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NORTH COAST TIMES E AG LE , JAN&FEBRUARY 2002
SALLY LACKAFF & ROGER HA YES
Rome. Accordingly, America is in a position to reshape norms,
alter expectations and create new realities.How?By unapologetic
and implacable demonstrations of will."
This is not an attitude interested in winning hearts and
minds It is what Molly Ivins calls the 'G.Gordon Liddy School of
Foreign Policy’ (she calls Krauthammer the ‘Boy Bismark’), and
asks, “How many times was Rome assaulted by barbarians?”
There it is. If it is Rome the government wishes the
USA to be, then they have set up the American ‘homeland’
(which sounds Teutonic in its implications) as a battleground
which will in theory be as dangerous to live in as Israelis feel.
The price of world supremacy is a medieval-like 'Fortress
America’ of perpetual imagined (and very likely real) danger.
As gruesome and immensely tragic as September 11
was and the agony of its imprint on the American psyche, the
dismaying danger is in overinflating the disaster to sanction
curtailing the Bill of Rights. The people whose interests the Bush
administration represent are rather intolerant of an open society
and neo-martial law will certainly target political as well as racial
minorities, profile different nationalities (if inadvertently), dissent
will be threatened if not actually suppressed and perhaps as at
other times in our history made illegal. The dichotomy is that
to defend the liberties of the USA against terrorists our leaders
insist many of those liberties must be suspended. (Republican
Senator Trent Lott said almost immediately after 9/11, “When
you’re at war civil liberties are treated differently ")
Since September 11 George Bush Jr. has reestablished
the Imperial Presidency. Election of a President has always
been choosing a wartime dictator; the most important role of
the Presidency is as Commander-in-Chief, which is decorous
in peacetime but Caesarian in wartime. “In time of war it’s all
power to the President,” a newspaper headline has declared.
Presidents consolidate their power in wartime and the impulse
is.to quell dissent, which is barely tolerated during normal times
and quickly repudiated during periods of national crisis when it
is most necessary.
Presidents are given great powers during crises
not covered in the Constitution. Abraham Lincoln, the first
Republican President, suspended habeus corpus during the
Civil War, which allowed military arrest of persons without
formally charging them with violating the law. During World
War 2 the U.S. interned thousands of Japanese Americans
(FDR’s infamous Executive Order 9066). President Bush has
set up military tribunals for suspected terrorists both domestic
and foreign — which includes Afghani prisoners whom he
refuses to grant POW status — and especially immigrants, not
unlike the Alien & Sedition Acts of 1798-1799 and the McCarren
Act of 1950 (also against aliens). During the present emergency
Muslim groups in particular are targets of surveillance, wiretaps
AFTER GREAT FEAR
"But again and again this instinct of the earth;
unimaginable how it expands within you —
this roaring of blood or sap; we must have been
trees in the beginning."
-Greek poet George Seferis,
Journal entry Oct 24.1950
Following acts of violence
we are offered, if we wish,
the stillness of alder leaves
moving in concert
with an easterly wind
in the morning
As the wind shifts
to the north east
the leaves bend and hold,
a freshness to the light.
And this is the image of our lives —
the alder leaves in motion
to every wind
from any quarter.
Each leaf a turning and response;
the tree itself, a solid stillness
-CAROLYN DUNN. 9/30/2001
and inquiry as well as imprisonment for even the remotest links
to terrorist groups.
Patriotism is the key word and justification for suspen
sion of civil liberties — which points out a flawed weakness
of democracy: the “tyranny of aroused public opinion,” which if
adroitly protracted under the rjbric of patriotism might well lead
to broad suppression of civil liberties.Yet it should be understood
first of all that our original patriots were not only traitors against
their Mother Country’ (or Homeland) but would be regarded
today as terrorists: a small determined group attempting liberty
from a massive overseas empire through terrorism and murder
of government officials and supporters before and during the
Revolution. Their opponents most likely called them “cowardly"
and “evil," which contemporary terrorists are accused of being.
It might be worth considering how suitable it seemed
when subjected peoples revolted against communist Russia
— Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia — and our collective
righteous anger when those revolts were crushed; and how
happy we were the Soviet world turned upside down in 1989,
followed two years later by the final collapse of the decrepit
Russian empire — the 'Evil Empire’ — which gave the world
a much appreciated Christmas present that earlier palindromic
year 1991.
So we are at a point where we must wonder if the
attacks on the USA on 9/11 might be in a similar vein as the
revolts against the didactic rule of the USSR — the differences
of methods and purpose are major, yet there are distinct and
obvious similarities.
Quite the opposite of claims that the 9/11 terrorists
struck the USA because it is the foundation of liberty, it is
instead the opponent of democratic governments in the Middle
East and much of the Southern Hemisphere, supporting ruthless
autocratic regimes it generally keeps on its tether through force
and corruption.
Our Cold War policies of real politick’ did not endear us
to much of the emerging world which has suffered heavily under
puppet despots we supported in our half century conflict for
world supremacy with the Soviet Union, nor does it make us
popular today as we use the same methods to control the supply
of resources that sustain the American Way of Life' our political
leaders proclaim as the mandate of God and Christianity.
Ever since the Persian Gulf War the U.S. has put an
iron umbrella over the Middle East to guard our oil lines, striking
with aircraft and missiles at targets in countries that dispute our
virtual monopoly over their most lucrative regional product.
It was not our values but the abandonment of them
the terrorists attacked. Terrorism has become synonymous
with anti-Americanism and its rise has greatly to do with our
zealously arrogant efforts to subdue liberties and freedoms
we claim to exemplify.
We must think of terrorism in the larger sense before we
can stop it War inevitably kills innocent people, especially in our
time when populations are the major targets, which makes war
itself a major and persistent act of terrorism (which is denied as
vociferously as armies deny rape) In particular the favored
concept of total war that dates back to Biblical times and earlier
in which entire populations are open for annihilation, is not only
the prerogative of governments and military institutions but
obviously of those who struggle against them with any means
at hand, however horrible and catastrophic the results It is
often said that “terrorism is the poor man's B-52." And obviously,
stratospheric bombers are far out of the reach of defenseless
people underneath them.
Terrorism is overwhelmingly the weapon of the strong
rather than the weak When states commit terrorism they have
more resources than individuals or groups of terrorists
Terrorism is the calculated threat or use of violence to
support ideological or political goals. The means and scale of
violence determine the success or failure of terrorism. Violence
or its threat is the leading principle of power
Webster's defines Terrorism' as “The use of terrorizing
methods of governing or resisting a government." The Random
House Dictionary defines terrorism as “The use of violence and
threats to frighten and force one's will upon another, especially
for political purposes" The American Heritage Dictionary defines
terrorism more partisanly “The unlawful use or threatened use
of force or violence by a person or an organized group against
people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing
societies or government for ideological or political reasons" —
which leaves out a government's use of terror to repress and
intimidate its citizenry that Webster’s includes, but most
certainly defines the nation's early revolutionaries
The late Ekbal Ahmed put terrorism into five general
categories State terrorism Political terrorism Criminal terrorism
Pathological terrorism Political terror of the private group (which
can also be considered as oppositional terrorism'). Any one or
two or all five can (and often do) overlap
Terrorism inherently places ideology or other abstracts
(such as the eternal struggle for liberty, equality and eradication
of poverty’) above human life — that of its perpetrators as well
as its targeted victims Terrorists who are willing to die (often
their deaths are a prerequisite of their terror) are generally noted
for their contempt toward life and the living
Though the so-called higher ideal is the terrorist's
usually proclaimed manifesto, terrorism in its precalculated
callousness yet precludes any claim an ideology might make
toward idealism or respect for human life. It can therefore be
regarded indefensible whether used or endorsed by a state or
a group of individuals, no matter the integrity of their claim.
Terrorism is reprehensibly anti-human yet essentially
human; most acts considered inhuman are exclusively human.
Whatever gains possibly accrued by terrorism are eroded by the
inherent callousness (however bitter or desperate) of its use.
Terrorism, although tactically utilized by guerrillas as
well as insurgents, should not be confused with revolutionary
warfare. Guerrilla warfare is characterized as “a combination
of military and political methods intended to overthrow the
government of a state." Terrorism by contrast is more often
“premeditated use or threat of indiscriminate violence exercised
without human constraint."
The UN itself is unable to adequately define terrorism,
perhaps because many of its member nations have been
created and continue to expand their influence and power
through various forms of terrorism or continence of it Ronald
Reagan once called Nicaraguan terrorists the U.S. bankrolled
during his administration to overthrow the Sandinista govern
ment as “freedom fighters.”
The USA has increasingly become a target for terrorism.
Conversely it is a major importer of it as well, and has been
since at least the advent of the Cold War. As a matter of fact,
the U.S. is the only nation condemned by the World Court for
international terrorism, and it vetoed a UN security resolution
for all nations to observe international law — both of these in
response to Nicaragua’s protest against U.S instigation and
support of the anti-Sandinista Contras (who were of course
counter-revolutionary terrorists).
In 1987 the UN passed a strong resolution against
terrorism The U.S. and Israel voted against it. Nothing in
the resolution prohibits those fighting for “just cause” against
“repression and colonialism." But apartheid South Africa was
a U.S. ally at the time — so native “freedom fighters” were
classified in the U.S. as “terrorist forces"
The contradictory attitude toward terrorism by the
U.S might be illustrated by rephrasing a famous remark by
Winston Churchill during World War 2: “Curse those bastards
who crash airplanes into our cities and bless our heroes who
bomb their cities."
Terrorism is usually depicted as the method of violence
used against “us.” — somewhat in the manner Robert Graves
defined mythology as every religion but one’s own.The assertion
is that it is not relevant or suitable to discuss what we have done
to them but only what they have done to us.
The U.S government also interprets terrorism as any
form of armed struggle against regimes it arms and supports, no
matter how despotic or regressive. As Noam Chomsky has said,
"The first and principle method of stopping terrorism is for the
United States to stop participating in it.”
We are a global civilization, like it or not. Nuclear
weapons rendered the nation-state as dead as dinosaurs. And
if the so-called global economy is meant to benefit only a few
wealthy nations and multinational corporations rather than be a
world structure meant to include everybody in equal protections
and freedoms, then the nightmare of September 11 is only an
advent of a dark future.
Most of the rest of the world claims to support the USA
in the war on terrorism: is that advocacy for reasons of high
moral purpose against the purported evil attack on freedom
the President regularly chimes? — Or because the world’s only
remaining superpower is the colossus of weapons of mass
destruction?
The U.S government has rushed from an undeniable
truth to a false conclusion — that because 3,000 or more people
were killed on 9/11 we must declare a world war on terrorism
and retaliate with greater violence than that we have suffered as
well as strongarm every nation that does not sympathize with
our unilateral declaration of war.
With the Bush administration gutting environmental
restrictions; granting double-dipping corporations huge tax
breaks as well as major military contracts paid for by taxes;
blantantly rejecting fuel conservation while putting American
troops in harm’s way to protect and exploit world oil reserves
for our national use; and collaterally killing innocents whose
only crimes are to be where they are — it is now more than
ever necessary to reopen the inquiry into Bush's legitimacy
as President.
He and his associates are not unlike the Hitler regime
that once it got power it had to race to control everything before
anyone could recover or gain enough strength to successfully
resist them Bush’s father had a word for it: Momentum "The
Mighty Mo."
Cannon Beach, Oregon
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