-- Introduction
We are writing this on September 17, less than a week after a horrific terrorist attack against the United States. We are still dealing with our grief and trauma and we are still profoundly moved by the many acts of heroism, generosity, and solidarity that have taken place. Some may find it inappropriate to offer political analysis this early, but however discordant some may find it, the time for political analysis is before actions are taken that may make the situation far worse. Critics of war across the U.S. and around the world are working hard to communicate with people who for the moment mainly seek retribution. Below we address some of the many questions that are being asked. We hope the answers we offer, developed in consultation with many other activists, will assist people in their daily work.
Q. Who did it?
A. The identity of the 19 individuals who hijacked the four planes is known, but what is not known as we write is who provided the coordination, the planning, and the funding, and who provided the logistical support, both in the United States and elsewhere. Many indications point to the involvement of Osama bin Laden, but if his role is confirmed, this is the beginning, not the end, of the inquiry: Were any other organizations involved, and if so, which ones? Were any national governments involved, and if so, which ones? The danger here is that the U.S. government may answer these questions on the basis of political criteria rather than evidence.
Q. Who is Osama bin Laden?
A. Osama bin Laden is an exiled Saudi, who inherited a fortune estimated at $300 million, though it's not clear how much remains of it. Fanatically devoted to his intolerant version of Islam -- a version rejected by the vast majority of Muslims -- bin Laden volunteered his services to the Afghan Mujahideen, the religious warriors battling the invading Soviet Union from 1979 to 1989. The Afghan rebels were bankrolled by Saudi Arabia and the United States and trained by Pakistani intelligence, with help from the CIA. The United States provided huge amounts of arms, including Stingers -- one-person anti-aircraft missiles -- despite warnings that these could end up in the hands of terrorists. Washington thus allied itself with bin Laden and more than 25,000 other Islamic militants from around the world who came to Afghanistan to join the holy war against the Russians. As long as they were willing to fight the Soviet Union, the U.S. welcomed them, even though many were virulently anti-American, some even connected to the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat of Egypt. When Moscow finally withdrew its troops from Afghanistan, some of these Islamic militants turned their sights on their other enemies, including Egypt (where they hoped to establish an Islamic state), Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Bin Laden established an organization of these holy war veterans -- al Qaida. In February 1998, bin Laden issued a statement, endorsed by several extreme Islamic groups, declaring it the duty of all Muslims to kill U.S. citizens -- civilian or military -- and their allies everywhere.
Q. Where is Osama bin Laden?
A. After some attacks on U.S. interests in Saudi Arabia, Saudi authorities revoked bin Laden's citizenship. Bin Laden went to the Sudan and then on to Afghanistan. His precise location is unknown, since he frequently moves or goes into hiding. Afghanistan is led by the Taliban, a group of extreme Islamic fundamentalists, who emerged out of the Mujahideen. The Taliban does not have full control over the country -- there is a civil war against dissidents who control some 10-20% of the country. Afghanistan is an incredibly poor nation -- life expectancy is 46, one out of seven children die in infancy, and per capita income is about $800 per year. Huge numbers of people remain refugees. Taliban rule is dictatorial, and its social policy is unusually repressive and sexist: for example, Buddhist statues have been destroyed, Hindus have been required to wear special identification, and girls over 8 are barred from school. Human rights groups, the United Nations, and most governments have condemned the policies of the Taliban. Only Pakistan, and the two leading U.S. allies in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, recognize the Taliban government.
Q. Why did the World Trade Center terrorists do it?
A. We don't entirely know who did it, so we can't say for sure why they did it. There are, however some possibilities worth thinking about.
One explanation points to a long list of grievances felt by people in the Middle East -- U.S. backing for Israeli repression and dispossession of the Palestinians, U.S. imposition of sanctions on Iraq, leading to the deaths of huge numbers of innocents, and U.S. support for autocratic, undemocratic, and highly inegalitarian regimes. These are real grievances and U.S. policy really does cause tremendous suffering. But how do these terror attacks mitigate the suffering? Some may believe that by inflicting pain on civilians, a government may be overthrown or its policies will change in a favorable direction. This belief is by no means unique to Middle Easterners -- and has in fact been the standard belief of U.S. and other government officials for years. It was the belief behind the terror bombings of World War II by the Nazis and by the U.S. and Britain, behind the pulverizing of North Vietnam, and behind the strikes on civilian infrastructure during the Kosovo war. It is the same rationale as that offered for the ongoing economic sanctions against Iraq: starve the people to pressure the leader. In addition to from the deep immorality of targeting civilians as a means of changing policy, its efficacy is often dubious. In this case, one would have a totally inaccurate view of the United States if one thought that the events of September 11 would cause U.S. officials to suddenly see the injustice of their policies toward the Palestinians, etc. On the contrary, the likely result of the attacks will be to allow U.S. leaders to mobilize the population behind a more uncompromising pursuit of their previous policies. The actions will horribly set back the causes of the weak and the poor, while empowering the most aggressive and reactionary elements around the globe.
There is a second possible explanation for why those who planned the September 11 attacks did so. Why commit a grotesquely provocative act against a power so large, so armed, and so dangerous as the United States? Perhaps provoking the United States was precisely the intent. By provoking a massive military assault on one or more Islamic nations, the perpetrators may hope to set off a cycle of terror and counter-terror, precipitating a holy war between the Islamic world and the West, a war that they can lead and that they may hope will result in the overthrow of all insufficiently Islamic regimes and the unraveling of the United States, just as the Afghan war contributed to the demise of the Soviet Union. Needless to say, this scenario is insane on every count one can assess.
But if provocation rather than grievances is what motivated the planners of the terror strikes against the U.S., this wouldn't mean grievances are irrelevant. Whatever the planners' motives, they still needed to attract capable, organized, and skilled people, not only to participate, but even to give their lives to this suicidal agenda. Deeply-felt grievances provide a social environment from which fanatics can recruit and garner support.
Q. How should guilt be determined? How should punishment be assessed and meted out?
A. The answers to these questions are all important. In our world, the only alternative to vigilantism is that guilt should be determined by an amassing of evidence that is then assessed in accordance with international law by the United Nations Security Council or other appropriate international agencies.
Punishment should be determined by the UN as well, and likewise the means of implementation. The UN may arrive at determinations that one or another party likes or not, as with any court, and may also be subject to political pressures that call into question its results or not, as with any court. But that the UN is the place for determinations about international conflict is obvious, at least according to solemn treaties signed by the nations of the world. Most governments, however, don't take seriously their obligations under international law, and certainly the United States does not. To U.S. policy makers international law is for everyone else to follow, and for Washington to manipulate when possible, or to ignore otherwise. Thus when the World Court told the United States to cease its contra war against Nicaragua and pay reparations, U.S. officials simply declared they did not consider themselves bound by the ruling.
Q. Why us? Why the U.S.?
A. The terrorists wreaked their havoc on New York and Washington, not on Mexico City or Stockholm. Why?
George W. Bush has claimed that the United States was targeted because of its commitment to freedom and democracy. Bush says people are jealous of our wealth. The truth is that anti-Americanism rests on feelings that the U.S. obstructs freedom and democracy as well as material plenty for others. In the Middle East, for example, the United States supports Israeli oppression of Palestinians, providing the military, economic, and diplomatic backing that makes that oppression possible. It condemns conquest when it is done by Iraq, but not when done by Israel. It has bolstered authoritarian regimes (such as Saudi Arabia) that have provided U.S. companies with mammoth oil profits and has helped overthrow regimes (such as Iraq in the early 1950s) that challenged those profits. When terrorist acts were committed by U.S. friends such as the Israeli-supervised massacres in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon, no U.S. sanctions were imposed. But about the U.S. imposed sanctions on Iraq, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent children, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright could only say that she thought it was worth it. When the U.S. went to war against Iraq, it targeted civilian infrastructure. When Iran and Iraq fought a bloody war, the United States surreptitiously aided both sides.
On top of specific Middle Eastern concerns, anti-Americanism is also spawned by more general grievances. The United States is the leading status-quo power in the world. It promotes a global economic system of vast inequality and incredible poverty. It displays its arrogance of power when it rejects and blocks international consensus on issues ranging from the environment, to the rights of children, to landmines, to an international criminal court, to national missile defense.
Again, these grievances may have nothing to do with the motives of those who masterminded the terror strikes of September 11. But they certainly help create an environment conducive to recruiting people to commit such acts.
Q. But isn't it callous to talk about U.S. crimes at a time when the U.S. is mourning its dead?
A. It would be callous if the people talking about U.S. crimes weren't also horrified at the terror in New York, grieving the grievous, and, as well, if the U.S. weren't talking about mounting a war against whole countries, removing governments from power, engaging in massive assaults, and evidencing no concern to discriminate terrorists from civilian bystanders.
But since critics do feel the pain, and since the U.S. is formulating its notions of justice in precisely those unconstructive and dangerous terms, for critics to carefully point out the hypocrisy and the likely consequences even as we also mourn the dead, feel outrage at the carnage, and help relief efforts is essential. It is how we help avoid piling catastrophe on top of catastrophe.
Suppose bin Laden is the mastermind of the recent horror. Imagine he had gone before the Afghan population a week or two earlier and told them of the U.S. government's responsibility for so much tragedy and mayhem around the world, particularly to Arab populations as in Iraq and Palestine. Imagine that he further told them that Americans have different values and that they cheered when bombs were rained on people in Libya and Iraq. So bin Laden proposes the bombing of U.S. civilians to force their government to change its ways. In that hypothetical event, what would we want the Afghan people to have replied?
We would want them to have told bin Laden that he was demented and possessed. We would want them to have pointed out that the fact that the U.S. government has levied massive violence against Iraq's civilians and others, does not warrant attacks on U.S. civilians, and the fact of different values doesn't warrant attacks of any sort at all.
So isn't this what we ought to also want the U.S. public to say to George Bush? The fact of bin Laden's violence, assuming it proves to be the case, or that of the Taliban or whatever other government may be implicated, does not warrant reciprocal terror attacks on innocent civilians.
Q. By talking about U.S. crimes abroad, you sound like you are excusing these terrorist acts. Do you have no feelings for those suffering?
A. To express remorse and pain, and to also seek to avoid comparable and worse pain being inflicted on further innocents (including Americans) is not to evidence a lack of feeling for the impact of crimes against humanity, but instead indicates feelings that extend further than what the media or the government tells us are the limits of permissible sympathy. We not only feel for those innocents who have already died, and their families, and the whole populace reeling in pain, but also for those who might be killed shortly, for those we may be able to help save.
U.S. crimes in no way justify or excuse the attacks of September 11. Terror is an absolutely unacceptable response to U.S. crimes. But at the same time, we need to stress as well that terror -- targeting civilians -- is an absolutely unacceptable response by the United States to the genuine crimes of others.
The reason it is relevant to bring up U.S. crimes is not to justify terrorism, but to understand the terrain that breeds terrorism and terrorists. Terrorism is a morally despicable and strategically suicidal reaction to injustice. But reducing injustice, which is correct on its own account, can certainly help eliminate the seeds of pain and suffering that nurture terrorist impulses and support for them.
Q. Bush has said that the "war on terrorism" needs to confront all countries that aid or abet terrorism. Which countries qualify?
A. The current thinking on this topic, promulgated by Bush and spreading rapidly beyond, is that anyone who plans, carries out, or abets terrorism, including knowingly harboring terrorists, is culpable for terrorist actions and their results -- where terrorism is understood as the attacking of innocent civilians in order to coerce policy makers. Some people might argue with some aspect of this formulation, but from where we sit, the formulation is reasonable enough. It is the application that falls short.
The U.S. State Department has a list of states that support terrorism, but it is -- as one would expect -- an extremely political document. The latest listing consisted of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cuba, North Korea, and Sudan -- significantly omitting Afghanistan. Cuba is included, one suspects, less because of any actual connection to terrorism, than because of longstanding U.S. hostility to the Cuban government and the long record of U.S. terrorism against Cuba. If we are talking about terrorism of the sort exemplified by car and other hand-delivered bombs, kidnappings, plane hijackings, or now plane suicide assaults, we can reasonably guess that most of the countries on the State Department list, along with Afghanistan, Pakistan, and some other poor nations would qualify with varying degrees of culpability.
On the other hand, if we are talking about terrorism of the sort exemplified by military bombing and invasion, by food or medical embargoes affecting civilians rather than solely or even primarily official and military targets, by hitting "soft targets" such as health clinics or agricultural cooperatives in Nicaragua, or by funding and training death squads, then we would have a rather different list of culpable nations, including such professed opponents of terrorism as the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and Israel.
At times the parties engaged in either list point to the actions perpetrated by those on the other list as justification for their behavior. But of course original terror does not justify subsequent terror, nor does reciprocal terror diminish terror from the other side. |
