[Peace-discuss] Fwd: USA/Africa: Anthrax, History and Security

Dlind49 at aol.com Dlind49 at aol.com
Sat Jul 27 10:07:17 CDT 2002


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
John Pilger, The Observer - Sunday July 14, 2002
http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4461028,00.html
   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. This is a revised extract from The New Rulers 
of the World, by John Pilger, published by Verso. To order a copy, for £8 
plus p&p (rrp £10), call the Observer Books Service on 0870 066 7989.  
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 




More information about the Peace-discuss mailing list