[A-List] The War OF Terrorism

[Bill Totten]

by Edward Herman

ZNet Commentary (September 11 2004)

As the powerful seek domination their control of language is as
important to their success as their possession of weapons to frighten
and kill. The ability to pin the label of terrorist on their targets,
and to have themselves (and clients) merely engaging in counter-terror
and retaliation is a major advantage of the powerful, as terror is a
highly invidious word. Who can oppose combating and defending against
terror?

George Bush has won this war of language, whether he thinks "we" can or
cannot win the war on terrorism. John Kerry and the Democrats have been
delighted at Bush's momentary retreat on whether we (he) can win this
war; but they believe in the war and have differentiated themselves from
Bush mainly by claiming that they will do the job of winning it more
efficiently than Bush.

Even many liberals and leftists contend that Bush's attack on Iraq was
wrong mainly because it diverted attention from the war on terrorism,
which they regard, explicitly or implicitly, as a legitimate enterprise,
properly central as a foreign policy objective, and one that Bush is
pursuing, even if incompetently.

An alternative view, rarely even mentioned in the mainstream and
anathema to the "cruise missile left" - although not unfamiliar in much
of the rest of the world - is that the war on terrorism is a fraud and
cover for a war of terrorism. This is not to deny that 9/11 was a major
terrorist act and that a response against the perpetrators would be
entirely justifiable.

But not much of Bush's alleged anti-terror effort has gone into pursuit
of the 9/11 terrorists;  much more has been put into a huge military
buildup that has nothing to do with defending against terrorism, a 
great deal has been expending in direct US terrorist operations 
(as in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, briefly described below), 
and substantial sums have been devoted to helping out clients who 
are "with us" and pleased to get US help in dealing with their own
dissidents ("terrorists").

The Bush triumph in the use of language requires a slithering past the
essential meaning of terrorism, and even official definitions, in favor
of  the "only-if-they-do-it-is-it-to-be-called-terrorism" definition.
The essential meaning is "A mode of governing, or opposing government,
by intimidation" (Webster); the US Code definition is "any activity ...
dangerous to human life - intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian
population - [or] to influence the policy of a government by
intimidation".

It has long been recognized that states are the primary terrorists, 
as they have the resources to intimidate, and terrible forms of
intimidation such as torture are engaged in almost entirely by states
(in Abu Ghraib, by Saddam Hussein's Iraq and then by the United States).
They are what we may call "wholesale" terrorists, who do their terror
business on a large scale, in contrast with "retail" terrorists, who
kill on a smaller scale with their more limited means.

But because the United States and many of its clients like Israel and
Colombia - and for many years Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Uruguay, South Africa and Turkey, among others - have used
terrorism as a mode of governing, or of extending their domains, by
intimidation, official usage has downgraded state terrorism and tended
to confine the use of the word to retail terrorism.

Exceptions are made where politically convenient, so that the former
Soviet Union, Libya and Cuba can be guilty of terrorism and sponsoring
terrorism, and retail terrorists under US protection like Savimbi in
Angola, the Nicaraguan contras, and the Cuban refugee network still
engaging in hit and run attacks against Cuba, are classed as "freedom
fighters" rather than terrorists (in contrast with Mandela's African
National Congress and the Palestine Liberation Organization, both long
classed as terrorist groups).

Three of the four Cuban expatriate terrorists recently pardoned by the
president of Panama are US citizens, and after their release from prison
returned immediately to their safe haven in Miami (perhaps to work, as
some wag has suggested, on the Florida Board of Elections).

Naturally, officials can only get away with this ludicrous evasion of
wholesale terrorism and  focus on selected retail terrorisms with media
cooperation, which has always been forthcoming.

Although the New York Times did very briefly mention the conclusion of
Argentina's "National Commission on Disappeared Persons" whose work
followed the ouster of the military government in 1983, that the
terrorism of the military government had been "infinitely worse" than
that of the retail terrorists they were exterminating (along with many
many non-terrorist dissidents), throughout the years of Argentine state
terrorism the Times confined the use of the word terrorism  to the acts
of the retail terrorists, also frequently referred to as "extremists",
in accord with the official agenda.

It should be obvious that war and military conquest involves wholesale
terrorism on an especially large scale, and state terrorism should also
include a military buildup and development of  weaponry designed to
produce fear and compliance with the demands of the stronger. Is a
nuclear war threat and the brandishing of nuclear weapons not a case of
trying to "influence a government [or many governments] by intimidation"?
As the United States has monopolized brandishing and using nuclear
weapons, this is not found to be terrorism in the West, by application
of the "only-if-they-do-it" definition and rule.

The same definition and rule explains why war and conquest are not
terrorism: it fits the wrong party too often. But the fit is close: 
it was openly acknowledged during the bombing war against Yugoslavia 
in 1999 that the intent was to force a quick surrender by displaying
overwhelming force and ravaging Serbia, and this plan was warmly greeted
in the United States by liberal pundits like Thomas Friedman:-

"It should be lights out in Belgrade: every power grid, water pipe,
bridge, road and war-related factory has to be targeted. Like it or not,
we are at war with the Serbian nation (the Serbs certainly think so),
and the stakes have to be very clear: Every week you ravage Kosovo is
another decade we will set your country back by pulverizing you. You
want 1950?  We can do 1950. You want 1389?  We can do 1389 too."  
<"Stop the Music", New York Times, April 23 1999>

This was clearly an attempt to "influence the policy of the government
by intimidation", the intimidation eventually explicitly aimed at
civilians and civilian facilities, therefore constituting both
"terrorism" and a clear violation of basic international law (but
aggressively supported by Louise Arbour and the Yugoslavia Tribunal).

The ideas that this was self-defense or even defense of  Kosovo
Albanians, and was forced by Serbian violence and the exhaustion of
negotiating options, are completely indefensible (see Diana Johnstone's
Fools' Crusade and Michael Mandel's How America Gets Away With Murder).

The US attack on Afghanistan was a source of widespread fear in that
poor country which was receiving large-scale international aid to
prevent mass starvation. Unknown numbers died in fear-based flight from
US bombs and the disruption of aid service, and many thousands - many
more than died at 9/11 - were victims of "collateral damage".

Collateral damage killings were exceptionally large because there was no
political cost to killing Afghan civilians, so bombing civilian sites
based on rumor and unverified "information" was commonplace, besides
which many areas bombed contained civilians friendly to the Taliban and
hence were more than expendable ("This is an area of enormous sympathy
for the Taliban and Al Qaeda", said General Gregory Newbold, about the
killings at the wedding ceremony at Kakrak; or "The people in this
vicinity clearly were connected to those activities", as Rumsfeld said
about a mass killing of civilians at Karam village).

This was wholesale terrorism, even if the United States had a right to
deal with the perpetrators of 9/11 - the thousands of dead Afghanis were
not perpetrators and were not responsible for acts of the Taliban, and
the US attack was in straightforward violation of the UN Charter.

The same of course was true of the invasion-occupation of Iraq, the
initial "Shock and Awe" invasion bombing plan pointing up the importance
of the use of fear as well as force as means of  intimidating the 
Iraqi army and populace. Both the invasion and occupation have been
characterized by the lavish use of firepower, including cluster bombs
and depleted uranium munitions, in heavily populated areas to keep US
casualties low (at the expense of Iraqi civilian casualties) and to
intimidate any opposition.

Estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths under the occupation run up to 37,000
and beyond. Sweeps with mass arrests based on minimal information stoked
fear and anger, and helped fill Abu Ghraib and other prisons, the Red
Cross claiming that US officials acknowledged that 70-90 percent
of those seized and imprisoned - with many tortured - were taken 
"by mistake" and presumably on the basis of  misinformation or no
information of oppositional activity.

These terroristic practices, carried out in support of a completely
illegal invasion and occupation, helped stoke a major insurgency in Iraq.
However, for the US establishment and media, local resistance to this
wholesale terrorism was evil and outlawry, and the only behavior
properly designated by the word terrorism. This requires eye aversion,
internalization of the belief in the US right to commit aggression and
the absence of any right of the people attacked to resist, and the use
of the "only-if-they-do-it" definition.

For the Bush administration the invasion-occupation of Iraq is part 
of the war on terrorism, and so is the support of the governments 
of Colombia, Indonesia, Israel, the Philippines, Russia, Turkey and
Uzbekistan, all involved in local wars of repression that involve
serious state terrorism. The  buildup of US arms and bases throughout
the globe is part of the war on terrorism, but it and the underlying
policy documents that give it intellectual rationale clearly relate to
power projection and the determination to dominate, not reaction to
"terrorism." These all bespeak a war OF terrorism, not a war on
terrorism.

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-09/11herman.cfm

Bill Totten     http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/