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A Seven
Part Special Report
by Douglas Valentine, Author of The Phoenix Program
Homeland
Insecurity: The Politics of Terror in America
by Douglas Valentine
November 9, 2001
Karen Snell
Torture By
Proxy
John Troyer
A
New Kind of Activism
Tariq Ali
Q &
A About the War
Michael
Colby
Schoolgirl
Gets Booted
for Anti-war Views
November 8, 2001
Mokhiber/Weissman
The
Cipro Rip-Off
Mitchel Cohen
The Smear Campaign
Against Nancy Oden
Steve
Perry
American
Roulette
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
November 7, 2001
Bahour/Dahan
Placebo Peace
Plan
Tom Turnipseed
Bush
Gives Billions
to His Oil Buddies
Cockburn/St. Clair
Greens, Airports
and
National ID Cards
Dr. Susan
Block
Ayatollah
Asscroft
Brian J. Foley
Bombing Campaign
Not "Self-Defense" Under International Law
November 6, 2001
Mark Scaramella
Where's
That Red Cross Money Going
C.G. Estabrook
Our Torturers
Sheperd
Bliss
Scott
Nearing on War
Rep. Ron Paul
Underwriting
the Taliban
Tariq
Ali
The
General Who
Came to Dinner
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
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
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
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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November 10,
2001
Seeking Opposition to
the War In Afghanistan
By Grover Furr
I. The elephant
in the living room
How do you hide an elephant in your living
room? You can't hide it. So, you pretend it's not there. If you're
the American news media.
Where's the elephant?
In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan,
a country right on its border. The USSR claimed that the American
Central Intelligence Agency was behind a fundamentalist Islamic
revolt against the pro-Soviet government. Both the Carter and
Reagan Administrations denied this.
President Reagan was outraged. "The
Evil Empire," he stated. The US withdrew from the Olympic
Games, and began an open campaign to build up the Islamic fundamentalist
"freedom fighters" revolt. But the Soviets were correct,
as Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's former National Security
Advisor admitted in Le Nouvel Observateur in January1998.
Twenty-two years later, the US has invaded
Afghanistan. If it was wrong for the Soviet Union to invade,
isn't it just as wrong for the US to do so? If the Soviet invasion
were evidence for Soviet imperialism, isn't the US invasion evidence
of US imperialism?
It would be one thing if the US media--to
say nothing of the Bush regime--were to actually face this question,
and say something like: "Well, the Soviets weren't going
after terrorists, like we are. So their invasion was 'imperialism',
while our 'war' is only to fight terrorism." Except that
the Soviets were going after terrorists-- US-sponsored terrorists
-- as Brzezinski admitted. According to the US government and
mass media, what the US does is never "terrorism."
That word is only used for what others do.
That would be at least to acknowledge
that there is an elephant in the living room--that the US is
now doing exactly the same thing that successive US regimes denounced
the Soviet Union for doing.
But they don't want us to see what is,
so obviously, going on. They think that, if they ignore it, we
won't see it either. They think we are idiots.
II. Oil and
Imperialism
However, it is clearer than ever that
the war in Afghanistan is over control of oil. It is not even
about catching OBL. This is an imperialist war.
On September 18 the BBC revealed that
the US had plans to invade Afghanistan before Sept. 11. And the
Bush Administration states the US plans to stay in Afghanistan
a long time, set up a "friendly" regime, and establish
a military presence there, while admitting it may be years, if
ever, before it finds OBL.
Unocal, a US oil company had been negotiating
with the Taliban regime for pipeline routes until this past Spring,
when the Taliban demanded too much money. These negotiations
explain the US government's "humanitarian" and "anti-drug"
aid to the Taliban regime during 2000 and the first part of 2001.
A military presence in Afghanistan will
give US rulers a strong military base near the Caspian region
of emerging oil nations, and athwart some of the best routes
for oil and gas pipelines.
"Fighting terrorism" is simply
the pretext, necessary to win the approval of the American public--to
counteract the "Vietnam Syndrome", the healthy distrust
of the American people of their imperialist government that works
against their interest at every turn.
And it is not a war for "cheaper"
oil--as though our own dear US rulers were sending us off to
fight, kill and die so that we can drive gas-guzzling SUVs to
our heart's content. As in the Gulf War, one aim is more expensive
oil--higher profits for big US oil companies. The deeper motive,
though, is control--political leverage over other industrial,
imperialist countries like Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Italy,
Holland--that, unlike the US, have few or no oil reserves of
their own.
III. A Terrorist
War
In this criminal war, the US is already
killing civilians. Remember the term "collateral damage"?
Now the US killers don't know what to call the civilian casualties.
Yes, US killers; if the suicide terrorists of 9/11 were killers,
then the US government are killers too. Civilian deaths are the
inevitable result of any bombing campaign against populated areas.
What we are seeing in Afghanistan is
typical imperialist slaughter of people in a non-industrialized
country for profit. It's murder on a grand scale, as only the
largest and most technologically sophisticated military in the
world --the US military--can do it. And it has just begun.
There's been some talk of "pathological
cultures." Well, there is plenty of pathology in the Middle
East! For example, Islamic Fundamentalism and Jewish Fundamentalism
(see Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism
in Israel, Pluto Press, 1999). Neither "fundamentalisms"
are any good at all.
But there is nothing so "pathological",
so hideous, as a society that declares itself "civilized"
and then bombs and kills the people of a tormented country like
Afghanistan.
Nothing so "pathological" as
that same society which, as Brzezinski boasted, started the Afghan
war, leading to over one million Afghani deaths with another
two million maimed and wounded, simply as a move in a great "chess
game" against its chief imperialist rival at the time, the
USSR.
Nothing so "pathological" as
that same society that supports Israeli murder and brutality
against Palestinians--acts so horrendous that, were they being
committed against Jews anywhere in the world, the world would
rise up in protest, and rightly so.
And then some "leaders" in
that same society have the gall to declare themselves "civilized",
and other cultures--the cultures of their victims--as "pathological."
It is this imperialist culture that is
truly sick.
Let us reject the US government's lies,
and raise our voices to oppose this criminal war. Tens of thousands
of US college students, workers, and others have already done
so. To find out more, email struggleforpeace@hotmail.com.
And see http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/pol/wtcanalysis.html
for the articles mentioned here, and many others.
Grover Furr
is an associate professor of English at Montclair State University.
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