Terror in America: Comment

The attack on the World Trade Center was without doubt one of the vilest atrocities we have ever seen. Most people who watched the images of the planes hurtling into the Twin Towers wore expressions of horror and disbelief. But it was Dubbya's face that was the most worrying: in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, President George Bush emerged from his bunker with all the calm and dignity of the children's TV actor Peewee Herman when he was caught masturbating in a porn cinema. You wouldn't want to see that look of confusion on the face of a man in charge of a hot cup of tea, let alone the world's largest nuclear arsenal.

America may be on the verge of taking military action in its "war on terrorism" but, like any state going to war, it started waging its PR campaign from day one to convince the waverers at home and abroad. "How cynical can you get?" I hear you cry. "Suggesting that America's political leaders are manipulating a national tragedy." Cynical? I am but an amateur compared to Bush, who has hijacked the language of liberation and is currently headed in the direction of the twin towers of historical fact and truth. How ironic that Dubbya should use language as a weapon, given his difficulty with it: he is currently planning to bomb a country he can barely pronounce and probably can't spell.

Bush has claimed that the atrocity of the World Trade Center was an "attack not just on America, but on all people who love democracy". This implies that America cherishes democracy across the world. Yeah, right. From backing Pinochet in Chile (where the CIA helped arm the man who overthrew the democratically elected president) to Nicaragua (where Oliver North illegally equipped the contra terrorists while supplying missiles to Iranian fundamentalists), America has destabilised and crushed democracies across the world. From Angola to East Timor, from El Salvador to the Shi'a Arabs and Kurds in Iraq, no one has done more to support terror and dictators than America.

One Republican politician recently said, on live TV: "Now is not the time for justice. Now is the time to wage war and win." Not one person in the TV studio suggested that what the man had said was just a tad insane. Surely now, of all times, is the time for justice. Yet despite Bush's protestations that the terrorist acts were an attack on the "rule of law", the "rule of law" is the last thing that the US cares for now. The most basic premise of the rule of law is "innocent until proven guilty", not "wanted dead or alive". Americans have taken on the mentality of a lynch mob. You can almost hear them drawling in southern accents: "Yew jus' know Bin Laden's guilty, yew only gotta look at his eyes!" Which, to be fair, is more evidence than Bush has come up with so far.

Osama Bin Laden may or may not have been behind the atrocity - I don't know, and neither does 99.9 per cent of the world. What I do know is that America's most recent attempts to punish terrorist attacks have been about as wrong as marrying a goat. After Lockerbie, the US launched attacks on Libya, killing Colonel Gaddafi's adopted daughter. Yet most of the evidence points to that atrocity being perpetrated not by Libya, but by the Syria-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.

After the attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, Bill Clinton ordered the bombing of the El Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries Company in Sudan, claiming that it was involved in the production of VX nerve gas and was financed by Osama Bin Laden. Clinton was proved wrong on both counts. El Shifa made more than 60 per cent of Sudan's human and veterinary medicines; no one knows how many Sudanese died as a result of losing those medicines because the US blocked an inquiry at the United Nations. Yet "now is not the time for justice" for those who defend "the rule of law".

Perhaps the biggest myth Bush is peddling is that this is a "war against terrorism". In targeting "host countries" that harbour terrorists, we can be absolutely certain that innocent civilians will die. America's military attacks in the past have had all the pinpoint precision of free-form improvised jazz - unless the US is now saying that it was actually aiming for bunkers full of Iraqi women and children.

If Bush's intended military action results in the loss of one innocent life, then Bush is a terrorist. What kind of memorial is it for the innocent victims in the World Trade Center to be used as an excuse to kill other innocent victims? If the response to the arbitrary slaughter of civilians is to slaughter more civilians, is that not "an attack on all people who love democracy"?

If America wants to win the "war against terrorism", it can do two simple things that don't require committing troops and resources to faraway places. First, it can condemn Israel in the UN Security Council. Second, it can fight terrorism by refusing to sponsor it. Given that Noriega and Saddam Hussein were funded and aided by the US, it should come as no shock that Bin Laden was supported by the US, too. He is just another armed bastard paid for by American tax dollars who turned to bite the hand that fed him. The US should review its financing of such people - if only from a consumer affairs, value-for-money angle.

America's war on terrorism really starts at home.

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website