Conghaileach
20th July 2002, 12:54
Znet (http://www.zmag.org/): Terror and Just Response
by Noam Chomsky
July 02, 2002
September 11 will surely go down in the annals of terrorism as a
defining moment. Throughout the world, the atrocities were condemned as
grave crimes against humanity, with near-universal agreement that all
states must act to "rid the world of evildoers,"that "the evil scourge
of terrorism" -- particularly state-backed international terrorism --
is a plague spread by "depraved opponents of civilization itself" in a
"return to barbarism" that cannot be tolerated. But beyond the strong
support for the words of the US political leadership -- respectively,
George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and his Secretary of State George Shultz
[1] -- interpretations varied: on the narrow question of the proper
response to terrorist crimes, and on the broader problem of determining
their nature.
On the latter, an official US definition takes "terrorism" to be "the
calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that
are political, religious,or ideological in nature... through
intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear."[2] That formulation leaves
many question open, among them, the legitimacy of actions to realize
"the right to self-determination, freedom, and independence, as derived
from the Charter of the United Nations, of people forcibly deprived of
that right..., particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes
and foreign occupation..." In its most forceful denunciation of the
crime of terrorism, the UN General Assembly endorsed such actions, 153-
2.[3]
Explaining their negative votes, the US and Israel referred to the
wording just cited. It was understood to justify resistance against the
South African regime, a US ally that was responsible for over 1.5
million dead and $60 billion in damage in neighboring countries in
1980-88 alone, putting aside its practices within. And the resistance
was led by Nelson Mandela's African National Congress, one of the "more
notorious terrorist groups" according to a 1988 Pentagon report, in
contrast to pro-South African RENAMO, which the same report describes
as merely an "indigenous insurgent group" while observing that it might
have killed 100,000 civilians in Mozambique in the preceding two
years.[4] The same wording was taken to justify resistance to Israel's
military occupation, then in its 20th year, continuing its integration
of the occupied territories and harsh practices with decisive US aid
and diplomatic support, the latter to block the longstanding
international consensus on a peaceful settlement.[5]
Despite such fundamental disagreements, the official US definition
seems to me adequate for the purposes at hand,[6] though the
disagreements shed some light on the nature of terrorism, as perceived
from various perspectives.
Let us turn to the question of proper response. Some argue that the
evil of terrorism is "absolute" and merits a "reciprocally absolute
doctrine" in response.[7] That would appear to mean ferocious military
assault in accord with the Bush doctrine, cited with apparent approval
in the same academic collection on the "age of terror": "_If you harbor
terrorists, you're a terrorist; if you aid and abet terrorists, you're
a terrorist -- and you will be treated like one_." The volume reflects
articulate opinion in the West in taking the US-UK response to be
appropriate and properly "calibrated," but the scope of that consensus
appears to be limited, judging by the evidence available, to which we
return.
More generally, it would be hard to find anyone who accepts the
doctrine that massive bombing is the appropriate response to terrorist
crimes -- whether those of Sept. 11, or even worse ones, which are,
unfortunately, not hard to find. That follows if we adopt the principle
of universality: if an action is right (or wrong) for others, it is
right (or wrong) for us. Those who do not rise to the minimal moral
level of applying to themselves the standards they apply to others --
more stringent ones, in fact -- plainly cannot be taken seriously when
they speak of appropriateness of response; or of right and wrong, good
and evil.
To illustrate what is at stake, consider a case that is far from the
most extreme but is uncontroversial; at least, among those with some
respect for international law and treaty obligations. No one would have
supported Nicaraguan bombings in Washington when the US rejected the
order of the World Court to terminate its "unlawful use of force" and
pay substantial reparations, choosing instead to escalate the
international terrorist crimes and to extend them, officially, to
attacks on undefended civilian targets, also vetoing a Security Council
resolution calling on all states to observe international law and
voting alone at the General Assembly (with one or two client states)
against similar resolutions. The US dismissed the ICJ on the grounds
that other nations do not agree with us, so we must "reserve to
ourselves the power to determine whether the Court has jurisdiction
over us in a particular case" and what lies "essentially within the
domestic jurisdiction of the United States" -- in this case, terrorist
attacks against Nicaragua.[8]
Meanwhile Washington continued to undermine regional efforts to reach
a political settlement, following the doctrine formulated by the
Administration moderate, George Shultz: the US must "cut [the
Nicaraguan cancer] out," by force. Shultz dismissed with contempt those
who advocate "utopian, legalistic means like outside mediation, the
United Nations, and the World Court, while ignoring the power element
of the equation";"Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the
shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table," he declared.
Washington continued to adhere to the Shultz doctrine when the Central
American Presidents agreed on a peace plan in 1987 over strong US
objections: the Esquipulas Accords, which required that all countries
of the region move towards democracy and human rights under
international supervision, stressing that the "indispensable element"
was the termination of the US attack against Nicaragua. Washington
responded by sharply expanding the attack, tripling CIA supply flights
for the terrorist forces. Having exempted itself from the Accords, thus
effectively undermining them, Washington proceeded to do the same for
its client regimes, using the substance -- not the shadow -- of power
to dismantle the International Verification Commission (CIVS) because
its conclusions were unacceptable, and demanding, successfully, that
the Accords be revised to free US client states to continue their
terrorist atrocities. These far surpassed even the devastating US war
against Nicaragua that left tens of thousands dead and the country
ruined perhaps beyond recovery. Still upholding the Shultz doctrine,
the US compelled the government of Nicaragua, under severe threat, to
drop the claim for reparations established by the ICJ.[9]
There could hardly be a clearer example of international terrorism as
defined officially, or in scholarship:operations aimed at
"demonstrating through apparently indiscriminate violence that the
existing regime cannot protect the people nominally under its
authority," thus causing not only "anxiety, but withdrawal from the
relationships making up the established order of society."[10] State
terror elsewhere in Central America in those years also counts as
international terrorism, in the light of the decisive US role, and the
goals, sometimes frankly articulated; for example, by the Army's School
of the Americas, which trains Latin American military officers and
takes pride in the fact that "Liberation Theology...was defeated with
the assistance of the U.S. Army."[11]
It would seem to follow, clearly enough, that only those who support
bombing of Washington in response to these international terrorist
crimes -- that is, no one -- can accept the "reciprocally absolute
doctrine" on response to terrorist atrocities or consider massive
bombardment to be an appropriate and properly "calibrated" response to
them.
Consider some of the legal arguments that have been presented to
justify the US-UK bombing of Afghanistan; I am not concerned here with
their soundness, but their implications, if the principle of uniform
standards is maintained. Christopher Greenwood argues that the US has
the right of "self-defense" against "those who caused or threatened
...death and destruction," appealing to the ICJ ruling in the Nicaragua
case. The paragraph he cites applies far more clearly to the US war
against Nicaragua than to the Taliban or al-Qaeda, so if it is taken to
justify intensive US bombardment and ground attack in Afghanistan, then
Nicaragua should have been entitled to carry out much more severe
attacks against the US.Another distinguished professor of international
law, Thomas Franck, supports the US-UK war on grounds that "a state is
responsible for the consequences of permitting its territory to be used
to injure another state"; fair enough, and surely applicable to the US
in the case of Nicaragua, Cuba, and many other examples, including some
of extreme severity.[12]
Needless to say, in none of these cases would violence in "self-
defense" against continuing acts of "death and destruction" be
considered remotely tolerable; acts, not merely "threats."
The same holds of more nuanced proposals about an appropriate response
to terrorist atrocities. Military historian Michael Howard proposes "a
police operation conducted under the auspices of the United Nations...
against a criminal conspiracy whose members should be hunted down and
brought before an international court, where they would receive a fair
trial and, if found guilty, be awarded an appropriate sentence."
Reasonable enough, though the idea that the proposal should be applied
universally is unthinkable. The director of the Center for the Politics
of Human Rights at Harvard argues that "The only responsible response
to acts of terror is honest police work and judicial prosecution in
courts of law, linked to determinate, focused and unrelenting use of
military power against those who cannot or will not be brought to
justice."[13] That too seems sensible, if we add Howard's qualification
about international supervision, and if the resort to force is
undertaken after legal means have been exhausted. The recommendation
therefore does not apply to 9-11 (the US refused to provide evidence
and rebuffed tentative proposals about transfer of the suspects), but
it does apply very clearly to Nicaragua.
It applies to other cases as well. Take Haiti, which has provided
ample evidence in its repeated calls for extradition of Emmanuel
Constant, who directed the forces responsible for thousands of deaths
under the military junta that the US was tacitly supporting (not to
speak of earlier history); these requests the US ignores, presumably
because of concerns about what Constant would reveal if tried. The most
recent request was on 30 September 2001, while the US was demanding
that the Taliban hand over Bin Laden.[14] The coincidence was also
ignored, in accord with the convention that minimal moral standards
must be vigorously rejected.
Turning to the "responsible response," a call for implementation of
it where it is clearly applicable would elicit only fury and contempt.
Some have formulated more general principles to justify the US war in
Afghanistan. Two Oxford scholars propose a principle of
"proportionality": "The magnitude of response will be determined by the
magnitude with which the aggression interfered with key values in the
society attacked"; in the US case, "freedom to pursue self-betterment
in a plural society through market economics," viciously attacked on 9-
11 by "aggressors...with a moral orthodoxy divergent from the West."
Since "Afghanistan constitutes a state that sided with the aggressor,"
and refused US demands to turn over suspects, "the United States and
its allies, according to the principle of magnitude of interference,
could justifiably and morally resort to force against the Taliban
government."[15]
On the assumption of universality, it follows that Haiti and
Nicaragua can "justifiably and morally resort to" far greater force
against the US government. The conclusion extends far beyond these two
cases, including much more serious ones and even such minor escapades
of Western state terror as Clinton's bombing of the al-Shifa
pharmaceutical plant in Sudan in 1998, leading to "several tens of
thousands" of deaths according to the German Ambassador and other
reputable sources, whose conclusions are consistent with the immediate
assessments of knowledgeable observers.[16] The principle of
proportionality therefore entails that Sudan had every right to carry
out massive terror in retaliation, a conclusion that is strengthened if
we go on to adopt the view that this act of "the empire" had "appalling
consequences for the economy and society" of Sudan so that the atrocity
was much worse than the crimes of 9-11, which were appalling enough,
but did not have such consequences.[17]
Most commentary on the Sudan bombing keeps to the question of whether
the plant was believed to produce chemical weapons; true or false, that
has no bearing on "the magnitude with which the aggression interfered
with key values in the society attacked," such as survival. Others
point out that the killings were unintended, as are many of the
atrocities we rightly denounce. In this case, we can hardly doubt that
the likely human consequences were understood by US planners. The acts
can be excused, then, only on the Hegelian assumption that Africans are
"mere things," whose lives have "no value," an attitude that accords
with practice in ways that are not overlooked among the victims, who
may draw their own conclusions about the "moral orthodoxy of the West."
One participant in the Yale volume (Charles Hill) recognized that 11
September opened the _second_ "war on terror." The first was declared
by the Reagan administration as it came to office 20 years earlier,
with the rhetorical accompaniment already illustrated; and "we won,"
Hill reports triumphantly, though the terrorist monster was only
wounded, not slain.[18] The first "age of terror" proved to be a major
issue in international affairs through the decade, particularly in
Central America, but also in the Middle East, where terrorism was
selected by editors as the lead story of the year in 1985 and ranked
high in other years.
We can learn a good deal about the current war on terror by inquiring
into the first phase, and how it is now portrayed. One leading academic
specialist describes the 1980s as the decade of "state terrorism," of
"persistent state involvement, or `sponsorship,' of terrorism,
especially by Libya and Iran." The US merely responded, by adopting "a
`proactive' stance toward terrorism." Others recommend the methods by
which "we won": the operations for which the US was condemned by the
World Court and Security Council (absent the veto) are a model for
"Nicaragua-like support for the Taliban's adversaries (especially the
Northern Alliance)." A prominent historian of the subject finds deep
roots for the terrorism of Osama Bin Laden: in South Vietnam, where
"the effectiveness of Vietcong terror against the American Goliath
armed with modern technology kindled hopes that the Western heartland
was vulnerable too."[19]
Keeping to convention, these analyses portray the US as a benign
victim, defending itself from the terror of others: the Vietnamese (in
South Vietnam), the Nicaraguans (in Nicaragua), Libyans and Iranians
(if they had ever suffered a slight at US hands, it passes unnoticed),
and other anti-American forces worldwide.
Not everyone sees the world quite that way. The most obvious place to
look is Latin America, which has had considerable experience with
international terrorism. The crimes of 9-11 were harshly condemned, but
commonly with recollection of their own experiences. One might describe
the 9-11 atrocities as "Armageddon," the research journal of the Jesuit
university in Managua observed, but Nicaragua has "lived its own
Armageddon in excruciating slow motion" under US assault "and is now
submerged in its dismal aftermath," and others fared far worse under
the vast plague of state terror that swept through the continent from
the early 1960s, much of it traceable to Washington. A Panamanian
journalist joined in the general condemnation of the 9-11 crimes, but
recalled the death of perhaps thousands of poor people (Western crimes,
therefore unexamined) when the President's father bombed the barrio
Chorillo in December 1989 in Operation Just Cause, undertaken to kidnap
a disobedient thug who was sentenced to life imprisonment in Florida
for crimes mostly committed while he was on the CIA payroll. Uruguayan
writer Eduardo Galeano observed that the US claims to oppose terrorism,
but actually supports it worldwide, including "in Indonesia, in
Cambodia, in Iran, in South Africa,...and in the Latin American
countries that lived through the dirty war of the Condor Plan,"
instituted by South American military dictators who conducted a reign
of terror with US backing.[20]
The observations carry over to the second focus of the first
"war on terror": West Asia. The worst single
atrocity was the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which
left some 20,000 people dead and much of
the country in ruins, including Beirut. Like the murderous and
destructive Rabin-Peres invasions of 1993
and 1996, the 1982 attack had little pretense of self-defense.
Chief of Staff Rafael ("Raful") Eitan merely
articulated common understanding when he announced that the
goal was to "destroy the PLO as a
candidate for negotiations with us about the Land of
Israel,"[21] a textbook illustration of terror as
officially defined. The goal "was to install a friendly regime
and destroy Mr. Arafat's Palestinian Liberation
Organization," Middle East correspondent James Bennet writes:
"That, the theory went, would help
persuade Palestinians to accept Israeli rule in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip."[22] This may be the first
recognition in the mainstream of facts widely reported in
Israel at once, previously accessible only in
dissident literature in the US.
These operations were carried out with the crucial military and
diplomatic support of the Reagan and
Clinton administrations, and therefore constitute international
terrorism. The US was also directly involved
in other acts of terror in the region in the 1980s, including
the most extreme terrorist atrocities of the peak
year of 1985: the CIA car-bombing in Beirut that killed 80
people and wounded 250; Shimon Peres's
bombing of Tunis that killed 75 people, expedited by the US and
praised by Secretary of State Shultz,
unanimously condemned by the UN Security Council as an "act of
armed aggression" (US abstaining);
and Peres's "Iron Fist" operations directed against "terrorist
villagers" in Lebanon, reaching new depths of
"calculated brutality and arbitrary murder," in the words of a
Western diplomat familiar with the area, amply
supported by direct coverage.[23] Again, all international
terrorism, if not the more severe war crime of
aggression.
In journalism and scholarship on terrorism, 1985 is recognized
to be the peak year of Middle East
terrorism, but not because of these events: rather, because of
two terrorist atrocities in which a single
person was murdered, in each case an American.[24] But the
victims do not so easily forget.
This very recent history takes on added significance because
leading figures in the re-declared "war on
terror" played a prominent part in its precursor. The
diplomatic component of the current phase is led by
John Negroponte, who was Reagan's Ambassador to Honduras, the
base for the terrorist atrocities for
which his government was condemned by the World Court and for
US-backed state terror elsewhere in
Central America, activities that "made the Reagan years the
worse decade for Central America since the
Spanish conquest," mostly on Negroponte's watch.[25] The
military component of the new phase is led
by Donald Rumsfeld, Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East
during the years of the worst terrorist
atrocities there, initiated or supported by his government.
No less instructive is the fact that such atrocities did not
abate in subsequent years. Specifically,
Washington's contribution to "enhancing terror" in the Israel-
Arab confrontation continues. The term is
President Bush's, intended, according to convention, to apply
to the terrorism of others. Departing from
convention, we find, again, some rather significant examples.
One simple way to enhance terror is to
participate in it, for example, by sending helicopters to be
used to attack civilian complexes and carry out
assassinations, as the US regularly does in full awareness of
the consequences. Another is to bar the
dispatch of international monitors to reduce violence. The US
has insisted on this course, once again
vetoing a UN Security Council resolution to this effect on 14
December 2001. Describing Arafat's fall from
grace to a position barely above Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein,
the press reports that President Bush
was "greatly angered [by] a last-minute hardening of a
Palestinian position...for international monitors in
Palestinian areas under a UN Security Council resolution"; that
is, by Arafat's joining the rest of the world
in calling for means to reduce terror.[26]
Ten days before the veto of monitors, the US boycotted -- thus
undermined -- an international conference
in Geneva that reaffirmed the applicability of the Fourth
Geneva Convention to the occupied terrorities, so
that most US-Israeli actions there are war crimes -- and when
"grave breaches," as many are, serious war
crimes. These include US-funded Israeli settlements and the
practice of "wilful killing, torture, unlawful
deportation, wilful depriving of the rights of fair and regular
trial, extensive destruction and appropriation
of property...carried out unlawfully and wantonly."[27]
The Convention, instituted to criminalize formally the crimes
of the Nazis in occupied Europe, is a core
principle of international humanitarian law. Its applicability
to the Israeli-occupied territories has repeatedly
been affirmed, among other occasions, by UN Ambassador George
Bush (September 1971) and by
Security Council resolutions: 465 (1980), adopted unanimously,
which condemned US-backed Israeli
practices as "flagrant violations" of the Convention; 1322
(Oct. 2000), 14-0, US abstaining, which called
on Israel "to abide scrupulously by its responsibilities under
the Fourth Geneva Convention," which it was
again violating flagrantly at that moment. As High Contracting
Parties, the US and the European powers
are obligated by solemn treaty to apprehend and prosecute those
responsible for such crimes, including
their own leadership when they are parties to them. By
continuing to reject that duty, they are enhancing
terror directly and significantly.
Inquiry into the US-Israel-Arab conflicts would carry us too
far afield. Let's turn further north, to another
region where "state terror" is being practiced on a massive
scale; I borrow the term from the Turkish State
Minister for Human Rights, referring to the vast atrocities of
1994; and sociologist Ismail Besikci, returned
to prison after publishing his book _State Terror in the Near
East_, having already served 15 years for
recording Turkish repression of Kurds.[28] I had a chance to
see some of the consequences first-hand
when visiting the unofficial Kurdish capital of Diyarbakir
several months after 9-11. As elsewhere, the
crimes of September 11 were harshly condemned, but not without
memory of the savage assault the
population had suffered at the hands of those who appoint
themselves to "rid the world of evildoers," and
their local agents. By 1994, the Turkish State Minister and
others estimated that 2 million had been driven
out of the devastated countryside, many more later, often with
barbaric torture and terror described in
excruciating detail in international human rights reports, but
kept from the eyes of those paying the bills.
Tens of thousands were killed. The remnants -- whose courage is
indescribable -- live in a dungeon where
radio stations are closed and journalists imprisoned for
playing Kurdish music, students are arrested and
tortured for submitting requests to take elective courses in
their own language, there can be severe
penalties if children are found wearing Kurdish national colors
by the omnipresent security forces, the
respected lawyer who heads the human rights organization was
indicted shortly after I was there for using
the Kurdish rather than the virtually identical Turkish
spelling for the New Year's celebration; and on, and
on.
These acts fall under the category of state-sponsored
international terrorism. The US provided 80% of the
arms, peaking in 1997, when arms transfers exceeded the entire
Cold War period combined before the
"counter-terror" campaign began in 1984. Turkey became the
leading recipient of US arms worldwide, a
position it retained until 1999 when the torch was passed to
Colombia, the leading practitioner of state
terror in the Western hemisphere.[29]
State terror is also "enhanced" by silence and evasion. The
achievement was particularly notable against
the background of an unprecedented chorus of self-
congratulation as US foreign policy entered a "noble
phase" with a "saintly glow," under the guidance of leaders who
for the first time in history were dedicated
to "principles and values" rather than narrow interests.[30]
The proof of the new saintliness was their
unwillingness to tolerate crimes near the borders of NATO --
only within its borders, where even worse
crimes, not in reaction to NATO bombs, were not only tolerable
but required enthusiastic participation,
without comment.
US-sponsored Turkish state terror does not pass entirely
unnoticed. The State Department's annual
report on Washington's "efforts to combat terrorism" singled
out Turkey for its "positive experiences" in
combating terror, along with Algeria and Spain, worthy
colleagues. This was reported without comment in
a front-page story in the _New York Times_ by its specialist on
terrorism. In a leading journal of
international affairs, Ambassador Robert Pearson reports that
the US "could have no better friend and
ally than Turkey" in its efforts "to eliminate terrorism"
worldwide, thanks to the "capabilities of its armed
forces" demonstrated in its "anti-terror campaign" in the
Kurdish southeast. It thus "came as no surprise"
that Turkey eagerly joined the "war on terror" declared by
George Bush, expressing its thanks to the US
for being the only country willing to lend the needed support
for the atrocities of the Clinton years -- still
continuing, though on a lesser scale now that "we won." As a
reward for its achievements, the US is now
funding Turkey to provide the ground forces for fighting "the
war on terror" in Kabul, though not
beyond.[31]
Atrocious state-sponsored international terrorism is thus not
overlooked: it is lauded. That also "comes as
no surprise." After all, in 1995 the Clinton administration
welcomed Indonesia's General Suharto, one of
the worst killers and torturers of the late 20th century, as
"our kind of guy." When he came to power 30
years earlier, the "staggering mass slaughter" of hundreds of
thousands of people, mostly landless
peasants, was reported fairly accurately and acclaimed with
unconstrained euphoria. When Nicaraguans
finally succumbed to US terror and voted the right way, the US
was "United in Joy" at this "Victory for US
Fair Play," headlines proclaimed. It is easy enough to multiply
examples. The current episode breaks no
new ground in the record of international terrorism and the
response it elicits among the perpetrators.
Let's return to the question of the proper response to acts of
terror, specifically 9-11.
It is commonly alleged that the US-UK reaction was undertaken
with wide international support. That is
tenable, however, only if one keeps to elite opinion. An
international Gallup poll found only minority
support for military attack rather than diplomatic means.[32]
In Europe, figures ranged from 8% in Greece
to 29% in France. In Latin America, support was even lower:
from 2% in Mexico to 16% in Panama.
Support for strikes that included civilian targets was very
slight. Even in the two countries polled that
strongly supported the use of military force, India and Israel
(where the reasons were parochial),
considerable majorities opposed such attacks. There was, then,
overwhelming opposition to the actual
policies, which turned major urban concentrations into "ghost
towns" from the first moment, the press
reported.
Omitted from the poll, as from most commentary, was the
anticipated effect of US policy on Afghans,
millions of whom were on the brink of starvation even before 9-
11. Unasked, for example, is whether a
proper response to 9-11 was to demand that Pakistan eliminate
"truck convoys that provide much of the
food and other supplies to Afghanistan's civilian population,"
and to cause the withdrawal of aid workers
and a severe reduction in food supplies that left "millions of
Afghans...at grave risk of starvation," eliciting
sharp protests from aid organizations and warnings of severe
humanitarian crisis, judgments reiterated at
the war's end.[33]
It is, of course, the assumptions of planning that are relevant
to evaluating the actions taken; that too
should be transparent. The actual outcome, a separate matter,
is unlikely to be known, even roughly;
crimes of others are carefully investigated, but not one's own.
Some indication is perhaps suggested by
the occasional reports on numbers needing food aid: 5 million
before 9-11, 7.5 million at the end of
September under the threat of bombing, 9 million six months
later, not because of lack of food, which was
readily available throughout, but because of distribution
problems as the country reverted to
warlordism.[34]
There are no reliable studies of Afghan opinion, but
information is not entirely lacking. At the outset,
President Bush warned Afghans that they would be bombed until
they handed over people the US
suspected of terrorism. Three weeks later, war aims shifted to
overthrow of the regime: the bombing would
continue, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce announced, "until the
people of the country themselves recognize
that this is going to go on until they get the leadership
changed."[35] Note that the question whether
overthrow of the miserable Taliban regime justifies the bombing
does not arise, because that did not
become a war aim until well after the fact. We can, however,
ask about the opinions of Afghans within
reach of Western observers about these choices -- which, in
both cases, clearly fall within the official
definition of international terrorism.
As war aims shifted to regime replacement in late October, 1000
Afghan leaders gathered in Peshawar,
some exiles, some coming from within Afghanistan, all committed
to overthrowing the Taliban regime. It
was "a rare display of unity among tribal elders, Islamic
scholars, fractious politicians, and former guerrilla
commanders," the press reported. They unanimously "urged the US
to stop the air raids," appealed to
the international media to call for an end to the "bombing of
innocent people," and "demanded an end to
the US bombing of Afghanistan." They urged that other means be
adopted to overthrow the hated
Taliban regime, a goal they believed could be achieved without
death and destruction.[36]
A similar message was conveyed by Afghan opposition leader
Abdul Haq, who was highly regarded in
Washington. Just before he entered Afghanistan, apparently
without US support, and was then captured
and killed, he condemned the bombing and criticized the US for
refusing to support efforts of his and of
others "to create a revolt within the Taliban." The bombing was
"a big setback for these efforts," he said.
He reported contacts with second-level Taliban commanders and
ex-Mujahiddin tribal elders, and
discussed how such efforts could proceed, calling on the US to
assist them with funding and other
support instead of undermining them with bombs. But the US, he
said, "is trying to show its muscle, score
a victory and scare everyone in the world. They don't care
about the suffering of the Afghans or how
many people we will lose."[37]
The plight of Afghan women elicited some belated concern after
9-11. After the war, there was even
some recognition of the courageous women who have been in the
forefront of the struggle to defend
women's rights for 25 years, RAWA (Revolutionary Association of
the Women of Afghanistan). A week
after the bombing began, RAWA issued a public statement (Oct.
11) that would have been front-page
news wherever concern for Afghan women was real, not a matter
of mere expediency. They condemned
the resort to "the monster of a vast war and destruction" as
the US "launched a vast aggression on our
country," that will cause great harm to innocent Afghans. They
called instead for "the eradication of the
plague of Taliban and Al Qieda" by "an overall uprising" of the
Afghan people themselves, which alone
"can prevent the repetition and recurrence of the catastrophe
that has befallen our country...."
All of this was ignored. It is, perhaps, less than obvious that
those with the guns are entitled to ignore the
judgment of Afghans who have been struggling for freedom and
women's rights for many years, and to
dismiss with apparent contempt their desire to overthrow the
fragile and hated Taliban regime from within
without the inevitable crimes of war.
In brief, review of global opinion, including what is known
about Afghans, lends little support to the
consensus among Western intellectuals on the justice of their
cause.
One elite reaction, however, is certainly correct: it is
necessary to inquire into the reasons for the crimes of
9-11. That much is beyond question, at least among those who
hope to reduce the likelihood of further
terrorist atrocities.
A narrow question is the motives of the perpetrators. On this
matter, there is little disagreement. Serious
analysts are in accord that after the US established permanent
bases in Saudi Arabia, "Bin Laden
became preoccupied with the need to expel U.S. forces from the
sacred soil of Arabia" and to rid the
Muslim world of the "liars and hypocrites" who do not accept
his extremist version of Islam.[38]
There is also wide, and justified, agreement that "Unless the
social, political, and economic conditions
that spawned Al Qaeda and other associated groups are
addressed, the United States and its allies in
Western Europe and elsewhere will continue to be targeted by
Islamist terrorists."[39] These conditions
are doubtless complex, but some factors have long been
recognized. In 1958, a crucial year in postwar
history, President Eisenhower advised his staff that in the
Arab world, "the problem is that we have a
campaign of hatred against us, not by the governments but by
the people," who are "on Nasser's side,"
supporting independent secular nationalism. The reasons for the
"campaign of hatred" had been outlined
by the National Security Council a few months earlier: "In the
eyes of the majority of Arabs the United
States appears to be opposed to the realization of the goals of
Arab nationalism. They believe that the
United States is seeking to protect its interest in Near East
oil by supporting the _status quo_ and
opposing political or economic progress...." Furthermore, the
perception is accurate: "our economic and
cultural interests in the area have led not unnaturally to
close U.S. relations with elements in the Arab
world whose primary interest lies in the maintenance of
relations with the West and the status quo in their
countries...."[40]
The perceptions persist. Immediately after 9-11, the _Wall
Street Journal_, later others, began to
investigate opinions of "moneyed Muslims": bankers,
professionals, managers of multinationals, and so
on. They strongly support US policies in general, but are
bitter about the US role in the region: about US
support for corrupt and repressive regimes that undermine
democracy and development, and about
specific policies, particularly regarding Palestine and Iraq.
Though they are not surveyed, attitudes in the
slums and villages are probably similar, but harsher; unlike
the "moneyed Muslims," the mass of the
population have never agreed that the wealth of the region
should be drained to the West and local
collaborators, rather than serving domestic needs. The "moneyed
Muslims" recognize, ruefully, that Bin
Laden's angry rhetoric has considerable resonance, in their own
circles as well, even though they hate
and fear him, if only because they are among his primary
targets.[41]
It is doubtless more comforting to believe that the answer to
George Bush's plaintive query, "Why do they
hate us?," lies in their resentment of our freedom and love of
democracy, or their cultural failings tracing
back many centuries, or their inability to take part in the
form of "globalization" in which they happily
participate. Comforting, perhaps, but not wise.
Though shocking, the atrocities of 9-11 could not have been
entirely unexpected. Related organizations
planned very serious terrorist acts through the 1990s, and in
1993 came perilously close to blowing up
the World Trade Center, with much more ambitious plans. Their
thinking was well understood, certainly by
the US intelligence agencies that had helped to recruit, train,
and arm them from 1980 and continued to
work with them even as they were attacking the US. The Dutch
government inquiry into the Srebrenica
massacre revealed that while they were attempting to blow up
the World Trade Center, radical Islamists
from the CIA-formed networks were being flown by the US from
Afghanistan to Bosnia, along with
Iranian-backed Hizbollah fighters and a huge flow of arms,
through Croatia, which took a substantial cut.
They were being brought to support the US side in the Balkan
wars, while Israel (along with Ukraine and
Greece) was arming the Serbs (possibly with US-supplied arms),
which explains why "unexploded mortar
bombs landing in Sarajevo sometimes had Hebrew markings,"
British political scientist Richard Aldrich
observes, reviewing the Dutch government report.[42]
More generally, the atrocities of 9-11 serve as a dramatic
reminder of what has long been understood:
with contemporary technology, the rich and powerful no longer
are assured the near monopoly of
violence that has largely prevailed throughout history. Though
terrorism is rightly feared everywhere, and
is indeed an intolerable "return to barbarism," it is not
surprising that perceptions about its nature differ
rather sharply in the light of sharply differing experiences,
facts that will be ignored at their peril by those
whom history has accustomed to immunity while they perpetrate
terrible crimes.
---------------
Footnotes:
[1] Bush cited by Rich Heffern, _National Catholic Reporter_,
Jan. 11, 2002. Reagan, _New York Times_,
Oct. 18, 1985. Shultz, U.S. Dept. of State, _Current Policy_
No. 589, June 24, 1984; No. 629, Oct. 25,
1984.
[2] _US Army Operational Concept for Terrorism Counteraction_,
TRADOC Pamphlet No. 525-37, 1984.
[3] Res. 42/159, 7 Dec. 1987; Honduras abstaining.
[4] Joseba Zulaika and William Douglass, _Terror and Taboo_
(New York, London: Routledge, 1996), 12.
1980-88 record, see "Inter-Agency Task Force, Africa Recovery
Program/Economic Commission, _South
African Destabilization: the Economic Cost of Frontline
Resistance to Apartheid_, NY, UN, 1989, 13, cited
by Merle Bowen, _Fletcher Forum_, Winter 1991. On expansion of
US trade with South Africa after
Congress authorized sanctions in 1985 (overriding Reagan's
veto), see Gay McDougall, Richard Knight,
in Robert Edgar, ed., _Sanctioning Apartheid_ (Trenton, NJ:
Africa World Press, 1990).
[5] For review of unilateral US rejectionism for 30 years, see
my introduction to Roane Carey, ed., _The
New Intifada_ (London, New York: Verso, 2000); see sources
cited for more detail.
[6] It is, however, never used. On the reasons, see Alexander
George, ed., _Western State Terrorism_
(Cambridge: Polity-Blackwell, 1991).
[7] Strobe Talbott and Nayan Chanda, introduction, _The Age of
Terror: America and the World after
September 11_ (New York: Basic Books and the Yale U. Center for
the Study of Globalization, 2001).
[8] Abram Sofaer, "The United States and the World Court," U.S.
Dept. of State, _Current Policy_, No.
769 (Dec. 1985). The vetoed Security Council resolution called
for compliance with the ICJ orders, and,
mentioning no one, called on all states "to refrain from
carrying out, supporting or promoting political,
economic or military actions of any kind against any state of
the region." Elaine Sciolino, _NYT_, July 31,
1986.
[9] Shultz, "Moral Principles and Strategic Interests," April
14, 1986, U.S. Dept. of State, _Current Policy_
No. 820. Shultz Congressional testimony, see Jack Spence in
Thomas Walker, ed., _Reagan versus the
Sandinistas_ (Boulder, London: Westview, 1987). For review of
the undermining of diplomacy and
escalation of international state terror, see my _Culture of
Terrorism_ (Boston: South End, 1988);
_Necessary Illusions_ (Boston: South End, 1989); _Deterring
Democracy_ (London, New York: Verso,
1991). On the aftermath, see Thomas Walker and Ariel Armony,
eds., _Repression, Resistance, and
Democratic Transition in Central America_ (Wilmington:
Scholarly Resources, 2000). On reparations, see
Howard Meyer, _The World Court in Action_ (Lanham, MD, Oxford:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), chap. 14.
[10] Edward Price, "The Strategy and Tactics of Revolutionary
Terrorism," _Comparative Studies in
Society and History 19:1_; cited by Chalmers Johnson, "American
Militarism and Blowback," _New
Political Science_ 24.1, 2002.
[11] SOA, 1999, cited by Adam Isacson and Joy Olson, _Just the
Facts_ (Washington: Latin America
Working Group and Center for International Policy, 1999), ix.
[12] Greenwood, "International law and the `war against
terrorism'," _International Affairs_ 78.2 (2002),
appealing to par. 195 of _Nicaragua v. USA_, which the Court
did not use to justify its condemnation of
US terrorism, but surely is more appropriate to that than to
the case that concerns Greenwood. Franck,
"Terrorism and the Right of Self-Defense," _American J. of
International Law_ 95.4 (Oct. 2001).
[13] Howard, _Foreign Affairs_, Jan/Feb 2002; talk of Oct. 30,
2001 (Tania Branigan, _Guardian_, Oct.
31). Ignatieff, _Index on Censorship_ 2, 2002.
[14] _NYT_, Oct. 1, 2001.
[15] Frank Schuller and Thomas Grant, _Current History_, April
2002.
[16] Werner Daum, "Universalism and the West," _Harvard
International Review_, Summer 2001. On
other assessments, and the warnings of Human Rights Watch, see
my _9-11_ (New York: Seven Stories,
2001), 45ff.
[17] Christopher Hitchens, _Nation_, June 10, 2002.
[18] Talbott and Chanda, _op. cit._
[19] Martha Crenshaw, Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, David
Rapoport, _Current History_, _America at
War_, Dec. 2001. On interpretations of the first "war on
terror" at the time, see George, _op. cit._
[20] _Envˇo_ (UCA Managua), Oct.; Ricardo Stevens (Panama),
NACLA _Report on the Americas_,
Nov/Dec; Galeano, _La Jornada_ (Mexico City), cited by Alain
Frachon, _Le Monde_, Nov. 24, 2001.
[21] For many sources, see my _Fateful Triangle_ (Boston: South
End, 1983; updated 1999 edition, on
South Lebanon in the 1990s); _Pirates and Emperors_ (New York:
Claremont, 1986; Pluto, London,
forthcoming); _World Orders Old and New_.
[22] Bennet, _NYT_, Jan. 24, 2002
[23] For details, see my essay in George, _op. cit_.
[24] Crenshaw, _op. cit._
[25] Chalmers Johnson, _Nation_, Oct. 15, 2001.
[26] Ian Williams, _Middle East International_, 21 Dec. 2001,
11 Jan. 2002. John Donnelly, _Boston
Globe_, April 25, 2002; the specific reference is to an earlier
US veto.
[27] Conference of High Contracting Parties, _Report on Israeli
Settlement_, Jan.-Feb. 2002 (Foundation
for Middle East Peace, Washington). On these matters see
Francis Boyle, "Law and Disorder in the
Middle East," _The Link_ 35.1, Jan.-March 2002.
[28] For some details, see my _New Military Humanism_ (Monroe
ME: Common Courage, 1999), chap. 3,
and sources cited. On evasion of the facts in the State
Department Human Rights Report, see Lawyers
Committee for Human Rights, _Middle East and North Africa_ (New
York, 1995), 255.
[29] Tamar Gabelnick, William Hartung, and Jennifer Washburn,
_Arming Repression: U.S. Arms Sales to
Turkey During the Clinton Administration_ (New York and
Washington: World Policy Institute and
Federation of Atomic Scientists, October 1999). I exclude
Israel-Egypt, a separate category. On state
terror in Colombia, now largely farmed out to paramilitaries in
standard fashion, see particularly Human
Rights Watch, _The Sixth Division_ (Sept. 2001) and Colombia
Human Rights Certification III, Feb. 2002.
Also, among others, Me'dicos Sin Fronteras, _Desterrados_
(Bogota' 2001).
[30] For a sample, see _New Military Humanism_ and my _A New
Generation Draws the Line_ (London,
NY: Verso, 2000).
[31] Judith Miller, _NYT_, April 30, 2000. Pearson, _Fletcher
Forum_ 26:1, Winter/Spring 2002.
[32] http://www.gallup.international.com/terrorismpoll-
figures.htm; data from Sept. 14-17, 2001.
[33] John Burns, _NYT_, Sept. 16, 2001; Samina Amin,
_International Security_ 26.3, Winter 2001-02).
For some earlier warnings, see _9-11_. On the postwar
evaluation of international agencies, see Imre
Karacs, _Independent on Sunday_ (London), Dec. 9, 2001,
reporting their warnings that over a million
people are "beyond their reach and face death from starvation
and disease." For some press reports, see
my "Peering into the Abyss of the Future," Lakdawala Memorial
Lecture, Institute of Social Sciences, New
Delhi, Nov. 2001, updated Feb. 2002.
[34] _Ibid._, for early estimates. Barbara Crossette, _NYT_,
March 26, and Ahmed Rashid, _WSJ_, June
6, 2002, reporting the assessment of the UN World Food Program
and the failure of donors to provide
pledged funds. The WFP reports that "wheat stocks are
exhausted, and there is no funding" to replenish
them (Rashid). The UN had warned of the threat of mass
starvation at once because the bombing
disrupted planting that provides 80% of the country's grain
supplies (AFP, Sept. 28; Edith Lederer, AP,
Oct. 18, 2001). Also Andrew Revkin, _NYT_, Dec. 16, 2001,
citing U.S. Department of Agriculture, with no
mention of bombing.
[35] Patrick Tyler and Elisabeth Bumiller, _NYT_, Oct. 12,
quoting Bush; Michael Gordon, _NYT_, Oct.
28, 2001, quoting Boyce; both p. 1.
[36] Barry Bearak, _NYT_, Oct. 25; John Thornhill and Farhan
Bokhari, _Financial Times_, Oct. 25, Oct.
26; John Burns, _NYT_, Oct. 26; Indira Laskhmanan, _BG_, Oct.
25, 26, 2001.
[37] Interview, Anatol Lieven, _Guardian_, Nov. 2, 2001.
[38] Ann Lesch, _Middle East Policy_ IX.2, June 2002. Also
Michael Doran, _Foreign Affairs_, Jan.-Feb.
2002; and many others, including several contributors to
_Current History_, Dec. 2001.
[39] Sumit Ganguly, _Ibid_.
[40] For sources and background discussion, see my _World
Orders Old and New_, 79, 201f.
[41] Peter Waldman et al., _WSJ_, Sept. 14, 2001; also Waldman
and Hugh Pope, _WSJ_, Sept. 21,
2001.
[42] Aldrich, _Guardian_, 22 April, 2002.
by Noam Chomsky
July 02, 2002
September 11 will surely go down in the annals of terrorism as a
defining moment. Throughout the world, the atrocities were condemned as
grave crimes against humanity, with near-universal agreement that all
states must act to "rid the world of evildoers,"that "the evil scourge
of terrorism" -- particularly state-backed international terrorism --
is a plague spread by "depraved opponents of civilization itself" in a
"return to barbarism" that cannot be tolerated. But beyond the strong
support for the words of the US political leadership -- respectively,
George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and his Secretary of State George Shultz
[1] -- interpretations varied: on the narrow question of the proper
response to terrorist crimes, and on the broader problem of determining
their nature.
On the latter, an official US definition takes "terrorism" to be "the
calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that
are political, religious,or ideological in nature... through
intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear."[2] That formulation leaves
many question open, among them, the legitimacy of actions to realize
"the right to self-determination, freedom, and independence, as derived
from the Charter of the United Nations, of people forcibly deprived of
that right..., particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes
and foreign occupation..." In its most forceful denunciation of the
crime of terrorism, the UN General Assembly endorsed such actions, 153-
2.[3]
Explaining their negative votes, the US and Israel referred to the
wording just cited. It was understood to justify resistance against the
South African regime, a US ally that was responsible for over 1.5
million dead and $60 billion in damage in neighboring countries in
1980-88 alone, putting aside its practices within. And the resistance
was led by Nelson Mandela's African National Congress, one of the "more
notorious terrorist groups" according to a 1988 Pentagon report, in
contrast to pro-South African RENAMO, which the same report describes
as merely an "indigenous insurgent group" while observing that it might
have killed 100,000 civilians in Mozambique in the preceding two
years.[4] The same wording was taken to justify resistance to Israel's
military occupation, then in its 20th year, continuing its integration
of the occupied territories and harsh practices with decisive US aid
and diplomatic support, the latter to block the longstanding
international consensus on a peaceful settlement.[5]
Despite such fundamental disagreements, the official US definition
seems to me adequate for the purposes at hand,[6] though the
disagreements shed some light on the nature of terrorism, as perceived
from various perspectives.
Let us turn to the question of proper response. Some argue that the
evil of terrorism is "absolute" and merits a "reciprocally absolute
doctrine" in response.[7] That would appear to mean ferocious military
assault in accord with the Bush doctrine, cited with apparent approval
in the same academic collection on the "age of terror": "_If you harbor
terrorists, you're a terrorist; if you aid and abet terrorists, you're
a terrorist -- and you will be treated like one_." The volume reflects
articulate opinion in the West in taking the US-UK response to be
appropriate and properly "calibrated," but the scope of that consensus
appears to be limited, judging by the evidence available, to which we
return.
More generally, it would be hard to find anyone who accepts the
doctrine that massive bombing is the appropriate response to terrorist
crimes -- whether those of Sept. 11, or even worse ones, which are,
unfortunately, not hard to find. That follows if we adopt the principle
of universality: if an action is right (or wrong) for others, it is
right (or wrong) for us. Those who do not rise to the minimal moral
level of applying to themselves the standards they apply to others --
more stringent ones, in fact -- plainly cannot be taken seriously when
they speak of appropriateness of response; or of right and wrong, good
and evil.
To illustrate what is at stake, consider a case that is far from the
most extreme but is uncontroversial; at least, among those with some
respect for international law and treaty obligations. No one would have
supported Nicaraguan bombings in Washington when the US rejected the
order of the World Court to terminate its "unlawful use of force" and
pay substantial reparations, choosing instead to escalate the
international terrorist crimes and to extend them, officially, to
attacks on undefended civilian targets, also vetoing a Security Council
resolution calling on all states to observe international law and
voting alone at the General Assembly (with one or two client states)
against similar resolutions. The US dismissed the ICJ on the grounds
that other nations do not agree with us, so we must "reserve to
ourselves the power to determine whether the Court has jurisdiction
over us in a particular case" and what lies "essentially within the
domestic jurisdiction of the United States" -- in this case, terrorist
attacks against Nicaragua.[8]
Meanwhile Washington continued to undermine regional efforts to reach
a political settlement, following the doctrine formulated by the
Administration moderate, George Shultz: the US must "cut [the
Nicaraguan cancer] out," by force. Shultz dismissed with contempt those
who advocate "utopian, legalistic means like outside mediation, the
United Nations, and the World Court, while ignoring the power element
of the equation";"Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the
shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table," he declared.
Washington continued to adhere to the Shultz doctrine when the Central
American Presidents agreed on a peace plan in 1987 over strong US
objections: the Esquipulas Accords, which required that all countries
of the region move towards democracy and human rights under
international supervision, stressing that the "indispensable element"
was the termination of the US attack against Nicaragua. Washington
responded by sharply expanding the attack, tripling CIA supply flights
for the terrorist forces. Having exempted itself from the Accords, thus
effectively undermining them, Washington proceeded to do the same for
its client regimes, using the substance -- not the shadow -- of power
to dismantle the International Verification Commission (CIVS) because
its conclusions were unacceptable, and demanding, successfully, that
the Accords be revised to free US client states to continue their
terrorist atrocities. These far surpassed even the devastating US war
against Nicaragua that left tens of thousands dead and the country
ruined perhaps beyond recovery. Still upholding the Shultz doctrine,
the US compelled the government of Nicaragua, under severe threat, to
drop the claim for reparations established by the ICJ.[9]
There could hardly be a clearer example of international terrorism as
defined officially, or in scholarship:operations aimed at
"demonstrating through apparently indiscriminate violence that the
existing regime cannot protect the people nominally under its
authority," thus causing not only "anxiety, but withdrawal from the
relationships making up the established order of society."[10] State
terror elsewhere in Central America in those years also counts as
international terrorism, in the light of the decisive US role, and the
goals, sometimes frankly articulated; for example, by the Army's School
of the Americas, which trains Latin American military officers and
takes pride in the fact that "Liberation Theology...was defeated with
the assistance of the U.S. Army."[11]
It would seem to follow, clearly enough, that only those who support
bombing of Washington in response to these international terrorist
crimes -- that is, no one -- can accept the "reciprocally absolute
doctrine" on response to terrorist atrocities or consider massive
bombardment to be an appropriate and properly "calibrated" response to
them.
Consider some of the legal arguments that have been presented to
justify the US-UK bombing of Afghanistan; I am not concerned here with
their soundness, but their implications, if the principle of uniform
standards is maintained. Christopher Greenwood argues that the US has
the right of "self-defense" against "those who caused or threatened
...death and destruction," appealing to the ICJ ruling in the Nicaragua
case. The paragraph he cites applies far more clearly to the US war
against Nicaragua than to the Taliban or al-Qaeda, so if it is taken to
justify intensive US bombardment and ground attack in Afghanistan, then
Nicaragua should have been entitled to carry out much more severe
attacks against the US.Another distinguished professor of international
law, Thomas Franck, supports the US-UK war on grounds that "a state is
responsible for the consequences of permitting its territory to be used
to injure another state"; fair enough, and surely applicable to the US
in the case of Nicaragua, Cuba, and many other examples, including some
of extreme severity.[12]
Needless to say, in none of these cases would violence in "self-
defense" against continuing acts of "death and destruction" be
considered remotely tolerable; acts, not merely "threats."
The same holds of more nuanced proposals about an appropriate response
to terrorist atrocities. Military historian Michael Howard proposes "a
police operation conducted under the auspices of the United Nations...
against a criminal conspiracy whose members should be hunted down and
brought before an international court, where they would receive a fair
trial and, if found guilty, be awarded an appropriate sentence."
Reasonable enough, though the idea that the proposal should be applied
universally is unthinkable. The director of the Center for the Politics
of Human Rights at Harvard argues that "The only responsible response
to acts of terror is honest police work and judicial prosecution in
courts of law, linked to determinate, focused and unrelenting use of
military power against those who cannot or will not be brought to
justice."[13] That too seems sensible, if we add Howard's qualification
about international supervision, and if the resort to force is
undertaken after legal means have been exhausted. The recommendation
therefore does not apply to 9-11 (the US refused to provide evidence
and rebuffed tentative proposals about transfer of the suspects), but
it does apply very clearly to Nicaragua.
It applies to other cases as well. Take Haiti, which has provided
ample evidence in its repeated calls for extradition of Emmanuel
Constant, who directed the forces responsible for thousands of deaths
under the military junta that the US was tacitly supporting (not to
speak of earlier history); these requests the US ignores, presumably
because of concerns about what Constant would reveal if tried. The most
recent request was on 30 September 2001, while the US was demanding
that the Taliban hand over Bin Laden.[14] The coincidence was also
ignored, in accord with the convention that minimal moral standards
must be vigorously rejected.
Turning to the "responsible response," a call for implementation of
it where it is clearly applicable would elicit only fury and contempt.
Some have formulated more general principles to justify the US war in
Afghanistan. Two Oxford scholars propose a principle of
"proportionality": "The magnitude of response will be determined by the
magnitude with which the aggression interfered with key values in the
society attacked"; in the US case, "freedom to pursue self-betterment
in a plural society through market economics," viciously attacked on 9-
11 by "aggressors...with a moral orthodoxy divergent from the West."
Since "Afghanistan constitutes a state that sided with the aggressor,"
and refused US demands to turn over suspects, "the United States and
its allies, according to the principle of magnitude of interference,
could justifiably and morally resort to force against the Taliban
government."[15]
On the assumption of universality, it follows that Haiti and
Nicaragua can "justifiably and morally resort to" far greater force
against the US government. The conclusion extends far beyond these two
cases, including much more serious ones and even such minor escapades
of Western state terror as Clinton's bombing of the al-Shifa
pharmaceutical plant in Sudan in 1998, leading to "several tens of
thousands" of deaths according to the German Ambassador and other
reputable sources, whose conclusions are consistent with the immediate
assessments of knowledgeable observers.[16] The principle of
proportionality therefore entails that Sudan had every right to carry
out massive terror in retaliation, a conclusion that is strengthened if
we go on to adopt the view that this act of "the empire" had "appalling
consequences for the economy and society" of Sudan so that the atrocity
was much worse than the crimes of 9-11, which were appalling enough,
but did not have such consequences.[17]
Most commentary on the Sudan bombing keeps to the question of whether
the plant was believed to produce chemical weapons; true or false, that
has no bearing on "the magnitude with which the aggression interfered
with key values in the society attacked," such as survival. Others
point out that the killings were unintended, as are many of the
atrocities we rightly denounce. In this case, we can hardly doubt that
the likely human consequences were understood by US planners. The acts
can be excused, then, only on the Hegelian assumption that Africans are
"mere things," whose lives have "no value," an attitude that accords
with practice in ways that are not overlooked among the victims, who
may draw their own conclusions about the "moral orthodoxy of the West."
One participant in the Yale volume (Charles Hill) recognized that 11
September opened the _second_ "war on terror." The first was declared
by the Reagan administration as it came to office 20 years earlier,
with the rhetorical accompaniment already illustrated; and "we won,"
Hill reports triumphantly, though the terrorist monster was only
wounded, not slain.[18] The first "age of terror" proved to be a major
issue in international affairs through the decade, particularly in
Central America, but also in the Middle East, where terrorism was
selected by editors as the lead story of the year in 1985 and ranked
high in other years.
We can learn a good deal about the current war on terror by inquiring
into the first phase, and how it is now portrayed. One leading academic
specialist describes the 1980s as the decade of "state terrorism," of
"persistent state involvement, or `sponsorship,' of terrorism,
especially by Libya and Iran." The US merely responded, by adopting "a
`proactive' stance toward terrorism." Others recommend the methods by
which "we won": the operations for which the US was condemned by the
World Court and Security Council (absent the veto) are a model for
"Nicaragua-like support for the Taliban's adversaries (especially the
Northern Alliance)." A prominent historian of the subject finds deep
roots for the terrorism of Osama Bin Laden: in South Vietnam, where
"the effectiveness of Vietcong terror against the American Goliath
armed with modern technology kindled hopes that the Western heartland
was vulnerable too."[19]
Keeping to convention, these analyses portray the US as a benign
victim, defending itself from the terror of others: the Vietnamese (in
South Vietnam), the Nicaraguans (in Nicaragua), Libyans and Iranians
(if they had ever suffered a slight at US hands, it passes unnoticed),
and other anti-American forces worldwide.
Not everyone sees the world quite that way. The most obvious place to
look is Latin America, which has had considerable experience with
international terrorism. The crimes of 9-11 were harshly condemned, but
commonly with recollection of their own experiences. One might describe
the 9-11 atrocities as "Armageddon," the research journal of the Jesuit
university in Managua observed, but Nicaragua has "lived its own
Armageddon in excruciating slow motion" under US assault "and is now
submerged in its dismal aftermath," and others fared far worse under
the vast plague of state terror that swept through the continent from
the early 1960s, much of it traceable to Washington. A Panamanian
journalist joined in the general condemnation of the 9-11 crimes, but
recalled the death of perhaps thousands of poor people (Western crimes,
therefore unexamined) when the President's father bombed the barrio
Chorillo in December 1989 in Operation Just Cause, undertaken to kidnap
a disobedient thug who was sentenced to life imprisonment in Florida
for crimes mostly committed while he was on the CIA payroll. Uruguayan
writer Eduardo Galeano observed that the US claims to oppose terrorism,
but actually supports it worldwide, including "in Indonesia, in
Cambodia, in Iran, in South Africa,...and in the Latin American
countries that lived through the dirty war of the Condor Plan,"
instituted by South American military dictators who conducted a reign
of terror with US backing.[20]
The observations carry over to the second focus of the first
"war on terror": West Asia. The worst single
atrocity was the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which
left some 20,000 people dead and much of
the country in ruins, including Beirut. Like the murderous and
destructive Rabin-Peres invasions of 1993
and 1996, the 1982 attack had little pretense of self-defense.
Chief of Staff Rafael ("Raful") Eitan merely
articulated common understanding when he announced that the
goal was to "destroy the PLO as a
candidate for negotiations with us about the Land of
Israel,"[21] a textbook illustration of terror as
officially defined. The goal "was to install a friendly regime
and destroy Mr. Arafat's Palestinian Liberation
Organization," Middle East correspondent James Bennet writes:
"That, the theory went, would help
persuade Palestinians to accept Israeli rule in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip."[22] This may be the first
recognition in the mainstream of facts widely reported in
Israel at once, previously accessible only in
dissident literature in the US.
These operations were carried out with the crucial military and
diplomatic support of the Reagan and
Clinton administrations, and therefore constitute international
terrorism. The US was also directly involved
in other acts of terror in the region in the 1980s, including
the most extreme terrorist atrocities of the peak
year of 1985: the CIA car-bombing in Beirut that killed 80
people and wounded 250; Shimon Peres's
bombing of Tunis that killed 75 people, expedited by the US and
praised by Secretary of State Shultz,
unanimously condemned by the UN Security Council as an "act of
armed aggression" (US abstaining);
and Peres's "Iron Fist" operations directed against "terrorist
villagers" in Lebanon, reaching new depths of
"calculated brutality and arbitrary murder," in the words of a
Western diplomat familiar with the area, amply
supported by direct coverage.[23] Again, all international
terrorism, if not the more severe war crime of
aggression.
In journalism and scholarship on terrorism, 1985 is recognized
to be the peak year of Middle East
terrorism, but not because of these events: rather, because of
two terrorist atrocities in which a single
person was murdered, in each case an American.[24] But the
victims do not so easily forget.
This very recent history takes on added significance because
leading figures in the re-declared "war on
terror" played a prominent part in its precursor. The
diplomatic component of the current phase is led by
John Negroponte, who was Reagan's Ambassador to Honduras, the
base for the terrorist atrocities for
which his government was condemned by the World Court and for
US-backed state terror elsewhere in
Central America, activities that "made the Reagan years the
worse decade for Central America since the
Spanish conquest," mostly on Negroponte's watch.[25] The
military component of the new phase is led
by Donald Rumsfeld, Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East
during the years of the worst terrorist
atrocities there, initiated or supported by his government.
No less instructive is the fact that such atrocities did not
abate in subsequent years. Specifically,
Washington's contribution to "enhancing terror" in the Israel-
Arab confrontation continues. The term is
President Bush's, intended, according to convention, to apply
to the terrorism of others. Departing from
convention, we find, again, some rather significant examples.
One simple way to enhance terror is to
participate in it, for example, by sending helicopters to be
used to attack civilian complexes and carry out
assassinations, as the US regularly does in full awareness of
the consequences. Another is to bar the
dispatch of international monitors to reduce violence. The US
has insisted on this course, once again
vetoing a UN Security Council resolution to this effect on 14
December 2001. Describing Arafat's fall from
grace to a position barely above Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein,
the press reports that President Bush
was "greatly angered [by] a last-minute hardening of a
Palestinian position...for international monitors in
Palestinian areas under a UN Security Council resolution"; that
is, by Arafat's joining the rest of the world
in calling for means to reduce terror.[26]
Ten days before the veto of monitors, the US boycotted -- thus
undermined -- an international conference
in Geneva that reaffirmed the applicability of the Fourth
Geneva Convention to the occupied terrorities, so
that most US-Israeli actions there are war crimes -- and when
"grave breaches," as many are, serious war
crimes. These include US-funded Israeli settlements and the
practice of "wilful killing, torture, unlawful
deportation, wilful depriving of the rights of fair and regular
trial, extensive destruction and appropriation
of property...carried out unlawfully and wantonly."[27]
The Convention, instituted to criminalize formally the crimes
of the Nazis in occupied Europe, is a core
principle of international humanitarian law. Its applicability
to the Israeli-occupied territories has repeatedly
been affirmed, among other occasions, by UN Ambassador George
Bush (September 1971) and by
Security Council resolutions: 465 (1980), adopted unanimously,
which condemned US-backed Israeli
practices as "flagrant violations" of the Convention; 1322
(Oct. 2000), 14-0, US abstaining, which called
on Israel "to abide scrupulously by its responsibilities under
the Fourth Geneva Convention," which it was
again violating flagrantly at that moment. As High Contracting
Parties, the US and the European powers
are obligated by solemn treaty to apprehend and prosecute those
responsible for such crimes, including
their own leadership when they are parties to them. By
continuing to reject that duty, they are enhancing
terror directly and significantly.
Inquiry into the US-Israel-Arab conflicts would carry us too
far afield. Let's turn further north, to another
region where "state terror" is being practiced on a massive
scale; I borrow the term from the Turkish State
Minister for Human Rights, referring to the vast atrocities of
1994; and sociologist Ismail Besikci, returned
to prison after publishing his book _State Terror in the Near
East_, having already served 15 years for
recording Turkish repression of Kurds.[28] I had a chance to
see some of the consequences first-hand
when visiting the unofficial Kurdish capital of Diyarbakir
several months after 9-11. As elsewhere, the
crimes of September 11 were harshly condemned, but not without
memory of the savage assault the
population had suffered at the hands of those who appoint
themselves to "rid the world of evildoers," and
their local agents. By 1994, the Turkish State Minister and
others estimated that 2 million had been driven
out of the devastated countryside, many more later, often with
barbaric torture and terror described in
excruciating detail in international human rights reports, but
kept from the eyes of those paying the bills.
Tens of thousands were killed. The remnants -- whose courage is
indescribable -- live in a dungeon where
radio stations are closed and journalists imprisoned for
playing Kurdish music, students are arrested and
tortured for submitting requests to take elective courses in
their own language, there can be severe
penalties if children are found wearing Kurdish national colors
by the omnipresent security forces, the
respected lawyer who heads the human rights organization was
indicted shortly after I was there for using
the Kurdish rather than the virtually identical Turkish
spelling for the New Year's celebration; and on, and
on.
These acts fall under the category of state-sponsored
international terrorism. The US provided 80% of the
arms, peaking in 1997, when arms transfers exceeded the entire
Cold War period combined before the
"counter-terror" campaign began in 1984. Turkey became the
leading recipient of US arms worldwide, a
position it retained until 1999 when the torch was passed to
Colombia, the leading practitioner of state
terror in the Western hemisphere.[29]
State terror is also "enhanced" by silence and evasion. The
achievement was particularly notable against
the background of an unprecedented chorus of self-
congratulation as US foreign policy entered a "noble
phase" with a "saintly glow," under the guidance of leaders who
for the first time in history were dedicated
to "principles and values" rather than narrow interests.[30]
The proof of the new saintliness was their
unwillingness to tolerate crimes near the borders of NATO --
only within its borders, where even worse
crimes, not in reaction to NATO bombs, were not only tolerable
but required enthusiastic participation,
without comment.
US-sponsored Turkish state terror does not pass entirely
unnoticed. The State Department's annual
report on Washington's "efforts to combat terrorism" singled
out Turkey for its "positive experiences" in
combating terror, along with Algeria and Spain, worthy
colleagues. This was reported without comment in
a front-page story in the _New York Times_ by its specialist on
terrorism. In a leading journal of
international affairs, Ambassador Robert Pearson reports that
the US "could have no better friend and
ally than Turkey" in its efforts "to eliminate terrorism"
worldwide, thanks to the "capabilities of its armed
forces" demonstrated in its "anti-terror campaign" in the
Kurdish southeast. It thus "came as no surprise"
that Turkey eagerly joined the "war on terror" declared by
George Bush, expressing its thanks to the US
for being the only country willing to lend the needed support
for the atrocities of the Clinton years -- still
continuing, though on a lesser scale now that "we won." As a
reward for its achievements, the US is now
funding Turkey to provide the ground forces for fighting "the
war on terror" in Kabul, though not
beyond.[31]
Atrocious state-sponsored international terrorism is thus not
overlooked: it is lauded. That also "comes as
no surprise." After all, in 1995 the Clinton administration
welcomed Indonesia's General Suharto, one of
the worst killers and torturers of the late 20th century, as
"our kind of guy." When he came to power 30
years earlier, the "staggering mass slaughter" of hundreds of
thousands of people, mostly landless
peasants, was reported fairly accurately and acclaimed with
unconstrained euphoria. When Nicaraguans
finally succumbed to US terror and voted the right way, the US
was "United in Joy" at this "Victory for US
Fair Play," headlines proclaimed. It is easy enough to multiply
examples. The current episode breaks no
new ground in the record of international terrorism and the
response it elicits among the perpetrators.
Let's return to the question of the proper response to acts of
terror, specifically 9-11.
It is commonly alleged that the US-UK reaction was undertaken
with wide international support. That is
tenable, however, only if one keeps to elite opinion. An
international Gallup poll found only minority
support for military attack rather than diplomatic means.[32]
In Europe, figures ranged from 8% in Greece
to 29% in France. In Latin America, support was even lower:
from 2% in Mexico to 16% in Panama.
Support for strikes that included civilian targets was very
slight. Even in the two countries polled that
strongly supported the use of military force, India and Israel
(where the reasons were parochial),
considerable majorities opposed such attacks. There was, then,
overwhelming opposition to the actual
policies, which turned major urban concentrations into "ghost
towns" from the first moment, the press
reported.
Omitted from the poll, as from most commentary, was the
anticipated effect of US policy on Afghans,
millions of whom were on the brink of starvation even before 9-
11. Unasked, for example, is whether a
proper response to 9-11 was to demand that Pakistan eliminate
"truck convoys that provide much of the
food and other supplies to Afghanistan's civilian population,"
and to cause the withdrawal of aid workers
and a severe reduction in food supplies that left "millions of
Afghans...at grave risk of starvation," eliciting
sharp protests from aid organizations and warnings of severe
humanitarian crisis, judgments reiterated at
the war's end.[33]
It is, of course, the assumptions of planning that are relevant
to evaluating the actions taken; that too
should be transparent. The actual outcome, a separate matter,
is unlikely to be known, even roughly;
crimes of others are carefully investigated, but not one's own.
Some indication is perhaps suggested by
the occasional reports on numbers needing food aid: 5 million
before 9-11, 7.5 million at the end of
September under the threat of bombing, 9 million six months
later, not because of lack of food, which was
readily available throughout, but because of distribution
problems as the country reverted to
warlordism.[34]
There are no reliable studies of Afghan opinion, but
information is not entirely lacking. At the outset,
President Bush warned Afghans that they would be bombed until
they handed over people the US
suspected of terrorism. Three weeks later, war aims shifted to
overthrow of the regime: the bombing would
continue, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce announced, "until the
people of the country themselves recognize
that this is going to go on until they get the leadership
changed."[35] Note that the question whether
overthrow of the miserable Taliban regime justifies the bombing
does not arise, because that did not
become a war aim until well after the fact. We can, however,
ask about the opinions of Afghans within
reach of Western observers about these choices -- which, in
both cases, clearly fall within the official
definition of international terrorism.
As war aims shifted to regime replacement in late October, 1000
Afghan leaders gathered in Peshawar,
some exiles, some coming from within Afghanistan, all committed
to overthrowing the Taliban regime. It
was "a rare display of unity among tribal elders, Islamic
scholars, fractious politicians, and former guerrilla
commanders," the press reported. They unanimously "urged the US
to stop the air raids," appealed to
the international media to call for an end to the "bombing of
innocent people," and "demanded an end to
the US bombing of Afghanistan." They urged that other means be
adopted to overthrow the hated
Taliban regime, a goal they believed could be achieved without
death and destruction.[36]
A similar message was conveyed by Afghan opposition leader
Abdul Haq, who was highly regarded in
Washington. Just before he entered Afghanistan, apparently
without US support, and was then captured
and killed, he condemned the bombing and criticized the US for
refusing to support efforts of his and of
others "to create a revolt within the Taliban." The bombing was
"a big setback for these efforts," he said.
He reported contacts with second-level Taliban commanders and
ex-Mujahiddin tribal elders, and
discussed how such efforts could proceed, calling on the US to
assist them with funding and other
support instead of undermining them with bombs. But the US, he
said, "is trying to show its muscle, score
a victory and scare everyone in the world. They don't care
about the suffering of the Afghans or how
many people we will lose."[37]
The plight of Afghan women elicited some belated concern after
9-11. After the war, there was even
some recognition of the courageous women who have been in the
forefront of the struggle to defend
women's rights for 25 years, RAWA (Revolutionary Association of
the Women of Afghanistan). A week
after the bombing began, RAWA issued a public statement (Oct.
11) that would have been front-page
news wherever concern for Afghan women was real, not a matter
of mere expediency. They condemned
the resort to "the monster of a vast war and destruction" as
the US "launched a vast aggression on our
country," that will cause great harm to innocent Afghans. They
called instead for "the eradication of the
plague of Taliban and Al Qieda" by "an overall uprising" of the
Afghan people themselves, which alone
"can prevent the repetition and recurrence of the catastrophe
that has befallen our country...."
All of this was ignored. It is, perhaps, less than obvious that
those with the guns are entitled to ignore the
judgment of Afghans who have been struggling for freedom and
women's rights for many years, and to
dismiss with apparent contempt their desire to overthrow the
fragile and hated Taliban regime from within
without the inevitable crimes of war.
In brief, review of global opinion, including what is known
about Afghans, lends little support to the
consensus among Western intellectuals on the justice of their
cause.
One elite reaction, however, is certainly correct: it is
necessary to inquire into the reasons for the crimes of
9-11. That much is beyond question, at least among those who
hope to reduce the likelihood of further
terrorist atrocities.
A narrow question is the motives of the perpetrators. On this
matter, there is little disagreement. Serious
analysts are in accord that after the US established permanent
bases in Saudi Arabia, "Bin Laden
became preoccupied with the need to expel U.S. forces from the
sacred soil of Arabia" and to rid the
Muslim world of the "liars and hypocrites" who do not accept
his extremist version of Islam.[38]
There is also wide, and justified, agreement that "Unless the
social, political, and economic conditions
that spawned Al Qaeda and other associated groups are
addressed, the United States and its allies in
Western Europe and elsewhere will continue to be targeted by
Islamist terrorists."[39] These conditions
are doubtless complex, but some factors have long been
recognized. In 1958, a crucial year in postwar
history, President Eisenhower advised his staff that in the
Arab world, "the problem is that we have a
campaign of hatred against us, not by the governments but by
the people," who are "on Nasser's side,"
supporting independent secular nationalism. The reasons for the
"campaign of hatred" had been outlined
by the National Security Council a few months earlier: "In the
eyes of the majority of Arabs the United
States appears to be opposed to the realization of the goals of
Arab nationalism. They believe that the
United States is seeking to protect its interest in Near East
oil by supporting the _status quo_ and
opposing political or economic progress...." Furthermore, the
perception is accurate: "our economic and
cultural interests in the area have led not unnaturally to
close U.S. relations with elements in the Arab
world whose primary interest lies in the maintenance of
relations with the West and the status quo in their
countries...."[40]
The perceptions persist. Immediately after 9-11, the _Wall
Street Journal_, later others, began to
investigate opinions of "moneyed Muslims": bankers,
professionals, managers of multinationals, and so
on. They strongly support US policies in general, but are
bitter about the US role in the region: about US
support for corrupt and repressive regimes that undermine
democracy and development, and about
specific policies, particularly regarding Palestine and Iraq.
Though they are not surveyed, attitudes in the
slums and villages are probably similar, but harsher; unlike
the "moneyed Muslims," the mass of the
population have never agreed that the wealth of the region
should be drained to the West and local
collaborators, rather than serving domestic needs. The "moneyed
Muslims" recognize, ruefully, that Bin
Laden's angry rhetoric has considerable resonance, in their own
circles as well, even though they hate
and fear him, if only because they are among his primary
targets.[41]
It is doubtless more comforting to believe that the answer to
George Bush's plaintive query, "Why do they
hate us?," lies in their resentment of our freedom and love of
democracy, or their cultural failings tracing
back many centuries, or their inability to take part in the
form of "globalization" in which they happily
participate. Comforting, perhaps, but not wise.
Though shocking, the atrocities of 9-11 could not have been
entirely unexpected. Related organizations
planned very serious terrorist acts through the 1990s, and in
1993 came perilously close to blowing up
the World Trade Center, with much more ambitious plans. Their
thinking was well understood, certainly by
the US intelligence agencies that had helped to recruit, train,
and arm them from 1980 and continued to
work with them even as they were attacking the US. The Dutch
government inquiry into the Srebrenica
massacre revealed that while they were attempting to blow up
the World Trade Center, radical Islamists
from the CIA-formed networks were being flown by the US from
Afghanistan to Bosnia, along with
Iranian-backed Hizbollah fighters and a huge flow of arms,
through Croatia, which took a substantial cut.
They were being brought to support the US side in the Balkan
wars, while Israel (along with Ukraine and
Greece) was arming the Serbs (possibly with US-supplied arms),
which explains why "unexploded mortar
bombs landing in Sarajevo sometimes had Hebrew markings,"
British political scientist Richard Aldrich
observes, reviewing the Dutch government report.[42]
More generally, the atrocities of 9-11 serve as a dramatic
reminder of what has long been understood:
with contemporary technology, the rich and powerful no longer
are assured the near monopoly of
violence that has largely prevailed throughout history. Though
terrorism is rightly feared everywhere, and
is indeed an intolerable "return to barbarism," it is not
surprising that perceptions about its nature differ
rather sharply in the light of sharply differing experiences,
facts that will be ignored at their peril by those
whom history has accustomed to immunity while they perpetrate
terrible crimes.
---------------
Footnotes:
[1] Bush cited by Rich Heffern, _National Catholic Reporter_,
Jan. 11, 2002. Reagan, _New York Times_,
Oct. 18, 1985. Shultz, U.S. Dept. of State, _Current Policy_
No. 589, June 24, 1984; No. 629, Oct. 25,
1984.
[2] _US Army Operational Concept for Terrorism Counteraction_,
TRADOC Pamphlet No. 525-37, 1984.
[3] Res. 42/159, 7 Dec. 1987; Honduras abstaining.
[4] Joseba Zulaika and William Douglass, _Terror and Taboo_
(New York, London: Routledge, 1996), 12.
1980-88 record, see "Inter-Agency Task Force, Africa Recovery
Program/Economic Commission, _South
African Destabilization: the Economic Cost of Frontline
Resistance to Apartheid_, NY, UN, 1989, 13, cited
by Merle Bowen, _Fletcher Forum_, Winter 1991. On expansion of
US trade with South Africa after
Congress authorized sanctions in 1985 (overriding Reagan's
veto), see Gay McDougall, Richard Knight,
in Robert Edgar, ed., _Sanctioning Apartheid_ (Trenton, NJ:
Africa World Press, 1990).
[5] For review of unilateral US rejectionism for 30 years, see
my introduction to Roane Carey, ed., _The
New Intifada_ (London, New York: Verso, 2000); see sources
cited for more detail.
[6] It is, however, never used. On the reasons, see Alexander
George, ed., _Western State Terrorism_
(Cambridge: Polity-Blackwell, 1991).
[7] Strobe Talbott and Nayan Chanda, introduction, _The Age of
Terror: America and the World after
September 11_ (New York: Basic Books and the Yale U. Center for
the Study of Globalization, 2001).
[8] Abram Sofaer, "The United States and the World Court," U.S.
Dept. of State, _Current Policy_, No.
769 (Dec. 1985). The vetoed Security Council resolution called
for compliance with the ICJ orders, and,
mentioning no one, called on all states "to refrain from
carrying out, supporting or promoting political,
economic or military actions of any kind against any state of
the region." Elaine Sciolino, _NYT_, July 31,
1986.
[9] Shultz, "Moral Principles and Strategic Interests," April
14, 1986, U.S. Dept. of State, _Current Policy_
No. 820. Shultz Congressional testimony, see Jack Spence in
Thomas Walker, ed., _Reagan versus the
Sandinistas_ (Boulder, London: Westview, 1987). For review of
the undermining of diplomacy and
escalation of international state terror, see my _Culture of
Terrorism_ (Boston: South End, 1988);
_Necessary Illusions_ (Boston: South End, 1989); _Deterring
Democracy_ (London, New York: Verso,
1991). On the aftermath, see Thomas Walker and Ariel Armony,
eds., _Repression, Resistance, and
Democratic Transition in Central America_ (Wilmington:
Scholarly Resources, 2000). On reparations, see
Howard Meyer, _The World Court in Action_ (Lanham, MD, Oxford:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), chap. 14.
[10] Edward Price, "The Strategy and Tactics of Revolutionary
Terrorism," _Comparative Studies in
Society and History 19:1_; cited by Chalmers Johnson, "American
Militarism and Blowback," _New
Political Science_ 24.1, 2002.
[11] SOA, 1999, cited by Adam Isacson and Joy Olson, _Just the
Facts_ (Washington: Latin America
Working Group and Center for International Policy, 1999), ix.
[12] Greenwood, "International law and the `war against
terrorism'," _International Affairs_ 78.2 (2002),
appealing to par. 195 of _Nicaragua v. USA_, which the Court
did not use to justify its condemnation of
US terrorism, but surely is more appropriate to that than to
the case that concerns Greenwood. Franck,
"Terrorism and the Right of Self-Defense," _American J. of
International Law_ 95.4 (Oct. 2001).
[13] Howard, _Foreign Affairs_, Jan/Feb 2002; talk of Oct. 30,
2001 (Tania Branigan, _Guardian_, Oct.
31). Ignatieff, _Index on Censorship_ 2, 2002.
[14] _NYT_, Oct. 1, 2001.
[15] Frank Schuller and Thomas Grant, _Current History_, April
2002.
[16] Werner Daum, "Universalism and the West," _Harvard
International Review_, Summer 2001. On
other assessments, and the warnings of Human Rights Watch, see
my _9-11_ (New York: Seven Stories,
2001), 45ff.
[17] Christopher Hitchens, _Nation_, June 10, 2002.
[18] Talbott and Chanda, _op. cit._
[19] Martha Crenshaw, Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, David
Rapoport, _Current History_, _America at
War_, Dec. 2001. On interpretations of the first "war on
terror" at the time, see George, _op. cit._
[20] _Envˇo_ (UCA Managua), Oct.; Ricardo Stevens (Panama),
NACLA _Report on the Americas_,
Nov/Dec; Galeano, _La Jornada_ (Mexico City), cited by Alain
Frachon, _Le Monde_, Nov. 24, 2001.
[21] For many sources, see my _Fateful Triangle_ (Boston: South
End, 1983; updated 1999 edition, on
South Lebanon in the 1990s); _Pirates and Emperors_ (New York:
Claremont, 1986; Pluto, London,
forthcoming); _World Orders Old and New_.
[22] Bennet, _NYT_, Jan. 24, 2002
[23] For details, see my essay in George, _op. cit_.
[24] Crenshaw, _op. cit._
[25] Chalmers Johnson, _Nation_, Oct. 15, 2001.
[26] Ian Williams, _Middle East International_, 21 Dec. 2001,
11 Jan. 2002. John Donnelly, _Boston
Globe_, April 25, 2002; the specific reference is to an earlier
US veto.
[27] Conference of High Contracting Parties, _Report on Israeli
Settlement_, Jan.-Feb. 2002 (Foundation
for Middle East Peace, Washington). On these matters see
Francis Boyle, "Law and Disorder in the
Middle East," _The Link_ 35.1, Jan.-March 2002.
[28] For some details, see my _New Military Humanism_ (Monroe
ME: Common Courage, 1999), chap. 3,
and sources cited. On evasion of the facts in the State
Department Human Rights Report, see Lawyers
Committee for Human Rights, _Middle East and North Africa_ (New
York, 1995), 255.
[29] Tamar Gabelnick, William Hartung, and Jennifer Washburn,
_Arming Repression: U.S. Arms Sales to
Turkey During the Clinton Administration_ (New York and
Washington: World Policy Institute and
Federation of Atomic Scientists, October 1999). I exclude
Israel-Egypt, a separate category. On state
terror in Colombia, now largely farmed out to paramilitaries in
standard fashion, see particularly Human
Rights Watch, _The Sixth Division_ (Sept. 2001) and Colombia
Human Rights Certification III, Feb. 2002.
Also, among others, Me'dicos Sin Fronteras, _Desterrados_
(Bogota' 2001).
[30] For a sample, see _New Military Humanism_ and my _A New
Generation Draws the Line_ (London,
NY: Verso, 2000).
[31] Judith Miller, _NYT_, April 30, 2000. Pearson, _Fletcher
Forum_ 26:1, Winter/Spring 2002.
[32] http://www.gallup.international.com/terrorismpoll-
figures.htm; data from Sept. 14-17, 2001.
[33] John Burns, _NYT_, Sept. 16, 2001; Samina Amin,
_International Security_ 26.3, Winter 2001-02).
For some earlier warnings, see _9-11_. On the postwar
evaluation of international agencies, see Imre
Karacs, _Independent on Sunday_ (London), Dec. 9, 2001,
reporting their warnings that over a million
people are "beyond their reach and face death from starvation
and disease." For some press reports, see
my "Peering into the Abyss of the Future," Lakdawala Memorial
Lecture, Institute of Social Sciences, New
Delhi, Nov. 2001, updated Feb. 2002.
[34] _Ibid._, for early estimates. Barbara Crossette, _NYT_,
March 26, and Ahmed Rashid, _WSJ_, June
6, 2002, reporting the assessment of the UN World Food Program
and the failure of donors to provide
pledged funds. The WFP reports that "wheat stocks are
exhausted, and there is no funding" to replenish
them (Rashid). The UN had warned of the threat of mass
starvation at once because the bombing
disrupted planting that provides 80% of the country's grain
supplies (AFP, Sept. 28; Edith Lederer, AP,
Oct. 18, 2001). Also Andrew Revkin, _NYT_, Dec. 16, 2001,
citing U.S. Department of Agriculture, with no
mention of bombing.
[35] Patrick Tyler and Elisabeth Bumiller, _NYT_, Oct. 12,
quoting Bush; Michael Gordon, _NYT_, Oct.
28, 2001, quoting Boyce; both p. 1.
[36] Barry Bearak, _NYT_, Oct. 25; John Thornhill and Farhan
Bokhari, _Financial Times_, Oct. 25, Oct.
26; John Burns, _NYT_, Oct. 26; Indira Laskhmanan, _BG_, Oct.
25, 26, 2001.
[37] Interview, Anatol Lieven, _Guardian_, Nov. 2, 2001.
[38] Ann Lesch, _Middle East Policy_ IX.2, June 2002. Also
Michael Doran, _Foreign Affairs_, Jan.-Feb.
2002; and many others, including several contributors to
_Current History_, Dec. 2001.
[39] Sumit Ganguly, _Ibid_.
[40] For sources and background discussion, see my _World
Orders Old and New_, 79, 201f.
[41] Peter Waldman et al., _WSJ_, Sept. 14, 2001; also Waldman
and Hugh Pope, _WSJ_, Sept. 21,
2001.
[42] Aldrich, _Guardian_, 22 April, 2002.