Like all Americans, on Tuesday, 9-11, I was shocked and horrified to

watch the WTC Twin Towers attacked by hijacked planes and collapse,

resulting in the deaths of perhaps up to 10,000 innocent people.

 

I had not been that shocked and horrified since January 16, 1991, when

then President Bush attacked Baghdad, and the rest of Iraq and began

killing 200,000 people during that "war" (slaughter).  This includes the

infamous "highway of death" in the last days of the slaughter when U.S.

pilots literally shot in the back retreating Iraqi civilians and

soldiers.   I continue to be horrified by the sanctions on Iraq, which

have resulted in the death of over 1,000,000 Iraqis, including over

500,000 children, about whom former Secretary of State Madeline

Allbright has stated that their deaths "are worth the cost".

 

Over the course of my life I have been shocked and horrified by a

variety of U.S. governmental actions, such as the U.S. sponsored coup

against democracy in Guatemala in 1954 which resulted in the deaths of

over 120,000 Guatemalan peasants by U.S. installed dictatorships over

the course of four decades.

 

Last Tuesday's events reminded me of the horror I felt when the U.S.

overthrew the governments of the Dominican Republic in 1965 and helped

to murder 3,000 people.  And it reminded me of the shock I felt in 1973,

when the U.S. sponsored a coup in Chile against the democratic

government of Salvador Allende and helped to murder another 30,000

people, including U.S. citizens.

 

Last Tuesday's events reminded me of the shock and horror I felt in 1965

when the U.S. sponsored a coup in Indonesia that resulted in the murder

of over 800,000 people, and the subsequent slaughter in 1975 of over

250,000 innocent people in East Timor by the Indonesian regime with the

direct complicity of President Ford and Secretary of State Henry

Kissenger.

 

I was reminded of the shock and horror I felt during the U.S. sponsored

terrorist contra war (the World Court declared the U.S. government a war

criminal in 1984 for the mining of the harbors) against Nicaragua in the

1980s which resulted in the deaths of over 30,000 innocent people (or as

the U.S. government used to call them before the term "collateral

damage" was invented--"soft targets").

 

I was reminded of being horrified by the U. S. war against the people of

El Salvador in the 1980s, which resulted in the brutal deaths of over

80,000 people, or "soft targets".

 

I was reminded of the shock and horror I felt during the U.S. sponsored

terror war against the peoples of southern Africa (especially Angola)

that began in the 1970's and continues to this day and has resulted in

the deaths and mutilations of over 1,000,000.  I was reminded of the

shock and horror I felt as the U.S. invaded Panama over the Christmas

season of 1989 and killed over 8,000 in an attempt to capture George H.

Bush's CIA partner, now turned enemy, Manual Noriega.

 

I was reminded of the horror I felt when I learned about how the Shah of

Iran was installed in a U.S. sponsored brutal coup that resulted in the

deaths of over 70,000 Iranians from 1952-1979.  And the continuing shock

as I learned that the Ayatollah Khomani, who overthrew the Shah in 1979,

and who was the U.S. public enemy for decade of the 1980s, was also on

the CIA payroll, while he was in exile in Paris in the 1970s.

 

I was reminded of the shock and horror that I felt as I learned about

how the U.S. has "manufactured consent" since 1948 for its support

of Israel, to the exclusion of virtually any rights for the Palestinians

in their native lands resulting in ever worsening day-to-day conditions

for the people of Palestine.  I was shocked as I learned about the

hundreds of towns and villages that were literally wiped off the face of

the earth in the early days of Israeli colonization.  I was horrified in

1982 as the villagers of Sabra and Shatila were massacred by Israeli

allies with direct Israeli complicity and direction.  The untold

thousands who died on that day match the scene of horror that we saw

last Tuesday.  But those scenes were not repeated over and over again on

the national media to inflame the American public.

 

The events and images of last Tuesday have been appropriately compared

to the horrific events and images of Lebanon in the 1980s with resulted

in the deaths of tens of thousand of people, with no reference to the

fact that the country that inflicted the terror on Lebanon was Israel,

with U.S. backing.  I still continue to be shocked at how mainstream

commentators refer to "Israeli settlers" in the "occupied territories"

with no sense of irony as they report on who are the aggressors in the

region.

 

Of course, the largest and most shocking war crime of the second half of

the 20th century was the U.S. assault on Indochina from 1954-1975,

especially Vietnam, where over 4,000,000 people were bombed, napalmed,

crushed, shot and individually "hands on" murdered in the "Phoenix

Program" (this is where Oliver North got his start).  Many U.S. Vietnam

veterans were also victimized by this war and had the best of

intentions, but the policy makers themselves knew the criminality of

their actions and policies as revealed in their own words in "The

Pentagon Papers," released by Daniel Ellsberg of the RAND Corporation.

In 1974 Ellsberg noted that our Presidents from Truman to Nixon

continually lied to the U.S. public about the purpose and conduct of the

war.  He has stated that, "It is a tribute to the American people that

our leaders perceived that they had to lie to us, it is not a tribute to

us that we were so easily misled."

 

I was continually shocked and horrified as the U.S. attacked and bombed

with impunity the nation of Libya in the 1980s, including killing the

infant daughter of Khadafi. I was shocked as the U.S. bombed and invaded

Grenada in 1983.  I was horrified by U.S.  military and CIA actions in

Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan, Brazil, Argentina, and Yugoslavia.

The deaths in these actions ran into the hundreds of thousands.

 

The above list is by no means complete or comprehensive.  It is merely a

list that is easily accessible and not unknown, especially to the

economic and intellectual elites.  It has just been conveniently

eliminated from the public discourse and public consciousness.  And for

the most part, the analysis that the U.S. actions have resulted in the

deaths of primarily civilians (over 90%) is not unknown to these elites

and policy makers.  A conservative number for those who have been killed

by U.S. terror and military action since World War II is 8,000,000

people.  Repeat--8,000,000 people. This does not include the wounded,

the imprisoned, the displaced, the refugees, etc.  Martin Luther King,

Jr. stated in 1967, during the Vietnam War, "My government is the

world's leading purveyor of violence."  Shocking and horrifying.

 

Nothing that I have written is meant to disparage or disrespect those

who were victims and those who suffered death or the loss of a loved one

during this week's events.  It is not meant to "justify" any action by

those who bombed the Twin Towers or the Pentagon.  It is meant to put it

in a context.  If we believe that the actions were those of "madmen",

they are "madmen" who are able to keep a secret for 2 years or more

among over 100 people, as they trained to execute a complex plan.  While

not the acts of madmen, they are apparently the acts of "fanatics" who,

depending on who they really are, can find real grievances, but whose

actions are illegitimate.

 

Osama Bin Laden at this point has been accused by the media and the

government of being the mastermind of Tuesday's bombings.  Given the

government's track record on lying to the America people, that should

not be accepted as fact at this time.  If indeed Bin Laden is the

mastermind of this action, he is responsible for the deaths of perhaps

10,000 people-a shocking and horrible crime.  Ed Herman in his book The

Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda does not justify

any terrorism but points out that states often engage in "wholesale"

terror, while those whom governments define as "terrorist" engage is

"retail" terrorism.  While qualitatively the results are the same for

the individual victims of terrorism, there is a clear quantitative

difference.  And as Herman and others point out, the seeds, the roots,

of much of the "retail" terror are in fact found in the "wholesale"

terror of states.  Again this is not to justify, in any way, the actions

of last Tuesday, but to put them in a context and suggest an

explanation.

 

Perhaps most shocking and horrific, if indeed Bin Laden is the

mastermind of Tuesday's actions; he has clearly had significant training

in logistics, armaments, and military training, etc. by competent and

expert military personnel.  And indeed he has.  During the 1980s, he was

recruited, trained and funded by the CIA in Afghanistan to fight against

the Russians.  As long as he visited his terror on Russians and his

enemies in Afghanistan, he was "our man" in that country.

 

The same is true of Saddam Hussein of Iraq, who was a CIA asset in Iraq

during the 1980s.  Hussein could gas his own people, repress the

population, and invade his neighbor (Iran) as long as he did it with

U.S. approval.

 

The same was true of Manuel Noriega of Panama, who was a contemporary

and CIA partner of George H. Bush in the 1980s.  Noriega's main crime

for Bush, the father, was not that he dealt drugs (he did, but the U.S.

and Bush knew this before 1989), but that Noriega was no longer going to

cooperate in the ongoing U.S. terrorist contra war against Nicaragua.

This information is not unknown or really controversial among elite

policy makers.  To repeat, this not to justify any of the actions of

last Tuesday, but to put it in its horrifying context.

 

As shocking as the events of last Tuesday were, they are likely to

generate even more horrific actions by the U.S. government that will add

significantly to the 8,000,000 figure stated above.  This response may

well be qualitatively and quantitatively worst than the events of

Tuesday.  The New York Times headline of 9/14/01 states that, "Bush And

Top Aides Proclaim Policy Of Ending States That Back Terror" as if that

was a rationale, measured, or even sane option.  States that have been

identified for possible elimination are "a number of Asian and African

countries, like Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, and even Pakistan."  This is

beyond shocking and horrific-it is just as potentially suicidal,

homicidal, and more insane than the hijackers themselves.

 

Also, qualitatively, these actions will be even worse than the original

bombers if one accepts the mainstream premise that those involved are

"madmen", "religious fanatics", or a "terrorist group."  If so, they are

acting as either individuals or as a small group.  The U.S. actions may

continue the homicidal policies of a few thousand elites for the past 50

years, involving both political parties.

 

The retail terror is that of desperate and sometime fanatical small

groups and individuals who often have legitimate grievances, but engage

in individual criminal and illegitimate activities; the wholesale terror

is that of "rational" educated men where the pain, suffering, and deaths

of millions of people are contemplated, planned, and too often,

executed, for the purpose of furthering a nebulous concept called the

"national interest".  Space does not allow a full explanation of the

elites Orwellian concept of the "national interest", but it can be

summarized as the protection and expansion of hegemony and an imperial

empire.

 

The American public is being prepared for war while being fed a

continuous stream of shocking and horrific repeated images of Tuesday's

events and heartfelt stories from the survivors and the loved ones of

those who lost family members.  These stories are real and should not be

diminished.  In fact, those who lost family members can be considered a

representative sample of humanity of the 8,000,000 who have been lost

previously.  If we multiply by 800-1000 times the amount of pain, angst,

and anger being currently felt by the American public, we might begin to

understand how much of the rest of the world feels as they are

continually victimized.

 

Some particularly poignant images are the heart wrenching public stories

that we are seeing and hearing of family members with pictures and

flyers searching for their loved ones.  These images are virtually the

same as those of the "Mothers of the Disappeared" who searched for their

(primarily) adult children in places such as Argentina, where over

11,000 were "disappeared" in 1976-1982, again with U.S. approval.  Just

as the mothers of Argentina deserved our respect and compassion, so do

the relatives of those who are searching for their relatives now.

However we should not allow ourselves to be manipulated by the media and

U.S. government into turning real grief and anger into a national policy

of wholesale terror and genocide against innocent civilians in Asia and

Africa.  What we are seeing in military terms is called "softening the

target."  The target here is the American public and we are being

ideologically and emotionally prepared for the slaughter that may

commence soon.

 

None of the previously identified Asian and African countries are

democracies, which means that the people of these countries have

virtually no impact on developing the policies of their governments,

even if we assume that these governments are complicit in Tuesday's

actions.  When one examines the recent history of these countries, one

will find that the American government had direct and indirect

influences on creating the conditions for the existence of some of these

governments.  This is especially true of the Taliban government of

Afghanistan itself.

 

The New York Metropolitan Area has about 21,000,000 people or about 8 %

of the U.S. population.  Almost everyone in America knows someone who

has been killed, injured or traumatized by the events of Tuesday.  I

know that I do.  Many people are calling for "revenge" or "vengeance"

and comments such as "kill them all" have been circulated on the TV,

radio, and email.  A few more potentially benign comments have called

for "justice."  This is only potentially benign since that term may be

defined by people such as Bush and Colin Powell.  Powell is an

unrepentant participant in the Vietnam War, the terrorist contra war

against Nicaragua, and the Gulf war, at each level becoming more

responsible for the planning and execution of the policies.

 

Those affected, all of us, must do everything in our power to prevent a

wider war and even greater atrocity, do everything possible to stop the

genocide if it starts, and hold those responsible for their potential

war crimes during and after the war.  If there is a great war in 2001

and it is not catastrophic (a real possibility), the crimes of that war

will be revisited upon the U.S. over the next generation.  That is not

some kind of religious prophecy or threat, it is merely a

straightforward political analysis.  If indeed it is Bin Laden, the

world must not deal only with him as an individual criminal, but

eliminate the conditions that create the injustices and war crimes that

will inevitably lead to more of these types of attacks in the future.

The phrase "No Justice, No Peace" is more than a slogan used in a march,

it is an observable historical fact.  It is time to end the horror.

 

In a few short pages it is impossible to delineate all of the events

described over the past week or to give a comprehensive accounting of

U.S. foreign policy.  Below are a few resources for up to date news and

some background reading, by Noam Chomsky, the noted analyst.  The titles

of the books explain their relevance for this topic.

 

For the most current information see http://www.commondreams.org/.

For information on how the media distorts the news see

http://www.fair.org/.

For excellent links on the Middle East see

http://al-awda.org/newyork/links.html.

 

 

For background reading by Noam Chomsky see:

Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (with Ed

Herman Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians

Deterring Democracy