|
October 30, 2001
Maud Hurd
We Need a Real
Stimulus Package
Dr. Susan
Block
We're
All Afghans Now
Tariq Ali
Busted in Munich
Francis
Beer
Toward
the Terrorist
Anti-World
October 29, 2001
Alexander Cockburn
The Left
and the Just War
John Pilger
Hidden
Agenda
of the War on Terror
David Krieger
Nukes on
the Loose
Jack McCarthy
Neo-Nazis
and 9/11
Marina Kalashnikova
The Brzezinski
Interview
Richard
Manning
Terrorism:
a definitive history
October 27, 2001
Edward
Said
A
Vision to Lift the Spririt
October 26, 2001
CounterPunch
Wire
Genocide
Scholar Gagged
Over Comments on the
Bombing of Afghanistan
Rahul
Mahajan
Poisoning
the Well
Sen. Russ Feingold
Why I Opposed
the
Anti-Terrorism Bill
John Troyer
Put
the War to a Vote
Norman Madarasz
What It
Means to be
Against the War
Patrick
Cockburn
Northern
Alliance Attacks
US Bombing Strategy
Richard Lloyd Parry
Terrible Images
of a "Just" War
October 25, 2001
Ghassan
Andoni
Raid
on Bethlehem
N.D. Jayaprakash
From
Hiroshima to NYC
Evan Schultz
Memo
to Ashcroft:
Read Marbury
The Sunshine
Project
Assault
on the BioWeapons
Convention
Sarah
Turner
Cashing
In on Patriotism
Latin American Colloquium
on Systemology
The Meridia Manifesto
Noam Chomsky
The
New War on Terror
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
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published Oct. 3, 2001
8-Page Special
Issue
Aftermath
Diary
Ashcroft's Onslaught
on Civil Liberties
Ridge Long Groomed
for Cheney's Job
Those CIA Killing
Bids Never Stopped
The Not-So-Great
Mayor Giuliani
Crop Duster
Ban
Will Save Lives
Madeleine Albright's
Deadly Legacy
How the Bin
Laden Women
Fled Bel Air
Tom Ridge's
Vietnam
Same as Kerrey's?
A CounterPunch
Journey
to Ramallah
A Word About
God
Nostradamus
Jam-maker
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 New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
Responses to 9/11:
Chomsky, Russell Banks,
Zinn, and Alice Walker
A Free ebook from
Seven Stories Press
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
|
October
30, 2001
The Silent Genocide
Before it's done
the U.S. offensive in Afghanistan will cause the deaths of millions
of innocents.
By Steve Perry
As the U.S. launches its fourth week of gaudy,
largely fruitless air strikes in Afghanistan, the echoes of the
Gulf War a decade ago become plainer and plainer. Once again
the Pentagon is releasing carefully vetted footage of aerial
bombardments and the networks are dutifully dressing them up
with expert commentaries from military officials; once again
war is being waged at a comfortable distance with little if any
immediate cost to its prosecutors. Once again there are the perfunctory
expressions of regret at civilian casualties, and the assurances
they are being kept to a minimum. And now as before it's an unconscionable
lie.
There are differences, of course. The
bombing raids in Iraq were conceived to decimate the country's
infrastructure-its roads and bridges, its water supply facilities
and hospitals-and bring it to its knees. By these means, U.S.
planners figured, they would turn a demoralized and immiserated
populace against its government and topple Saddam by degrees.
From this latter standpoint it was all a huge tactical failure,
but it succeeded marvelously well as to the first half of the
equation. International estimates of the eventual civilian casualties
vary between half a million and a million and a half.
Afghanistan is another matter. It has
no civilian infrastructure to speak of, and for that matter not
much in the way of a military infrastructure. American officials
spoke for the first 10 days or so of incapacitating the Taliban's
air power, but from the start it consisted of 20 or so fighter
planes and a rag-tag arsenal of portable, limited range anti-aircraft
missiles (Stingers, mainly, supplied by the U.S. or its allies)
that are very likely unaffected by all the U.S. bombing to date.
It is increasingly apparent that the U.S. offensive began when
it did not because we had a line on bin Laden or a neat tactical
plan for dispatching the Taliban, but because pressure was mounting
to do something.
So we did. And while the tactical picture
is quite different from that in Iraq 10 years ago, the likely
consequences are strikingly similar-though on a more dire scale.
The bombing strikes that began on October 7 disrupted humanitarian
food shipments to an Afghan people already reeling from the effects
of drought and civil war. By the estimates of numerous international
aid groups, some 7-8 million Afghans were at risk of starvation
without food aid even before the war began. Those food shipments
largely ceased at the commencement of the war. Some have since
started up again, including the main one, the U.N.'s World Food
Program, but their efforts are in disarray and operating at around
half their previous levels. The onset of winter in Afghanistan
will place half a million or more people outside the reach of
these agencies in any case.
Since the bombing began an untold number
of Afghans have fled across the borders into Pakistan and Iran,
swelling already ill-equipped refugee camps that contain something
over 4 million Afghans. (These people do not figure in the 7-8
million inside the country at risk of starvation.) They are
the lucky ones, relatively speaking, but a great many of them
will fall prey to starvation and disease as well. The math is
simple enough. If relief organizations on the whole are able
to function at half their customary capacity-an optimistic figure-then
as many as 3 to 4 million may ultimately die as a result of the
U.S./U.K. offensive in Afghanistan.
To those few outside the Arab world who
are inclined to make a fuss over the food crisis, the U.S. offers
a couple of tawdry lies. The first is in the form of American
air drops, and these are a manifest farce. The Americans have
dumped fewer than a million rations so far, a comparative drop
in the bucket, and they refuse to place them in areas controlled
by the Taliban, which is where the vast majority of the needy
reside. Second, the U.S. has maintained that any food aid to
these stricken regions would only be seized by Taliban fighters.
Just how true this is remains impossible to say, but who was
it exactly that precipitated the wartime footing in Afghanistan
in the first place? Well, the U.S. is bound to splutter, it was
the bin Laden-harboring Taliban. Never mind the numerous offers
to turn bin Laden over to a third-party nation for trial in an
international court of law. The U.S. has far too much blood on
its hands to assent to a precedent that might bind it to the
dictates of international law going forward.
In the meantime, if millions die in a
holocaust occasioned by the Bush administration's holy war, well,
that's collateral damage for you. Tuesday's London Independent
featured a report on rabid dogs roaming the streets of Kabul.
They are said to be biting three or four people a day and there
is of course no rabies vaccine to be had anywhere in Afghanistan.
But the rabid dogs in the streets are as nothing compared to
the rabid dogs in the skies.
Anthrax update:
an official tilt
For a couple of weeks now there has been
brewing speculation that the recent anthrax mailings in the U.S.
were likely the work of American right wing elements. Analysts
pointed to the handwriting and the language of the enclosed notes;
among many pointers it was noted that the phrase "Allah
is great" is not one a Muslim would be likely to use. The
possible American connection gained more credibility when it
was disclosed that the strain of the bacteria being used probably
originated in a U.S. military lab.
But this news was slow to reach the American
public. It was left to the CIA's favorite mouthpiece in American
media, Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, to codify the shift
in official thinking. This past Saturday he published a
piece pointing to the domestic right. Quoth Bob: " 'Everything
seems to lean toward a domestic source,' one senior official
said. 'Nothing seems to fit with an overseas terrorist type operation.
There is no intelligence on it and it does not fit any [al-Qaida]
pattern.' "
There's an interesting footnote to this
belated revelation. A Newsweek poll taken the week after the
anthrax scare spread to New York and Washington asked respondents
whether they believed the bio-attacks were related to the September
11 bombings. Given that the American media had mentioned no other
possible perpetrator, what percentage would you suppose answered
in the affirmative? I would have guessed around 90 percent myself.
The answer, though, was 63 percent. Ponder that for a moment.
Even in the heat of battle, just weeks after an unprecedented
assault on America's shores by a foreign enemy, over a third
of Americans retained at least a shadow awareness that the enemies
of American empire are many and varied and not just in the Middle
East. Americans recognize at some level that old debts are coming
due; no wonder prescriptions for sleep aids and painkillers have
skyrocketed in the past couple of months.
Tailgunner
Joe takes his shot
Despite the best efforts of hawks in
the Bush administration and the Congress, there is no evidence
that Iraq had any part in the September 11 bombings or the subsequent
anthrax attacks. No matter. There are still plenty of voices
calling for an Iraq offensive. The latest is Senator Joe Lieberman,
who wrote in a Monday Wall Street Journal op-ed that Saddam's
hordes must be targeted. Lauding the "bright moral line"
drawn by the Bush crew, he went on to assert that actual guilt
in either attack is a matter of no consequence.
"Whether or not Saddam is implicated
directly in the anthrax attacks or the horrors of Sept. 11,"
Lieberman bleated, "he is, by any common definition, a terrorist
who must be removed. A serious effort to end Saddam's rule over
Iraq should begin now with a declaration by the administration
that it is America's policy to change the Iraqi regime, and with
greater financial and tactical support of the broad-based Iraqi
opposition. In time, military support will follow."
The situation now is bad enough. Imagine
where we'd be if Gore had won. CP
Steve Perry
writes frequently for CounterPunch and is a contributor to the
excellent cursor.org
website, which offers incisive coverage of the current crisis.
He lives in Minneapolis, MN.
|