by Larry Mosqueda, Ph.D. - The Evergreen State College - September 15, 2001
http://www.oureffort2001.com/RESEARCH/TALIBAN/thestrike.htm
The Imaam al-Albani Centre, Jordan, aptly noted - in its
recent statement on the events in New York -, "And what makes the matter
sensitively difficult at the one and same time is that the Americans do
not mention in that which they announced of those supporting terrorism which
have been counted previously - any group, or faction, or society or individual,
except when it is linked with Islaam! So we say: O Allaah, amazing and strange!
Are there not to be found in their own lands and amongst their own societies,
any terrorists? Are they not themselves while they exercise with such
harshness the policing of all the nations and societies - based upon what
they conceive of the meaning of terrorism terrorists themselves?"
Thus, it would fair and just that the "Strike Against Terror"
propaganda that is being used to brainwash the masses into creating an inherent
link between Islam and "Terror" - while in reality it is free and
remote from it - should be widened ever so slightly...
Just consider the following statement (and the details therein):
"Like all Americans, on Tuesday, 9-11, I was shocked and horrified to
watch the WTC Twin Towers attacked by hijacked planes and collapse, resulting in
the deaths of perhaps up to 10,000 innocent people.
I had not been that shocked and horrified since January 16, 1991, when then
President Bush attacked Baghdad, and the rest of Iraq and began killing 200,000
people during that "war" (slaughter). This includes the infamous
"highway of death" in the last days of the slaughter when U.S. pilots
literally shot in the back retreating Iraqi civilians and soldiers. I continue
to be horrified by the sanctions on Iraq, which have resulted in the death of
over 1,000,000 Iraqis, including over 500,000 children, about whom former
Secretary of State Madeline Allbright has stated that their deaths "are
worth the cost".
Over the course of my life I have been shocked and horrified by a variety of
U.S. governmental actions, such as the U.S. sponsored coup against democracy in
Guatemala in 1954 which resulted in the deaths of over 120,000 Guatemalan
peasants by U.S. installed dictatorships over the course of four decades.
Last Tuesday's events reminded me of the horror I felt when the U.S.
overthrew the governments of the Dominican Republic in 1965 and helped to murder
3,000 people. And it reminded me of the shock I felt in 1973, when the U.S.
sponsored a coup in Chile against the democratic government of Salvador Allende
and helped to murder another 30,000 people, including U.S. citizens.
Last Tuesday's events reminded me of the shock and horror I felt in 1965 when
the U.S. sponsored a coup in Indonesia that resulted in the murder of over
800,000 people, and the subsequent slaughter in 1975 of over 250,000 innocent
people in East Timor by the Indonesian regime with the direct complicity of
President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissenger.
I was reminded of the shock and horror I felt during the U.S. sponsored
terrorist contra war (the World Court declared the U.S. government a war
criminal in 1984 for the mining of the harbors) against Nicaragua in the 1980s
which resulted in the deaths of over 30,000 innocent people (or as the U.S.
government used to call them before the term "collateral damage" was
invented--"soft targets").
I was reminded of being horrified by the U. S. war against the people of El
Salvador in the 1980s, which resulted in the brutal deaths of over 80,000
people, or "soft targets".
I was reminded of the shock and horror I felt during the U.S. sponsored
terror war against the peoples of southern Africa (especially Angola) that began
in the 1970's and continues to this day and has resulted in the deaths and
mutilations of over 1,000,000. I was reminded of the shock and horror I felt as
the U.S. invaded Panama over the Christmas season of 1989 and killed over 8,000
in an attempt to capture George H. Bush's CIA partner, now turned enemy, Manual
Noriega.
I was reminded of the horror I felt when I learned about how the Shah of Iran
was installed in a U.S. sponsored brutal coup that resulted in the deaths of
over 70,000 Iranians from 1952-1979. And the continuing shock as I learned that
the Ayatollah Khomani, who overthrew the Shah in 1979, and who was the U.S.
public enemy for decade of the 1980s, was also on the CIA payroll, while he was
in exile in Paris in the 1970s.
I was reminded of the shock and horror that I felt as I learned about how the
U.S. has "manufactured consent" since 1948 for its support of Israel,
to the exclusion of virtually any rights for the Palestinians in their native
lands resulting in ever worsening day-to-day conditions for the people of
Palestine. I was shocked as I learned about the hundreds of towns and villages
that were literally wiped off the face of the earth in the early days of Israeli
colonization. I was horrified in 1982 as the villagers of Sabra and Shatila were
massacred by Israeli allies with direct Israeli complicity and direction. The
untold thousands who died on that day match the scene of horror that we saw last
Tuesday. But those scenes were not repeated over and over again on the national
media to inflame the American public.
The events and images of last Tuesday have been appropriately compared to the
horrific events and images of Lebanon in the 1980s with resulted in the deaths
of tens of thousand of people, with no reference to the fact that the country
that inflicted the terror on Lebanon was Israel, with U.S. backing. I still
continue to be shocked at how mainstream commentators refer to "Israeli
settlers" in the "occupied territories" with no sense of irony as
they report on who are the aggressors in the region.
Of course, the largest and most shocking war crime of the second half of the
20th century was the U.S. assault on Indochina from 1954-1975, especially
Vietnam, where over 4,000,000 people were bombed, napalmed, crushed, shot and
individually "hands on" murdered in the "Phoenix Program"
(this is where Oliver North got his start). Many U.S. Vietnam veterans were also
victimized by this war and had the best of intentions, but the policy makers
themselves knew the criminality of their actions and policies as revealed in
their own words in "The Pentagon Papers," released by Daniel Ellsberg
of the RAND Corporation.
In 1974 Ellsberg noted that our Presidents from Truman to Nixon continually
lied to the U.S. public about the purpose and conduct of the war. He has stated
that, "It is a tribute to the American people that our leaders perceived
that they had to lie to us, it is not a tribute to us that we were so easily
misled."
I was continually shocked and horrified as the U.S. attacked and bombed with
impunity the nation of Libya in the 1980s, including killing the infant daughter
of Khadafi. I was shocked as the U.S. bombed and invaded Grenada in 1983. I was
horrified by U.S. military and CIA actions in Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan,
Sudan, Brazil, Argentina, and Yugoslavia. The deaths in these actions ran into
the hundreds of thousands.
The above list is by no means complete or comprehensive. It is merely a list
that is easily accessible and not unknown, especially to the economic and
intellectual elites. It has just been conveniently eliminated from the public
discourse and public consciousness. And for the most part, the analysis that the
U.S. actions have resulted in the deaths of primarily civilians (over 90%) is
not unknown to these elites and policy makers. A conservative number for those
who have been killed by U.S. terror and military action since World War II is
8,000,000 people. Repeat--8,000,000 people. This does not include the wounded,
the imprisoned, the displaced, the refugees, etc. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated
in 1967, during the Vietnam War, "My government is the world's leading
purveyor of violence." Shocking and horrifying.
Nothing that I have written is meant to disparage or disrespect those who
were victims and those who suffered death or the loss of a loved one during this
week's events. It is not meant to "justify" any action by those who
bombed the Twin Towers or the Pentagon. It is meant to put it in a
context..."