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October 22, 2001
Hani
Shukrallah
Capital
Strikes Back
October 21, 2001
Donald
Rumsfeld
The
al-Jazeera Interview
Mark
Scaramella
Nuclear
Anxiety
October 19, 2001
Mohammed
Sid-Ahmed
Bush's
Palestinian State
Michael
Colby
A
Mailroom Manifesto
October 18, 2001
Mahajan
and Jensen
Avoiding
a New Cold War
Patrick
Cockburn
US
Planes Pound Taliban
Jamey Hecht
Gerald Ford
and the CIA
Mokhiber
and Weisman
3
Arguments
Against This War
October 17, 2001
Ballinger
and Marsh
Music
and War Resistance
Steve
Perry
The
Anthrax Chronicles
Chris
Kromm
Operation
Infinite Disaster
Susan
Block
Sex
Not Bombs
David Vest
Osama Speaks
October 16, 2001
Steve
Perry
War
Without Frontiers
Douglas
Valentine
The
CIA and Anthrax
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
Resources:
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Diary
Ashcroft's Onslaught
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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
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A CounterPunch
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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
and St. Clair
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October 22,
2001
The
War on Women
The Home Front
by David Vest
Suppose the president of the United
States announced that terrorists had targeted and stalked 1 million
American victims over the past twelve months, with the intention
of isolating and attacking them, not all together in big buildings,
but one at a time.
Suppose the Department of Justice,
to support the president, released estimates that over 800,000
of these assaults on individuals had been carried out, with upwards
of 4,500 confirmed dead -- comparable to the number still missing
at the World Trade Towers.
Would you find those facts
disturbing? Would you mentally calculate your own odds?
Suppose that, even though the
federal government had made every effort to get this story out,
it had gone virtually unreported.
It is all true. There's no
"catch" to it. And it's been going on for years. While
the national media obsessed over Clinton's bad behavior and Bush's
bad grammar, thousands of Americans were being stalked and killed.
And in most cases, the victims had been warned. They had received
what the courts call "terroristic threats." Many of
them went to the authorities for help, but it didn't save them.
Wait a minute, you say. If
there were that many terrorists in the United States, we'd all
know about it. Good God, it would be all we talked about!
The overwhelming majority of
the targets have been women. The terror aimed at them didn't
emanate from a cave in Afghanistan.
Hold on, you say. I see where
this is going. That's not terrorism, that's domestic violence.
We'd be trivializing both issues if we got them mixed up.
Maybe that depends on one's
perspective. Is it terrorism only when men are equally at risk?
Not from the point of view of 4,500 dead women, not judged by
the effect on many thousands of children who witnessed these
attacks.
While some of us worried about
anthrax and foreign fanatics, some Americans had more reason
to fear their fellow citizens.
My hope is that in the aftermath
of 9/11 we'll be left with zero tolerance for violent, terroristic
assaults on Americans, whether the terrorist cowers in a faraway
cave or struts around the house next door.
Maybe we'll even have less
patience with people who "harbor" terrorists and collude
with them, who know what's going on and do nothing to stop it,
who support the domestic Taliban when it counsels women to "submit."
October is -- was -- National
Domestic Violence Awareness Month. The president tried to tell
us. The Department of Justice did, too.
Casual sex went up after 9/11.
So did relapse among alcoholics and addicts. Maybe you've seen
those reports. What do you think happened on the "home"
front?
David Vest
is a writer, poet and piano player for the Cannonballs. A native
of Alabama, he now lives in Portland, Oregon. Visit his webpage
for samples of the Cannonballs' brand of take no prisoners rock
& roll and other Vest columns: http://www.mindspring.com/~dcqv
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