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September 18, 2001
Blowback Strikes
Shocked and Horrified
By Larry Mosqueda
Like all Americans, on Tuesday, 9-11,
I was shocked and horrified to watch the WTC Twin Towers attacked
by hijacked planes and collapse, resulting in the deaths of perhaps
up to 10,000 innocent people.
I had not been that shocked
and horrified since January 16, 1991, when then President Bush
attacked Baghdad, and the rest of Iraq and began killing 200,000
people during that "war" (slaughter). This includes
the infamous "highway of death" in the last days of
the slaughter when U.S. pilots literally shot in the back retreating
Iraqi civilians and soldiers. I continue to be horrified by the
sanctions on Iraq, which have resulted in the death of over 1,000,000
Iraqis, including over 500,000 children, about whom former Secretary
of State Madeline Albright has stated that their deaths "are
worth the cost".
Over the course of my life
I have been shocked and horrified by a variety of U.S. governmental
actions, such as the U.S. sponsored coup against democracy in
Guatemala in 1954 which resulted in the deaths of over 120,000
Guatemalan peasants by U.S. installed dictatorships over the
course of four decades.
Last Tuesday's events reminded
me of the horror I felt when the U.S. overthrew the governments
of the Dominican Republic in 1965 and helped to murder 3,000
people. And it reminded me of the shock I felt in 1973, when
the U.S. sponsored a coup in Chile against the democratic government
of Salvador Allende and helped to murder another 30,000 people,
including U.S. citizens.
Last Tuesday's events reminded
me of the shock and horror I felt in 1965 when the U.S. sponsored
a coup in Indonesia that resulted in the murder of over 800,000
people, and the subsequent slaughter in 1975 of over 250,000
innocent people in East Timor by the Indonesian regime with the
direct complicity of President Ford and Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger.
I was reminded of the shock
and horror I felt during the U.S. sponsored terrorist contra
war (the World Court declared the U.S. government a war criminal
in 1984 for the mining of the harbors) against Nicaragua in the
1980s which resulted in the deaths of over 30,000 innocent people
(or as the U.S. government used to call them before the term
"collateral damage" was invented--"soft targets").
I was reminded of being horrified
by the U. S. war against the people of El Salvador in the 1980s,
which resulted in the brutal deaths of over 80,000 people, or
"soft targets".
I was reminded of the shock
and horror I felt during the U.S. sponsored terror war against
the peoples of southern Africa (especially Angola) that began
in the 1970's and continues to this day and has resulted in the
deaths and mutilations of over 1,000,000. I was reminded of the
shock and horror I felt as the U.S. invaded Panama over the Christmas
season of 1989 and killed over 8,000 in an attempt to capture
George H. Bush's CIA partner, now turned enemy, Manuel Noriega.
I was reminded of the horror
I felt when I learned about how the Shah of Iran was installed
in a U.S. sponsored brutal coup that resulted in the deaths of
over 70,000 Iranians from 1952-1979. And the continuing shock
as I learned that the Ayatollah Khomeni, who overthrew the Shah
in 1979, and who was the U.S. public enemy for decade of the
1980s, was also on the CIA payroll, while he was in exile in
Paris in the 1970s.
I was reminded of the shock
and horror that I felt as I learned about the how the U.S. has
"manufactured consent" since 1948 for its support of
Israel, to the exclusion of virtually any rights for the Palestinians
in their native lands resulting in ever worsening day-to-day
conditions for the people of Palestine. I was shocked as I learned
about the hundreds of towns and villages that were literally
wiped off the face of the earth in the early days of Israeli
colonization. I was horrified in 1982 as the villagers of Sabra
and Shatila were massacred by Israeli allies with direct Israeli
complicity and direction. The untold thousands who died on that
day match the scene of horror that we saw last Tuesday. But those
scenes were not repeated over and over again on the national
media to inflame the American public.
The events and images of last
Tuesday have been appropriately compared to the horrific events
and images of Lebanon in the 1980s with resulted in the deaths
of tens of thousand of people, with no reference to the fact
that the country that inflicted the terror on Lebanon was Israel,
with U.S. backing. I still continue to be shocked at how mainstream
commentators refer to "Israeli settlers" in the "occupied
territories" with no sense of irony as they report on who
are the aggressors in the region.
Of course, the largest and
most shocking war crime of the second half of the 20th century
was the U.S. assault on Indochina from 1954-1975, especially
Vietnam, where over 4,000,000 people were bombed, napalmed, crushed,
shot and individually "hands on" murdered in the "Phoenix
Program" (this is where Oliver North got his start). Many
U.S. Vietnam veterans were also victimized by this war and had
the best of intentions, but the policy makers themselves knew
the criminality of their actions and policies as revealed in
their own words in "The Pentagon Papers," released
by Daniel Ellsberg of the RAND Corporation. In 1974 Ellsberg
noted that our Presidents from Truman to Nixon continually lied
to the U.S. public about the purpose and conduct of the war.
He has stated that, "It is a tribute to the American people
that our leaders perceived that they had to lie to us, it is
not a tribute to us that we were so easily misled."
I was continually shocked and
horrified as the U.S. attacked and bombed with impunity the nation
of Libya in the 1980s, including killing the infant daughter
of Khadafi. I was shocked as the U.S. bombed and invaded Grenada
in 1983. I was horrified by U.S. military and CIA actions in
Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan, Brazil, Argentina, and Yugoslavia.
The deaths in these actions ran into the hundreds of thousands.
The above list is by no means
complete or comprehensive. It is merely a list that is easily
accessible and not unknown, especially to the economic and intellectual
elites. It has just been conveniently eliminated from the public
discourse and public consciousness. And for the most part, the
analysis that the U.S. actions have resulted in the deaths of
primarily civilians (over 90%) is not unknown to these elites
and policy makers. A conservative number for those who have been
killed by U.S. terror and military action since World War II
is 8,000,000 people. Repeat--8,000,000 people. This does not
include the wounded, the imprisoned, the displaced, the refugees,
etc. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated in 1967, during the Vietnam
War, "My government is the world's leading purveyor of violence."
Shocking and horrifying.
Nothing that I have written
is meant to disparage or disrespect those who were victims and
those who suffered death or the loss of a loved one during this
week's events. It is not meant to "justify" any action
by those who bombed the Twin Towers or the Pentagon. It is meant
to put it in a context. If we believe that the actions were those
of "madmen", they are "madmen" who are able
to keep a secret for 2 years or more among over 100 people, as
they trained to execute a complex plan. While not the acts of
madmen, they are apparently the acts of "fanatics"
who, depending on who they really are, can find real grievances,
but whose actions are illegitimate.
Osama Bin Laden at this point
has been accused by the media and the government of being the
mastermind of Tuesday's bombings. Given the government's track
record on lying to the America people, that should not be accepted
as fact at this time. If indeed Bin Laden is the mastermind of
this action, he is responsible for the deaths of perhaps 10,000
people-a shocking and horrible crime. Ed Herman in his book The
Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda does not
justify any terrorism but points out that states often engage
in "wholesale" terror, while those whom governments
define as "terrorist" engage is "retail"
terrorism. While qualitatively the results are the same for the
individual victims of terrorism, there is a clear quantitative
difference. And as Herman and others point out, the seeds, the
roots, of much of the "retail" terror are in fact found
in the "wholesale" terror of states. Again this is
not
to justify, in any way, the
actions of last Tuesday, but to put them in a context and suggest
an explanation.
Perhaps most shocking and horrific,
if indeed Bin Laden is the mastermind of Tuesday's actions; he
has clearly had significant training in logistics, armaments,
and military training, etc. by competent and expert military
personnel. And indeed he has. During the 1980s, he was recruited,
trained and funded by the CIA in Afghanistan to fight against
the Russians. As long as he visited his terror on Russians and
his enemies in Afghanistan, he was "our man" in that
country.
The same is true of Saddam
Hussein of Iraq, who was a CIA asset in Iraq during the 1980s.
Hussein could gas his own people, repress the population, and
invade his neighbor (Iran) as long as he did it with U.S. approval.
The same was true of Manuel
Noriega of Panama, who was a contemporary and CIA partner of
George H. Bush in the 1980s. Noriega's main crime for Bush, the
father, was not that he dealt drugs (he did, but the U.S. and
Bush knew this before 1989), but that Noriega was no longer going
to cooperate in the ongoing U.S. terrorist contra war against
Nicaragua. This information is not unknown or really controversial
among elite policy makers. To repeat, this not to justify any
of the actions of last Tuesday, but to put it in its horrifying
context.
As shocking as the events of
last Tuesday were, they are likely to generate even more horrific
actions by the U.S. government that will add significantly to
the 8,000,000 figure stated above. This response may well be
qualitatively and quantitatively worst than the events of Tuesday.
The New York Times headline of 9/14/01 states that, "Bush
And Top Aides Proclaim Policy Of Ending States That Back Terror"
as if that was a rationale, measured, or even sane option. States
that have been identified for possible elimination are "a
number of Asian and African countries, like Afghanistan, Iraq,
Sudan, and even Pakistan." This is beyond shocking and horrific-it
is just as potentially suicidal, homicidal, and more insane than
the hijackers themselves.
Also, qualitatively, these
actions will be even worse than the original bombers if one accepts
the mainstream premise that those involved are "madmen",
"religious fanatics", or a "terrorist group."
If so, they are acting as either individuals or as a small group.
The U.S. actions may continue the homicidal policies of a few
thousand elites for the past 50 years, involving both political
parties.
The retail terror is that of
desperate and sometime fanatical small groups and individuals
who often have legitimate grievances, but engage in individual
criminal and illegitimate activities; the wholesale terror is
that of "rational" educated men where the pain, suffering,
and deaths of millions of people are contemplated, planned, and
too often, executed, for the purpose of furthering a nebulous
concept called the "national interest". Space does
not allow a full explanation of the elites Orwellian concept
of the "national interest", but it can be summarized
as the protection and expansion of hegemony and an imperial empire.
The American public is being
prepared for war while being fed a continuous stream of shocking
and horrific repeated images of Tuesday's events and heartfelt
stories from the survivors and the loved ones of those who lost
family members. These stories are real and should not be diminished.
In fact, those who lost family members can be considered a representative
sample of humanity of the 8,000,000 who have been lost previously.
If we multiply by 800-1000 times the amount of pain, angst, and
anger being currently felt by the American public, we might begin
to understand how much of the rest of the world feels as they
are continually victimized.
Some particularly poignant
images are the heart wrenching public stories that we are seeing
and hearing of family members with pictures and flyers searching
for their loved ones. These images are virtually the same as
those of the "Mothers of the Disappeared" who searched
for their (primarily) adult children in places such as Argentina,
where over 11,000 were "disappeared" in 1976-1982,
again with U.S. approval. Just as the mothers of Argentina deserved
our respect and compassion, so do the relatives of those who
are searching for their relatives now. However we should not
allow ourselves to be manipulated by the media and U.S. government
into turning real grief and anger into a national policy of wholesale
terror and genocide against innocent civilians in Asia and Africa.
What we are seeing in military terms is called "softening
the target." The target here is the American public and
we are being ideologically and emotionally prepared for the slaughter
that may commence soon.
None of the previously identified
Asian and African countries are democracies, which means that
the people of these countries have virtually no impact on developing
the policies of their governments, even if we assume that these
governments are complicit in Tuesday's actions. When one examines
the recent history of these countries, one will find that the
American government had direct and indirect influences on creating
the conditions for the existence of some of these governments.
This is especially true of the Taliban government of Afghanistan
itself.
The New York Metropolitan Area
has about 21,000,000 people or about 8 % of the U.S. population.
Almost everyone in America knows someone who has been killed,
injured or traumatized by the events of Tuesday. I know that
I do. Many people are calling for "revenge" or "vengeance"
and comments such as "kill them all" have been circulated
on the TV, radio, and email. A few more potentially benign comments
have called for "justice." This is only potentially
benign since that term may be defined by people such as Bush
and Colin Powell. Powell is an unrepentant participant in the
Vietnam War, the terrorist contra war against Nicaragua, and
the Gulf war, at each level becoming more responsible for the
planning and execution of the policies.
Those affected, all of us,
must do everything in our power to prevent a wider war and even
greater atrocity, do everything possible to stop the genocide
if it starts, and hold those responsible for their potential
war crimes during and after the war. If there is a great war
in 2001 and it is not catastrophic (a real possibility), the
crimes of that war will be revisited upon the U.S. over the next
generation. That is not some kind of religious prophecy or threat,
it is merely a straightforward political analysis. If indeed
it is Bin Laden, the world must not deal only with him as an
individual criminal, but eliminate the conditions that create
the injustices and war crimes that will inevitably lead to more
of these types of attacks in the future. The phrase "No
Justice, No Peace" is more than a slogan used in a march,
it is an observable historical fact. It is time to end the horror.
CP
Larry Mosqueda teaches at The Evergreen State College
in Olympia, Washington.
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