Conghaileach
16th July 2002, 21:38
The Observer Comment
The great charade
As the West prepares for an assault on Iraq, John
Pilger argues that 'war on terror' is a smokescreen created by the
ultimate terrorist ... America itself War on Iraq? Discuss it here
John Pilger
Sunday July 14, 2002 The Observer
It is 10 months since 11 September, and still the great charade plays on. Having
appropriated our shocked response to that momentous day, the rulers of
the world have since ground our language into a paean of cliches and
lies about the 'war on terrorism' - when the most enduring menace, and
source of terror, is them.
The fanatics who attacked America came from Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
No bombs fell on these American protectorates. Instead, more than
5,000 civilians have been bombed to death in stricken Afghanistan, the
latest a wedding party of 40 people, mostly women and children. Not a
single al-Qaeda leader of importance has been caught. Following this
'stunning victory', hundreds of prisoners were shipped to an American
concentration camp in Cuba, where they have been held against all the
conventions of war and international law. No evidence of their alleged
crimes has been produced, and the FBI confirms only one is a genuine
suspect. In the United States, more than 1,000 people of Muslim
background have 'disappeared'; none has been charged. Under the
draconian Patriot Act, the FBI's new powers include the authority to
go into libraries and ask who is reading what.
Meanwhile, the Blair government has made fools of the British Army by
insisting they pursue warring tribesmen: exactly what squaddies in
putties and pith helmets did over a century ago when Lord Curzon,
Viceroy of India, described Afghanistan as one of the 'pieces on a
chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the
domination of the world'.
There is no war on terrorism; it is the great game speeded up. The
difference is the rampant nature of the superpower, ensuring infinite
dangers for us all. Having swept the Palestinians into the arms of
the supreme terrorist Ariel Sharon, the Christian Right
fundamentalists running the plutocracy in Washington, now replenish
their arsenal in preparation for an attack on the 22 million suffering
people of Iraq. Should anyone need reminding, Iraq is a nation held
hostage to an American-led embargo every bit as barbaric as the
dictatorship over which Iraqis have no control. Contrary to propaganda
orchestrated from Washington and London, the coming attack has nothing
to do with Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction', if these
exist at all. The reason is that America wants a more compliant thug
to run the world's second greatest source of oil.
The drum-beaters rarely mention this truth, and the people of Iraq.
Everyone is Saddam Hussein, the demon of demons. Four years ago, the
Pentagon warned President Clinton that an all-out attack on Iraq might
kill 'at least' 10,000 civilians: that, too, is unmentionable. In a
sustained propaganda campaign to justify this outrage, journalists on
both sides of the Atlantic have been used as channels, 'conduits', for
a stream of rumours and lies. These have ranged from false claims
about an Iraqi connection with the anthrax attacks in America to a
discredited link between the leader of the 11 September hijacks and
Iraqi intelligence. When the attack comes, these consorting
journalists will share responsibility for the crime.
It was Tony Blair who served notice that imperialism's return journey
to respectability was under way. Hark, the Christian gentleman-
bomber's vision of a better world for 'the starving, the wretched, the
dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the
deserts of northern Africa to the slums of Gaza to the mountain ranges
of Afghanistan.' Hark, his 'abiding' concern for the 'human rights of
the suffering women of Afghanistan' as he colluded with Bush who, as
the New York Times reported, 'demanded the elimination of truck
convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to
Afghanistan's civilian population'. Hark his compassion for the
'dispossessed' in the 'slums of Gaza', where Israeli gunships,
manufactured with vital British parts, fire their missiles into
crowded civilian areas.
As Frank Furedi reminds us in The New Ideology of Imperialism , it is
not long ago 'that the moral claims of imperialism were seldom
questioned in the West. Imperialism and the global expansion of the
western powers were represented in unambiguously positive terms as a
major contributor to human civilisation.' The quest went wrong when it
was clear that fascism was imperialism, too, and the word vanished
from academic discourse. In the best Stalinist tradition, imperialism
no longer existed. Today, the preferred euphemism is 'civilisation';
or if an adjective is required, 'cultural'. From Italy's Prime
Minister Silvio Berlusconi, an ally of crypto-fascists, to impeccably
liberal commentators, the new imperialists share a concept whose true
meaning relies on a xenophobic or racist comparison with those who are
deemed uncivilised, culturally inferior and might challenge the
'values' of the West. Watch the 'debates' on Newsnight. The question
is how best 'we' can deal with the problem of 'them'.
For much of the western media, especially those commentators in
thrall to and neutered by the supercult of America, the most salient
truths remain taboos. Professor Richard Falk, of Cornell university,
put it succinctly some years ago. Western foreign policy, he wrote, is
propagated in the media 'through a self righteous, one-way moral/legal
screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence
portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted
violence'. Perhaps the most important taboo is the longevity of the
United States as both a terrorist state and a haven for terrorists.
That the US is the only state on record to have been condemned by the
World Court for international terrorism (in Nicaragua) and has vetoed
a UN Security Council resolution calling on governments to observe
international law, is unmentionable. 'In the war against terrorism,'
said Bush from his bunker following 11 September, 'we're going to hunt
down these evil-doers wherever they are, no matter how long it takes.'
Strictly speaking, it should not take long, as more terrorists are
given training and sanctuary in the United States than anywhere on
earth. They include mass murderers, torturers, former and future
tyrants and assorted international criminals. This is virtually unknown
to the American public, thanks to the freest media on earth.
There is no terrorist sanctuary to compare with Florida, currently
governed by the President's brother, Jeb Bush. In his book Rogue State
, former senior State Department official Bill Blum describes a
typical Florida trial of three anti-Castro terrorists, who hijacked a
plane to Miami at knifepoint. 'Even though the kidnapped pilot was
brought back from Cuba to testify against the men,' he wrote, 'the
defence simply told the jurors the man was lying, and the jury
deliberated for less than an hour before acquitting the defendants.'
General Jose Guillermo Garcia has lived comfortably in Florida since
the 1990s. He was head of El Salvador's military during the 1980s when
death squads with ties to the army murdered thousands of people.
General Prosper Avril, the Haitian dictator, liked to display the
bloodied victims of his torture on television. When he was overthrown,
he was flown to Florida by the US Government. Thiounn Prasith, Pol
Pot's henchman and apologist at the United Nations, lives in New York.
General Mansour Moharari, who ran the Shah of Iran's notorious
prisons, is wanted in Iran, but untroubled in the United States.
Al-Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan were kindergartens compared
with the world's leading university of terrorism at Fort Benning in
Georgia. Known until recently as the School of the Americas, it
trained tyrants and some 60,000 Latin American special forces,
paramilitaries and intelligence agents in the black arts of terrorism.
In 1993, the UN Truth Commission on El Salvador named the army
officers who had committed the worst atrocities of the civil war; two-
thirds of them had been trained at Fort Benning. In Chile, the
school's graduates ran Pinochet's secret police and three principal
concentration camps. In 1996, the US government was forced to release
copies of the school's training manuals, which recommended blackmail,
torture, execution and the arrest of witnesses' relatives. In recent
months, the Bush regime has torn up the Kyoto treaty, which would ease
global warming, to which the United States is the greatest
contributor. It has threatened the use of nuclear weapons in 'pre-
emptive' strikes (a threat echoed by Defence Minister Geoffrey Hoon).
It has tried to abort the birth of an international criminal court. It
has further undermined the United Nations by blocking a UN
investigation of the Israeli assault on a Palestinian refugee camp;
and it has ordered the Palestinians to replace their elected leader
with an American stooge. At summit conferences in Canada and
Indonesia, Bush's people have blocked hundreds of millions of dollars
going to the most deprived people on earth, those without clean water
and electricity.
These facts will no doubt beckon the inane slur of 'anti-Americanism'.
This is the imperial prerogative: the last refuge of those whose
contortion of intellect and morality demands a loyalty oath. As Noam
Chomsky has pointed out, the Nazis silenced argument and criticism
with 'anti German' slurs. Of course, the United States is not Germany;
it is the home of some of history's greatest civil rights movements,
such as the epic movement in the 1960s and 1970s. I was in the US
last week and glimpsed that other America, the one rarely seen among
the media and Hollywood stereotypes, and what was clear was that it
was stirring again. The other day, in an open letter to their
compatriots and the world, almost 100 of America's most distinguished
names in art, literature and education wrote this: 'Let it not be
said that people in the United States did nothing when their
government declared a war without limit and instituted stark new
measures of repression. We believe that questioning, criticism and
dissent must be valued and protected. Such rights are always contested
and must be fought for. We, too, watched with shock the horrific
events of September 11. But the mourning had barely begun when our
leaders launched a spirit of revenge. The government now openly
prepares to wage war on Iraq - a country that has no connection with
September 11.
'We say this to the world. Too many times in history people have
waited until it was too late to resist. We draw on the inspiration of
those who fought slavery and all those other great causes of freedom
that began with dissent. We call on all like-minded people around the
world to join us.' It is time we joined them.
The great charade
As the West prepares for an assault on Iraq, John
Pilger argues that 'war on terror' is a smokescreen created by the
ultimate terrorist ... America itself War on Iraq? Discuss it here
John Pilger
Sunday July 14, 2002 The Observer
It is 10 months since 11 September, and still the great charade plays on. Having
appropriated our shocked response to that momentous day, the rulers of
the world have since ground our language into a paean of cliches and
lies about the 'war on terrorism' - when the most enduring menace, and
source of terror, is them.
The fanatics who attacked America came from Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
No bombs fell on these American protectorates. Instead, more than
5,000 civilians have been bombed to death in stricken Afghanistan, the
latest a wedding party of 40 people, mostly women and children. Not a
single al-Qaeda leader of importance has been caught. Following this
'stunning victory', hundreds of prisoners were shipped to an American
concentration camp in Cuba, where they have been held against all the
conventions of war and international law. No evidence of their alleged
crimes has been produced, and the FBI confirms only one is a genuine
suspect. In the United States, more than 1,000 people of Muslim
background have 'disappeared'; none has been charged. Under the
draconian Patriot Act, the FBI's new powers include the authority to
go into libraries and ask who is reading what.
Meanwhile, the Blair government has made fools of the British Army by
insisting they pursue warring tribesmen: exactly what squaddies in
putties and pith helmets did over a century ago when Lord Curzon,
Viceroy of India, described Afghanistan as one of the 'pieces on a
chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the
domination of the world'.
There is no war on terrorism; it is the great game speeded up. The
difference is the rampant nature of the superpower, ensuring infinite
dangers for us all. Having swept the Palestinians into the arms of
the supreme terrorist Ariel Sharon, the Christian Right
fundamentalists running the plutocracy in Washington, now replenish
their arsenal in preparation for an attack on the 22 million suffering
people of Iraq. Should anyone need reminding, Iraq is a nation held
hostage to an American-led embargo every bit as barbaric as the
dictatorship over which Iraqis have no control. Contrary to propaganda
orchestrated from Washington and London, the coming attack has nothing
to do with Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction', if these
exist at all. The reason is that America wants a more compliant thug
to run the world's second greatest source of oil.
The drum-beaters rarely mention this truth, and the people of Iraq.
Everyone is Saddam Hussein, the demon of demons. Four years ago, the
Pentagon warned President Clinton that an all-out attack on Iraq might
kill 'at least' 10,000 civilians: that, too, is unmentionable. In a
sustained propaganda campaign to justify this outrage, journalists on
both sides of the Atlantic have been used as channels, 'conduits', for
a stream of rumours and lies. These have ranged from false claims
about an Iraqi connection with the anthrax attacks in America to a
discredited link between the leader of the 11 September hijacks and
Iraqi intelligence. When the attack comes, these consorting
journalists will share responsibility for the crime.
It was Tony Blair who served notice that imperialism's return journey
to respectability was under way. Hark, the Christian gentleman-
bomber's vision of a better world for 'the starving, the wretched, the
dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the
deserts of northern Africa to the slums of Gaza to the mountain ranges
of Afghanistan.' Hark, his 'abiding' concern for the 'human rights of
the suffering women of Afghanistan' as he colluded with Bush who, as
the New York Times reported, 'demanded the elimination of truck
convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to
Afghanistan's civilian population'. Hark his compassion for the
'dispossessed' in the 'slums of Gaza', where Israeli gunships,
manufactured with vital British parts, fire their missiles into
crowded civilian areas.
As Frank Furedi reminds us in The New Ideology of Imperialism , it is
not long ago 'that the moral claims of imperialism were seldom
questioned in the West. Imperialism and the global expansion of the
western powers were represented in unambiguously positive terms as a
major contributor to human civilisation.' The quest went wrong when it
was clear that fascism was imperialism, too, and the word vanished
from academic discourse. In the best Stalinist tradition, imperialism
no longer existed. Today, the preferred euphemism is 'civilisation';
or if an adjective is required, 'cultural'. From Italy's Prime
Minister Silvio Berlusconi, an ally of crypto-fascists, to impeccably
liberal commentators, the new imperialists share a concept whose true
meaning relies on a xenophobic or racist comparison with those who are
deemed uncivilised, culturally inferior and might challenge the
'values' of the West. Watch the 'debates' on Newsnight. The question
is how best 'we' can deal with the problem of 'them'.
For much of the western media, especially those commentators in
thrall to and neutered by the supercult of America, the most salient
truths remain taboos. Professor Richard Falk, of Cornell university,
put it succinctly some years ago. Western foreign policy, he wrote, is
propagated in the media 'through a self righteous, one-way moral/legal
screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence
portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted
violence'. Perhaps the most important taboo is the longevity of the
United States as both a terrorist state and a haven for terrorists.
That the US is the only state on record to have been condemned by the
World Court for international terrorism (in Nicaragua) and has vetoed
a UN Security Council resolution calling on governments to observe
international law, is unmentionable. 'In the war against terrorism,'
said Bush from his bunker following 11 September, 'we're going to hunt
down these evil-doers wherever they are, no matter how long it takes.'
Strictly speaking, it should not take long, as more terrorists are
given training and sanctuary in the United States than anywhere on
earth. They include mass murderers, torturers, former and future
tyrants and assorted international criminals. This is virtually unknown
to the American public, thanks to the freest media on earth.
There is no terrorist sanctuary to compare with Florida, currently
governed by the President's brother, Jeb Bush. In his book Rogue State
, former senior State Department official Bill Blum describes a
typical Florida trial of three anti-Castro terrorists, who hijacked a
plane to Miami at knifepoint. 'Even though the kidnapped pilot was
brought back from Cuba to testify against the men,' he wrote, 'the
defence simply told the jurors the man was lying, and the jury
deliberated for less than an hour before acquitting the defendants.'
General Jose Guillermo Garcia has lived comfortably in Florida since
the 1990s. He was head of El Salvador's military during the 1980s when
death squads with ties to the army murdered thousands of people.
General Prosper Avril, the Haitian dictator, liked to display the
bloodied victims of his torture on television. When he was overthrown,
he was flown to Florida by the US Government. Thiounn Prasith, Pol
Pot's henchman and apologist at the United Nations, lives in New York.
General Mansour Moharari, who ran the Shah of Iran's notorious
prisons, is wanted in Iran, but untroubled in the United States.
Al-Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan were kindergartens compared
with the world's leading university of terrorism at Fort Benning in
Georgia. Known until recently as the School of the Americas, it
trained tyrants and some 60,000 Latin American special forces,
paramilitaries and intelligence agents in the black arts of terrorism.
In 1993, the UN Truth Commission on El Salvador named the army
officers who had committed the worst atrocities of the civil war; two-
thirds of them had been trained at Fort Benning. In Chile, the
school's graduates ran Pinochet's secret police and three principal
concentration camps. In 1996, the US government was forced to release
copies of the school's training manuals, which recommended blackmail,
torture, execution and the arrest of witnesses' relatives. In recent
months, the Bush regime has torn up the Kyoto treaty, which would ease
global warming, to which the United States is the greatest
contributor. It has threatened the use of nuclear weapons in 'pre-
emptive' strikes (a threat echoed by Defence Minister Geoffrey Hoon).
It has tried to abort the birth of an international criminal court. It
has further undermined the United Nations by blocking a UN
investigation of the Israeli assault on a Palestinian refugee camp;
and it has ordered the Palestinians to replace their elected leader
with an American stooge. At summit conferences in Canada and
Indonesia, Bush's people have blocked hundreds of millions of dollars
going to the most deprived people on earth, those without clean water
and electricity.
These facts will no doubt beckon the inane slur of 'anti-Americanism'.
This is the imperial prerogative: the last refuge of those whose
contortion of intellect and morality demands a loyalty oath. As Noam
Chomsky has pointed out, the Nazis silenced argument and criticism
with 'anti German' slurs. Of course, the United States is not Germany;
it is the home of some of history's greatest civil rights movements,
such as the epic movement in the 1960s and 1970s. I was in the US
last week and glimpsed that other America, the one rarely seen among
the media and Hollywood stereotypes, and what was clear was that it
was stirring again. The other day, in an open letter to their
compatriots and the world, almost 100 of America's most distinguished
names in art, literature and education wrote this: 'Let it not be
said that people in the United States did nothing when their
government declared a war without limit and instituted stark new
measures of repression. We believe that questioning, criticism and
dissent must be valued and protected. Such rights are always contested
and must be fought for. We, too, watched with shock the horrific
events of September 11. But the mourning had barely begun when our
leaders launched a spirit of revenge. The government now openly
prepares to wage war on Iraq - a country that has no connection with
September 11.
'We say this to the world. Too many times in history people have
waited until it was too late to resist. We draw on the inspiration of
those who fought slavery and all those other great causes of freedom
that began with dissent. We call on all like-minded people around the
world to join us.' It is time we joined them.