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alternative perspectives on the "war on terrorism"
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Time for Britain to stop being America's lap-dog
Will Hutton, The Observer, February 17, 2002
The most important political story of our time is the rise of the
American Right and the near collapse of American liberalism. This has
transformed the political and cultural geography of the United States
and now it is set to transform the political and cultural geography of
the West. Britain's reflex reactions to an ally with whom we apparently
share so much and which has served us well are going to be tested as
never before.
[The complete article]
What are the facts about anti-Semitism in Europe?
Peter Beaumont, The Observer, February 17, 2002
Israel's brutal response to the often equally reprehensible
anti-Israeli Palestinian violence of the intifada has produced one of
the most vigorous media critiques of Israel's policies in the European
media in a generation. The reply to this criticism, say those most vocal
in reporting the existence of the new anti-Semitism, particularly in
the Israeli press, is devastating in its simplicity: criticise Israel,
and you are an anti-Semite just as surely as if you were throwing paint
at a synagogue in Paris.
[The complete article]
A people at ground zero
Iffat Malik, Al-Ahram Weekly, February 7, 2002
Afghanistan has become adept at breaking records -- all are
negative. Few countries have been at conflict for such a sustained
period of time (22 years and counting); few have as many unexploded
land-mines or people who have lost limbs. Few countries have such a high
infant mortality rate, or percentage of their population living in
absolute poverty. And few have such an extensive and long- standing
refugee population.
[The complete article]
Elusive homeland
Negar Azimi, Al-Ahram Weekly, February 7, 2002
For over two decades Afghanistan's main export has been refugees. As
another war winds down in the country, Al-Ahram Weekly explores the lot
of the millions of Afghans who sought to escape the carnage. From the
teeming refugee camps of Iran to the relative tranquillity of Cairo's
Al-Azhar university, Negar Azimi finds Afghanis with little faith in the
trumpeted message of a new, stable and more prosperous homeland.
[The complete article]
The Arab nations are lost in a pit of desperation
Robert Fisk, The Independent, February 16, 2002
All the participants in the Middle East conflict are now engaged in a
game of self-deception, a massive and fraudulent attempt to avoid any
examination of the critical issues that lie behind the tragedy. The
Saudis want to appeal to America's "conscience", not because they are
upset at Arafat's predicament but because 15 of the 11 September
hijackers were themselves Saudis. Sharon's attempt to join in the "war
against terror" – the manufacturing of non-existent Iranian enemies in
Lebanon, for example, along with some very real enemies in the West Bank
and Gaza – is a blatant attempt to ensure American support for his
crushing of the Palestinian intifada and for the continuation of
Israel's colonisation of Palestinian land.
[The complete article]
War comes home
Andrew Stephen, New Statesman, February 11, 2002
The tragedy of Black Hawk Down is that it feeds in to so many
dangerous current American myths: that the UN (which, significantly,
Bush did not mention in his State of the Union address) is useless, and
that valiant American attempts to "nation build" are doomed.
[The complete article]
Noam Chomsky on the drug-terror link
Philip Smith, DRCNet, February 14, 2002
"Terrorism is now being used and has been used pretty much the same
way communism was used. If you want to press some agenda, you play the
terrorism card. If you don't follow me on this, you're supporting
terrorism."
[The complete article]
US mis-strikes in Afghanistan: accidents or possible war crimes?
David Corn, The Nation, February 25, 2002
Have US forces in Afghanistan engaged in war crimes? That's a
provocative question, the sort of query that few, if any, reporters at
the Pentagon briefing room are going to toss at Rummy. Nevertheless,
it's a question that may bear consideration as new details emerge about
the latest US mis-strikes.
[The complete article]
US targets Saddam
Julian Borger and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, February 14, 2002
The Pentagon and the CIA have begun preparations for an assault on
Iraq involving up to 200,000 US troops that is likely to be launched
later this year with the aim of removing Saddam Hussein from power, US
and diplomatic sources told the Guardian yesterday. President George
Bush's war cabinet, known as the "principals committee", agreed at a
pivotal meeting in late January that the policy of containment has
failed and that active steps should be taken to topple the Iraqi leader.
But, according to a US intelligence source familiar with CIA
preparations, provisional plans for a parallel overt and covert war only
landed on the president's desk in the past few days.
[The complete article]
Can the US be defeated?
Seumas Milne, The Guardian, February 14, 2002
Those who have argued that America's war on terror would fail to
defeat terrorism have, it turns out, been barking up the wrong tree.
Ever since President Bush announced his $45bn increase in military
spending and gave notice to Iraq, Iran and North Korea that they had
"better get their house in order" or face what he called the "justice of
this nation", it has become ever clearer that the US is not now
primarily engaged in a war against terrorism at all.
[The complete article]
Caught in the middle - can moderate Muslims be heard over the radical roar?
Bharati Sadasivam, Village Voice, February 13, 2002
The equation of Islam with terrorism post-September 11 has had
consequences for Muslims everywhere, particularly in India, home to the
world's second largest Muslim population.
[The complete article]
Beat the press - does the White House have a blacklist?
Nicholas Confessore, The American Prospect, March 11, 2002
"What September 11 has done," says one White House reporter, "is
heightened their arrogance." Many among the working press say that some
Bush officials seem to view tough questions as unpatriotic and negative
stories, however accurate, as borderline seditious. "No one would ever
overtly question your patriotism," says one reporter. "But there is a
little sense of, 'This is wartime, how dare you ask those questions?'"
[The complete article]
Tyranny in the name of freedom
Simon Churchyard, Red Pepper, February, 2002
With the cementing of a new US-Uzbek alliance as part of the "war
against terror", America is bolstering one of the former Soviet Union's
least-known, but most repressive, dictatorships.
[The complete article]
US turns away as prisoners face death
Andrew Buncombe and Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, 10 February, 2002
The US has been accused of openly flouting the Geneva Conventions at
an Afghan jail where scores of prisoners are at risk of dying from
disease and malnutrition, just days after President Bush said Taliban
fighters should be protected under international law.
[The complete article]
US big guns silent on 'regime change'
Julian Borger, The Guardian, February 13, 2002
The politicians are keen to see the back of Saddam Hussein, but the military is taking a more detached and realistic view.
[The complete article]
Forget drugs, this is about the guerrillas
Isabel Hilton, The Guardian, February 13, 2002
The US is turning its attention and its guns towards Colombia.
[The complete article]
Increasing defense spending isn't America's cure-all
Paul Simon, Chicago Tribune, February 12, 2002
Today [the US] spends more than the next eight nations combined on
defense, but is dead last among the 21 wealthy nations of the world in
the percentage of our income that helps the poor beyond our borders.
[The complete article]
America's imperial war
George Monbiot, The Guardian, February 12, 2002
An asymmetric world war of the kind George Bush and his defence
secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, have proposed provides the justification,
long sought by the defence companies and their sponsored representatives
in Washington, for a massive increase in arms spending. Eisenhower
warned us to "guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The
potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will
persist." But we have disregarded his warning, and forgotten how
dangerous the people seeking vast state contracts can be.
[The complete article]
"America is extremely naughty"
Neil MacFarquhar, The New York Times (via IHT), February 12, 2002
Millions of Iranians streamed through city streets nationwide
Monday, marking the 23d anniversary of the Islamic Revolution with a
massive pep rally to express their antipathy for President George W.
Bush labeling them part of an "axis of evil."
[The complete article]
Afghans are still dying as air strikes go on. But no one is counting
Ian Traynor, The Guardian, February 12, 2002
Bombing blunders and misleading information on the ground keep the
civilian toll rising in Afghanistan. In the first of a three-part
investigation Guardian writers ask: How many innocent people are dying?
[The complete article]
Bush, oil and the Taliban
Nina Burleigh, Salon, February 8, 2002
Two French authors allege that before Sept. 11, the White House put oil interests ahead of national security.
[The complete article]
Iran acts against anti-US Afghan fighters
Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times, February 12, 2002
As several thousand die-hard guerrillas, armed and supplied, prepare
to attack foreign troops in Afghanistan as soon as the snow melts,
sudden Iranian action has dealt a blow to future anti-US and anti-Kabul
resistance.
[The complete article]
Is it farewell to human rights?
Michael Ignatieff, New York Times (via The Age), February 11, 2002
Since the end of the Cold War, human rights has become the dominant
moral vocabulary in foreign affairs. The question after September11 is
whether the era of human rights has come and gone. Michael Ignatieff is professor of human rights policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
[The complete article]
Bush is worrying Asians
Alan Dupont, International Herald Tribune, February 11, 2002
In his determination to win the battle against Al Qaeda and
international terrorism, President George W. Bush must be careful that
he does not lose the wider war by alienating friends and uniting foes.
[The complete article]
Torn land harbors chaos but no Qaeda - Somalia finds US focus misguided
Donald G. McNeil Jr., The New York Times (via IHT), February 11, 2002
The fear that the Americans would bomb or invade - omnipresent a
month ago - has now ebbed. But American and European warships patrol the
coast, looking for ships or planes smuggling in lieutenants of Al
Qaeda. There have been unconfirmed reports that American and British
commandos have entered, but only on reconnaissance missions. As Ken
Menkhaus, an expert on Somalia at Davidson College in North Carolina,
wrote in a recent academic paper, "There are at this time no terrorist
bases or training camps in Somalia, and everyone in the U.S. government
knows this."
[The complete article]
Thousands rally against US in Iran as more innocent Afghans killed
Agence France-Presse, February 11, 2002
Tens of thousands of Iranians declared their defiance toward the
United States Monday, as Afghan officials said another US military
bungle had cost more innocent lives in the "war on terror".
[The complete article]
Sharon's hard line stirs peace movement
Phil Reeves, The Independent, February 11, 2002
More than 16 months after the start of the intifada, Israel's long
dormant left-wing and pro-peace lobby has declared that the "peace camp
is going back to the streets", as rumblings increase over the conduct of
Ariel Sharon's government and the army. More than 25 grassroots
political organisations fired the opening salvo of the new campaign by
gathering in Tel Aviv on Saturday to protest against the government's
handling of the intifada and to demand Israeli withdrawal from the
occupied territories.
[The complete article]
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HOME
September 11 and the declaration of a "war on terrorism," has
forced Americans to look at the World in a new light. No one can afford
any longer to define the limits of their concerns by refusing to look
beyond this nation's borders. If the freedom that every American
cherishes, is not to become a freedom bound within a fortress, then
every American will need to understand and respect the needs and
concerns of the rest of the World. To this end, The War in Context
invites anyone with interest and an open mind to listen to the critical
discourse in which the policies and actions of the Bush administration
are now being questioned. This debate, which is engaging inquiring minds
inside and outside America, will hopefully inform the development of a
sustainable new world order - a world order in which America is as much
shaped by the World as is the World shaped by America.
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