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CounterPunch
February
21, 2003
Freedom and the Political
Economy of Terror
a review of
Chomsky Power and Terror
by ABU SPINOZA
In his book Development as Freedom, the eminent
Indian-Bengali economist Amartya Sen (1999, xi) writes:
And yet we also live in a world with
remarkable deprivation, destitution, and oppression. There are
many new problems as well as old ones, including the persistence
of poverty and unfulfilled elementary needs, occurrence of famines
and widespread hunger, violations of elementary political freedoms
as well as basic liberties, extensive neglect of the interests
and agency of women, and worsening threats to our environment
and to sustainability of our economic and social lives. Many
of these deprivations can be observed, in one form or another,
in rich countries as well as poor ones.
Sen then goes on to investigate five
distinct types of freedom, including (a) political freedoms,
(b) economic facilities, (c) social opportunities, (d) transparency
guarantees, and (e) protective securities. He explores the connections
that link various types of freedom with one another. Political
freedom in the forms of free speech and elections help to promote
economic security. Social opportunities in the forms of education
and health facilities help economic participation. Economic
facilities in the form of opportunities for participation in
trade and production can help generate personal abundance as
well as public resources for social development. Sen (1999)
shows that freedom of different types can strengthen each other.
His contribution to understanding development as freedom is
indeed profound. However, he does not discuss issues of power
and terror, which are substantive forces in the world. Terror
and violence are weapons of the strong and powerful against the
weak and dispossessed. The scale of crimes committed with the
economic support and the violent capabilities of the state and
the backing of concentrated wealth exceed by far the crimes committed
by various retail terrorists, bandits, gangsters, rouges, fringe
elements, assorted secessionists' organizations, and national
liberation movements. Of course the crimes of the strong do
not justify the crimes of the weak.
American dissident Noam Chomsky's (2003)
recent book, Power
and Terror: Post 9/11 Talks and Interviews, provides
a succinct but an illuminating discussion of the problems of
power and terror. It is illustrated with plenty of concrete
examples. He proceeds from the premise that as moral agent human
beings' actions ought to meet certain minimal and universal principles.
He assumes the simple and basically self-evident principle that
one should to apply to oneself the same standards that one applies
to others. This essay will examine Chomsky's analysis of power
and terror, bearing in mind Sen's (1999) conception of human
freedom as both a goal and a means for development.
While acts of terrorism of the weak against
the powerful must be condemned, the far more prevalent case of
terrorism of the powerful against the weak must also be exposed,
resolutely condemned, and vanquished. Yet the latter is unmentionable.
The magnitude of various crimes of violence and terror have
to be put in perspective and the causes of violence and terrorism
have to be understood if one wishes to reduce the likelihood
of more acts of terrorism and seeks to eradicate the causes of
violence and terrorism. Chomsky's (2003) view is that in order
to stop or reduce terrorism, one must stop participating in it.
This is an elementary and simple but important principle. The
strong generally refuse to abide by this principle unless compelled
to do so under public pressure or some other constraints. He
discusses a wide range of issues and cases. He observes that
among intellectuals "the atrocities that you commit somewhere
else don't exist." This has been true of intellectuals
serving power. The United States is not an outlier in this respect.
In today's world the United States is a superpower. Its have
a determining impact on the lives of people every corner of the
planet.
The unusual degree of freedom and political
rights that exist in United States affords the privileged segment
of its citizenry access to information, and gives them the capability
and the responsibility to prevent or minimize the harm caused
by power interests. Chomsky takes this responsibility seriously.
His analysis is motivated by these concerns. The robustness
and explanatory power of his analysis can be demonstrated by
examining some of the main contemporary foreign policy issues,
such as the war with Afghanistan, the bombing al-Shifa pharmaceutical
plant, the looming war against Iraq, Palestine under occupation,
Turkey's attacks on the Kurds, famines and starvation, and the
rhetoric of terrorism. These topics are briefly examined here.
Afghanistan
and "the War Against Terrorism"
The war against Afghanistan has led to
the deaths of at least 3,000 civilians according to Mark Herold's
(2002) comprehensive study of available media reports. It also
led to countless injuries, immense hardships, diseases, and dislocations
of Afghans. Thus, grave sufferings were inflicted on one of
the poorest people in the world. The US military actions put
a large number of people on the brink of malnutrition and risk
of starvation. It is doubtful that there will be a complete
accounting of the deaths and the sufferings of the Afghans and
other wretched masses because it is of little consequences to
the rich and the powerful. Based on his exhaustive survey of
available media reports about the civilian casualties in Afghanistan,
Herold (2002) explains the high level of civilian casualties
due to:
[T]he apparent willingness of U.S. military
strategists to fire missiles into and drop bombs upon, heavily
populated areas of Afghanistan. A legacy of the ten years of
civil war during the 80s is that many military garrisons and
facilities are located in urban areas where the Soviet-backed
government had placed them since they could be better protected
there from attacks by the rural mujahideen. Successor Afghan
governments inherited these emplacements. To suggest that the
Taliban used 'human shields' is more revealing of the historical
amnesia and racism of those making such claims, than of Taliban
deeds. Anti-aircraft emplacements will naturally be placed close
by ministries, garrisons, communications facilities, etc. A
heavy bombing onslaught must necessarily result in substantial
numbers of civilian casualties simply by virtue of proximity
to 'military targets', a reality exacerbated by the admitted
occasional poor targeting, human error, equipment malfunction,
and the irresponsible use of out-dated Soviet maps. But, the
critical element remains the very low value put upon Afghan civilian
lives by U.S. military planners and the political elite, as clearly
revealed by U.S. willingness to bomb heavily populated regions.
There is no reason to believe that the
bombing of Afghanistan has reduced the future possibility of
terrorism either globally or against civilians in the West.
The bombing of Afghanistan was purely an act of revenge. It
resulted in the overthrow of the Taliban regime but most of the
members of al-Qaida network escaped and were not brought to justice.
No one could possibly blame the Afghan people for the crimes
committed against the American people but they had to pay a hire
price. Chomsky points out that Afghan opinion was against US
bombing but this was irrelevant to US planners or the media.
The civilian casualties in Afghanistan are rarely discussed
in the mainstream media. The Bombing of al-Shifa
In his earlier book, Chomsky (2001) cited
the bombing of al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan as a
typical example of the arrogance of the world's only superpower.
It is known that there was no credible evidence linking al-Shifa
to terrorism. The bombing of the plant destroyed significantly
Sudan's ability to produce critical medical drugs. For poor
country in the midst of ethnic and regional civil war, it is
a major devastation. Although reports of the lack of evidence
tying al-Shifa factory to terrorism and the potential consequences
of the bombing of this factory to the Sudanese population were
available in the mainstream press, the international community
(which is a "code" word used to designate the expressed
wishes of the elites of the Western countries) have neither investigated
this crime nor labeled those responsible for this as terrorists,
let alone call for their punishment. No US official has bothered
to apologize for the destruction of this factory. Sudan has
neither received nor been offered any form of compensation.
Because the indirect victims of the destruction of al-Shifa are
from an African developing country, little will be heard about
them.
The Looming
War Against Iraq
Since the tragic events of 9-11, the
Anglo-American authorities have relentlessly pursued a policy
of provoking hostilities with Iraq under one pretext or another.
Iraq's rich oil resources, believed to be the second largest
in the world, loom in the background of the Western powers' aim
of establishing control over the country. This aim cannot be
articulated too openly because of the shamelessness of trying
to rob the inhabitants of a country of their own natural resources.
The Bush administration tried and is still trying to justify
its war plans by attempting to link the Iraqi regime to al-Qaeda
terrorists. In spite of concerted efforts, the administration
failed to produce an iota of evidence of any link. The US authorities
have also tried to accuse Iraq of possessing weapons of mass
destruction that could threaten Western countries including the
US with destruction. National Security Adviser Condelezza Rice
evoked fears of mushroom clouds over American cities. Again,
no material evidence has been yet produced that shows that Iraq
actually possesses weapons of mass destruction.
The lack knowledge or evidence does not
prevent Bush administration from advocating and preparing for
the use of force against Iraq. If Iraq did possess weapons of
mass destruction, then there is still no reason to believe that
Iraq has the capability to launch them against NATO. Suppose,
however, Iraq had the capability to use them, there is no reason
to think that it is about to engage in aggression at this time
or the foreseeable future. None of the neighboring countries
of Iraq, including those that it attacked previously, claim that
it poses any lethal danger to them at this time. It should be
kept in mind that the Western countries and Arab regimes consistently
supported Saddam Hussein without any hesitation when he was committing
ghastly atrocities against Kurds and other Iraqis. Hussein's
regime was favored because Iraq had invaded Iran. Iraq was such
a close relationship with Washington that it was the only country
other than Israel that could get away with attacking a US naval
ship. In fact even after the Persian Gulf War in 1991 New York
Times correspondent and columnist Thomas Friedman openly advanced
the perpetuation of "iron-fisted military junta" in
Iraq. Such advocacy reveals the contempt for human rights and
rights of the Iraqi people to democracy and self-determination.
Occupied Palestine
Following 9-11, the Israeli authorities
used the rhetoric of combating terrorism to crush Palestinian
resistance, kill Palestinian civilians, imprison activists, and
destroy infrastructure and ruin whatever semblance of an independent
state that the incompetent Palestinian Nationality Authority
was able to create. The Israel's invasion of Lebanon was clear
and distinct example of international terrorism, but it is not
discussed as such in the annals of scholarly discourse let alone
the mainstream media. Israel's objective was to destroy Palestinian
"peace offensive," that is, the offer to negotiation
and reach a just settlement. The US provided a green light to
Israel's invasion of Lebanon just as it has given de facto approval
for Israel re-occupation of Palestinian territories.
In order to end violence and terrorism,
a necessary condition for peace is the complete Israeli withdrawal
from the occupied Palestinian territories. Its occupation is
illegal. There are numerous UN Security Council Resolutions
that call for full Israeli withdrawal from West Bank and Gaza.
Under international law, the Palestinian people are entitled
to armed resistance to occupation. Armed actions against an
army of occupation and armed settlers are justified. However,
attacks against civilians cannot be justified and must be condemned.
It is the Palestinians who have borne the brunt of most violence
and terrorism. During this intifada through November 25th 2002,
for every one Israeli civilian wounded by a Palestinian, forty
Palestinian civilians were hospitalized due to attacks by Israelis.
During this intifada 1,926 Palestinian were killed and 21,240
injured in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The subtotal since
March 29, 2002 invasion (termed by Israel as "Operation
Defensive Shield") is 669 deaths and 2,687 injuries. Analysts
believe that these figures are likely underestimates because
the Palestinian Red Crescent Society is unable to access many
areas and account for those who disappeared during Israel's attack
on Jenin refugee camp. Among Israelis 691 people died and 4,908
were injured. These statistics reveal the underlying asymmetry
in power relations between Israel and the Palestinians.
In the occupied territories, defenseless
Palestinian refugee camps and civilian areas are often bombarded
from Israeli F-16s and advanced helicopters (provided by the
US), and women and children are made homeless as the occupation
army bulldozes their homes. The Israeli occupation army and
settlers uproot olive trees with no regard for the livelihood
of peasants or the environment. Detention without trail, complete
curfew, torture, collective punishment and other arbitrary abuse
of powers in contravention of Fourth Geneva Convention are quite
common in the West Bank and Gaza.
Chomsky (1999) has written extensively
about the United States, Israel, and Palestine. The facts are
fairly straightforward. The brutal Israeli occupation could
not go on without massive US economic and military support.
Israel and the United States' rejection of peace can be seen
in their refusal to accept in their latest to refusal to even
seriously consider Abdallah plan. The US has been blocking diplomatic
settlement for the last 30 years or so. It vetoed a European
Union initiative to send international monitors to the occupied
territories to reduce violence. Turkey and the Kurds
Chomsky believes that Turkish authorities
provided troops for Afghanistan because the US gave critical
supply of arms for Turkey's brutal suppression of the Kurds and
attacks on about 3,500 villages and towns in southeastern Turkey.
It was probably the worst atrocity of the 1990s except from
Rwanda. In the "no fly zone" in Northern Iraq, which
is supposedly to protect the Kurds, Turkish planes are allowed
to bomb the Kurds. Despite some improvement in recent days,
the Kurds are an oppressed community in Turkey. Their human
rights are severely restricted. Children are punished for wearing
Kurdish colors. Even their language rights are quite limited.
Chomsky (2003) recalls an incident in
southeastern Turkey; he was presented a translation of Kurdish-English
dictionary. This act could incur the wrath of the authorities.
Indeed for writing about New Year's festival in the region,
Osman Baydemir was jailed for using the Kurdish spelling with
"W" in "Newroz" instead of the Turkish spelling
with "V" in "Nevroz." Chomsky notes that
Ismail Besikci, a leading Turkish sociologist and author of State
Terror in the Middle East (1991), has been in prison for writing
about the horrors of Turkish repression of the Kurds. Even a
Turkish state minister admitted that the country has carried
out state terror. Yet it is never described as such in the op-ed
pages of the New York Times. Famines and Starvation
Sen (1999) has argued that if a country
has democratic institutions, like regular and fair elections
and free press, it is able to prevent virulent disasters, like
famine and mass starvation. The authorities are compelled to
undertake transfer programs because there is public pressure
to do so. Thus he argues that the institutions of democracy
can be instrumental in preventing famines by providing timely
information and thereby creating pressure for public actions.
However notional democracy is not sufficient to prevent chronic
starvation and disease. In a comparative study of India and
China, Dreze and Sen (1989) point out that whereas India was
able to avoid famines, it invested far less in rural health care
services. They show that the result of this has been catastrophic:
Approximately every 8 years in Indian the number of people dying
from starvation, poor health, malnutrition and disease equals
to a 1958-60 famine.
For Chomsky this surely is a powerful
indictment of the limits of notional democracy that is confined
to period free elections and characterized by unequal and unfair
distribution of wealth and income. This is not to suggest that
formal freedoms are unimportant. As Sen (1999) has shown they
are quite essential both as an instrument and as an end. These
formal rights should be vigorously defended and extended.
One can further point out actually existing
democracies have no qualms about inflicting great miserly on
Third World countries. The results of US-imposed and UN-legitimized
sanctions on Iraq have been deadly. More than 1 million Iraqis,
including at least half a million children, have died as a result
of sanctions. Child mortality in Iraq has risen from a level
comparable to that of industrial countries to that of devastated
least developed countries. Iraq's water treatment facilities
and waste disposal and sanitation systems are in ruins because
the sanctions bar the importation of essential spare parts.
US war planners deliberately damaged the country's water system
(Nagy 2001).
Chomsky regards that this devaluation
of the lives of people of the Third World is a result of the
internalization of the view among Western elites that some lives
are worthy whereas the lives of the others are of little consequences
and therefore can be easily dispensed. Citing the case of Irish
famine Sen (1999, 170-5) has argued the British ruling class
was deeply alienated from the Irish and, therefore, allowed Irish
famines to occur with no concern from the plight of the victims
of the famine. His view that "the sense of distance ruler
and the ruled--between 'us' and 'them'" is an indispensable
element is true not just in the case of famine but also in the
other modes of active affliction of cruelty on Third World nations.
The Rhetoric
and the Reality of Terror
The leading Western powers and Japan
supplied Indonesia's military with weapons when Indonesia invaded
and occupied East Timor until it regained independence. The
post-September 11th alliance between USA, Russia, China, Indonesia,
Algeria, Egypt has enabled these countries to carry out their
own terrorist atrocities. Cuba has also been subject to United
States' direct and proxy terror for many years. The US has refused
to extradite Emmanuel Constant, a brutal paramilitary leader
tried in absentia for carrying out massacres in Haiti. John
Negroponte, who is now United States' representative at the UN,
served as the "proconsul" to Honduras while it carried
out atrocities. Chomsky (2001) makes evident that the official
doctrine and practice of what is euphemistically called "low
intensity warfare" is actually a form of terrorism as understood
in US laws. While there is some truth to the dictum that terrorism
is often the weapon of the weak, terrorism actually is a frequently
used tool of the powerful.
The US has often supported a variety
of terrorist criminal wars. It was responsible for the unlawful
use of force against Nicaragua and backed contras who carried
out terrorist attacks against Nicaraguans. Chomsky recalls that
the US, UK, Egypt, France, and Pakistan organized, financed,
trained, and armed Islamic fundamentalists. During Indonesia's
invasion and occupation East Timor it received that military
and financial support from Western countries and Japan. In its
annual report in 2000, the US State Department praised Turkey,
Algeria, and Spain for their "positive experience"
in dealing with terrorists. The US is backing the Colombian
state, which has one of the worst human rights record in the
Americas. Former US military officials associated with private
mercenary service companies, such as DynCorp and Military Professional
Resources, are assisting Colombian authorities in their violent
war. Crop fumigation in the name of war against drugs are ruining
their lives of poor peasant, killing their children and forcing
them into utter destitution by destroying their livelihood.
The standard discourse on violence and
terrorism is fraught with propaganda and distortions. It is
not difficult to find examples of this in almost every issue
of the mainstream newspapers and scholarly journals. Leading
columnists, such as William Safire, Thomas Friedman, Nicholas
Kristoff, and Charles Krauthammer, and editorial writers of the
trend-setting media merely echo different segments of state power
and rarely say anything about the victims of the crimes of the
superpower.
Consider some of the examples that Chomsky
cites. Though the site of attack on the World Trade Center is
described as Ground Zero, barely any mention was made of Nagasaki
or Hiroshima. The targets of atomic bombings were civilian.
In the mainstream press, barely any reference is made to the
fact that millions perished in Vietnams due to US bombing, mines
and use of chemical weapons. The US backed the Latin American
elite in crushing the liberation theology within the Catholic
Church. The US had labeled African National Congress as a terrorist
organization during its apartheid and supported South Africa
when it attacked its neighboring countries and killed more than
1 million people. Western state terrorism is always labeled
counter-terrorism. The underlying principle is simple: The violence
committed by official enemies is "terrorism" but the
violence committed by Western states and their allies is called
"counter-terrorism."
The absence of a critical perspective
in the press should not surprise anyone. Nevertheless, there
are occasionally useful articles and news reports that appear
in the mainstream press that indirectly convey the facts. If
one reads the mainstream press diligently and critically, and
analyzes what is conveyed between the lines then one is able
to form a fairly accurate and comprehensive view of developments
in the world. Someone following the foreign press, the business
press and the alternative media, particularly some excellent
informative websites, such as www.yellowtimes.org
, www.cursor.org or www.zmag.org, can get a broader
and balanced view of the world.
While most books on terrorism, particularly
written by establishment intellectuals, are little more than
repetition of standard lines, there are a number of earlier and
recent thoughtful works on power and terror that may be mentioned
here. Chomsky's own books, such as Pirates and Emperors (1987)
or The Culture of Terrorism (1988), have exposed how extensive
is state terrorism. Edward Herman's (1982) writing on the international
terror network provides a good understanding of the national
security states and the United States' continued support for
such regimes even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. After
reviewing the United States' long history of violence and resistance
to it, the eminent historian Howard Zinn (2001) argues that concentrating
on the class issue is critical. He holds that the left should
not only oppose war but challenge should also the current social
and economic system that, he believes, is responsible for perpetrating
successive wars. It has been well known among technical specialists,
such as Falkenrath et al (1998), that the threat of terrorism
is quite real and that with present technology Western states
do not retain their monopoly on terrorist violence.
Without exception, serious scholars on
terrorism agree that in order to reduce terrorism the underlying
causes have to be addressed. Application of force, security
measures, and state-violence, which is often itself illegal and
excessive, are likely to only further aggravate disenfranchised
communities and widen the social base for terrorists to obtain
recruits to the nefarious cause of violence against civilians.
Conclusion
Those who are subject to foreign and
military occupation, dictatorial rule, poverty, violence, or
state-sponsored terrorism, have their political freedoms, economic
facilities, social opportunities, transparency guarantees, and
protective securities banished into oblivion. Such phenomena
are all too common in the world today. Far too many people live
either unbearable poverty or without minimal political rights
or both, in Afghanistan, Argentina, Congo, Colombia, Palestine,
Pakistan, Zaire, and even in advanced countries like the USA
or the UK. Public awareness and resistance to deprivations and
denials is quite substantive and gradually growing at local,
national and global levels. The current anti-war movement is
a vital part of the multifaceted and complex social struggle
for liberty, human dignity, justice, and peace.
In his treatise Sen (1999, 267-8) notes:
It is characteristic of freedom that
it has diverse aspects that relate to a variety of activities
and institutions. It cannot yield a view of development that
translates readily into some simple "formula" of accumulation
of capital, or opening up of markets, or having efficient economic
planning (though each of these particular features fits into
the broader picture). The organizing principle that places all
the different bits and pieces into an integrated whole is the
overarching concern with the process of enhancing individual
freedoms and the social commitment to help bring that about.
The unity is important, but at the same time we cannot lose
sight of the fact that freedom is an inherent diverse concept,
which involves . . . considerations of processes as well as substantive
opportunities.
Certainly the freedom from tyranny and
state-sponsored violence is one key aspect of development. When
state terrorism predominate the lives of people, their freedom
is curtailed in the most serve and degrading manner. It is a
tribute to Chomsky that his activist work illustrates the importance
of the absence of state-sponsored terror to human life and society.
It is, however, his actual contribution to the struggle for
achieving this freedom from terror and tyranny that makes his
work invaluable.
References
Arnove, Anthony, ed., (2003). Iraq
under Siege, updated edition. Cambridge, MA: South End
Press.
Besikci, Ismail (1991). State Terror
in the Middle East. Ankara, Turkey: Yurt-Kitap-Yayin Press.
Chomsky, Noam (1987). Pirates
and Emperors: International Terrorism in the Real World.
Cheektowaga, NY: Black Rose Books.
Chomsky, Noam (1988). The
Culture of Terrorism. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
Chomsky, Noam (1999). The
Fateful Triangle, updated edition. Cambridge, MA: South
End Press.
Chomsky, Noam (2001). 9-11,
ed., Greg Ruggerio. New York, NY: Seven Stories Press.
Drèze, Jean; and Sen, Amartya
(1989). Hunger and Public Action. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Herman, Edward (1982). The Real Terror
Network. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
Herold, Marc W., (2002). "A Dossier
on Civilian Victims of United States' Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan:
A Comprehensive Accounting," http://www.cursor.org/stories/civilian_deaths.htm.
Falkenrath, Richard A.; Newman, Robert
D.; and Thayer, Bradley A (1998). America's Achilles Heel.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Nagy, Thomas J., (2001). "The Secret
Behind the Sanctions How the U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's
Water Supply," The Progressive (September), http://www.progressive.org/0801issue/nagy0901.html
Sen, Amartya (1999). Development as Freedom. New York, NY:
Alfred A. Knopf.
Zinn, Howard (2002). Terrorism and War,
eds., Anthony Arnove. New York, NY: Seven Stories Press.
Abu Spinoza
is a pseudonym for an economist. This essay first appeared in
www.pressaction.com.
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February 15
/ 16, 2003
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