A: I do not think it will lead to a long-term restriction of rights internally in any serious way. The cultural and institutional barriers to that are too firmly rooted, I believe. If the US chooses to respond by escalating the cycle of violence, which is most likely what bin Laden and his associates hope for, then the consequences could be awesome. There are, of course, other ways, lawful and constructive ones. And there are ample precedents for them. An aroused public within the more free and democratic societies can direct policies towards a much more humane and honorable course.
A: Impediments to free flow of information in countries like the US are rarely traceable to government, rather, to self-censorship of the familiar kind. The current situation is not exceptional--considerably better than the norm, in my opinion. There are, however, some startling examples of US government efforts to restrict free flow of information abroad. Al-Jazeera is "the only international news organization to maintain reporters in the Taliban-controlled part of Afghanistan." Al-Jazeera is, naturally, despised and feared by the dictatorship of the region, particularly because of its frank exposures of their human rights records. The US has joined their ranks. The emir of Qatar confirmed that "Washington has asked Qatar to rein in the influential and editorially independent Arabic Al-Jazeera television station."
A: To quote the lead analysis in the "New York Times" (September 16): "the perpetrators acted out of hatred for the values cherished in the West as freedom, tolerance, prosperity, religious pluralism and universal suffrage." US actions are irrelevant, and therefore need not even be mentioned. This is a comforting picture; it happens to be completely at variance with everything we know, but has all the merits of self-adulation and uncritical support for power. And it has the flaw that adopting it contributes significantly to the likelihood of further atrocities, including atrocities directed against us, perhaps even more horrendous ones than those of 9-11.
As for the bin Laden network, they tell us what their concerns are loud and clear: they are fighting a Holy War against the corrupt, repressive, and "un-Islamist" regimes of the region.
A: When countries are attacked they try to defend themselves if they can. According to the doctrine proposed, Nicaragua, South Vietnam, Cuba, and numerous others should have been setting off bombs in Washington and other US cities. It is because such doctrines had brought Europe to virtual self-annihilation after hundreds of years of savagery that the nations of the world forged a different compact after WWII, establishing--at least formally--the principle that the resort to force is barred except in the case of self-defense against armed attack until the Security Council acts to protect international peace and security. Specifically, retaliation is barred. Since the US is not under armed attack, in the sense of Article 51 of the UN Charter--if we agree that the fundamental principles of international law should apply to ourselves, not only to those we dislike.
A: I find the question baffling. As I've said elsewhere, the US is, after all, the only country condemned by the World Court for international terrorism--for "the unlawful use of force" for political ends, as the Court put it--ordering the US to terminate these crimes and pay substantial reparations. The US of course dismissed the Court's judgment with contempt, reacting by escalating the terrorist war against Nicaragua and vetoing a Security Council resolution calling on all states to observe international law. The terrorist war expanded in accordance with the official policy of attacking "soft targets"-- undefended civilian targets, like agricultural collections, thanks to the complete control of Nicaraguan air space by the US and the advanced communications equipment provided to them by their supervisors.
A: It is certainly possible, for the worldwide protests against corporate globalization, which--again--did not begin in Seattle. Such terrorist atrocities are a gift to the harshest and most repressive elements on all sides, and are sure to be exploited--already have been in fact--to accelerate the agenda of militarization, regimentation, reversal of social democratic programs, transfer of wealth to narrow sectors, and undermining democracy in any meaningful form. But that will not happen without resistance, and I doubt that it will succeed, except in the short term.
A: This is an extremely convenient belief for Western intellectuals. It absolves them of responsibility for the actions that actually do lie behind the choice of the World Trade Center. Was it bombed in 1993 because of concern over globalization and cultural hegemony? Was Sadat assassinated 20 years ago because of globalization?
A few days ago the "Wall Street Journal" reported attitudes of rich and privileged Egyptians who were bitterly critical of the US for objective reasons of policy, which are well-known to those who wish to know. Is that concern over "globalization," McDonald's, and jeans? Attitudes in the street are similar, but far more intense, and have nothing at all to do with these fashionable excuses. These excuses are convenient. Bin Laden himself has probably never even heard of "globalization."
Rather, there has, so far, been a solid drumbeat of calls for violent reaction, with only scarce mention of the fact that this will not only visit a terrible cost on wholly innocent victims, many of them Afghan victims of the Taliban, but also that it will answer the most fervent prayers of bin Laden and his network.
The bin Laden network itself falls into a different category, and in fact its actions for 20 years have caused great harm to the poor and oppressed people of the region, who are not the concern of terrorist networks. But they do draw from a reservoir of anger, fear, and desperation, which is why they are praying for a violent US reaction, which will mobilize others to their horrendous cause.
Such topics as these should occupy the front pages--at least, if we hope to reduce the cycle of violence rather than to escalate it.
A: As for the bin Laden network, they have as little concern for globalization and cultural hegemony as they do for the poor and oppressed people of the Middle East who they have been severely harming for years. They tell us what their concerns are loud & clear: they are fighting a Holy War against the corrupt, repressive, and "un-Islamist" regimes of the region, and their supporters, just as they fought a Holy War against the Russians in the 1980s--and elsewhere.
Bin Laden himself has probably never even heard of "globalization." Those who have interviewed him in depth, like Robert Fisk, report that he knows virtually nothing of the world and doesn't care to. We can choose to ignore all the facts and wallow in self-indulgent fantasies if we like, but at considerable risk to ourselves, among others. Among other things, we can also ignore, if we choose, the roots of the "Afghanis" such as bin Laden and his associates, also not a secret.
Foreign leaders, specialists on the Middle East, and I suppose their own intelligence agencies, are warning them that a massive military response will answer bin Laden's prayers. But there are hawkish elements who want to use the occasion to strike out at their enemies, with extreme violence, no matter how many innocent people suffer. There are plenty of bin Ladens on both sides, as usual.
A: Not a secret, incidentally; prominently reported in the mainstream, though easily forgotten. That didn't violate any laws. And it's not just the CIA. Should they have been permitted to organize in Nicaragua a terrorist army that had the official task, straight out of the mouth of the State Department, to attack "soft targets" in Nicaragua, meaning undefended agricultural cooperatives and health clinics? Remember that the State Department officially approved such attacks immediately after the World Court had ordered the US to end its international terrorist campaign and pay substantial reparations. What's the name for that? Or to set up something like the bin Laden network, not him himself, but the background organizations?
His call for the overthrow of corrupt and brutal regimes of gangsters and torturers resonates quite widely, as does his indignation against the atrocities that he and others attribute to the US, hardly without reason. It's entirely true that his crimes are extremely harmful to the poorest and most oppressed people of the region. By courageously fighting oppressors, who are quite real, bin Laden may appear to be a hero, however harmful his actions are to the poor majority. And if the US succeeds in killing him, he may become even more powerful as a martyr. He is, after all, as much of a symbol as an objective force, both for the US and probably much of the population.
They carried terror into Russian territory. They won the war and the Russian invaders withdrew. The war was not their only activity. In 1981, forces based in those same groups assassinated President Sadat of Egypt, who had been instrumental in setting them up. In 1983, one suicide bomber, maybe with connections to the same forces, essentially drove the US military out of Lebanon. And it continued.
By 1989, they had succeeded in their Holy War in Afghanistan. As soon as the US established a permanent military presence in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden and the rest announced that from their point of view, that was comparable to the Russian occupation of Afghanistan and they turned their guns on the Americans, as had already happened in 1983 when the US had military forces in Lebanon.
A: The bombing of Serbia was called a "humanitarian intervention", by no means a novel usage. That was a standard description of European imperialist ventures in the 19th century. To cite some more recent examples, the major recent scholarly work on "humanitarian intervention" in the immediate pre-WWII period: Japan's invasion of Manchuria, Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, and Hitler's takeover of the Sudetenland. The author is not suggesting that the term is apt; rather, that the crimes were masked as "humanitarian."
Whether the Kosovo intervention indeed was "humanitarian," possibly the first such case in history, is a matter of fact: passionate declaration does not suffice, if only because virtually every use of force is justified in these terms. It is quite extraordinary how weak the arguments are to justify the claim of humanitarian intent in the Kosovo case; more accurately, they scarcely exist.
A: This attack was surely an enormous shock and surprise to the intelligence services of the West, including those of the US. The CIA did have a role, a major one in fact, but that was in the 1980s, when it joined Pakistani intelligence and others (Saudi Arabia, Britain, etc.) in recruiting, training, and arming the most extreme Islamic fundamentalists it could find to fight a "Holy War" against the Russian invaders of Afghanistan.
There is now, predictably, an effort under way to clean up the record and pretend that the US was an innocent bystander. After that war was over, the "Afghans" (many, like bin Laden, not Afghans), turned their attention elsewhere: for example, to Chechnya and Bosnia, where they may have received at least tacit US support. Not surprisingly, they were welcomed by the governments; in Bosnia, many Islamic volunteers were granted citizenship in gratitude for their military services.
A: When a federal building was blown up in Oklahoma City, there were calls for bombing the Middle East, and it probably would have happened if the source turned out to be there. When it was found to be domestic, with links to the ultra-right militias, there was no call to obliterate Montana and Idaho. Rather, there was a search for the perpetrator, who was found, brought to court, and sentenced, and there were efforts to understand the grievances that lie behind such crimes and to address the problems. Just about every crime--whether a robbery in the streets or colossal atrocities--has reasons, and commonly we find that some of them are serious and should be addressed.
That is the course one follows if the intention is to reduce the probability of further atrocities. There is another course: react with extreme violence, and expect to escalate the cycle of violence, leading to still further atrocities such as the one that is inciting the call for revenge. The dynamic is very familiar
Terrorism, according to the official definitions, is simply part of state action, official doctrine, and not just that of the US, of course. It is not, as is often claimed, "the weapon of the weak."
Furthermore, all of these things should be well known. It's shameful that they're not. These are things people need to know if they want to understand anything about themselves. They are known by the victims, of course, but the perpetrators prefer to look elsewhere.
"Blowback" from the radical Islamic forces organized, armed, and trained by the US, Egypt, France, Pakistan, and others began almost at once, with the 1981 assassination of President Sadat of Egypt.
A: The attacks are not "consequences" of US policies in any direct sense. But indirectly, of course there are consequences. There seems little doubt that the perpetrator come from the terrorist network that has its roots in the mercenary armies that were organized, trained, and armed by the CIA, Egypt, Pakistan, French intelligence, Saudi Arabian funding, and others. The backgrounds of all of this remain somewhat murky.
The US, along with its allies, assembled a huge mercenary army, maybe 100,000 or more, and they drew from the most militant sectors they could find, which happened to be radical Islamists, what are called here Islamic fundamentalists, from all over, most of them not from Afghanistan. They're called "Afghanis," but like bin Laden, many come from elsewhere.
Bin Laden joined sometime in the 1980s. He was involved in the funding networks. They fought a holy war against the Russian occupiers.
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The above quotations are from 9-11 Was There an Alternative by Noam Chomsky. Click here for other excerpts from 9-11 Was There an Alternative by Noam Chomsky. Click here for other excerpts by Noam Chomsky. Click here for a profile of Noam Chomsky.
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