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September
17, 2001
Bringing the War Home
By Carl Estabrook
"The chickens
come home to roost"
--Malcolm X, at the time of the Kennedy assassination.
The destruction in New York on September
11 was a great crime, but it is not an excuse for the leaders
of the Bush Administration to kill Arabs or Afghanis.
Those Americans who say that
the carnage in New York "changed the world forever"
haven't been paying much attention to what their country has
been doing in the world. (Of course, they're encouraged not
to.) The US government is responsible just in the last decade
for enormities around the world that have killed many more people
than did the terrorist crimes in New York. Americans may not
have noticed, but the rest of the world has. That's the answer
to the plaintive inquiry, "Why do they hate us so much?"
If you were to ask Americans,
Did the Clinton Administration ever do anything that killed more
people than died in New York this week?, most would be shocked
at the question. But that administration began with US troops
killing perhaps twice as many people in Somalia and continued
with the killing of at least as many in Serbia. Against the
five thousand thought to have died in New York, we have to count
the deaths from sanctions in Iraq, where Clinton's secretary
of State said in 1996 that the half-million children's corpses
by then were "a high price" but "worth it."
In Timor, US-supplied paramilitaries
from US-client Indonesia killed thousands in massacres that could
have been stopped with a phone call from Washington.
In Turkey -- the third leading
recipient of US arms -- American heavy weapons and planes were
used against Kurds throughout the Clinton years (and on), killing
tens of thousands.
In those same years, the principal
US client, Israel, which receives half of all US foreign aid,
concluded 22 years of illegal occupation of Lebanon with tens
of thousands dead; it continues after 34 years its illegal occupation
of Palestine, with the deaths of many thousands.
In another ongoing US-financed
war, tens of thousands have been killed in Colombia (which has
now displaced Turkey as a US-arms recipient).
On one afternoon in August
of 1998 (it happened to be the day M. Lewinsky was testifying)
the Clinton administration sent a dozen million-dollar-each cruise
missiles into a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, one of the poorest
countries in the world, destroying most of that country's capacity
to make antibiotics and drugs for malaria, tuberculosis, and
cholera, as well as veterinary medicine and fertilizer. It is
estimated that many thousands died as a result; the US blocked
a UN inquiry into the death toll.
Last week's terrorist crimes
in New York are just that -- crimes, and not an "act of
war," as the Bush Administration keeps bleating. (Even
the insurance companies, who would be let off the hook if the
New York losses were the result of war, have admitted that they
can't claim that.) We've had some recent examples of how international
criminals should be dealt with. In Paris a few months ago, an
international criminal responsible for many more deaths than
Osama bin Laden was subpoenaed by a French judge. He fled the
country while his government asserted that he was in no way subject
to French jurisdiction, but Henry Kissinger -- for it was he
-- like Bin Laden now has to be careful where he travels. The
pattern was set by the UK's detention of the Chilean mass-murderer
Pinochet (put in place by Kissinger), although he was eventually
released by the man who is now the UK foreign minister.
The real grief of Americans
is being turned by the Bush administration into a suicidal flourish
of geriatric machismo. "Up to 60 countries face the full
wrath of American military might!" exclaims loony Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld. "Use tactical nuclear weapons on Afghanistan!"
says the usual shadowy spokesman for the US "intelligence
community." And the putative president of the US threatens
to attack any country found "harboring" terrorists.
Of course, if that were an excuse for killing a country's civilians,
then many in the rest of the world would say that Bin Laden could
claim it in regard to America, where Clinton and Kissinger are
at large, and the government is purportedly put in place by the
people.
A war emergency has advantages
to the Bush administration, of course. Its "approval rating"
rises, as typically in crises; it's an excuse to send money to
large corporations and lessen the capital gains tax while revving
up young Americans to kill foreigners; and it justifies further
inroads on civil liberties. (In the wake of the Oklahoma City
bombing, Clinton signed one of the most repressive pieces of
legislation in years, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty
Act.) In launching a war on poor Islamic countries, the Bush
administration is contributing to the fulfillment of the fevered
fantasies of Bin Laden and American "political scientist"
Samuel Huntington, who both look to a "clash of civilizations"
between Islamic militancy and US hegemony.
The principal beneficiary from
the carnage of September 11 is of course Israel. Prime Minister
Sharon took the occasion of the world's concentration on New
York suddenly to cancel his planned meeting with Arafat and to
send tanks and helicopter gunships into Palestinian towns, killing
a number of Palestinians; plans for walling off Palestinian enclaves
were suddenly resurrected. As it prepared for its war with "Islamic
fundamentalism," the Bush administration's feeble attempts
to restrain its blood-thirsty client have disappeared entirely,
and the Israeli government knows it: the war criminal at its
head can do anything he likes. When his opponent (from the right),
Benyamin Netanyahu, was asked what the attack means for relations
between the US and Israel, he replied, "It's very good."
The US must retract the war
it has projected around the world for generations. In New York
last week the victims were as usual working people -- janitors,
secretaries, firefighters. It will be another and greater crime
to continue to kill poor people in the Middle East at an even
greater rate in response. CP
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