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October 16, 2001
Patrick
Cockburn
The
Battle of Mazar-i-Sharif
John
Troyer
Return
to Normal?
Moji Agha
A
Jihad Against Ignorance
October
15, 2001
Tariq
Ali
Alternatives
to War
John
Pilger
War
American Style
Umberto
Eco
The
Roots of Conflict
Marwan
Bishara
Clash
of Civilizations? Hardly
Patrick
Cockburn
Modern
War in
A Medieval Village
October
13, 2001
Carl
Estabrook
Letters
to Editors
Molly
Secours
War:
The Procter and Gamble Perspective
Alexander
Cockburn
War
Can't Save the Economy
October
12, 2001
Imran
Khan
Try
Them in Court
Vijay
Prashad
War
in a Passive Voice
Patrick
Cockburn
Bombing
the Taliban
October
11, 2001
David
Vest
Bob
Dylan and 9/11
Amb.
Edward Peck
Bush
War Plan "Dumb"
Hani
Shukrallah
West
Is As West Does
Patrick
Cockburn
Looming
Humanitarian Crisis
October
10, 2001
Cockburn/St.
Clair
The
Empire Strikes Back
Resources:
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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
Nostrodamus
Jam-maker
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
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and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James
Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas
Valentine
Al
Gore:
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by Cockburn
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October 16,
2001
War Without Frontiers
Where
will the U.S. strike next in its global "war against terrorism"?
You can't tell the players without a scorecard.
By Steve Perry
We're promised a new kind of war, but
the first blows struck at Afghanistan last week had a decidedly
familiar ring. The spectacle was wholly reminiscent of the Gulf
War in its air strikes, levied without American casualties and
accompanied by carefully chosen Pentagon films purporting to
document the deadly efficiency of the cruise missiles and smart
bombs in the American arsenal. Thanks to the example of Operation
Desert Storm, "war" now seems a remote and bloodless
game in the minds of most Americans. Just how distant and abstract
was underscored by Saturday's news that a bomb meant for a Taliban
helicopter had instead blown up a civilian site a mile away-owing
to a one-digit error in the programming of its satellite-guided
payload. On Tuesday U.S. bombs decimated a Red Cross relief center.
So what? It's all collateral damage, and after all, you can't
make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
Small wonder that such an overwhelming
number of Americans support whatever Bush elects to do. Framed
by the memory of the Gulf War and the horrific events of September
11, their sentiments involve no conception of any downside in
lining up with Bush's war on terrorism. And thus the administration
is afforded a war mandate not quite like any other in American
history, a license to name enemies and delineate targets with
a profligacy that appears constrained only by its own appetites.
At the moment the U.S.'s prerogatives are breathtaking. The enemies,
and the consequent military commitments, are wherever Bush et
al. choose to say they are, whenever they choose to designate
them as such.
Granted, the field of possibilities
is not really as open as the foregoing implies. American options
for carrying the war to other fronts are hampered by the fragile
state of U.S. alliances; precariously pro-U.S. Arab nations are
not the only ones who wish to see a quick end to military action.
On Sunday the array of dissenting voices included many from America's
staunchest ally, Tony Blair's U.K, whose secretary of state for
international development, Clare Short, called for a fast, "elegant"
end to the bombing. The most important tactical question is how
willing the Americans are to go it alone. If they want allies
outside of Israel, they will confine themselves to Afghanistan;
if they conclude international opinion is a secondary matter,
the sky's the limit.
Meantime, though, strikes against
Iraq in the not too distant future seem almost inevitable. Day
by day U.S. officials have taken care to gird the American public
for an eventual offensive against Saddam's hordes. In the past
week the press has been seeded with reports of alleged meetings
a year ago between suicide bomber Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi
diplomat, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir Al-Ani. These tete-a-tetes
may or not have been related to the September 11 attacks, and
Al-Ani may or may not have been acting as an emissary of the
Iraqi government. As regards any Iraqi connection to al-Qaida,
bear in mind that Osama bin Laden hates Saddam and his regime
for what he views as their heretical secularism. They are the
unlikeliest of allies.
No matter. Press accounts likewise
finger Saddam and Iraq for the anthrax attacks more recently
visited on the U.S., but this is a dubious equation. There's
really no percentage in it for Saddam: Unlike the terror units
that have attacked the U.S., which are diffuse and difficult
to locate and would like nothing better than to draw the Americans
into broad-scale war, the Iraqi state has everything to lose
by provoking the U.S. into making war against it. More to the
point, to suppose that Saddam must be the source of the anthrax
currently being mailed round the U.S. is to ignore how easy the
anthrax bacterium is to acquire. It is in ready supply in a number
of American laboratories that have had almost no security up
to now. Until a scant few years ago, you or I could have ordered
a sample of it from a commercial laboratory in Maryland that
is assumed to be the source of Iraq's anthrax cache.
Iraq may be the likeliest of
presumptive secondary targets, but it is hardly the only one.
Southeast Asia remains an untapped goldmine of potential battlefields.
The Americans have already indicated they will send military
advisers to the Philippines to combat the Abu Sayyaf group implicated
in a failed attempt to blow up numerous U.S. airliners in 1995.
Indonesia, too, is a point of concern; with the world's largest
concentration of Muslims and a population in excess of 240 million,
it has been the site of some of the most virulent post-September
11 anti-U.S. demonstrations. And Malaysia is on record as the
source of a letter containing anthrax bacteria that was mailed
to a Microsoft office in Reno, Nevada.
Closer to the main action,
Israel is pushing hard for the inclusion of a number of additional
targets in the Middle East. Beyond Iraq, they include Syria as
well as Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, strongholds of the pro-Palestinian
forces of Hamas and Hizbollah. By Bush's definitions they certainly
qualify as sponsors of terrorism, the views of dissenting allies
be damned.
The administration approaches
a decision point in Afghanistan. With winter coming on and little
to show for its flashy hits upon Taliban and al-Qaida sites throughout
the countryside, does it hunker down and prepare for ground war
in the Afghan mountains, waged either by U.S. special forces
or their surrogates in the Northern Alliance, or does it take
its show on the road and begin targeting other antagonists in
ostensibly easier settings?
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.
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