- How many people do you know who claim to be skeptical,
who pride themselves on their distrust for authority, who like to pretend
that they're wise to the ways of the world -- and then, every time there's
a war, they swallow the lies of the government with all the gullibility
of a three-year-old child in the lap of a department store Santa Claus?
Don't fall into that trap yourself! Learn to identify and refute official
misinformation when you see it. Let's count down some of the common misconceptions
about this war:
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- Lie #5: "We're not at war with the Afghan people
-- look, we're bringing them food!"
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- Reality: Afghanistan is in the midst of a severe drought
which threatens literally millions of people with starvation. Even before
the threat of U.S. bombing, the World Food Program (WFP) said that nearly
6 million people were in need of immediate food assistance. When the threat
of war caused massive movements of refugees and internally displaced people,
the WFP raised that number to 7.5 million. UN agencies were keeping huge
numbers of people alive, but the war danger -- as well as the U.S. demand
that Pakistan seal its border with Afghanistan -- caused the WFP to suspend
deliveries of wheat flour to the country. We have no idea how many people
have already died as a result. Meanwhile, the U.S. dropped 37,000 individually-wrapped
packages of food from the sky. You do the math. That's enough to feed about
37,000 people for one day, in a country where seven and a half million
are in danger of starvation. Additionally, the spokesman for an international
charity active in Afghanistan told the London Independent that "Random
food drops are the worst possible way of delivering food aid. They cause
more problems than they solve." Not the least of which is the fact
that Afghanistan has the highest number of unexploded land mines in the
world. There are already 10 or 15 mine incidents every day, and with people
scrambling into mine-ridden areas to pick up random packages of food dropped
from U.S. planes, that number is only going to go up.
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- Lie #4: "Oil? Who said anything about oil?"
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- Reality: The Caspian Sea region has potentially the
world's largest oil reserves, likely making Central Asia the next Middle
East. The problem is piping it out. Afghanistan occupies a strategic position
between the Caspian and the markets of the Indian subcontinent and east
Asia. It's prime territory for building pipelines, which is why the oil
company Unocal -- as well as the U.S. government -- welcomed the Taliban's
rise to power in 1996 as a promising source of "stability." That
turned out to be a pipe dream (so to speak), but people like our Commander-in-Chief
and the oil men around him have never given up on the tremendous profit
possibilities that Central Asia offers. And if you don't think such considerations
are crossing their minds at this time of crisis, may we suggest a refresher
course in The Facts of Life?
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- Lie #3: "The U.S. is trying to liberate the people
of Afghanistan from Taliban tyranny."
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- Reality: The U.S., Russia, and Iran have been aiding
a rough coalition of armed groups called the Northern Alliance. The Northern
Alliance's fighters are drawn mainly from ethnic minority groups in Afghanistan
who have been persecuted by the Taliban. But their record is also a bloody
one. Groups like the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
(RAWA), which have been fighting against fundamentalism and for democracy
in Afghanistan for years, have publicly stated that the fundamentalist
gangsters of the Northern Alliance are not an acceptable alternative to
the fundamentalist gangsters of the Taliban. No wonder: Human Rights Watch
implicates the Northern Alliance in "indiscriminate aerial bombardment
and shelling, direct attacks on civilians, summary executions, rape, persecution
on the basis of religion or ethnicity, the recruitment and use of children
as soldiers, and the use of antipersonnel landmines." By now everyone
knows that Osama bin Laden was among the mujihadin recruited by the CIA
to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Meet the next generation.
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- Lie #2: "America is coming together."
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- Reality: Tens of thousands of people have been laid
off in the airline industry alone. The government quickly responded to
the airline industry crisis with a multi-billion-dollar bailout package
for the companies in order to keep afloat the profits of shareholders and
the salaries of CEOs, but when it came to aiding the thousands of workers
laid off, Congressman Dick Armey said that that would be contrary to "the
American spirit." Maybe it is. Maybe it's the "American spirit"
to make common working people pay for a crisis and to bear the burdens
of an expensive war. But it certainly doesn't have anything to do with
"togetherness."
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- And the biggest lie of all . . .
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- Lie #1: "It's possible to win a 'war against terrorism.'"
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- Reality: Terrorism is a tactic, not a political or social
force in and of itself. Anyone can use it, and the idea that you can wage
a "war" against it is as dishonest as the idea behind the "War
on Drugs." The use of food as a political weapon, indiscriminate aerial
bombardment, and the arming of gangsterish groups of religious fanatics
all count as "terrorism" by any reasonable definition of the
word, and the United States has long employed all of them -- and more.
This war is really about sordid material interests and power (see especially
Lies numbers 2 and 4, above), and in defense of these interests the U.S.
is prepared to shift the label "terrorist" as it sees fit, to
apply to all manner of dissident political movements and not just marginal
bands of fanatics like bin Laden's al-Qa'ida. Conversely, it's willing
to call its own terrorists "freedom fighters" (see Lie number
3 above). Maybe some of them will get transformed into "terrorists"
again in a few years. It's a sick game and a charade, and the government
is manipulating the very real grief and anger of the people of the United
States after the September 11 atrocities to get us all to fall for it again.
Don't believe them for a second. ___
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- Produced by the Anti-War Committee of Students in Solidarity
at the University of Pittsburgh
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