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Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 10:18:52 +0300
From: "[iso-8859-7] ������� �������"
Reply-To: psychohistory@yahoogroups.com
To: psychohistory@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [psychohistory] A Terrorist's Nursery
Hi,
The following article appeared in the INDEPENDET and, in IMO, presends well
the Psychohistorical case of the 'making of terrorists'.
I make some comments at the bottom of the message.
[
Robert Fisk: As the refugees crowd the borders, we'll be blaming someone
else
'It is palpably evident that they are not fleeing the Taliban but our bombs
and missiles'
23 October 2001
Mullah Mohammed Omar's 10-year-old son is dead. He was, according to Afghan
refugees fleeing Kandahar, taken to one of the city's broken hospitals by
his father, the Taliban leader and "Emir of the Faithful", but the boy -
apparently travelling in Omar's car when it was attacked by US aircraft -
died of his wounds.
No regrets, of course. Back in 1985, when American aircraft bombed Libya,
they also destroyed the life of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's six-year-old
adopted daughter. No regrets, of course. In 1992, when an Israeli pilot
flying an American-made Apache helicopter fired an American-made missile
into the car of Said Abbas Moussawi, head of the Hizbollah guerrilla army in
Lebanon, the Israeli pilot also killed Moussawi's 10-year-old. No regrets,
of course.
Whether these children deserved their deaths, be sure that their fathers -
in our eyes - were to blame. Live by the sword, die by the sword - and that
goes for the kids too. Back in 1991, The Independent revealed that American
Gulf War military targets included "secure" bunkers in which members of
Saddam Hussein's family - or the families of his henchmen - were believed to
be hiding. That's how the Americans managed to slaughter well over 300
people in an air raid shelter at Amariya in Baghdad. No Saddam kids, just
civilians. Too bad. I wonder - now that President George Bush has given
permission to the CIA to murder Osama bin Laden - if the same policy applies
today?
And so the casualties begin to mount. From Kandahar come ever more frightful
stories of civilians buried under ruins, of children torn to pieces by
American bombs. The Taliban - and here the Americans must breathe a
collective sigh of relief - refuse to allow Western journalists to enter the
country to verify these reports. So when a few television crews were able to
find 18 fresh graves in the devastated village of Khorum outside Jalalabad
just over a week ago, the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could
ridicule the deaths as "ridiculous". But not, I suspect, for much longer.
For if each of our wars for infinite justice and eternal freedom have a
familiar trade mark - the military claptrap about air superiority,
suppression of "command and control centres", radar capabilities - each has
an awkward, highly exclusive little twist to it. In 1999, Nato claimed it
was waging war to put Kosovo Albanian refugees back in their homes - even
though most of the refugees were still in their homes when the war began.
Our bombing of Serbia led directly to their dispossession. We bear a heavy
burden of responsibility for their suffering - since the Serbs had told us
what they would do if Nato opened hostilities - although the ultimate blame
for their "ethnic cleansing'' clearly belonged to Slobodan Milosevic.
But Nato's escape clause won't work this time round. For as the Afghan
refugees turn up in their thousands at the border, it is palpably evident
that they are fleeing not the Taliban but our bombs and missiles. The
Taliban is not ethnically cleansing its own Pashtun population. The refugees
speak vividly of their fear and terror as our bombs fall on their cities.
These people are terrified of our "war on terror'', victims as innocent as
those who were slaughtered in the World Trade Centre on 11 September. So
where do we stop?
It's an important question because, once the winter storms breeze down the
mountain gorges of Afghanistan, a tragedy is likely to commence, one which
no spin doctor or propaganda expert will be able to divert. We'll say that
the thousands about to die or who are dying of starvation and cold are
victims of the Taliban's intransigence or the Taliban's support for
"terrorism" or the Taliban's propensity to steal humanitarian supplies.
I have to admit - having been weaned on Israel's promiscuous use of the word
"terror" every time a Palestinian throws a stone at his occupiers - that I
find the very word "terrorism" increasingly mendacious as well as racist. Of
course - despite the slavish use of the phrase "war on terrorism" on the BBC
and CNN - it is nothing of the kind. We are not planning to attack Tamil
Tiger suicide bombers or Eta killers or Real IRA murderers or Kurdish KDP
guerrillas. Indeed, the US has spent a lot of time supporting terrorists in
Latin America - the Contras spring to mind - not to mention the rabble we
are now bombing in Afghanistan. This is, as I've said before, a war on
America's enemies. Increasingly, as the date of 11 September acquires iconic
status, we are retaliating for the crimes against humanity in New York and
Washington. But we're not setting up any tribunals to try those responsible.
The figure of 6,000 remains as awesome as it did in the days that followed.
But what happens when the deaths for which we are responsible begin to
approach the same figure? Refugees have been telling me on the Pakistan
border that the death toll from our bombings in Afghanistan is in the
dozens, perhaps the hundreds. Once the UN agencies give us details of the
starving and the destitute who are dying in their flight from our bombs, it
won't take long to reach 6,000. Will that be enough? Will 12,000 dead
Afghans appease us, albeit that they have nothing to do with the Taliban or
Osama bin Laden? Or 24,000? If we think we know what our aims are in this
fraudulent "war against terror", have we any idea of proportion?
Sure, we'll blame the Taliban for future tragedies. Just as we've been
blaming them for drug exports from Afghanistan. Tony Blair was at the
forefront of the Taliban-drug linkage. And all we have to do to believe this
is to forget the UN Drug Control Programme's announcement last week that
opium production in Afghanistan has fallen by 94 per cent, chiefly due to
Mullah Omar's prohibition in Taliban-controlled areas. Most of Afghanistan's
current opium production comes - you've guessed it - from our friends in the
Northern Alliance.
This particular war is, as Mr Bush said, going to be "unlike any other" -
but not in quite the way he thinks. It's not going to lead to justice. Or
freedom. It's likely to culminate in deaths that will diminish in magnitude
even the crime against humanity on 11 September. Do we have any plans for
this? Can we turn the falsity of a "war against terror" into a war against
famine and starvation and death, even at the cost of postponing our day of
reckoning with Osama bin Laden?
]
Historicaly reprisals of a 10-fold of a 100-fold magnitude never worked in
the favore of those commiting them. Making a 'little' New York every day in
Afganistan, or anyware for that matter, just guarantees the creation of more
willing to die terrorists.
Of course 'our' governments already know this, thus an issue arrises: What's
in the long term agenda, if anything? The rhetiric and the 'official'
reasons given, ie. hunting down terrorists, retaliation to the patrons of
the Sept 11th events, punishing the guilty have only a short term value,
even without the cosideration of 'collateral damage', and will ultimately
lead to the creation of more willing to die terrorists. (Due to a mechanism
I call the "remaining leaven" - No matter the terrorists' death toll even
a - statisticaly expected - tiny bit of terrorist "yeast" will produce the
nesecary "leaven" that will fuel their future moves.
So, I speculate that there might be something more in it all...
Regards
Christos Konstas
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