
be confident - even overconfident - that it won't lose a military
confrontation and won't suffer many casualties. The U.S. government
in fact has already started moving in this direction, by threatening
to launch preemptive wars against nations that are trying to
develop nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction.
Another thing the U.S. is already doing is to militarize the
United States to an unprecedented, and wholly unnecessary, degree
in comparison with other nations. An editorial in the March 3
New York Times puts it bluntly. "If Congress cranks up the
Pentagon's budget as much as President Bush would like, the United
States will soon be spending more on defense than all the other
countries of the world combined." To me, this is absurd
- but there you are. These military expenditures will clearly
lead to cuts in spending on domestic U.S. problems such as poverty
and healthcare, and make it harder to do anything about solving
the problems of global poverty and income inequality that I've
already discussed. In this same five to ten year period, the
readily available military option will also encourage the U.S.
to avoid facing up to the hard decisions necessary for a peaceful
resolution of our more intractable foreign policy problems.
This leads me to a very important conclusion.
Since the greater willingness to initiate and fight wars intensifies
hatred of the U.S., it is in the U.S. interest to show restraint
and voluntarily stop employing warfare based on bombing in order
to combat future acts of terrorism. The fact that U.S. bombs
and missiles have already killed innocent civilians is tragic
and puts us on a par with the extremists who committed the September
11 acts. The U.S. should stop, right now, all further military
action that risks killing more civilians.
At the same time, I want to emphasize
that I am quite sure there is enough evidence of Osama bin Laden's
complicity in the September 11 terrorist actions to arrest and
indict him. Assuming he is still alive, I would therefore support
covert or Green-Beret-type operations to capture, but not assassinate,
him. Maximum precautions should be taken, however, to prevent
such operations from killing or injuring any more innocent civilians.
Once captured, bin Laden should be prosecuted and tried in an
international court.
I fully understand that compared to most
views you hear concerning the U.S. "war on terrorism,"
my views are RADICAL. But I believe that unless the U.S. moves
in the directions I've been suggesting throughout this talk,
in five or ten years the terrorism against the United States
will become so intense that our global relationships with other
nations will be in shambles. On the other hand, if the U.S. government
voluntarily moves toward the kind of foreign policy changes I've
been talking about, I think that its actions might start a trend
toward a considerably more peaceful, and stable, 21st Century
than now seems likely.
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