-Caveat Lector-
Is America the real terrorist?
Anthony Lappé
04/17/01 11:19pm
The trial of the three Osama Bin Laden operatives accused of
the 1998 US embassy bombing in Nairobi, Kenya just got
interesting, very interesting. In a NY federal court last
week, defense attorneys took a novel track: arguing the
bombing was not a terrorist attack, but an act of war - and
thus was no different than similar actions taken by another
notoriously violent actor on the world stage: the United
States.
"Whenever you try to coerce a political result by bombing
and killing people, that is classified under the federal
code as terrorism," David P. Baugh, a lawyer for the defense
said. "Unfortunately, we do it, they do it, everybody does
it." (NYT, 3/30/01)
The argument, morally vacuous as it is - the bombing killed
213 people including 167 Kenyan civilians - raises a
politically explosive question: Who is the real terrorist?
As evidence, Baugh is seeking to introduce information about
a litany of American military actions that have resulted in
civilians causalities: these include the scores of post-Gulf
War attacks on Iraq, the 1989 invasion of Panama, the
bombing of Muammar el-Qaddafi's headquarters in Libya in
1986, and other major American military strikes. The Panama
invasion alone, for instance, is believed to have killed up
to 3,000 civilians.
The argument that America is by far the world's most violent
power has best been made by Noam Chomsky, who has detailed
how the US has consistently subverted international law in
pursuit of its corporate and state interests. For most of
the 1980s, Chomsky writes, the US sponsored so-called
low-intensity conflicts throughout the world in which
civilians were not only inconvenient victims they many times
were the targets - witness: El Salvador, East Timor,
Guatemala, and others. More recently, the US has launched
larger more direct operations such as the on-going
US-British aerial attacks against Iraq. According the to the
Dubai-based Gulf News, since December '98 these attacks have
killed 317 civilians and left 936 wounded. In January 2001
alone, 6 were killed and 9 injured, though if you got your
news from America's major news outlets you would probably
never have heard this.
One of the most notorious US military actions which resulted
in civilian causalities was Reagan's 1986 attack on Qaddafi'
s headquarters. The bombing left the Libyan leader's
daughter dead. A thought experiment: Imagine how much of
Tripoli would be left standing tomorrow if today Libyan
bombs rained down on Austin, Texas leaving the First
Daughter and her dorm-mates buried in a pile of rubble.
For more info on the on-going US-UK strikes against Iraq:
http://www.nonviolence.org/vitw/
For a more extensive analysis of US state-sponsored
terrorism and America's flagrant disregard for international
law explore the Noam Chomsky archives:
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/index.cfm
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