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October
9, 2001
Patrick
Cockburn
Bombs
Weaken Taliban
Lenni
Brenner
Powell
the Owl
Zha
Marginalization
and Terror
Steve
Perry
It
Begins
October
8, 2001
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
Resources:
100s of Links
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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:
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by Cockburn
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October 15,
2001
The Eichmann Scenario
An Alternative to War
By Tariq Ali
Over the past decade or so, every war
fought by the West (in the Gulf, the Balkans and now South Asia)
has been accompanied by a well-orchestrated propaganda campaign.
Politics is conducted and presented in the style of intelligence
agencies: disinformation, exaggeration of enemy strength and
capability, explanation of a television image with a brazen lie
and censorship. The aim is to delude and disarm the citizenry.
Everything is either over-simplified or reduced to a wearisome
incomprehensibility. The message is simple. There is no alternative.
As the bombing of Afghanistan
continues for the second week, the Pentagon has admitted that
some bombs went astray. Two hundred Afghan civilians have been
killed so far and more will die if the bombs continue to fall.
During the lull before the war, the US Defense Secretary, Donald
Rumsfeld, mused in public as to whether Afghanistan had any "assets
worth bombing". He knew the answer. The fact is that the
Anglo-American bombing campaign is in clear breach of Articles
48 and 51 of the Geneva Convention as well as the Nuremberg Charter.
Article 48 insists that: "In order to ensure respect for
and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects,
the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between
the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects
and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations
only against military objectives."
Article 51 is equally clear
in prohibiting indiscriminate attacks and specifies these as
attacks "which may be expected to cause incidental loss
of a civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects
or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation
to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated".
Was there ever an alternative
to the bombing? If the real intention was not a crude war of
revenge, but to seriously weaken and eliminate terrorism and
bring to trial those who ordered the crimes committed on 11 September,
then the answer is yes. The disproportionality of what is taking
place speaks for itself. If the US judiciary was convinced by
the evidence of Mr bin Laden's guilt then a warrant should have
been issued for his extradition and a plan prepared to bring
him to trial.
A lesson could have been learnt
from Israel's patient stalking, capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann
who was accused of a far more serious crime. In going to war,
Bush and Blair resorted to a mixture of cowboy discourse and
Old Testament imagery to pre-empt any judicial inquiry or action.
The model so far has been that of the old lynch-mob, egged on
by a populace fed on a regular diet of scare stories. Anthrax
today and, no doubt, nuclear briefcases tomorrow.
If the real aim is simply an
old-fashioned imperialist one, i.e. to topple the Taliban regime
and replace it with a protectorate considered closer to "Western
values" (as the Taliban once was), then and only then does
the bombing make sense as the Northern Alliance, waiting to commence
the battle for Kabul, realise full well. Its leaders boast they
can do it alone, but US marines and British commandos are standing
by to help them just in case the Taliban defeat them as they
did once before.
Meanwhile, there is no news
of the pretext for this war. Where is Osama bin Laden? Is his
capture part two of this operation? And if he is caught will
he be killed or brought to trial? And, if so, will this entire
exercise have helped to diminish the attraction for, let alone
help to defeat terrorism? I think the result will be the exact
opposite and especially in the Arab and Muslim world.
Neither George Bush nor Tony
Blair appear to appreciate that, like it or not, Mr bin Laden
has become a hero in many parts of the Third World. Young, middle-class
graduates in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Maghreb will make sure
that his martyrdom will not be in vain. Only last week, President
Bush told journalists: "How do I respond when I see that
in some Islamic countries there is vitriolic hatred for America?
I'll tell you how I respond. I'm amazed. I just can't believe
it because I know how good we are."
Mr Blair, his military confederate,
had another solution: "One thing becoming increasingly clear
to me is the need to upgrade our media and public opinion operations
in the Arab and Muslim world." The simplicity on display
is frightening. Surely the mandarins in the State Department
and Foreign Office are aware of the realities. They must know
that the medium-term solution is political and economic, not
military.
Unless the Palestinians are
guaranteed a viable, sovereign state, there will be no peace.
Mr Arafat may be content with the shrivelled little Bantustans
at Israeli pleasure, but the Palestinian population is not. The
latest intifada is also a revolt against the Oslo Accords and
the corruption of the Palestinian leadership.
Then there is Iraq. Not a single
one of the standard arguments for the continuing bombardment
and blockade of Iraq stands up. The notion that Saddam's cruelties
are unique is an abject fiction. The Turkish Generals, valued
members of Nato, have killed 30,000 Kurds over the past decade
and denied them the use of their own language. Responsible modernity?
Saddam never attempted a cultural annihilation of this order.
The Saudi Kingdom makes not even a pretence of human rights,
its treatment of women would not pass muster in medieval Russia.
As for nuclear weapons, the hawkish Unscom inspector, Scott Ritter,
insists they cannot be countenanced. Israel, however, possesses
nuclear weapons without any sanctions whatsoever.
Double standards of this sort
and on this scale drive young people to despair. Here is an immediate
solution. The lifting of sanctions and a permanent halt to the
bombing of Iraq would have a positive impact throughout the world
of Islam, reducing the number of young men prepared to sacrifice
their own lives for what they regard as a holy cause. It would
be a small step forward if, as US and British jets are dispatched
for yet another bombing raid on a the shattered and famished
remnant of Afghanistan, a few of our political leaders spoke
up in the name of reason.
Tariq Ali, a frequent CounterPunch contributor,
is the author of The
Stone Woman.
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