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October
8, 2001
Patrick
Cockburn
Flashes
and Plumes of Fire
Zbigniew
Brzezinski
How
Jimmy Carter and
I Started the Muj
Philip Agee
The
USA and Terrorism
Mahajan
and Jensen
A
War of Lies
Patrick
Cockburn
Northern
Alliance
Builds an Airport
October
7, 2001
John Pilger
Hitchens'
Slurs
Tariq
Ali
Who
Said History
Stopped Being Ironical?
October
6, 2001
Vijay
Prashad
US
War Aims
Kevin
Gray
The
Trap:
Blacks and 9/11
October
5, 2001
Ronnie
Gilbert
Déjà
Vu: The FBI's War
on Civil Liberties
Patrick
Cockburn
Taliban
Cluster Bombs
Dave
Marsh
John
Brown, Woody Guthrie
and the Secret Music of 9/11
Babak
Nahid
A
Suspect's Perspective
October
4, 2001
David
Vest
Send
in the Cons
Robin
Blackburn
Road
to Armageddon
Noam
Chomsky
Chatting
with Chomsky
Tony
Blair
The
Dossier on bin Laden
Norman
Madarasz
Canada
Kow-Tows to US
Lorenzo Ervin
No Palestinian
Ever
Called Me Nigger
October
3, 2001
Peter Bell
Hitchens
and Coulter:
Love at Last?
Patrick
Cockburn
Waiting
Is the Hardest Part
Jeff
Chang
Clear
Channel Fires
Davey D!
John Chuckman
War
on Terror:
Crusade Without a Definition
Mahajan/Jensen
Tough
Talk Won't Solve
Problems of Terrorism
Ariel
Dorfman:
America
the Wounded
Lennie
Brenner
Dr.
Watson in Afghanistan
Steve
Perry:
Ashcroft's
Scare Tactics
October
2, 2001
Patrick
Cockburn:
Inside
an Afghan Hospital
Richard
Manning:
A
Vietnam Vet on Patriotism
St. Clair/Cockburn:
Tarnished
Star,
Tom Ridge in Vietnam
October
1, 2001
Noam
Chomsky:
Memo
to Hitchens
Hizam
Bitar:
Refuting
Michael Kinsley
David Grenier:
The
Good, The Bad,
and the Ugly
Douglas
Valentine:
Homeland
Insecurity
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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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
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
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
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New Stories:
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October 10,
2001
What Is To Be Done?
There
are lots of Americans who would like an alternative to prolonged
war. Is there one?
By Steve Perry
Don't let the heady poll numbers in
support of Bush and his war mandate fool you. There are plenty
of Americans who nurture a healthy suspicion regarding the motives
of U.S. foreign policy and the wisdom of waging endless war on
untold fronts, a suspicion bred by memories of Vietnam, however
dim, and by the manifest mess the U.S. has already made of things
in trying to manipulate affairs in the Middle East. The inescapable
fact of America's role in creating the Saddams and the al-Qaidas
of the world may be a faint footnote in the torrent of media
chat surrounding America's New War, but it's there all the same,
and it's made an impression on a lot of people.
I'm not talking about the various
left-pwog organizations that have elected to tuck and run in
the face of the New York and Washington attacks; I'm talking
about average people-citizens, quaint as that concept
has been made to seem-who sit home watching television and go
to work the next day to share their agonized confusion with co-workers.
There's no point in pretending the skeptics are anything but
an embattled minority amid the rush to war. Even so, I suspect
their ranks are substantial, and they are bound to grow if U.S.
military casualties begin to accrue in Afghanistan or elsewhere.
"It's been too long since Vietnam," my friend Jeff
St. Clair noted in a post this morning. "Nobody remembers
what a real war looks like." They may yet be reminded, and
they will not like what they see.
In trolling round left-liberal
Internet chat rooms and mail lists and talking to friends, one
question predominates. What to do? Given the horrific frontal
assaults of September 11, is there any alternative to signing
on for whatever war or wars the Bush gang sees fit to wage?
The short answer is yes, but
it needs elaboration. You can start with the two Big Lies of
the Bush administration's propaganda offensive.
1) The enemy is religious
zealotry, and the zealots hate the U.S. because it is a free
society.
This is the line daily repeated
in government briefings and the dutiful offerings of the opinion
pages. There's no question that the Wahabbi variant of Islam
espoused by bin Laden and the Taliban is an ugly beast, but the
official U.S. line turns the real point on its head. Fundamentalist
Islam is the vessel of revolt among the discontented masses;
that's because practically every other political/secular avenue
of resistance has been quashed in many countries. Religion is
the last available rallying point. In this respect it resembles
the Catholic liberation theology that swept up the peasantry
of Central America in the 1980s and '90s.
This doesn't mean that fundamentalist
Islam is the cause of anti-West outrage. The prime causes of
the reaction are political, and entirely understandable. Since
the British turned the fruits of Middle East imperialism over
to the U.S. for administering after World War II, we have manipulated
the governments of the region to ensure regimes to our liking,
and helped to suppress anything resembling democracy when it
reared its head; backed the ruthless depredations of an Israeli
government that is forever seeking to shrink Palestinian territories;
waged a war in Iraq that ultimately resulted in hundreds of thousands,
perhaps millions, of civilian deaths; and lobbed additional missiles
at targets in Iraq and the Sudan, often for transparently opportunistic
reasons. (Here we pause to remember the Monica-spawned bombing
of the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant in 1998, undertaken by the
Clinton administration against the advice of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, and later compounded by the U.S.'s refusal to allow
shipments of medical supplies to the Sudan.)
2) With
sufficient military resolve, the United States can smother terrorism
in its cradle.
Set aside the matter of bin
Laden's direct involvement, which remains an open question. Suppose
he's guilty and that the U.S. succeeds in doing him in, along
with his key lieutenants. They will have accomplished very little
toward the end of blunting anti-American energies and making
U.S. citizens safer at home; it may even be a move backward.
All along the American mindset has been to approach the "bin
Laden network" as though it were a small entrepreneurial
company that broke through to the big time, and can be put down
by getting rid of a few executives and money people. The reality
is not remotely like this; it's in no wise a top-down system,
but rather a loose and shifting confederation of small groups
that originate in the grassroots and draw funding from a rich
variety of sources. Bin Laden is hardly the only scion of privilege
willing to put his money where his religious and nationalist
convictions are.
What this means is that the U.S. can't "crush terror networks"
by military means, because they are not really built or controlled
by the few select masterminds the U.S. wants to take out. The
countless anti-Western guerrilla cells in the Middle East and
around the world are not al-Qaida franchisees to be pre-empted
by taking out corporate headquarters; they are foliage destined
to sprout wherever the soil is fertile. The harder we try to
shape events in the Muslim world by hot or cold war, the more
anti-U.S. martyrs-and soldiers, and financiers-we will create.
To those who say we bear a white man's burden for ameliorating
the repressive conditions of Taliban rule in Afghanistan and
bin Laden's broader vision for a pan-Islamic future, I would
pose two questions: When has the United States ever created more
palatable social circumstances through its Middle East interventions?
And have you examined
the record of our latest proxies, the Northern Alliance?
It is equally as horrendous as the Taliban's.
The main question still lingers.
As a friend put it to me the other day, you're very avid about
pointing out what the U.S. should not do; what should we
do? My modest proposal is as follows. If the U.S. wants to ensure
the safety of its domestic populace and more workable accommodations
to the emerging powers of the Middle East, it should proceed
along two lines. First bin Laden. Directly guilty or not, his
elimination is a foregone conclusion. So genuflect to his pursuit
by a clumsy spy satellite game of Where's Waldo? and cheer his
eventual demise. Grunt a lot in public about the evils of terrorism,
but meanwhile take steps in the background to retool U.S. Mideast
policy. Take a step back from sponsorship of Israeli aggressions
against the Palestinians. The Israelis will balk but considering
the amount of U.S. aid at stake-$2 billion annually in military
aid, and nearly a billion in non-military support-they will make
their peace soon enough. Likewise, back away from the unconditional
support of Arab client regimes that repress their own people
in the name of continuing U.S. control of the region's oil supply.
Be prepared to deal flexibly with regimes ambivalent toward traditional
American domination of the Middle East. The first Cold War is
over, after all, and there is no countervailing power to foil
American access to the area's oil reserves.
This way, and only this way,
points to greater security against future horrors like the September
11 attacks. 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.
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