|
October 1,
2001
Stop Bush's Killing
By Carl Estabrook
The clowns in Washington seem determined
to have a war, cheered on by corporate media who have abandoned
even the pretense of objectivity. (The "news" on
television considers with ponderous seriousness whether failing
to support Bush's proposed bombing campaign is treason.) There
is now one paramount practical question: How can they be stopped?
As James Connolly pointed out
at the beginning of the 20th century, the bloodiest in history,
one great source of the strength of the ruling elite, here and
elsewhere, is their willingness to order killing. In just the
decade 1991-2001, the leaders of the US have sponsored massacres
-- from Colombia to Turkey -- that killed many more people than
died in the September 11 atrocities _at the rate of at least
one per year_. We manage to ignore these murders, as we could
not ignore the murders in New York, but the rest of the world
has noticed them. And they also notice that the US is intending
to do it again, in reprisal for the September 11 attacks.
American killing has in fact
already begun, even while the "Bush team," Congressionally
plenipotent, temporized on exactly whom to bomb. The _New York
Times_ reported on September 16 that the US demanded that Pakistan
end the convoys that provide much of the food from the UN and
NGOs to Afghanistan's civilian population. With Afghans starving
after a three-year drought, the US is by this action simply killing
many of them. The casual murder of Iraqi children ("worth
the price," according to Clinton's Secretary of State) is
being repeated here, without comment in the US -- but it's noticed
in the rest of the world.
There's a sense in which the
war that Washington wants is an extension to the world at large
of those domestic wars, the War on Crime and the War on Drugs.
They were primarily ways to criminalize and incarcerate dangerous
classes. The policy has worked at home -- we imprison far more
of our fellow citizens proportionately than any other country
in the world -- and now we're extending it to dissident populations
abroad. "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
It seems clear that we can't
count on political liberals to stop this war. I've rarely seen
a more sickening sight than that of brave liberal spirits fawning
over Bush after his speech to the Congress. They leapt to their
feet, clapped, and sat in unison. It looked like archive film
of a legislature in a communist state circa 1950. And then they
surged forward to be chucked under the chin by George. Disgusting.
We might take a lesson from
how, after horrendous killing, the US was forced to stop the
war in Vietnam. There were three principal reasons: [1] the
courageous resistance of the Vietnamese people; [2] the revolt
of the American military in Vietnam; and [3] the slow but effective
growth of awareness of the nature of the war and opposition to
it in the US. By the end of the war, 80% of the US public agreed
in polls that the war was not simply mistaken but immoral, not
a blunder but a crime.
In this case, tragically, we
can count on reason [1]. A major assault on the Middle East
by the US is nothing short of the answer to Bin Laden's prayers.
It will produce resistance from those whom the US has oppressed
and exploited throughout the region.
But [2] will not be much of
a factor. The US learnt in Southeast Asia (as the French had
learnt there before) that a colonial war can't be run for long
with conscript troops. For every Phoenix-program terrorist like
ex-senator Bob Kerrey, slitting the throats of non-combatants,
there were a dozen American draftees that refused to go into
the jungle. This was the army that invented "fragging"
(rolling a fragmentation grenade under the bunk of a gung-ho
officer) and finally had to be withdrawn. So the US went to
a "volunteer" military (an economic draft, to be sure).
And then we have the "Powell Doctrine" -- a war crime
as stated -- "Only attack weak enemies and do it from the
air, targeting civilians and infrastructure, so you don't lose
troops." Under these conditions, the US military is "reliable,"
as it wasn't in Vietnam thirty years ago.
So it comes down to [3] --
telling the truth and shaming the devil, as Hotspur says. The
Pentagon and the putative president have announced that this
will be the most secret war ever. It won't be secret from those
whom the US attacks, but, yes, it has to be secret from those
our government fears most -- the US public. Our opposition to
Bush's killing can be constructed around the fact that people
are not fools. As in Vietnam, when the American people come
to know what is being done in their name, they are horrified.
CP
|