www.commondreams.org
Published on Tuesday, October 16, 2001
Week One: Operation Infinite Disaster
by Chris Kromm
President Bush's war planners have struggled to find a fitting code
name for our latest military venture. But after a week of war,
there's only one appropriate label for the nightmare that has
transpired: Operation Infinite Disaster.
Leave aside, for the moment, the moral shortcomings and Orwellian
implications of bombing starved people to "fight for freedom" or
honor the dead of the September 11 tragedy. What's even more striking
about the War Against ... Somebody is that, even on the Bush
administration's own terms, the bombing of Afghanistan has thus far
been a failure -- a series of tactical blunders guaranteed to make a
bad situation much, much worse.
A quick inventory of the week's events tell the story:
BOMBING PEOPLE WITH FOOD: The first sign of trouble was news that
Bush -- in a move to give the brutal bombings a humanitarian spin --
had opted to drop food supplies along with cluster bombs. This public
relations stunt quickly backfired, however, when every major relief
agency in the world derided the drops for 1) being insufficient
(enough to feed about .5% of the starving population for a single
day, provided the rations got to the intended "targets"); 2)
containing food Afghan people never eat (hello, peanut butter?!); and
3) having the disadvantage of landing in fields strewn with land
mines, adding injury to insult.
HIGH-TECH STRIKES IN A LOW-TECH WORLD: Then came evidence that U.S.
bombs are hitting worthless targets -- when they hit at all. This may
surprise U.S. readers, who, much like during the Gulf War, have been
treated to giddy media reports cooing over the Pentagon's high-
tech "smart" weaponry: gee-whiz gadgets like satellite targeting
which supposedly make military strikes "surgical" -- and blood-free.
(Although, in 1991 the Pentagon admitted that under six percent of
Gulf War weapons used "smart" technology -- and even among these
brilliant bombs, fully 20% missed their mark.)
The Pentagon says they've gotten better; time -- if not the media --
will tell. But what have these intelligent machines of destruction
been hitting? A few terrorist training camps, which, as journalist
Robert Fisk noted, our planes had "no difficulty spotting ...
because, of course, most of them were built by the CIA when Mr. bin
Laden and his men were the good guys."
But overall, the Taliban is a low-tech army -- and bombing their
outdated airstrips and archaic phone systems has had little impact on
how they control their terrain. And technology is only as good as the
fallible humans who use it, which leads to the next mistake:
KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE: "Serious blunders by American warplanes may
have killed at least 100 civilians in Afghanistan," according to eye-
witness accounts obtained by The Observer of London and reported on
Sunday, October 14. (U.S. newspapers have been slow to report
evidence of innocent people dying.) These deaths -- in Karam village,
18 miles west of Jalalabad -- came after news of the four workers
killed in a U.N. building devoted to clearing land mines.
A total of 400 civilian deaths have been confirmed. Personal
testimony from fleeing refugees suggest hundreds more.
What has been the effect of these deaths, besides belying the notion
that war can be waged without ending innocent lives? According to The
Guardian of London, the Karam killings are straining ties between the
U.S. and its shaky allies in the anti-terrorism coalition.
And among the Arab and Muslim populace, the response is
predictable: "Reports of between 50 and 150 deaths" the Guardian
reports, have "provoked rage and grief throughout Afghanistan and
throughout the Muslim world."
Which brings us to what the U.S.-led strikes *have * succeeded in
doing:
IGNITING AN EXPLOSIVE BACKLASH: I'm not referring to the 30,000
protesters who marched in England against the U.S.-led bombing, the
70,000 who marched in India, the 70,000 who marched in Germany, or
similar protests which have filled the streets in "friendly" turf
like Italy, Greece, and our own cities.
I'm also not referring to the boomerang response to U.S. bombing in
the form of terrorist counter-attacks, which have plunged America
into dread fear of powdery envelopes and exposed nuclear reactors.
No, more troubling are the 20,000 students who took over the streets
of Egypt yelling "U.S. go to hell!" The Jakarta Muslims threatening
to kill U.S. tourists and embassy workers. The millions of Arab-
Americans and Muslims who are raging -- violently -- against the U.S.
in Jordan, South Africa, Iran, Bangladesh, Pakistan (brought to the
brink of civil war) and Nigeria, where "hundreds" may be dead due to
rioting.
President Bush's reaction has instilled little confidence. When asked
in a press conference last Friday for his response to the vitriolic
hatred that has mushroomed around the globe, Bush could only
mumble: "I'm amazed. I just can't believe it because I know how good
we are" -- which, in the world's eyes, must bring profoundly new
meaning to the word "naiveté."
This disheartening string of missteps, feeding an upswell of moral
outrage, led everyone's favorite war-watching website --
www.debka.com -- to post this headline over the weekend: "First Week
of U.S. Offensive in Afghanistan is Inconclusive Militarily,
Earthshaking Geo-Politically."
And for what? To the Pentagon's dismay, Bin Laden hasn't
been "flushed out." The Taliban isn't waving a white flag. Our
supposed allies, the opium-running North Alliance, seem confused
about whether or not they should take over the country.
Amidst such chaos, the Bush camp has resorted to the time-tested
tactic of creating a diversion, suggesting the blame for September 11
may lay elsewhere -- Iraq (surprise) being the favorite fall guy.
This comes just weeks after every media mouthpiece instructed us
that "ONLY the resources and skills of Osama bin Laden" and the "al-
Quaeda network" could have been responsible.
The U.S. may or may not be able to reverse its miserable military
fortunes in Afghanistan. But the more dangerous consequences of the
U.S. bombing campaign -- a world aroused into anger against American
arrogance, in part the very reason for the September 11 tragedy --
will stay with us for a very long time.
Chris Kromm is Director of the Institute for Southern Studies in
Durham, North Carolina.
*****
Published on Tuesday, October 16, 2001 in the Guardian of London
Gagging the Skeptics
The US, founded to protect basic freedoms, is now insisting that its
critics are its enemies.
by George Monbiot
If satire died on the day Henry Kissinger received the Nobel Peace
Prize, then last week its corpse was exhumed for a kicking. As head
of the United Nations peacekeeping department, Kofi Annan failed to
prevent the genocide in Rwanda or the massacre in Srebrenica. Now, as
secretary general, he appears to have interpreted the UN charter as
generously as possible to allow the attack on Afghanistan to go
ahead.
Article 51 permits states to defend themselves against attack. It
says nothing about subsequent retaliation. It offers no license to
attack people who might be harboring a nation's enemies. The bombing
of Afghanistan, which began before the UN security council gave its
approval, is legally contentious. Yet the man and the organization
who overlooked this obstacle to facilitate war are honored for their
contribution to peace.
Endowments like the Nobel Peace Prize are surely designed to reward
self-sacrifice. Nelson Mandela gave up his liberty, FW de Klerk gave
up his power, and both were worthy recipients of the prize. But Kofi
Annan, the career bureaucrat, has given up nothing. He has been
rewarded for doing as he is told, while nobly submitting to a
gigantic salary and bottomless expense account.
Among the other nominees for the prize was a group whose
qualifications were rather more robust. Members of Women in Black
have routinely risked their lives in the hope of preventing war. They
have stayed in the homes of Palestinians being shelled by Israeli
tanks and have confronted war criminals in the Balkans. They have
stood silently while being abused and spat at during vigils all over
the world. But now, in this looking-glass world in which war is peace
and peace is war, instead of winning the peace prize the Women in
Black have been labeled potential terrorists by the FBI and
threatened with a grand jury investigation.
They are in good company. Earlier this year the director of the FBI
named the chaotic but harmless organizations Reclaim the Streets and
Carnival Against Capitalism in the statement on terrorism he
presented to the Senate. Now, partly as a result of his
representations, the Senate's new terrorism bill, like Britain's
Terrorism Act 2000, redefines the crime so broadly that members of
Greenpeace are in danger of being treated like members of al-Qaida.
The Bush doctrine - if you're not with us, you're against us - is
already being applied.
This government by syllogism makes no sense at all. Osama bin Laden
and al-Qaida have challenged the US government; ergo anyone who
challenges the government is a potential terrorist. That Bin Laden
is, according to US officials, a "fascist", while the other groups
are progressives is irrelevant: every public hand raised in objection
will from now on be treated as a public hand raised in attack. Given
that Bin Laden is not a progressive but is a millionaire, it would
surely make more sense to round up and interrogate all millionaires.
Lumping Women in Black together with al-Qaida requires just a minor
addition to the vocabulary: they have been jointly classified
as "anti-American". This term, as used by everyone from the US
defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and the Daily Mail to Tony Blair
and several writers on these pages, applies not only to those who
hate Americans, but also to those who have challenged US foreign and
defense objectives. Implicit in this denunciation is a demand for
uncritical support, for a love of government more consonant with the
codes of tsarist Russia than with the ideals upon which the United
States was founded.
The charge of "anti-Americanism" is itself profoundly anti-American.
If the US does not stand for freedom of thought and speech, for
diversity and dissent, then we have been deceived as to the nature of
the national project. Were the founding fathers to congregate today
to discuss the principles enshrined in their declaration of
independence, they would be denounced as "anti-American" and
investigated as potential terrorists. Anti-American means today
precisely what un-American meant in the 1950s. It is an instrument of
dismissal, a means of excluding your critics from rational discourse.
Under the new McCarthyism, this dismissal extends to anyone who seeks
to promulgate a version of events other than that sanctioned by the
US government. On September 20, President Bush told us that "this is
the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and
freedom". Two weeks later, his secretary of state, Colin Powell, met
the Emir of Qatar to request that progress, pluralism, tolerance and
freedom be suppressed. Al-Jazeera is one of the few independent
television stations in the Middle East, whose popularity is the
result of its uncommon regard for freedom of speech. It is also the
only station permitted to operate freely in Kabul. Powell's request
that it be squashed was a pre-emptive strike against freedom, which,
he hoped, would prevent the world from seeing what was really
happening once the bombing began.
Since then, both George Bush and Tony Blair have sought to prevent al-
Jazeera from airing video statements by Bin Laden, on the grounds of
the preposterous schoolboy intrigue that they "might contain coded
messages". Over the weekend the government sought to persuade British
broadcasters to restrict their coverage of the war. Blair's spin
doctors warned: "You can't trust them [the Taliban] in any way,
shape, or form." While true, this applies with equal force to the
techniques employed by Downing Street. When Alastair Campbell starts
briefing journalists about "Spin Laden", it's a case of the tarantula
spinning against the money spider.
If we are to preserve the progress, pluralism, tolerance and freedom
which President Bush claims to be defending, then we must question
everything we see and hear. Though we know that governments lie to us
in wartime, most people seem to believe that this universal rule
applies to every conflict except the current one. Many of those who
now accept that babies were not thrown out of incubators in Kuwait,
and that the Belgrano was fleeing when it was hit, are also prepared
to believe everything we are being told about Afghanistan and
terrorism in the US.
There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical. The magical appearance
of the terrorists' luggage, passports and flight manual looks rather
too good to be true. The dossier of "evidence" purporting to
establish Bin Laden's guilt consists largely of supposition and
conjecture. The ration packs being dropped on Afghanistan have no
conceivable purpose other than to create the false impression that
starving people are being fed. Even the anthrax scare looks
suspiciously convenient. Just as the hawks in Washington were losing
the public argument about extending the war to other countries,
journalists start receiving envelopes full of bacteria, which might
as well have been labeled"a gift from Iraq". This could indeed be the
work of terrorists, who may have their own reasons for widening the
conflict, but there are plenty of other ruthless operators who would
benefit from a shift in public opinion.
Democracy is sustained not by public trust but by public skepticism.
Unless we are prepared to question, to expose, to challenge and to
dissent, we conspire in the demise of the system for which our
governments are supposed to be fighting. The true defenders of
America are those who are now being told that they are anti-American.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
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