Monthly Archives: September 2004

World is blind to government terrorism

Posted by on 2004-09-08 No comments

No one who has children – or a heart – could fail to be horrified or angered by the massacre of hundreds of schoolchildren in Beslan, Russia. As George W. Bush put it, “This is yet another grim reminder of the lengths to which terrorists will go to threaten the civilized world.”

Unfortunately, the monsters who committed these acts –and 9/11 – were made in the “civilized world.”

Anyone who has ever watched a Rambo movie should remember that the Soviet Union was embroiled in Afghanistan, much as the United States was in Vietnam. In 1989, one of the CIA’s teletypes in Islamabad printed out, “We Won” as the last Russian soldier departed Afghanistan. How had the United States “won” in its struggle for influence in Afghanistan? By supporting Islamic jihad organizations, Osama bin Laden specifically.

Steve Coll of the Washington Post has written a book called “Ghost Wars,” which offers a fascinating view of the love-hate relationship between the United States and bin Laden. As it transpired, even after the Russian departure, the CIA and the Pakistani intelligence services continued to fund the mujahadeen, and run bombing and assassination campaigns against the Russian puppet, Najibullah, who warned Afghanis that “If fundamentalism comes to Afghanistan … Afghanistan will be turned into a center for terrorism.” He was right. He was also dead by 1996, betrayed by U.S.-funded warlords and hanged by the Taliban.

Likewise, Chechen rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab were trained and indoctrinated in CIA-sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to Yossef Bodansky, director of the U.S. Congress’ Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. According to Bodansky, the Chechens were directly trained by Pakistan’s security service, the ISI, and funded by the U.S. government.

The “civilized world” must take responsibility for many of these threats itself.

While we are angered and disgusted by suicide bombers, we seem to be blind to terrorism committed by governments. We forget that the first self-described “terrorists” were the French Jacobins, who pursued their “Reign of Terror” on civilians in the late 1700s. State terrorism is nothing new. Terror originates in injustice and only works by turning a blind eye to human suffering, whether by a state or a self-appointed group.

When millions of Jews were slaughtered in Europe, or Armenians wiped out in Turkey, the world barely took notice. It took several years for the world to recognize the slaughter of Bosnians. Humanity generally ignored the genocide in Rwanda. Americans watched without outrage an interview by Lesley Stahl of Secretary of State Madeline Albright, in which Albright assessed that the deaths of a half-million Iraqi children by economic sanctions “was worth it” in pursuing U.S. policy.

We currently argue the “nuances” of genocide in Darfur. Although we have sympathy for Russian families in Beslan today, where was our sympathy for Chechen victims of horrific Russian atrocities and massive destruction in Grozny? Where is our sympathy for the tens of thousands of civilians killed in the war in Iraq? Why do we tolerate the obscene term “collateral damage?”

Why do we light a candle for the kidnap victim in Colombia but forget the victim of government death squads and torturers who continue to be trained at the School of Americas? We grieve with the families of suicide bombing victims in Israel, but where is our sympathy for innocent Palestinian civilians bombed indiscriminately “in retaliation?” Why must, everywhere, so many innocents pay, and why do we apparently feel so little for them that we take no notice of their deaths?

Listening to remarks like those of the president’s, we cloak ourselves in the delusion that our governments always pursue morality rather than simply pragmatic foreign policy. We swear allegiance to states but confuse this allegiance for our personal declarations of faith and morality. Only when we recognize that state terrorism is a symptom of global injustice, and in fact perpetuates violence by the enemies of those states, will we be able wage a successful “war on terror.”

This was published in the Standard Times on September 8, 2004
http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/09-04/09-08-04/a12op136.htm
(link may be broken)

Good fences make good neighbors

Posted by on 2004-09-02 No comments

Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall,” paints a portrait of neighbors fixing their common stone fence in the spring. It is a fairly apt description of the relationship we have with our neighbor in the north, Canada. Unfortunately, Frost’s famous line also has been used to describe Israel’s “security barrier” in the West Bank. The chief problem with this analogy, and with the Israeli wall itself, is that “good fences make good neighbors” only when the fence is situated on one’s own property.

Consequently, the International Court of Justice ruled in July that the fence is “contrary to international law” and that Israel must cease its construction, dismantle it and pay reparations to those damaged by it.

Senate Resolution 408 condemns the International Court’s ruling. Massachusetts senators must vote against this resolution, and thereby vote for the international rule of law, when it comes up for a vote around Labor Day.

Strangely, although there is little discussion in the United States about this issue, the Israeli supreme court has condemned the wall in recognizing that Israel is occupying the West Bank and that the wall violates Palestinian human rights.

On June 30, it ruled that Israel has held the West Bank “in belligerent occupation” since 1967 and “the route which the military commander established for the security fence, which separates the local inhabitants from their agricultural lands, injures the local inhabitants in a severe and acute way, while violating their rights under humanitarian international law.”

On Aug. 24, the Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli Attorney General Menahem Mazuz recommended that Israel formally declare that the Fourth Geneva Convention, which formed the basis of the ICJ advisory opinion, applies to its military occupation of the West Bank.

It is true that the United States, Korea and India also have built security barriers, but they all have been built on recognized borders or cease-fire lines.

The wall Israel is building in the West Bank cuts deeply into Palestinian territory. The wall is twice as long as Israel’s border with the West Bank, and it has not even been completed.

Israeli Attorney General Mazuz, in an 84-page report to the prime minister, recommended that the government show “respect” for the ICJ’s decision, despite its misgivings, and that “a maximum effort to adapt, as soon as possible … the fence’s route and arrangements … in the seam zone to the principles the High Court of Justice has set.” Thus, even Israel appears to offer more respect for the ICJ and world opinion than this Senate resolution would.

If there is ever to be a solution to this 50-year-old problem, it will require evenhanded foreign policy by the United States.

By voting for this resolution, the United States effectively flouts international law and eliminates any influence it could ever hope to exert in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Urge your senators to vote “no” on Senate Resolution 408.

This was published in the Standard Times on September 2, 2004
http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/09-04/09-02-04/a14op280.htm
(link may be broken)