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November 6, 2001
Evan Ravitz
Stop the War
Through
Direct Democracy
Steve
Perry
Hunger
in Afghanistan
November 5, 2001
Patrick Cockburn
Living
in the Minefields
David Price
Terror
and Indigenous People
November 3, 2001
Declan McCullagh
Nancy Oden Interview
Daniel
Wolff
The
Memphis Blues Again
Mark Weisbrot
War on Civilians
Dave Marsh
How
the RIAA (and the FBI)
Cheat Musicians
Robert Jensen
Speaking
Out Against
War on Campus
November 2, 2001
CounterPunch
Wire
Green
Party Leader Detained at Maine Airport; Prevented from Boarding
Any Plane
Alexander Cockburn
FBI Eyes
Torture
November 1, 2001
Dean Baker
Dying
for Patents
Sami Amarah
US Attempts
to Recruit
Russian Vets of Afghan War
Molly Secours
Where
Are the Voices of Reason? Let the Women
Be Heard
William Blum
Unleashing the
CIA
October 31, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
Terrorize
the Poor,
Subsidize the Rich
Chris Clarke
Thank God
for Berkeley
Steve
Perry
The
Silent Genocide
October 30, 2001
Rep. Ron Paul
War on Terror
Bad as War on Drugs
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Flying
Blind:
The Predator's Problem
Ali Abunimah
Dear Colin
Powell
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The New Intifada:
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November
6, 2001
Terrorists Who Torture and Kill
For Us
By C.G. Estabrook
What sort of moral monsters would crash airplanes
into buildings and kill thousands of innocent people? Were they
the same sort of moral monsters as those whose actions now may
produce the death from starvation of perhaps three or four million
people over the next several weeks?
The former group of terrorists, still
largely faceless and many now dead, were representatives of the
terror networks that the CIA founded a generation ago to trouble
the USSR. In its most expensive operation in history, the CIA
gathered the most savage and fanatical people it could find,
trained and armed them, and set them loose in Afghanistan in
the 1970s, even before the Soviets invaded that now ruined country.
Unfortunately, like so many other CIA "assets," these
Mujahideen did not limit themselves to the task the CIA had in
mind. Already in 1981 they assassinated the president of Egypt,
Anwar Sadat, and then went on to use the techniques and weapons
supplied by the CIA (at the rate of half a billion dollars a
year of our tax money) to kill in the name of their Islamicism
around the world -- in Chechnya, Bosnia, North Africa, Kashmir,
the Philippines, and finally New York City.
When asked if he regretted organizing
these terrorists, President Carter's National Security Advisor,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, said in a 1998 interview, "What is
most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the
collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the
liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?"
(In Brzezinski's defense, perhaps, it may be noted that he said
that in a 1998 interview, when the stirred-up Moslems were killing
merely foreigners and not Americans on American soil.)
The latter group of terrorists are the
American officials who complacently contemplate the starvation
of millions of people in Afghanistan in the next few weeks in
what United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson has
called a humanitarian disaster on the scale of Rwanda in the
mid-1990s. "Are we going to preside over deaths from starvation
of hundreds of thousands -- maybe millions -- of people this
winter because we didn't use the window of opportunity before
winter closes?" Robinson was calling for at least a halt
in the American bombing of Afghanistan so that supplies could
be put in place. Then on October 24 the NEW YORK TIMES reported
that "senior Pentagon officials said for the first time
today that they hoped to choke off fuel, food and other supplies
..."
Remarkably enough, people who criticize
the mass murder being undertaken by Washington are often confronted
with the question, "Well, what would you do, after September
11?" My first response is, Try to dissuade my government
from killing many, many more people than died on that day.
But the questioner usually wants to know what's to be done to
stop terrorism.
Of course there was another way. Rather than purposely flouting
it, the US should have (a) used the resources of domestic and
international law to apprehend and prosecute anyone left alive
who was responsible for this crime; and (b) made an effort to
understand the causes, motives, and reasons for the crime so
that they can be removed, lessening the chance of a repetition.
A practical program for (a) would have been:
- Before killing anyone, take the matter
to the UN Security Council, as the US is bound to do by treaty,
and insist on the delivery to a court of justice of anyone responsible
for the crimes. If no appropriate court could be found, then
one could be created, as they were for the Lockerbie terrorist
attack and the Balkan war crimes.
- If the US has evidence that a state
was involved, it should be presented to the International Court
of Justice, the World Court, which has declared states guilty
of terrorism before and demanded that they make restitution.
(Admittedly, it was the US that was judged guilty of terrorism.)
- Suppose that the effective government
of Afghanistan, say, although it said that it was willing to
turn over Osama bin Laden to a court if the US produces evidence,
refuses the Security Council's demand to do so. At this point
a UN military force, drawn from disinterested countries -- i.e.,
no Russians, Americans, Pakistanis, or Iranians, all of whom
have territorial interests in Afghanistan -- should be authorized
by the Security Council to retrieve those people whom it denominates.
Instead, the US has launched a war that
may result in the deaths of millions in the next few months.
And then this week the FBI floated a trial balloon, suggesting
that it might have to use torture on some of more than 1,130
people detained, many illegally, in the course of the investigation!
CP
Carl Estabrook
teaches at the University of Illinois and is the host of News
From Neptune, a weekly radio show on politics and the media.
He writes a regular column for CounterPunch.
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