THE HANDSTAND

NOVEMBER 2002

WHO TERRORIZES WHOM?

by Pelayo Mella

From the very moment the political appears in society – in other words, the aspect of power – every social activity, inevitably, and a priori, becomes political i.e., it becomes a matter of power.  Given the fact that political power cannot exist in an independent form but always linked to a praxis or social project, it cannot be neutral either.

From the previous constitutive facts three axioms derive from the communicative praxis: The first one is the acknowledgement of the impossibility of not communicating, because even silence is a message. The second is the acknowledgement that all kind of communication, will it be true or false, affects the existing forces between the emitting and receiving subjects; this can be classified as progressive or reactionary, if we take into account the following axiom. It acknowledges the fact that communication has, ipso facto, an ethical or unethical character.

Thus, perhaps one of the remarkable features of a hegemonic power is the ability to define words and get issues framed according with their own political agenda. This is notorious at this moment in history regarding "terrorism" and "Antiterrorism."

From September 11 of last year, two simple truths have been widely reported. One is that the hijacker bombings of the World Trade Centre were events of a monumental and spectacular scale (media coverage of that day's events alone may have generated more words and graphic images than any other single event in history). There is no doubt about that.

A second truth is that the bombings were wilful political acts, which here – for the sake of our argument - we will call acts of terrorism, accepting the basic and widely agreed - upon definition of terrorism as Oxford Dictionaries and Encyclopaedias say:  " it is the use of force or the threat of force against civilian populations to achieve political objectives." And let us also recognize that "sponsorship of terrorism" means organizing, and/or Underwriting and providing a "safe harbour" to state or non state agents who terrorize.

The third undeniable truth less understood and less reported for obvious reasons is that from the 1950s, the United States has been heavily engaged in terrorism, it has sponsored, underwritten, and protected terrorist states as well as individual terrorists.

As we know, the United States is at present the only superpower and as such, it is also the world's greatest terrorist and sponsor of terror. Right now this country is supporting a genocidal terrorist operation against Iraq via "sanctions of mass destruction", it has regularly been bombing this country to achieve its political, military and economic objectives; it underwrites the army and paramilitary forces in Colombia, who openly terrorize the civilian population; it continues giving unconditional support to a fictional Israeli state which is the very symbol of terrorism, which suppresses its own people when they protest, and which for decades, has been using torture, force, death, and terror to achieve its Zionist ambitions.

The United States has terrorized and sponsored terror in Nicaragua, Brazil, Uruguay, Cuba, Guatemala, Indonesia/East Timor, Zaire, Angola, South Africa, and elsewhere. I won’t talk here about my own country, Chile, because anyone with a little bit of world history knows what the U.S. did there. The mere reason I am today in Britain since 1976 speaks for itself. The U.S. stands alone in both using and brandishing the threat to use nuclear weapons. It has for many years provided a safe harbour to the Cuban refugee terror network, and it has done the same for a whole string of terrorists in flight from, among other places, Chile, El Salvador, Haiti,Vietnam, etc, etc.

As an answer to the September 11 “terrorist” events, the United States resorted instantly to its own terrorism. Ignoring legal niceties – let’s not forget that the U.S.A. is a devotee of the "rule of law"! - the United States immediately began to threaten to "take out" states harbouring terrorists, bombed Afghanistan, it blocked the flow of food supplies to its starving population, which is yet another act of terrorism, and a major one. (A spokesman for Oxfam International stationed in Islamabad recently stated, "Prior to this crisis, the World Food Program, with the help of Oxfam and other groups, was feeding 3.7 million Afghanis. But with the onset of the bombing campaign, this was stopped as the aid workers were forced to withdraw. The airdrops fed no more than 130,000 people," or only 3.5 percent of those who faced winter and starvation). On October 7 the United States then began to bomb this impoverished country - not just a further act of terrorism, but also a crime of open aggression and brutality. 

Anyone with a bit of common sense will recognize that the U.S. terror against Afghanistan have caused, causes and will cause many, many more deaths than those killed in New York.  But U.S. self-righteousness, broadcast and justifies to the whole world by a subservient media machine, shouting that what the United States does, will neither be called terrorism, nor aggression, nor elicit indignation remotely comparable to that expressed over the events of September 11 last year, however well its actions fit the definitions.

Obedient countries will use this bias starting from the most servile of all: Great Britain. However the people in the so-called Third World call the U.S. by its real name: Terrorist. The same happens in the Arab countries, whose governments nervously and timidly look for their master’s approval to release some half-heartedly moan about the ‘terrorist’s’ actions against their on citizens. These are the countries that nervously look at the West for approval, and who timidly whinge and moan about the actions of Terrorist Number One. However, the independent press keep calling the United States a "rogue state par excellence repeatedly defying international rulings whether by the World Court or by U.N. resolutions when they have not suited its interests" and a "bandit sheriff", and speaking of this, as an "age of Euro-American tyranny" with tyrants who are merely "civilized and advanced terrorists" (Ausaf,Pakistan).

As an ex-Marxist and now a fervent Muslim, it is sad for me to observe how the Left, especially in this country, has not been immune to the propaganda coming from Washington and London and has, instead, completely misunderstood everything, and has not escaped from the definitions of hegemony and frames that we talked at the beginning.

Most Leftists - I’m not talking about Tony Benn, George Galloway and others, who I greatly respect for their integrity, I’m referring to the Socialist Workers Party, Militant, Workers Party, etc., - regularly discuss ‘terrorism’ starting from the premise that the United States is against terrorism and that the issue is how the United States can best deal with the problem. They really are quite preoccupied that the United States will solve this problem too aggressively, will seek vengeance and not justice! Do not these people know anything about history? Thus, they propose nice, lawful ways, such as asking the United Nations and International Court of Justice to do something about it; and they urge the cooperation from the Arab states to crush ‘terrorists’ within their own states.

They also argue about bin Laden’s money channels and how to stop them. What did these people ever do in their own countries that have the audacity to talk about somebody else’s fight? These people are so much on the “left” that they have suggested that the United States and its allies intervene in Afghanistan to create a new society and engage in a "nation-building" process. In other words, just like they did in Kosovo to have a "new humanitarian" intervention. In relation to a possible post-Saddam in Iraq, by reading their little newspapers, these pseudo-Marxists, are in a frenzy to install a Western-style “progressive” government there. These leftists will try to accommodate their politics to any situation.

None of these proposals are worthwhile. What Muslims should be discussing is how a "coalition of the willing" might be formed to bring the United States under control, to force it to stop using and threatening violence, to compel it, and its British wag-tailing dog to cease terrorizing Iraq, and to make it stop supporting terrorist states like Colombia, Turkey, and Israel. Or at least to make U.S. funding of its terrorist operations more difficult!

Hegemony defines the main part of the agenda - who terrorizes who - and the debate is over how he and his allies should deal with those he identifies as terrorists. A good illustration is displayed in the "New Agenda to Combat Terrorism," recently issued by the Institute for Policy Studies and Inter-Hemispheric Resource Centre in their Foreign Policy in Focus Series. Nowhere in this document is it suggested that the United States is itself a terrorist state, sponsor of terrorism, or a safe harbour of terrorists, although it is acknowledged that this country has supported "repressive regimes." "Repressive" is softer and less invidious than "terrorist." The report refers to the "destructive and counterproductive economic sanctions on Iraq," but doesn't suggest that this constitutes terrorism. When we say "destructive" we imagine a child kicking down a house made of dominoes, and not about millions of human casualties. The recent publicity given the U.S.'s destruction of the Iraqi water supply also suggests something more than "destructive and counterproductive" is needed to properly describe U.S.  policy toward that country (Thomas Nagy, "The Secret Behind the Sanctions: How the U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply," The Progressive, September 2001). Nowhere does the IPS/IRC document mentions Colombia, Israel, Turkey or Indonesia, where the United States is currently supporting "repressive regimes."

Liberals in the US and Britain have called for a "reorientation of United States policy along the lines of respecting human rights,” From here it emerged a movement entitled the “New Agenda” which states that "the unnecessary projection of U.S. military abroad, represented by the archipeligo of overseas military bases, often serves as a physical reminder of U.S. political and military support for repressive regimes." The claim that such bases are "unnecessary", completely ignores their ongoing important role in facilitating the global expansion of U.S. business, and, amazingly, ignores the fact that the United States is right now in the process of building new ones in "repressive" states like Uzbekistan, with over 7,000 political prisoners, most of them Muslim brothers, which has been launching a war against Islam for a long time. ("U.S. Indicates New Military Partnership With Uzbekistan," Wall Street Journal, Oct. 15, 2001). Such bases are only "unnecessary" to analysts who are unable or unwilling to confront the reality of a powerful imperialism in fine working order and in a new phase of expansion. These analysts seem to believe that the United States can easily, perhaps with the “left’”s advice, be dissuaded from being an imperialist and terrorist power!

Because the Liberal Left has the magic of accommodating itself to whatever situation they meet, in relation to what we must call the Super terrorist’s antiterrorist agenda, they also have reasons: The first one is that of the power of hegemonic ideas, so that even leftists are swept along with the general understanding that the United States is fighting terrorism, and is only a victim of terrorism. Some swallow the New Imperialist premise that the United States is the proper vehicle for reconstructing the world, which it should do in a gentler and kinder fashion. Thus, a Richard Falk takes this for granted in declaring the U.S. attack on Afghanistan "the first truly just war since World War II" (The Nation), although claiming that its justice "is in danger of being negated by the injustice of improper means and excessive ends." Though writing in the liberal Nation magazine, it never occurs to Falk that the rightwing Republican regime of Bush and Cheney, so close to the oil industry and military-industrial complex, might have an agenda incompatible with a just war.

Apart from this, as the attack against Afghanistan was itself a violation of International law, and was from its start killing civilians by bombs directly and via its important contribution to the already endemic mass starvation, Falk makes the war "just" despite the fact that its justice was already negated at the time he made his claim. (By Falk's logic, an Iraqi attack on the United States would also be a highly just war, though its justice might be endangered by dubious means and excessive ends.) This is imperialist apologetics carried to the limit.

The other reason for leftist accommodation is pragmatic. Thanks to the effectiveness of the U.S. propaganda system, U.S. citizens by and large are caught within the epistemic bind of not-knowing-that-they-do-not-know. Thus, leftists understand that people will have difficulty understanding what they are talking about, if they start their discussions of controlling terrorism with an agenda on how to control Super terrorist’s terrorism. On the other hand, by taking it as the starting premise that the United States is only a victim of terrorism, one loses the opportunity to educate people to a fundamental truth about terrorism and even implicitly denies that truth in order to be practical. One finds that one can't do that.

Not long ago, two books were published entitled The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, and The Real Terror Network (both by Naom Chomsky), the latter featuring the gigantic U.S.-sponsored terror network that emerged in the years after 1950. After following United States policy for years thereafter, in which terrorism has been prominent, I consider that, as a victim of U.S. terrorism, the notion of the United States as an antiterrorist state is a sick, repugnant joke.

As a Muslim, I am convinced that it is of the utmost importance to contest the hegemonic agenda that makes the United States and its allies the victims of terror only, and not terrorists and sponsors of terror. As Muslims, this is a matter of establishing a basic truth, but also providing the long run basis for systemic change that will help solve the problem of "terrorism," however defined. One thing is painfully clear though: The United States and allies will always be ready and prepared to use violence and terror against us, and they are willing to kill us. We always talk about how good we are. I really think there is something missing somewhere.

Pelayo Mella©2002