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October 23, 2001
Operation Enduring Deceit
By Davy De Verteuil
Nazism was a human catastrophe that, unfortunately, had a precedent: the policy that colonial Europe applied to indigenous (i.e., non-white) people over a period of five centuries.
What Hitler did to white people had been done by other Europeans to the American Indians (60 out of 80 million were killed outright or through forced labor and epidemics) and to Africans (between 28 and 35 million were exported as slaves. Africa was robbed of 280 to 350 million of its inhabitants, since ten people had to be killed for one to be taken alive during capture by the slave-dealers.)
The Jewish myth suited everybody. Full Article
Terrorist Attacks and the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan
By William Blum
Following the American bombing of Iraq, the US wound up with military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other places in the region. Following the American bombing of Yugoslavia, the US wound up with military bases in Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia. Following their bombing and invasion of Afghanistan, the US will wind up with military bases in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and other countries in the region.
The bombing and invasion of Afghanistan are being conducted primarily for the purpose of insuring the installation of a new government that will be a pliable American client state, a government that will be amenable to the siting of American military installations and electronic communications intercept stations and the running of oil and gas pipelines through the country from the Caspian Sea region.
After the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell condemned "people who feel that with the destruction of buildings, with the murder of people, they can somehow achieve a political purpose." Does that not precisely describe what the United States did two years ago when it bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days and nights? And is this not the same Colin Powell who directed the horrific bombings of Panama and Iraq? Do our leaders think that no one has any memory? Or do they simply not care what people think? Full Article
What’s So Complex About It?
By Michael Albert
In the past few weeks I have minutely explored, often with Stephen Shalom, multifold concerns about September 11 and the "war on terrorism." With him I have tried to calmly and soberly respond to all kinds of concerns people feel. I recommend doing it. We all need to become adept at rebutting the insanely manipulative media messages that crowd into so many people’s minds, and into our own as well. But going straight to the uncomplicated heart of the matter sometimes has merit, too.
The U.S. bombing of Afghanistan is a barbaric assault on defenseless civilians. It threatens a nearly incomprehensible human calamity. It is pursuing abominable goals.
The bombing is not a "just war," as Richard Falk labels it in The Nation, but a vigilante attack. No, it is not a vigilante attack; it is a vigilante lynch-mob assault writ large. No, it is not even a vigilante lynch mob assault writ large–even vigilante lynch mobs go after only those they think are culprits and not innocent bystanders. The bombing of Afghanistan is a gargantuan repugnance hurled against some of the poorest people on the planet. And this gargantuan repugnance is undertaken not out of sincere if horrendously misguided desires to curtail terrorism--since the bombing undeniably manifests terror and feeds the wellsprings of more terrorism to come--but out of malicious desires to establish a new elite-serving logic of U.S. policy-making via an endless War on Terrorism to replace the defunct Cold War. This is rehashed Reaganism made more cataclysmic than even his dismal mind could conceive. Full Article
What's morality got to do with this war? Quite a lot, actually
By Charlotte Raven The Guardian
This week, it is the image of low-flying aircraft spewing out platitudes in Pashtu about how the forces that have displaced the entire population of Kabul are friends of the Afghan people that makes me want to shout obscenities at every government minister who has ever mentioned freedom.
Of course, they have got an answer for this. If they could be bothered they would remind me that collateral damage is never sought but is, none the less, justified in pursuit of the greater good. You can't be against wars, they would say, because sometimes they are simply a regrettable necessity. Naive pacifism is all well and good but what would any of today's frustrated peaceniks have done about Hitler?
Some wars clearly are justified. I accept that. But the criteria that makes them worth fighting has nothing to do with the attainability or otherwise of any strategic ends. The justice of a just war stands whether or not it achieves its objectives. It is only when the war is not just - when it is simply the most efficacious means of aggressor getting what he wants - that the question of results eclipses every other consideration. Full Article
