- During the Cold War the United States supported a string
of terror states, from the immediate post-World War backing given Thailand
dictator Phibun Songkhram, "the first pro-Axis dictator to regain
power after the war," to its support of Suharto, Marcos, Mobutu, Diem,
Duvalier, Trujillo, Somoza, and a string of murderous military regimes
in Latin America. This was all done on the rationale of needing to "stop
Communism," but this excuse was used in cases where the threat was
non-existent and laughable. In May 1954, just one month before the United
States overthrew an elected government in Guatemala with a proxy army from
dictator Somoza's territory in Nicaragua, the National Security Council
issued a report on the threat of "Guatemalan Aggression in Latin America,"
and in a mode of panic described that tiny country as "increasingly
an instrument of Soviet aggression in this hemisphere." Guatemala
had not moved an inch outside its territory, was virtually disarmed by
a U.S. boycott, and was quickly overthrown a month later. Did the NSC really
believe their hysterical nonsense? Whether they did or not this was a wonderfully
convenient ploy to deflect attention from the U.S. desire to dominate the
hemisphere, and it was used regularly to create governments of terror that
quickly opened their doors to foreign investment and kept labor markets
as "flexible" as the transnationals and IMF might desire.
Anticommunism was a superb rhetorical instrument for rationalizing U.S.
support of convenient terrorism, and in the 1954 Guatemala case and regularly
elsewhere the mainstream media helped make it work.
There was some reaction to U.S. support of terror regimes in the Carter
years in the 1970s, with a claim that this country should give a little
more attention to "human rights." This new look never took hold,
except in government rhetoric (and in the Carter years aid to Indonesia
was stepped up as its attack on East Timor reached genocidal levels in
1977-1978, and relations with Marcos, the Brazilian generals and Mobutu
remained solid). But with the coming of Reagan there was a famous turn-about:
from our devotion to human rights we were going to turn our attention to
"terrorism," announced Secretary of State Alexander Haig in 1981.
It was alleged that the Soviet Union was behind a terror network, and in
a book that became the bible of the Reagan administration, The Terror Network,
Claire Sterling claimed a Soviet hand everywhere, from support of terrorists
that threatened governments from Italy and Germany to Argentina and South
Africa.
The problem with this new look is that it focused only on retail terrorism--and
selectively--and ignored state terrorism. It attended to the Red Brigades
and Baader-Meinhof gang in Italy and Germany, but neglected the Cuban refugee
terrorist network working out of Miami, Savimbi and Renamo in Angola and
Mozambique, and the Nicaraguan contras--these were OUR terrorists, therefore
"freedom fighters" or ignored. Even more important, Reagan supported
Marcos, Suharto, the murderous governments of El Salvador and Argentina,
and "constructively engaged" South Africa. These were premier
state terrorists; South Africa, crossing its borders into the neighboring
states and killing scores of thousands, was probably the leading terrorist
state in the 1980s. Kaddafi's Libya was an insignificant terrorist state
by comparison. Argentina, which Reagan rushed to embrace in 1981, was also
a violent terrorist state, and in a report on the history of that regime
sponsored by the Alfonsin government after the military government's ouster
in 1984, it was stated that "the armed forces responded to the terrorists'
crimes WITH A TERRORISM INFINITELY WORSE THAN THAT WHICH THEY WERE COMBATTING."
But this had never registered in the U.S. mainstream media while that terrorism
took place; they had always called the retail terrorists terrorists, but
not the "infinitely worse" state terrorists. The Alfonsin report
was given very little attention, and in a miracle of propaganda service
the Reagan administration, supporting the world's worst terrorists, engaging
in it directly by military actions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and sponsoring
terrorism by supporting the Nicaraguan contras and Savimbi in Angola (among
others), was allowed to be fighting terrorism!
So coming to George W. Bush's new dedication to fighting terrorism, we
are in familiar territory. The rule is that terrorism is what the U.S.
government says it is--if it or its allies or clients do precisely the
same thing as the named terrorists, that is not terrorism, by rule of affiliation.
Thus, if we bombed Serbian civilian facilities to intimidate that population,
killing many hundreds, that cannot be terrorism because we did it. It isn't
put this crudely of course, it is merely understood, a silent double standard,
just as it is tacitly understood that international law applies to others
but not to us.
And if we have refused to allow Iraq to import equipment to repair its
destroyed water treatment plants, and if this and the overall sanctions
regime kills hundreds of thousands of civilians, as we strive to remove
or control Saddam Hussein, this intimidation and large-scale killings is
not terrorism, because we are doing it. U.S. support of the Colombian army
(and indirectly, its paramilitaries) is not sponsoring terrorism, despite
the thousands killed and scores of thousands displaced each year, because
we cannot sponsor terrorism by definition. Similarly, although Ariel Sharon's
crucial role in the killings at Sabra and Shatila, Qibya, and elsewhere
gives him a civilian death toll that exceeds that of Carlos the Jackal
by better than fifteen to one, Carlos is EVIL, a major terrorist, whereas
Sharon is accepted and supported as Prime Minister of Israel and is not
labelled a terrorist. Israel, also, can invade Lebanon repeatedly, maintain
a murderous "contra" army in Lebanon, and kill and expropriate
freely in its occupied territories, without designation as a terrorist
state or sponsor of terrorism, by rule of affiliation.
And George W. Bush can threaten to attack Afghanistan if its Taliban rulers
(or faction) does not surrender bin Laden, without providing the Taliban
with any evidence of his participation in the World Trade Center/Pentagon
bombings, putting large numbers of Afghanis into flight for fear of bombing;
and Bush can force Pakistan to close its borders, threatening the several
million Afghanis already in peril of starvation with accelerated death--but
nowhere in the mainstream media is this described as terrorism, although
it fits perfectly the dictionary definition: "a mode of governing,
or opposing government, by intimidation."
I noted earlier that during the Cold War the Red Threat provided the intellectual
cover for support of a string of terror states that served U.S. political
and economic interests. The Bush war on terrorism is already providing
the same kind of cover for supporting OUR terror regimes, and they have
been delighted with the new developments. Benjamin Netanyahu could barely
contain his pleasure at the bombings, barely catching himself to note his
regrets at the deaths! ""It's very good....Well, not very good,
but it will generate immediate sympathy." Sharon immediately stepped
up his own campaign of intimidation, and the new war on terrorism plays
into his hands, as Israel has long been perceived to be only a victim of
terror, fighting terrorism, but never itself engaging in terror; therefore
a natural ally in the war on terrorism from whom we can learn much. Only
the Palestinians terrorize and are never obliged to fight terrorism.
Bush is strengthening ties with Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, and Indonesia,
among other states that engage in serious terror, just as Reagan built
his relationship with South Africa, Argentina, Marcos, and the governments
of El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s. There wasn't an insurmoutable
public relations problem then and there hasn't been a problem currently,
because the mainstream media take it as gospel that we are virtuous and
terrorists are those who we say are terrorists. The liberal E. J. Dionne,
Jr., writes that "Progressives who believe in justice should be able
to back war on terror" (Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 29, 2001). In
the great tradition of apologetics for U.S.- and U.S.-sponsored terrorism,
Dionne never bothers to discuss what terror is; he just takes it as a patriotic
premise that his country never engages in it, or supports it. He follows
his predecessors, who never discussed whether overthrowing the elected
government of Guatemala in 1954 was legal, moral, or based on a real Red
Threat; or whether perhaps Reagan's antiterrorism campaign of the 1980s
was really a cover for the support of terrorisms "infinitely worse"
than those Reagan and the media played up.
In sum, the propaganda system works extremely well, providing Big Brother-quality
results under a system of "freedom." The only losers are what
Thorstein Veblen called "the underlying population."
http://www.zmag.org/hermancover.htm
|