By BARBARA KINGSOLVER, Barbara Kingsolver is the author of, among other books, "The Poisonwood Bible" and "Prodigal Summer." This article will appear in a forthcoming collection of essays
TUCSON -- I cannot find the glory in this day. When I picked up the newspaper and saw "America Strikes Back!" blazed boastfully across it in letters I swear were 10 inches tall--shouldn't they reserve at least one type size for something like, say, nuclear war?--my heart sank. We've answered one terrorist act with another, raining death on the most war-scarred, terrified populace that ever crept to a doorway and looked out. The small plastic boxes of food we also dropped are a travesty. It is reported that these are untouched, of course--Afghanis have spent their lives learning terror of anything hurled at them from the sky. Meanwhile, the genuine food aid on which so many depended for survival has been halted by the war. We've killed whoever was too poor or crippled to flee, plus four humanitarian aid workers who coordinated the removal of land mines from the beleaguered Afghan soil. That office is now rubble, and so is my heart. I am going to have to keep pleading against this madness. I'll get scolded for it, I know. I've already been called every name in the Rush Limbaugh handbook: traitor, sinner, naive, liberal, peacenik, whiner. I'm told I am dangerous because I might get in the way of this holy project we've undertaken to keep dropping heavy objects from the sky until we've wiped out every last person who could potentially hate us. Some people are praying for my immortal soul, and some have offered to buy me a one-way ticket out of the country, to anywhere. I accept these gifts with a gratitude equal in measure to the spirit of generosity in which they were offered. People threaten vaguely, "She wouldn't feel this way if her child had died in the war!" (I feel this way precisely because I can imagine that horror.) More subtle adversaries simply say I am ridiculous, a dreamer who takes a child's view of the world, imagining it can be made better than it is. The more sophisticated approach, they suggest, is to accept that we are all on a jolly road trip down the maw of catastrophe, so shut up and drive.
I fight that, I fight it as if I'm drowning. When I get to feeling I am an army of one standing out on the plain waving my ridiculous little flag of hope, I call up a friend or two. We remind ourselves in plain English that the last time we got to elect somebody, the majority of us, by a straight popular-vote count, did not ask for the guy who is currently telling us we will win this war and not be "misunderestimated." We aren't standing apart from the crowd, we are the crowd. There are millions of us, surely, who know how to look life in the eye, however awful things get, and still try to love it back.
It is not naive to propose alternatives to war. We could be the kindest nation on Earth, inside and out. I look at the bigger picture and see that many nations with fewer resources than ours have found solutions to problems that seem to baffle us. I'd like an end to corporate welfare so we could put that money into ending homelessness, as many other nations have done before us. I would like a humane health-care system organized along the lines of Canada's. I'd like the efficient public-transit system of Paris in my city, thank you. I'd like us to consume energy at the modest level that Europeans do, and then go them one better. I'd like a government that subsidizes renewable energy sources instead of forcefully patrolling the globe to protect oil gluttony. Because, make no mistake, oil gluttony is what got us into this holy war, and it's a deep tar pit. I would like us to sign the Kyoto agreement today, and reduce our fossil-fuel emissions with legislation that will ease us into safer, less gluttonous, sensibly reorganized lives. If this were the face we showed the world, and the model we helped bring about elsewhere, I expect we could get along with a military budget the size of Iceland's.
How can I take anything but a child's view of a war in which men are acting like children? What they're serving is not justice, it's simply vengeance. Adults bring about justice using the laws of common agreement. Uncivilized criminals are still held accountable through civilized institutions; we abolished stoning long ago. The World Court and the entire Muslim world stand ready to judge Osama bin Laden and his accessories. If we were to put a few billion dollars into food, health care and education instead of bombs, you can bet we'd win over enough friends to find out where he's hiding. And I'd like to point out, since no one else has, the Taliban is an alleged accessory, not the perpetrator--a legal point quickly cast aside in the rush to find a sovereign target to bomb. The word "intelligence" keeps cropping up, but I feel like I'm standing on a playground where the little boys are all screaming at each other, "He started it!" and throwing rocks that keep taking out another eye, another tooth. I keep looking around for somebody's mother to come on the scene saying, "Boys! Boys! Who started it cannot possibly be the issue here. People are getting hurt."
I am somebody's mother, so I will say that now: The issue is, people are getting hurt. We need to take a moment's time out to review the monstrous waste of an endless cycle of retaliation. The biggest weapons don't win this one, guys. When there are people on Earth willing to give up their lives in hatred and use our own domestic airplanes as bombs, it's clear that we can't out-technologize them. You can't beat cancer by killing every cell in the body--or you could, I guess, but the point would be lost. This is a war of who can hate the most. There is no limit to that escalation. It will only end when we have the guts to say it really doesn't matter who started it, and begin to try and understand, then alter the forces that generate hatred.
We have always been at war, though the citizens of the U.S. were mostly insulated from what that really felt like until Sept. 11. Then, suddenly, we began to say, "The world has changed. This is something new." If there really is something new under the sun in the way of war, some alternative to the way people have always died when heavy objects are dropped on them from above, then please, in the name of heaven, I would like to see it. I would like to see it, now.
Terrorists should be tried in court
Bombing civilians will only lead to further atrocities
Imran Khan
Friday October 12, 2001
The Guardian
Everyone heaved a sigh of relief when there was restraint shown by the US and George Bush acknowledged that this is a "different type of war". And then the US embarked on a conventional war by bombing Afghanistan.
By doing so it may have played into the hands of the terrorists. For terrorism to flourish there has to be a feeling of injustice which breeds the anger and hatred needed to produce someone desperate enough to kill himself for his cause.
The sight of any further suffering by Afghan civilians in the form of "collateral damage" will shift Muslim sympathies towards them. A side-effect of the bombing will be massive dislocation, leaving them vulnerable to the severe Afghan winter, which will inevitably take a severe toll on these impoverished people who had absolutely nothing to do with the September 11 outrage.
Particularly alarming for Muslims is the news that the US has told the UN that it reserves the right to attack any state that it thinks harbours terrorists. Neither Mr Blair's wonderful speech in the House of Commons nor Mr Bush's visits to Islamic community centres will allay our fears that the target of such an anti-terror campaign is Muslims, especially if another Muslim country is bombed after Afghanistan.
As a Pakistani my fear is that if some Pakistani fanatics get involved in terrorist acts in the US, will we as a country of 140m get blamed? For the past 10 years our country has been unable to control internal terrorism. What if our government cannot destroy the terrorist networks within? Could we face the same situation as Afghanistan?
The country that is worst affected by the US bombing of Afghanistan is Pakistan. President Musharraf was bluntly and arrogantly told that either we cooperate with the US or be considered its enemy and be prepared to be bombed into the stone age. For no fault of its own, Pakistan was put into this no-win situation.
Today Pakistan is a US ally helping to destroy their neighbours and allies, the Taliban regime, and as a result helping the Northern Alliance which is pro-India and openly hostile to Pakistan. Anyone who knows Afghanistan also knows that the vacuum created by destroying the Taliban could lead to a civil war that could take years to settle and have a destablilising effect on the two bordering provinces of Pakistan.
Most worrying for us are the protests that have erupted all over Pakistan that could take the country towards anarchy and chaos. At the moment President Musharraf is in control, but he knows that the silent majority is rapidly turning against the bombing of Afghanistan; especially when TV shows the expensive US missiles creating more rubble in this war-ravaged country.
Were it to become vocal and come out in support of the extremists, the whole region could be destabilised - something the perpetrators of the September 11 acts are desperately hoping will happen. The worst case scenario for Pakistan would be the US messing up in Afghanistan and killing thousands of innocent civilians: countrywide protests could then lead to a new government led by hard-liners.
If the conflict in Afghan- istan gets prolonged and bloody then other Muslim countries could become destabilised, with pro-western governments replaced by anti-American, extremist ones. The ultimate nightmare will be the US taking military action against Muslim countries and in the process breeding many more Bin Ladens and al-Qaidas.
Bear in mind that a few desperate people today can do more damage than ever before in human history. I don't need to go into the havoc chemical warfare can create in civilian populations. Thus it is advisable for the US and its allies to sit back and consider whether it is wise to be guided by opinion polls and popularity ratings rather than by common sense.
The only way to deal with global terrorism is through justice. We need international institutions such as a fully empowered and credible world criminal court to define terrorism and dispense justice with impartiality. There should be a distinction made between freedom struggles based on human rights and self- determination, and terrorism. This is not going to be an easy thing to do, because there are a lot of shades of grey - but unfortunately we have run out of easy options.
It is wrong to suggest the September 11 terrorists were driven to suicide by the lure of virgins waiting for them in heavens. This simplistic and naive assumption cannot explain the suicide attacks conducted by the Hindu Tamil tigers in Sri Lanka, or for that matter the Japanese Kamakazi pilots during the second world war.
The world is heading towards disaster if the sole superpower behaves as judge, jury and executioner when dealing with global terrorism. It is also the direction the terrorists of the September 11 desperately hope will be taken: to pit the 1.3bn Muslims in this world against the US.
· Imran Khan is leader of the Tehreek Insaaf party of Pakistan
This one's the phony war
After retaliation, risk of a larger conflict looms
By Jonathan Schell
(THE NATION )
NEW YORK, Oct. 5 ? On Sept. 1, 1939, Hitler?s armies rolled across the western border of Poland. On September 3, England and France declared war on Germany. But the two great powers, unable to intervene in strength in Poland, did not take action right away. A lull ? ?prolonged and oppressive,? in Churchill?s words ? followed. The ?phony war,? as many called it, had begun. (Churchill called it the ?twilight war.?) England promptly sent bombers over Germany ? but only to drop millions of propaganda leaflets. And so the time was also called ?the confetti war.? Everyone knew, however, that the die had been cast, that real war would come. And it did come, of course, at a cost of some 46 million lives.
Are we embarked on a path of horror equivalent to ? or greater than ?that taken by the world after 1914 and 1939?
ON SEPT. 20, 2001, war was once again declared ? this time by an American president, supported by Congress. But once again there was a lull, a kind of phony war. The president?s words before the joint session of Congress were clear enough. Either the Taliban government of Afghanistan must yield up the Islamic extremist Osama bin Laden and other accused terrorists or it would ?share in their fate.? And yet over the next several days, in perhaps the swiftest climb-down from an ultimatum in American history, this clear commitment appeared to melt away.
It was a welcome change to dovish analysts, but vexing to hawks and confusing to all. Did the United States really mean to unseat the Taliban? The president?s spokesman, Ari Fleischer, didn?t see it that way. When Bush, using much politer language than he had before Congress, suggested that the best way to bring to justice those responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was ?to ask for the cooperation of citizens within Afghanistan who may be tired of having the Taliban in place,? Fleischer rushed out to assure the world that American action ?is not designed to replace one regime with another regime.?
Read more by Jonathan Schell in the digital edition of The Nation magazine.
Two days after the attack, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said that U.S. policy should be ?ending states who sponsor terrorism,? but four days after that Secretary of State Colin Powell said he?d prefer to say that ?ending terrorism is where I would like to leave it and let Mr. Wolfowitz speak for himself.? At the end of September, Wolfowitz himself said, ?I think it can?t be stressed enough that everybody who is waiting for military action?needs to rethink this thing.?
It was as if, after their declaration of war on Germany in 1939, France and England had announced the next week that they hadn?t exactly meant Germany, maybe hadn?t even meant war. Had the president been bluffing? After reflection, was he moving to a more sober policy, without being able to say so?
SHIFTING WINDS
At the beginning of October, the winds seemed to shift again. Britain?s Prime Minister, Tony Blair, declared that the Taliban?s choice was ?to surrender the terrorists or surrender power,? and Bush said that this had been ?exactly? his message to Congress. Bush had said that the United States was not ?into nation-
building,? but now an 86-year-old former Afghan monarch, Mohammed Zahir Shah, was rolled forward as the possible leader of a regime to replace the Taliban.
Government counsel to the American public was as changeable as policy. Ari Fleischer wanted Americans to get on with a ?normal? existence, and President Bush wanted them to ?get on board? airplanes again, but Attorney General John Ashcroft warned, ?We think that there is a very serious threat of additional problems now,? and added, ?and, frankly, as the United States responds, that threat may escalate.?
WHAT DOES ?WAR? MEAN?
After Sept. 11, do we still imagine that we are invulnerable to weapons of mass destruction?
The confusion was deeper still. In 1939, England and France did not know when war would come or what form it would take, but they knew without doubt that they were at war, and, what is more important, they knew what a war was. In the phony war of 2001, there was no agreement on either point. Many observers agreed with the Times?s Tom Friedman that ?the equivalent of World War III? was upon us. But was this true? Are we embarked on a path of horror equivalent to ? or greater than ?that taken by the world after 1914 and 1939? That was the question that, above all others, has hung terrifyingly in the air in this grief-stricken, nervous, uncertain interval between the injury to the United States and the response, between the attack and the counterattack.
It was not easy to answer. On the one hand, the world of 2001 did not present an array of great hostile powers, ready to wage total war on one another, as the world of 1939 had done. The United States was indeed such a power, but its immediate attackers had been a force of 19 men armed with box cutters. Years of battle among great alliances of nations was not in the cards. On the other hand, as the attack had shown, the world of 2001 was stocked with technical instruments of destruction that enabled a very few people, or a feeble state, to wreak almost incalculable devastation.
HAZARDS OF ?HOT PURSUIT?
It was with good reason that the United States was awakening in shock to the danger of attacks with weapons of mass destruction. In ?hot pursuit? (as Bush put it) of the terrorists, the United States had already seriously destabilized one weak yet nuclear-armed power: Pakistan. If Islamist extremists took over that nation, would the United States launch a pre-emptive strike against its nuclear arsenal? If it did, would it succeed, and would the extremist government, or its terrorist allies, find a way to retaliate upon American soil? Would someone else? After Sept. 11, do we still imagine that we are invulnerable?
Some voices were calling for major conventional war. The columnist Charles Krauthammer demanded that the United States overthrow the governments of four countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Iran. According to some news reports, there was support in the Administration for such a program. If a campaign on this scale is launched, the prediction that World War III is upon us will become more likely. Is the world of 2001 set on a course that will cost tens of millions of lives, or more? The men with the box cutters cannot by themselves bring it off. But an enraged, blind superpower could manage it. Krauthammer?s four wars could do it. They could transform the local catastrophe in New York and Washington into a global one.
Yet it remains equally true that a wise, restrained superpower can head off such a fate. Which will it be? The attack of September 11 did not decide. What the United States does now will decide.
(Jonathan Schell writes about peace and disarmament correspondent for The Nation, where this essay originally appeared. Reprinted with permission, c. 2001, The Nation.)
President Bush Radio Address to the Nation
THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. This week, we opened some important new fronts in the war on terror. We're taking the war to the enemy and we are strengthening our defenses here at home.
In last weeks' radio address, I warned that time was running out for the Taliban to turn over the terrorists they shelter. They did not listen, and they are paying a price.
On Sunday, American and British forces launched strikes at terrorist camps and Taliban military targets in Afghanistan. Our men and women in uniform are performing as they always do, with skill and courage. And they have achieved the goals of the first phase of our campaign. We have disrupted the terrorist network inside Afghanistan. We have weakened the Taliban's military. And we have crippled the Taliban's air defenses.
American forces dominate the skies over Afghanistan and we will use that dominance to make sure terrorists can no longer freely use Afghanistan as a base of operations.
This campaign will not be completed in one attack. Our enemy prefers to attack the helpless. He hides from our soldiers. But we're making a determined effort to take away his hiding places. The best defense against terrorism is a strong offensive against terrorists. That work continues.
At the same time, we are taking further action to strengthen our protections against terrorism here at home. This week, I signed an executive order creating a new Office of Homeland Security. The Office is headed by a skilled and tested leader, former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge.
Governor Ridge is a decorated Vietnam combat veteran. He's an effective executive and he knows what we're up against, because his own state was one of the three where Americans died on September the 11th.
Governor Ridge is charged with coordinating a comprehensive national effort to protect our country against terrorism, to frustrate terrorists' plans, to help protect vulnerable points, and to prepare our response to potential threats. Tom Ridge will report directly to me, and he will have the full support of our entire government.
I understand that many Americans are feeling uneasy. But all Americans should be assured: We are taking strong precautions, we are vigilant, we are determined, the country is alert, and the great power of the American nation will be felt.
Our nation is grateful to so many Americans who are rallying to our cause and preparing for the struggle ahead: FBI agents, intelligence officers, emergency response workers, public health authorities, state and local officials, our diplomats abroad, law enforcement teams who safeguard our security at home, and soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen who defend us so far away.
Many others are asking: What can I do? Americans already contribute to the war on terror by their patience and patriotism, by their resolve and generosity.
Yet, I have one more task, one especially for America's children. I urge you to show the best of America, by directly helping the children of Afghanistan who are suffering from the oppression and misrule of their own government. Many are malnourished, many are starving.
Put a dollar in an envelope. Mark it, "America's Fund for Afghan Children," and send it here to the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC, 20509-1600. Working with the American Red Cross, we will get that money to Afghan children in need.
This is something the children of America can do for the children of Afghanistan, even as we oppose the brutal Taliban regime. We will oppose their evil with firm justice, and we will answer their hatred with compassion for the Afghan people.
Thank you for listening.
The media and Mr. Bush
By Barry Grey
16 October 2001
In its efforts to portray George W. Bush in the most flattering possible light, the liberal press in the US has jettisoned whatever shreds of decorum and journalistic integrity it previously retained. In the course of the past month, testimonials to Bush?s astounding metamorphosis from mediocrity to greatness have become almost commonplace in the pages of such journals as the New York Times and the Washington Post.
This exercise in deception and self-delusion assumed grotesque proportions last week when Bush held a nationally televised, prime-time press conference. Bush?s meandering performance reflected what he is: a severely limited man, ill-equipped intellectually and politically to grasp the complexities of the situation that has unfolded since the terror attacks on New York and Washington.
The following day the New York Times published a rapturous editorial headlined ?Mr. Bush?s New Gravitas.? Marveling at the supposed transformation of the man ?who was barely elected president last year,? the Times declared: ?He seemed confident, determined, sure of his purpose and in full command of the complex array of political and military challenges that he faces in the wake of the terrible terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. It was a reassuring performance that should give comfort to an uneasy nation.?
The opening accolade set the tone for the rest of the commentary, which concluded on the following note: ?In all, it was a commanding appearance that should give citizens a sense that their president has done much to master the complexities of this new global crisis.... [Bush] seemed to be a president whom the nation could follow in these difficult times.?
This was an astonishing appraisal. The George W. Bush it described bore virtually no resemblance to the man who gave a White House press conference on October 11. That man tried to string together bits and pieces of ideas that he obviously did not comprehend, resulting in a jumble of non sequiturs, banalities and evasions. Were the Times editorialists watching the same press conference?
The members of the White House press corps did their best to give the president a free ride, refraining from asking any questions that challenged the dishonest claims that are being used to justify a war in Afghanistan and an assault on civil liberties within the US.
No one asked Bush to explain how a group of terrorists could implement a plan to murder thousands, destroy the World Trade Center and bomb the Pentagon, without being detected or deterred. No reporter noted the White House?s failure to this day to provide concrete evidence of Osama bin Laden?s guilt. In its collective cowardice, the press corps refused even to question Bush?s efforts to muzzle the press.
Of the economic and strategic aims underlying the war in petroleum-rich Central Asia, there was not a hint. The three-letter word beginning in ?o? and ending in ?l? was never uttered.
Nevertheless, Bush proved incapable of making a coherent case for the government?s course of action. Far from appearing ?confident, determined and sure of his purpose,? Bush was tentative, rambling and vague. As for his ?command of the complex array of political and military challenges,? the president could not even repeat with any consistency the mantras that had been formulated by his advisers.
What he initially termed ?the first, and we hope, the only [war] of the twenty-first century? became, the second time around, ?the first battle in the war of the twenty-first century,? and, a few minutes later, ?the new wars of the twenty-first century.?
As for the nature of the war, its duration and aims, Bush could offer little insight beyond the assertion that it was ?a different kind of war,? a phrase he repeated several times. Again and again Bush grabbed for such catchphrases. There was much talk about ?smoking him out of his cave? and references to bin Laden as ?the evil-doer.?
Bush?s remarks contained glaring contradictions. One reporter, noting that US officials could not say for sure whether bin Laden was still in Afghanistan, asked whether the war on terrorism could be won if the prime target was not found. Bush replied that ?success or failure depends not on bin Laden.? He continued, ?[S]uccess or failure depends upon routing [sic] out terrorism where it may exist all around the world. He?s just one person, a part of a network.?
How terrorism can be ?routed out? all over the world without capturing or eliminating the man whom the US claims is the world?s preeminent terrorist was not explained. Having downplayed the significance of bin Laden in one breath, moreover, Bush credited him with possessing vast powers in the next, declaring that the Saudi exile had ?hijacked a country? and ?forced a country to accept his radical thoughts.?
Another reporter pointed to that day?s FBI warning of fresh terrorist attacks and asked the entirely legitimate question: ?Given the complete generality of that warning, what does it really accomplish, aside from scaring people into not doing what you?ve urged them to do?getting back to their normal lives...?? Bush was plainly at a loss to unravel this conundrum.
It was ?a general threat on America,? he said, adding, ?had it been a specific threat, we would have contacted those to whom the threat was directed.? He went on to say the American people ?should take comfort? from official warnings of imminent attacks, because they showed the government was ?on full alert.? He then cited ?positive news? of an increase in commercial aircraft load factors and a rise in hotel occupancy rates. ?We are getting back to normal,? Bush declared.
This was a typical Bush non sequitur. He wanted to counter suspicions that the FBI alert was a ploy to create panic and stampede the public behind his war policy and his attacks on democratic rights. So he insisted that the threat of an imminent attack was real. But from this dire premise he somehow concluded that the appropriate response of the American people was to ?get back to normal.?
People should also be vigilant, he declared. But when asked, twice, exactly what this vigilance entailed and how ordinary people could protect themselves, Bush was at a loss. ?The American people, obviously, if they see something that is suspicious, something out of the norm that looks suspicious, they ought to notify local law authorities,? he said.
In response to the final question of the news conference??What are Americans supposed to look for and report to the police or to the FBI???Bush could do no better than: ?If you see suspicious people lurking around petrochemical plants, report it to law enforcement.?
Here is how the Times described the president?s attempt to handle these questions: ?Mr. Bush was especially effective in talking to the American people about their fears. He spoke candidly about new warnings that additional terrorist attacks could come at any time, but described the many precautions that the government is taking to defend the home front. He was at once firm in his resolve to protect the nation and fatherly in his calm advice to get on with the life of the country as much as people can.?
In this mixture of boot-licking and deceit, one claim stands out because it calls into question whether the authors even watched the press conference. It is factually untrue that Bush ?described the many precautions that the government is taking to defend the home front.? He did no such thing.
The Times continued: ?Using a mixture of straight talk, statesmanship and a touch of humor here and there, Mr. Bush used the press conference to clarify and sharpen his positions on several core issues in the war against terrorism.? The ?clarifying? and ?sharpening? which the newspaper lauded consisted of refusing to place a time limit on the war and allusions to setting up a client regime in Afghanistan, with the United Nations being called on to provide a legal fig leaf. The Times also praised Bush for threatening Iraq without committing the US to an imminent attack on Baghdad??a step that the nation is not yet [emphasis added] prepared to take,? in the words of the editorial.
The Times was particularly pleased with Bush?s talk of humanitarian aid to the ?impoverished people of Afghanistan.? It described as ?heartfelt? Bush?s most sickening display of hypocrisy?his appeal for American children to send donations to the children of Afghanistan.
In this connection, the Times passed over in silence a highly damning admission. Bush made a passing reference to Washington?s ?previous engagement in the Afghan area,? and said his administration had learned from that experience that ?we should not just simply leave after a military objective has been achieved.?
Bush was referring to US support for the Islamic Mujahedin during the Soviet invasion of the 1980s. As is well known, the guerillas armed and financed by the CIA in that period included Osama bin Laden and the precursors of the Taliban. No government played a greater role than the US in fostering the growth of these reactionary forces in Afghanistan, and once the Soviet army withdrew, Washington pulled out and left the population at the mercy of rival warlords and Islamic fundamentalist militias. The result was years of civil war that virtually destroyed the country.
Thus, by the time Bush concluded his remarks with a play at compassion, describing the horrific conditions facing Afghanistan?s children, he had already pointed unwittingly to the culpability of the US for these very conditions.
There were other remarkable statements that the Times chose to overlook, such as Bush?s assertion that the major mistake in Vietnam was allowing elected officials to control the actions of the military, his inane pronouncement that the lesson to be drawn from the events of September 11 was that ?there is evil in the world,? and his profession of ?amazement? at the widespread hatred for the US in the Arab and Muslim world.
What accounts for this simultaneous display of ignorance and dishonesty? Bush is a man who has not read a serious book in the last twenty years, if not in his entire life. He knows almost nothing about history, and even less about Central Asia. He is making war in a part of the world about which he is uninformed. It is doubtful that prior to September 11 he could have named the countries bordering Afghanistan.
He lacks a command of facts, let alone the ability to form broad generalizations that are rooted in facts and history, without which serious politics is impossible. He is abysmally unqualified for his position. All of this is well known in ruling class political and media circles.
The Times? editors know that Bush?s press conference bore no resemblance to their adulatory review. Why, then, did they publish such a shameless tract?
The media is determined that there will be no repetition of the Vietnam-era ?credibility gap? because there will be no challenge from their quarter to the claims of the government. This open transformation of the press into a propaganda arm of the state is a symptom of the far-reaching degeneration of democratic institutions in America.
Articles and commentaries such as that of the New York Times, and they are legion, reflect the contempt of the American ruling elite for the public. The media is not engaged simply in influencing public opinion. American politics has reached the stage where public opinion itself is entirely synthetic.
Lies and half-truths have become the ingredients of a perfected system of manipulation that is only remotely connected to facts and has virtually no reference to the concerns and moods of the broad mass of the population. Public opinion is nothing more than the manner in which the corporate oligarchy and its government agents package their own outlook.
The entire media operation has become an exercise not only in mass deception, but also in self-delusion. It is a closed circle that reflects the extreme alienation of the political system from the general population.
Notwithstanding the polls showing overwhelming support for the war, the more profound mood of the American people is one of unease and fear that the conflict will spiral out of control. It is inevitable that the staggering levels of social inequality and political alienation that characterize American society will find expression in enormous upheavals, for which an insulated ruling elite and its media propagandists are ill prepared.
Text of Al-Qaida's Statement
By The Associated Press,
Translation of the statement in Arabic Tuesday by Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith. Abu Ghaith opened with a verse from the Quran instructing Muslims not to take Jews and Christians as their leaders, saying that would make them part of them:
``Peace be upon Mohammad our prophet and those who follow him.
``I direct this message to the entire Islamic nation, and I say to them that all sides today have come together against the nation of Islam and the Muslims.
``This is the crusade that (President) Bush has promised us, coming toward Afghanistan (news - web sites) against the Islamic nation and the Afghan people. We are living under this bombardment from the crusade, which is also targeting the whole Islamic community.
``We have a fair and just case.
``The Islamic nation, for more than 80 years, has been suffering. The Palestinian people have been living under the Jewish and Zionist occupation; nobody moves to help them. Here we are, this is an Arab land, this is a land that is being desecrated, people have come to take its wealth.
``The nation must know that terror and the terror of the United States is only a trick. Is it possible that America and its allies would kill and that would not be called terrorism?
``And when the victim comes out to take revenge, it is called terrorism. This must not be acceptable.
``America must know that the nation will not keep quiet any more and will not allow what happens against it. Jihad today is a religious duty of every Muslim if they haven't got an excuse. God says fight, for the sake of God and to uphold the name of God.
``The American interests are everywhere all over the world. Every Muslim has to play his real and true role to uphold his religion and his nation in fighting, and jihad is a duty.
(A second Quran verse, saying Muslims should fight those who oppress them.)
``I want to talk on another point, that those youths who did what they did and destroyed America with their airplanes did a good deed. They have moved the battle into the heart of America. America must know that the battle will not leave its land, God willing, until America leaves our land, until it stops supporting Israel, until it stops the blockade against Iraq.
``The Americans must know that the storm of airplanes will not stop, God willing, and there are thousands of young people who are as keen about death as Americans are about life.
``The Americans must know that by invading the land of Afghanistan they have opened a new page of enmity and struggle between us and the forces of the unbelievers. We will fight them with the material and the spiritual strength that we have, and our faith in God. We shall be victorious.
``The Americans have opened a door that will never be closed.
``At the end, I address the sons and the young Muslims, the men and women, for them to take their responsibility. The land of Afghanistan and the mujahedin are being subjected to a full crusade with the objective of getting rid of the Islamic nation. The nation must take up its response and in the end I thank God for allowing us to start this jihad. This battle is a decisive battle between faithlessness and faith. And I ask God to give us victory in the face of our enemy and return them defeated.
Tony Blair's bin Laden dossier: a pretext instead of proof
By Chris Marsden and Barry Grey
6 October 2001
The document presented to Britain?s parliament on October 4 by Prime Minister Tony Blair has been hailed by the media as proof that Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network planned and carried out the September 11 hijack-bombings in New York and Washington. In fact, Blair?s dossier is a clumsy patchwork of assertions that provides no actual evidence establishing the guilt of bin Laden or the complicity of his Taliban protectors.
A review of the document makes clear that it is an attempt to silence the demand for proof of bin Laden?s guilt, without actually providing it, and thereby ease the path for the US and Britain to launch a war against Afghanistan.
Last week the Bush administration reneged on a promise to make public the evidence it claimed to possess proving bin Laden?s guilt. Had everything gone to according to plan, there is little doubt that this state of affairs would have continued and bombs would have rained down on Afghanistan without any pretence of having made the case against bin Laden and the Taliban.
However, Bush faced opposition from Pakistan and the Arab regimes, which feared an explosive reaction should the US begin bombing a Muslim country without any concrete proof to justify such an action. The document presented by Blair was part of an international effort to placate America?s wavering allies and give them something to present before their own people.
The dossier begins with the following caveat: ?This document does not purport to provide a prosecutable case against Osama bin Laden in a court of law.? This acknowledgment is rationalized on the grounds that ?Intelligence often cannot be used evidentially, due both to the strict rules of admissibility and to the need to protect the safety of sources.?
Three things can be said regarding this statement.
First, the premise that a lower standard of evidence is sufficient to justify a war than would be the norm for establishing innocence or guilt in a court of law is, at best, dubious. The incalculable consequences of a military attack argue for a standard of proof no less strict than that required in a legal case. In court what is at stake is the fate of the defendants as individuals, whereas the US and Britain are about to launch a military campaign in which the lives of an unknown number of innocent civilians are threatened.
Second, the claim that intelligence considerations prohibit those about to wage war from presenting evidence justifying such a course is a blanket rationalization for any and all military action. Even if one grants the legitimacy of withholding some evidence, it is not credible to assert that on security grounds no concrete proof can be made public. Such a stance amounts to an assertion of the right to play judge, jury and executioner.
Third, Blair?s document is not a serious presentation of evidence that falls somewhat short of the rigorous standards of a legal indictment. It is devoid of any independently verifiable facts that establish the guilt of either bin Laden, Al Qaeda or the Taliban in connection with the September 11 terror attacks.
Most of what the document puts forward was previously reported in the media. All of its allegations are unsubstantiated. The reader is expected to accept its claims on faith.
The document is divided into three main headings. The most crucial is the section purporting to deal with Al Qaeda?s role in the September 11 terror attacks. This constitutes just nine points out of the seventy contained in the 15-page dossier.
In an evident attempt to obscure the flimsy character of this pivotal section, the authors have filled the bulk of the document with pages purportedly outlining Al Qaeda?s previous involvement in terrorist attacks against the US, together with a presentation of the historical origins of bin Laden?s Al Qaeda network and the Taliban regime.
In the section dealing with September 11, only one apparently concrete connection between Al Qaeda and the hijack-bombings is made: the claim that of the 19 identified hijackers, ?At least three of them have already been positively identified as associates of Al Qaeda. One has been identified as playing key roles in both the East African embassy attacks and the USS Cole attack.?
But this statement raises more questions than it answers. If the identities of the three are known, why are they not named? What possible harm could it do?
Secondly, the description of the three as ?associates of Al Qaeda? is so broad and amorphous as to render it almost meaningless. The document acknowledges that Al Qaeda is a loose organization of many different groupings. Even if the three were in some way identified with Al Qaeda, this by itself would not prove that either Al Qaeda or bin Laden personally planned or ordered the September 11 attacks. Finally, the document merely asserts the existence of evidence linking the three to Al Qaeda, without actually presenting factual proof.
The Bush administration, in particular, treads on thin ice when it speaks loosely of ?links? between bin Laden, bin Laden?s associates and various other individuals. None other than the Wall Street Journal reported in a September 27 article of documented links between leading figures in the Republican Party, including George W. Bush?s father, the former president, and the bin Laden family.
The Journal wrote: ?Among its far-flung business interests, the well-heeled Saudi Arabian clan?which says it is estranged from Osama?is an investor in a fund established by the Carlyle Group, a well-connected Washington merchant bank specializing in buyouts of defense and aerospace companies.
?Through this investment and its ties to Saudi royalty, the bin Laden family has become acquainted with some of the biggest names in the Republican Party. In recent years, former President Bush, ex-Secretary of State James Baker and ex-Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci have made the pilgrimage to the bin Laden family?s headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.?
Regarding the events of September 11, the document goes on to make further assertions: that bin Laden himself declared shortly before September 11 that he was preparing a major attack on America and called close associates to return to Afghanistan from other parts of the world by September 10; and that ?Since 11 September we have learned that one of bin Laden?s closest and most senior associates was responsible for the detailed planning of the attacks.?
Once again a man considered to be at the very top of bin Laden?s organization, who is allegedly directly responsible for the terror outrage, is not named. Why?
There follows this significant statement: ?There is evidence of a very specific nature relating to the guilt of bin Laden and his associates that is too sensitive to release.?
Whether or not the authors of the document are aware of it, this sentence amounts to a tacit admission that they have produced nothing of a "specific nature" proving a connection between bin Laden and the September 11 attacks.
The evidence regarding previous terror attacks is hardly more substantial. Names and incidents are cited in connection with a number of high-profile attacks, but these are garnered from the trial testimony of a few individual defendants made under extreme duress.
To fill in the obvious gaps, the following assertion is made in an extended preamble dealing with the history of Al Qaeda: ?Osama bin Laden has claimed credit for the attack on US soldiers in Somalia in October 1993, which killed 18; for the attack on the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 which killed 224 and injured nearly 5000; and were linked [sic] to the attack on the USS Cole on 12 October 2000, in which 17 crew members were killed and 40 others injured.?
No such admission has ever been made, and none is cited in the document. Instead the reader is directed toward various anti-American statements and comments from bin Laden supportive of anti-US terrorist attacks.
(The inclusion of the attack on American soldiers in Somalia is entirely out of place. That incident cannot legitimately be considered a terrorist attack, since the Somalis involved were opposing US soldiers, not civilians, and their resistance was part of a struggle against a US military occupation of their country. The US troops, moreover, were involved in an aggressive action to capture Somali officials who had run afoul of American designs.)
The actual material presented in the document argues against the assertion that bin Laden claimed responsibility for the named terrorist attacks. When bin Laden was questioned by Time magazine regarding the August 1998 bombings of the US Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, he refused to either confirm or deny any responsibility. His quoted reply is simply a restatement of his fatwa, followed by the declaration, ?Our job is to instigate and, by the grace of God, we did that, and certain people responded to this instigation.? When asked if he knew the attackers, bin Laden simply called them ?real men.? As deplorable as such statements are, they do not constitute an admission of responsibility.
In point 51, the dossier notes the existence of documents in which an unrelated group, the Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Places, claims responsibility for the East African embassy bombings. The Blair dossier simply dismisses this inconvenient information with the claim that the organization is ?fictitious.?
One statement in the document undermines its own invocation of security needs as the justification for omitting specific evidence. In point 14, the dossier asserts that the US government ?well before September 11 2001? handed over evidence of Al Qaeda?s guilt in orchestrating the East African embassy attacks to the Taliban.
If the US government felt it could provide secret intelligence to the Taliban, whom it now accuses of sponsoring a global anti-American murder incorporated, how can it cite the need for secrecy and the protection of sources to justify concealing crucial evidence from its own people and the rest of the world today?
Politically, the most significant part of Blair?s dossier is the section that purports to outline the historical origins of Al Qaeda and the Taliban regime. This potted history, by way of omission, points to critical facts that both the US and Britain are intent on obscuring because they reveal the political responsibility of successive governments in Washington and London for the rise of bin Laden and the Taliban, and the spread throughout Central Asia and the Middle East of the reactionary brand of nationalism and religious obscurantism which they embody.
The document takes as its starting point the year 1989, when, it claims, bin Laden and others founded Al Qaeda. The authors conveniently omit any reference to the previous decade, during which the American CIA, with the assistance of the British Special Air Service (SAS), funded, trained and armed the Mujahedin as part of the Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union, which invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and withdrew 10 years later. Among those with whom the Americans worked to undermine Soviet influence was Osama bin Laden.
This is the real history, without knowledge of which it is impossible to understand the destruction of secular political forces in Afghanistan and the sudden rise to prominence of the Taliban, whose ideological and political roots lie in the Mujahedin groups that were nurtured by the US. (The US-Taliban connection was evidenced by the initial tacit support of Washington for the Taliban regime when it took power in 1996.)
If, after three-and-a-half weeks, this crude admixture of unsubstantiated assertions and historical falsifications is all that can be presented to the public, there can be only two possible explanations:
Either the US government has no proof of a direct connection between Osama bin Laden, the Taliban and the September 11 attacks, or it cannot release the evidence it has because the information would in some way implicate individuals or organizations connected to American intelligence or that of an allied state.
In exposing the fraudulent character of this document, the World Socialist Web Site is in no way motivated by a desire to protect bin Laden or the Taliban, or maintain their innocence in regard to last month?s attacks. They may very well be complicit in the hijack-bombings. Their politics and methods are deeply reactionary and hostile to the interests of the working class and oppressed masses in the Middle East, Central Asia and every other part of the world.
But our rejection of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism does not in the slightest lessen our opposition to the US and British governments and their militaristic agenda. The fact that they have failed to make public any serious evidence establishing the culpability of those singled out for retaliation is of enormous significance. It shows that they have seized on the September 11 tragedy as an opportunity to pursue an international agenda long in the making. They are seeking to whip up a war fever so they can pursue geo-strategic aims in the oil-rich Middle East and Central Asian regions in a manner that would have been politically unthinkable prior to September 11.