Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---------------------------------------------
BRING THE WAR HOME
"The chickens come home to roost"
--Malcolm X, at the time of the Kennedy assassination.
The destruction in New York on September 11 was a great crime, but it is
not an excuse for the leaders of the Bush Administration to kill Arabs or
Afghanis.
Those Americans who say that the carnage in New York "changed the world
forever" haven't been paying much attention to what their country has been
doing in the world. (Of course, they're encouraged not to.) The US
government is responsible just in the last decade for enormities around
the world that have killed many more people than did the terrorist crimes
in New York. Americans may not have noticed, but the rest of the world
has. That's the answer to the plaintive inquiry, "Why do they hate us so
much?"
If you were to ask Americans, Did the Clinton Administration ever do
anything that killed more people than died in New York this week?, most
would be shocked at the question. But that administration began with US
troops killing perhaps twice as many people in Somalia and continued with
the killing of at least as many in Serbia. Against the five thousand
thought to have died in New York, we have to count the deaths from
sanctions in Iraq, where Clinton's secretary of State said in 1996 that
the half-million children's corpses by then were "a high price" but "worth
it." In Timor, US-supplied paramilitaries from US-client Indonesia killed
thousands in massacres that could have been stopped with a phone call from
Washington. In Turkey -- the third leading recipient of US arms --
American heavy weapons and planes were used against Kurds throughout the
Clinton years (and on), killing tens of thousands. In those same years,
the principal US client, Israel, which receives half of all US foreign
aid, concluded 22 years of illegal occupation of Lebanon with tens of
thousands dead; it continues after 34 years its illegal occupation of
Palestine, with the deaths of many thousands. In another ongoing
US-financed war, tens of thousands have been killed in Colombia (which has
now displaced Turkey as a US-arms recipient). On one afternoon in August
of 1998 (it happened to be the day M. Lewinsky was testifying) the Clinton
administration sent a dozen million-dollar-each cruise missiles into a
pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, one of the poorest countries in the world,
destroying most of that country's capacity to make antibiotics and drugs
for malaria, tuberculosis, and cholera, as well as veterinary medicine and
fertilizer. It is estimated that many thousands died as a result; the US
blocked a UN inquiry into the death toll.
Last week's terrorist crimes in New York are just that -- crimes, and not
an "act of war," as the Bush Administration keeps bleating. (Even the
insurance companies, who would be let off the hook if the New York losses
were the result of war, have admitted that they can't claim that.) We've
had some recent examples of how international criminals should be dealt
with. In Paris a few months ago, an international criminal responsible
for many more deaths than Osama bin Laden was subpoenaed by a French
judge. He fled the country while his government asserted that he was in
no way subject to French jurisdiction, but Henry Kissinger -- for it was
he -- like Bin Laden now has to be careful where he travels. The pattern
was set by the UK's detention of the Chilean mass-murderer Pinochet (put
in place by Kissinger), although he was eventually released by the man who
is now the UK foreign minister.
The real grief of Americans is being turned by the Bush administration
into a suicidal flourish of geriatric machismo. "Up to 60 countries face
the full wrath of American military might!" exclaims loony Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld. "Use tactical nuclear weapons on Afghanistan!" says
the usual shadowy spokesman for the US "intelligence community." And the
putative president of the US threatens to attack any country found
"harboring" terrorists. Of course, if that were an excuse for killing a
country's civilians, then many in the rest of the world would say that Bin
Laden could claim it in regard to America, where Clinton and Kissinger are
at large, and the government is purportedly put in place by the people.
A war emergency has advantages to the Bush administration, of course.
Its "approval rating" rises, as typically in crises; it's an excuse to
send money to large corporations and lessen the capital gains tax while
revving up young Americans to kill foreigners; and it justifies further
inroads on civil liberties. (In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing,
Clinton signed one of the most repressive pieces of legislation in years,
the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.) In launching a war on
poor Islamic countries, the Bush administration is contributing to the
fulfillment of the fevered fantasies of Bin Laden and American "political
scientist" Samuel Huntington, who both look to a "clash of civilizations"
between Islamic militancy and US hegemony.
The principal beneficiary from the carnage of September 11 is of course
Israel. Prime Minister Sharon took the occasion of the world's
concentration on New York suddenly to cancel his planned meeting with
Arafat and to send tanks and helicopter gunships into Palestinian towns,
killing a number of Palestinians; plans for walling off Palestinian
enclaves were suddenly resurrected. As it prepared for its war with
"Islamic fundamentalism," the Bush administration's feeble attempts to
restrain its blood-thirsty client have disappeared entirely, and the
Israeli government knows it: the war criminal at its head can do anything
he likes. When his opponent (from the right), Benyamin Netanyahu, was
asked what the attack means for relations between the US and Israel, he
replied, "It's very good."
The US must retract the war it has projected around the world for
generations. In New York last week the victims were as usual working
people -- janitors, secretaries, firefighters. It will be another and
greater crime to continue to kill poor people in the Middle East at an
even greater rate in response.
"News from Neptune" is heard Saturdays 10-11 AM on WEFT, 90.1 FM.
"Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody else
is spouting, or else you say something true, and it will sound
like it's from Neptune." --Noam Chomsky
--30--
-------------------------------------------------
This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been
shut down
==^================================================================
EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://TOPICA.COM/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA
Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
This email was sent to: archive@jab.org
T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail!
http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register
==^================================================================
