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Published on Tuesday, October 16, 2001  
Week One: Operation Infinite Disaster 
by Chris Kromm 
  
President Bush's war planners have struggled to find a fitting code 
name for our latest military venture. But after a week of war, 
there's only one appropriate label for the nightmare that has 
transpired: Operation Infinite Disaster. 

Leave aside, for the moment, the moral shortcomings and Orwellian 
implications of bombing starved people to "fight for freedom" or 
honor the dead of the September 11 tragedy. What's even more striking 
about the War Against ... Somebody is that, even on the Bush 
administration's own terms, the bombing of Afghanistan has thus far 
been a failure -- a series of tactical blunders guaranteed to make a 
bad situation much, much worse. 

A quick inventory of the week's events tell the story: 

BOMBING PEOPLE WITH FOOD: The first sign of trouble was news that 
Bush -- in a move to give the brutal bombings a humanitarian spin -- 
had opted to drop food supplies along with cluster bombs. This public 
relations stunt quickly backfired, however, when every major relief 
agency in the world derided the drops for 1) being insufficient 
(enough to feed about .5% of the starving population for a single 
day, provided the rations got to the intended "targets"); 2) 
containing food Afghan people never eat (hello, peanut butter?!); and 
3) having the disadvantage of landing in fields strewn with land 
mines, adding injury to insult. 

HIGH-TECH STRIKES IN A LOW-TECH WORLD: Then came evidence that U.S. 
bombs are hitting worthless targets -- when they hit at all. This may 
surprise U.S. readers, who, much like during the Gulf War, have been 
treated to giddy media reports cooing over the Pentagon's high-
tech "smart" weaponry: gee-whiz gadgets like satellite targeting 
which supposedly make military strikes "surgical" -- and blood-free. 
(Although, in 1991 the Pentagon admitted that under six percent of 
Gulf War weapons used "smart" technology -- and even among these 
brilliant bombs, fully 20% missed their mark.) 

The Pentagon says they've gotten better; time -- if not the media -- 
will tell. But what have these intelligent machines of destruction 
been hitting? A few terrorist training camps, which, as journalist 
Robert Fisk noted, our planes had "no difficulty spotting ... 
because, of course, most of them were built by the CIA when Mr. bin 
Laden and his men were the good guys." 

But overall, the Taliban is a low-tech army -- and bombing their 
outdated airstrips and archaic phone systems has had little impact on 
how they control their terrain. And technology is only as good as the 
fallible humans who use it, which leads to the next mistake: 

KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE: "Serious blunders by American warplanes may 
have killed at least 100 civilians in Afghanistan," according to eye-
witness accounts obtained by The Observer of London and reported on 
Sunday, October 14. (U.S. newspapers have been slow to report 
evidence of innocent people dying.) These deaths -- in Karam village, 
18 miles west of Jalalabad -- came after news of the four workers 
killed in a U.N. building devoted to clearing land mines. 

A total of 400 civilian deaths have been confirmed. Personal 
testimony from fleeing refugees suggest hundreds more. 

What has been the effect of these deaths, besides belying the notion 
that war can be waged without ending innocent lives? According to The 
Guardian of London, the Karam killings are straining ties between the 
U.S. and its shaky allies in the anti-terrorism coalition. 

And among the Arab and Muslim populace, the response is 
predictable: "Reports of between 50 and 150 deaths" the Guardian 
reports, have "provoked rage and grief throughout Afghanistan and 
throughout the Muslim world." 

Which brings us to what the U.S.-led strikes *have * succeeded in 
doing: 

IGNITING AN EXPLOSIVE BACKLASH: I'm not referring to the 30,000 
protesters who marched in England against the U.S.-led bombing, the 
70,000 who marched in India, the 70,000 who marched in Germany, or 
similar protests which have filled the streets in "friendly" turf 
like Italy, Greece, and our own cities. 

I'm also not referring to the boomerang response to U.S. bombing in 
the form of terrorist counter-attacks, which have plunged America 
into dread fear of powdery envelopes and exposed nuclear reactors. 

No, more troubling are the 20,000 students who took over the streets 
of Egypt yelling "U.S. go to hell!" The Jakarta Muslims threatening 
to kill U.S. tourists and embassy workers. The millions of Arab-
Americans and Muslims who are raging -- violently -- against the U.S. 
in Jordan, South Africa, Iran, Bangladesh, Pakistan (brought to the 
brink of civil war) and Nigeria, where "hundreds" may be dead due to 
rioting. 

President Bush's reaction has instilled little confidence. When asked 
in a press conference last Friday for his response to the vitriolic 
hatred that has mushroomed around the globe, Bush could only 
mumble: "I'm amazed. I just can't believe it because I know how good 
we are" -- which, in the world's eyes, must bring profoundly new 
meaning to the word "naiveté." 

This disheartening string of missteps, feeding an upswell of moral 
outrage, led everyone's favorite war-watching website -- 
www.debka.com -- to post this headline over the weekend: "First Week 
of U.S. Offensive in Afghanistan is Inconclusive Militarily, 
Earthshaking Geo-Politically." 

And for what? To the Pentagon's dismay, Bin Laden hasn't 
been "flushed out." The Taliban isn't waving a white flag. Our 
supposed allies, the opium-running North Alliance, seem confused 
about whether or not they should take over the country. 

Amidst such chaos, the Bush camp has resorted to the time-tested 
tactic of creating a diversion, suggesting the blame for September 11 
may lay elsewhere -- Iraq (surprise) being the favorite fall guy. 
This comes just weeks after every media mouthpiece instructed us 
that "ONLY the resources and skills of Osama bin Laden" and the "al-
Quaeda network" could have been responsible. 

The U.S. may or may not be able to reverse its miserable military 
fortunes in Afghanistan. But the more dangerous consequences of the 
U.S. bombing campaign -- a world aroused into anger against American 
arrogance, in part the very reason for the September 11 tragedy -- 
will stay with us for a very long time. 

Chris Kromm is Director of the Institute for Southern Studies in 
Durham, North Carolina. 

*****

Published on Tuesday, October 16, 2001 in the Guardian of London  
Gagging the Skeptics
The US, founded to protect basic freedoms, is now insisting that its 
critics are its enemies.
 
by George Monbiot 
  
If satire died on the day Henry Kissinger received the Nobel Peace 
Prize, then last week its corpse was exhumed for a kicking. As head 
of the United Nations peacekeeping department, Kofi Annan failed to 
prevent the genocide in Rwanda or the massacre in Srebrenica. Now, as 
secretary general, he appears to have interpreted the UN charter as 
generously as possible to allow the attack on Afghanistan to go 
ahead. 
Article 51 permits states to defend themselves against attack. It 
says nothing about subsequent retaliation. It offers no license to 
attack people who might be harboring a nation's enemies. The bombing 
of Afghanistan, which began before the UN security council gave its 
approval, is legally contentious. Yet the man and the organization 
who overlooked this obstacle to facilitate war are honored for their 
contribution to peace. 

Endowments like the Nobel Peace Prize are surely designed to reward 
self-sacrifice. Nelson Mandela gave up his liberty, FW de Klerk gave 
up his power, and both were worthy recipients of the prize. But Kofi 
Annan, the career bureaucrat, has given up nothing. He has been 
rewarded for doing as he is told, while nobly submitting to a 
gigantic salary and bottomless expense account. 

Among the other nominees for the prize was a group whose 
qualifications were rather more robust. Members of Women in Black 
have routinely risked their lives in the hope of preventing war. They 
have stayed in the homes of Palestinians being shelled by Israeli 
tanks and have confronted war criminals in the Balkans. They have 
stood silently while being abused and spat at during vigils all over 
the world. But now, in this looking-glass world in which war is peace 
and peace is war, instead of winning the peace prize the Women in 
Black have been labeled potential terrorists by the FBI and 
threatened with a grand jury investigation. 

They are in good company. Earlier this year the director of the FBI 
named the chaotic but harmless organizations Reclaim the Streets and 
Carnival Against Capitalism in the statement on terrorism he 
presented to the Senate. Now, partly as a result of his 
representations, the Senate's new terrorism bill, like Britain's 
Terrorism Act 2000, redefines the crime so broadly that members of 
Greenpeace are in danger of being treated like members of al-Qaida. 
The Bush doctrine - if you're not with us, you're against us - is 
already being applied. 

This government by syllogism makes no sense at all. Osama bin Laden 
and al-Qaida have challenged the US government; ergo anyone who 
challenges the government is a potential terrorist. That Bin Laden 
is, according to US officials, a "fascist", while the other groups 
are progressives is irrelevant: every public hand raised in objection 
will from now on be treated as a public hand raised in attack. Given 
that Bin Laden is not a progressive but is a millionaire, it would 
surely make more sense to round up and interrogate all millionaires. 

Lumping Women in Black together with al-Qaida requires just a minor 
addition to the vocabulary: they have been jointly classified 
as "anti-American". This term, as used by everyone from the US 
defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and the Daily Mail to Tony Blair 
and several writers on these pages, applies not only to those who 
hate Americans, but also to those who have challenged US foreign and 
defense objectives. Implicit in this denunciation is a demand for 
uncritical support, for a love of government more consonant with the 
codes of tsarist Russia than with the ideals upon which the United 
States was founded. 

The charge of "anti-Americanism" is itself profoundly anti-American. 
If the US does not stand for freedom of thought and speech, for 
diversity and dissent, then we have been deceived as to the nature of 
the national project. Were the founding fathers to congregate today 
to discuss the principles enshrined in their declaration of 
independence, they would be denounced as "anti-American" and 
investigated as potential terrorists. Anti-American means today 
precisely what un-American meant in the 1950s. It is an instrument of 
dismissal, a means of excluding your critics from rational discourse. 

Under the new McCarthyism, this dismissal extends to anyone who seeks 
to promulgate a version of events other than that sanctioned by the 
US government. On September 20, President Bush told us that "this is 
the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and 
freedom". Two weeks later, his secretary of state, Colin Powell, met 
the Emir of Qatar to request that progress, pluralism, tolerance and 
freedom be suppressed. Al-Jazeera is one of the few independent 
television stations in the Middle East, whose popularity is the 
result of its uncommon regard for freedom of speech. It is also the 
only station permitted to operate freely in Kabul. Powell's request 
that it be squashed was a pre-emptive strike against freedom, which, 
he hoped, would prevent the world from seeing what was really 
happening once the bombing began. 

Since then, both George Bush and Tony Blair have sought to prevent al-
Jazeera from airing video statements by Bin Laden, on the grounds of 
the preposterous schoolboy intrigue that they "might contain coded 
messages". Over the weekend the government sought to persuade British 
broadcasters to restrict their coverage of the war. Blair's spin 
doctors warned: "You can't trust them [the Taliban] in any way, 
shape, or form." While true, this applies with equal force to the 
techniques employed by Downing Street. When Alastair Campbell starts 
briefing journalists about "Spin Laden", it's a case of the tarantula 
spinning against the money spider. 

If we are to preserve the progress, pluralism, tolerance and freedom 
which President Bush claims to be defending, then we must question 
everything we see and hear. Though we know that governments lie to us 
in wartime, most people seem to believe that this universal rule 
applies to every conflict except the current one. Many of those who 
now accept that babies were not thrown out of incubators in Kuwait, 
and that the Belgrano was fleeing when it was hit, are also prepared 
to believe everything we are being told about Afghanistan and 
terrorism in the US. 

There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical. The magical appearance 
of the terrorists' luggage, passports and flight manual looks rather 
too good to be true. The dossier of "evidence" purporting to 
establish Bin Laden's guilt consists largely of supposition and 
conjecture. The ration packs being dropped on Afghanistan have no 
conceivable purpose other than to create the false impression that 
starving people are being fed. Even the anthrax scare looks 
suspiciously convenient. Just as the hawks in Washington were losing 
the public argument about extending the war to other countries, 
journalists start receiving envelopes full of bacteria, which might 
as well have been labeled"a gift from Iraq". This could indeed be the 
work of terrorists, who may have their own reasons for widening the 
conflict, but there are plenty of other ruthless operators who would 
benefit from a shift in public opinion. 

Democracy is sustained not by public trust but by public skepticism. 
Unless we are prepared to question, to expose, to challenge and to 
dissent, we conspire in the demise of the system for which our 
governments are supposed to be fighting. The true defenders of 
America are those who are now being told that they are anti-American. 

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001