|
|
|
|
|
alternative perspectives on the "war on terrorism"
|
US seen at risk of repeating Cold War mistakes
Jim Lobe, Asia Times, March 9, 2002
As the administration of President George W Bush ramps up its global
anti-terrorism campaign, it risks repeating the mistakes Washington
made in Latin America during the Cold War, says a longtime critic of US
policy in Latin America.
[The complete article]
Americans are masters of destruction
The US is driving the Muslim world to hatred
Abdel Bari Atwan, The Observer, March 10, 2002
It never occurred to me when I met Osama bin Laden in one of the
caves of the Jalalabad overlooking Tora Bora mountains more than five
years ago that this slim, rarely smiling man would be the leading figure
responsible for paving the way for inter-religious, inter-cultural wars
that may last for five or more decades but this is what he has done.
Although 11 September changed the Western world the effect on the
Islamic world has been far greater. The gulf between the two is
widening.
[The complete article]
'Bombing Saddam is ignorance'
Henry Porter, The Observer, March 3, 2002
Robert Baer's objections to an attack on Iraq could hardly be
principled. As the CIA's point man in Iraq during the failed uprising in
1995, he encouraged dissident groups to believe that the United States
wanted the overthrow and death of Saddam Hussein. Yet Baer, whose memoir
of life in the CIA, See No Evil, is published in Britain tomorrow, is
appalled at the idea of a US strike against Iraq today.
[The complete article]
Secret plan outlines the unthinkable
A secret policy review of US nuclear policy puts forth chilling new contingencies for nuclear war
William M Arkin, Los Angeles Times, March 10 2002
Heretofore, nuclear strategy tended to exist as something apart from
the ordinary challenges of foreign policy and military affairs. Nuclear
weapons were not just the option of last resort, they were the option
reserved for times when national survival hung in the balance--a
doomsday confrontation with the Soviet Union, for instance. Now, nuclear
strategy seems to be viewed through the prism of Sept. 11.
[The complete article]
Bush is doing nothing to stop Israel's immoral civil war
Robert Fisk, The Independent, March 9, 2002
The American press made much of US Secretary of State Colin Powell's
criticism of Mr Sharon. But read what Mr Powell actually said: he asked
whether Sharon's military policy – of killing more Palestinians – would
work. One of his spokesmen, speaking two days ago, announced that "we
had to make clear to him [Sharon] there is simply no evidence that
approach will succeed''. Mr Powell and his minions were not attacking Mr
Sharon because the Israeli policy was immoral. It was the military
ineffectiveness of killing Palestinians, not the abuse of human rights
that this embodies, to which the Americans took objection.
[The complete article]
FOCUS ON IRAQ:
COMMENT - When it comes to understanding the thinking of the Bush administration, one need look no further than The Weekly Standard and National Review
to find a steady flow of unofficial foreign policy statements. This
should hardly be surprising, given that William Kristol, editor of The
Weekly Standard, is also a member of the Defense Policy Board (a Pentagon advisory panel charged with overseeing military preparedness and engaging in defense policy big-think) and contributors to both publications are supporters of The Project for the New American Century (whose original sponsors include Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney).
Over the coming months we are likely to witness a concerted effort
to bolster the image of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) until they
acquire a status similar to that of the Northern Alliance. The only
difference will be that no one will be claiming that the INC can serve
as a proxy that circumvents the need for a substantial US ground force.
Interestingly, if discrediting one of their own intelligence agencies
is necessary for furthering their attack-Iraq agenda, the principal
backers of the INC - Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey and Richard Perle -
appear to be unconstrained by any need to abide by the united-we-stand
philosophy.
Believe the CIA?
How reliable is the agency’s information on Iraq?
Max Singer, National Review, March 7, 2002
As the discussion about what the U.S. should do about Iraq comes to a
head, the CIA has stepped up its efforts to discredit the main Iraqi
opposition movement, the Iraqi National Congress (INC).
[The complete article]
Pakistani intelligence and Americans 'abduct' Briton
Case part of trend in casual detention, say lawyers
Audrey Gillan, The Guardian, March 9, 2002
Fresh fears about the circumstances in which alleged terror suspects
are being detained by US authorities have emerged after Pakistani
intelligence was accused last night of working with Americans to kidnap a
British man, bundling him into the boot of a car and smuggling him to
Afghanistan. The case is being closely scrutinised by British and US
lawyers who believe it reflects a trend of casual detention of terrorist
suspects in the region, with apparent disregard for international law.
[The complete article]
The kilim fields
Christopher Kremmer, Sydney Morning Herald, March 9, 2002
More than a decade ago, I walked into a rug shop in the Afghan
capital, Kabul, and in a sense, I never walked out. The store was a
musty repository of woollen objects with strange, angular motifs, and
the proprietor a man of gentle piety, who would eventually become one of
my most valued friends. As that first afternoon rolled along on a river
of green tea, we exchanged more in the way of ideas than carpets,
traded more details of our lives than rare weavings. Afghanistan had
already been at war for a decade, and a decade since that meeting, it
still is.
[The complete article]
Six months later, the basic tool is language
Norman Solomon, Media Beat, March 7, 2002
Cameras have recorded countless defining moments. And six months
after Sept. 11, some nightmarish televised glimpses of that day's
horrors still resonate deeply. Visual images are powerful. Yet there's
no substitute for words that sum up what might otherwise seem too
ambiguous, upsetting or baffling. Words attach meaning to events. Since
last fall, the biggest media buzz-phrase has been "the war on
terrorism." By now, journalists are in the habit of shortening it to
"the war on terror" -- perhaps the most demagogic term in recent memory.
[The complete article]
US faces guerrilla warfare
Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, March 8, 2002
Few here believe peace has really dawned in a country torn apart by
more than 20 years of war. "I don't think the fighting will ever finish
in Afghanistan," said Abdul Matin Hassan Kheil, who commands around 100
of the Afghan soliders now fighting in the mountains near Gardez. "In
Afghanistan people always want to be more powerful than anybody else.
This fighting will continue for a long time."
[The complete article]
George's journey makes the big screen
Julian Borger, The Guardian, March 8, 2002
Now that he has evolved into a steely-eyed, firm-jawed wartime
leader, it is sometimes hard to recall the callow and goofy figure that
George Bush cut on the campaign trail. But today, at the height of his
popularity, a ghost of his pre-presidential whimsy will come back to
haunt him.
[The complete article]
The politics of rights
UN high commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson, visits Egypt
Amira Howeidy, Al-Ahram Weekly, March 7, 2002
"Frankly speaking," Abdel-Raouf El-Ridi, Egypt's former ambassador
to the US, addressed Robinson at the seminar, "we see the Western world
applying double standards. When there was occupation in Europe, those
resisting it were considered heroes. When there was a Soviet occupation
in Afghanistan, the resistance fighters were called mujahideen, who,
back then in the Western lexicon, were considered heroes... But we have
to observe the relationship between occupation and so-called terrorism,
because [the Palestinians'] feeling of humiliation, resentment and anger
at the Israeli occupation has led to the situation we have today. And
occupation, Mrs Robinson, is a violation of human rights."
[The complete article]
History shows that after the war comes the real battle
Martin Woollacott, The Guardian, March 8, 2002
It is usually supposed that victory crowns a military campaign. In
Afghanistan it seems to be working out the other way round. The nasty
skirmishes between rival bosses in the regions, the violence that took
the life of a member of the interim authority in Kabul, the very limited
reach of the small international force in the capital, and now the
genuine battles going on with Taliban and al-Qaida forces near Gardez
all suggest that much remains to be done.
[The complete article]
From Suez to the Pacific - US expands its presence across the globe
Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, March 8, 2002
Today, almost six months after the attacks on New York and
Washington, the US is putting in place a network of forward bases
stretching from the Middle East across the entire length of Asia, from
the Red Sea to the Pacific.
[The complete article]
It's the oil pipeline, stupid
Peter Dale Scott, AlterNet, March 5, 2002
Deployment of U.S. Special Operations forces to the Caucasus state
of Georgia would help enforce a Washington pipeline policy aimed at
neutralizing Russian influence in oil-rich Central Asia.
[The complete article]
Parallax and Palestine
D.D. Guttenplan, The Nation, March 11, 2002
Always present to some degree, in the weeks following the attack on
the World Trade Center the divergence in British and American views of
the Middle East has become acute in ways that are both revealing and
suggestive. "All the differences in the way Britain and America view the
conflict have come to the surface," says Avi Shlaim, author of The Iron Wall,
a history of Israel's relations with its Arab neighbors. "Most
Americans only know the Israeli side of the story," says Shlaim, a
Baghdad-born Israeli who teaches at Oxford. The resulting blindness, he
adds, makes for an American approach that is irrelevant at best and
often disastrous. [...] The American view of the conflict is "shaped by
a false paradigm of equivalence," says Chris Doyle of the Council for
the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, a pro-Palestinian
lobbying group. "America acts as if there was a moral equivalence
between the occupiers and the occupied, and a military equivalence
between a nuclear power and teenagers throwing stones."
[The complete article]
The Pashtuns: A tribe is prey to vengeance after Taliban's fall in North
Dexter Filkins and Barry Bearak, New York Times, March 7, 2002
The Pashtuns of northern Afghanistan are fleeing their villages by
the thousands now, telling tales of murder and rape and robbery, and
leaving behind empty towns and grazing grounds just beginning to shimmer
with the first grass of spring. Some refugees are living in caves;
others are heading south, to where their ethnic brethren still dominate.
Dozens, perhaps hundreds of Pashtun villages have been looted. Reports
like these inspire proposals by the interim government in Kabul for a
security force to police areas outside the capital, proposals that the
Western allies are reluctant to accept.
[The complete article - registration required]
Terrorists under the bed
Eric Boehlert, Salon, March 5, 2002
"Terrorism expert" Steven Emerson paints a terrifying picture of
lethal Muslim fundamentalists among us in "American Jihad." But he
doesn't know the difference between Osama bin Laden and Yasser Arafat.
[The complete article]
FOCUS ON IRAQ:
The debate within
The objective is clear—topple Saddam. But how?
Seymour M Hersh, The New Yorker, March 11, 2002
After a year of bitter infighting, the Bush Administration remains
sharply divided about Iraq. There is widespread agreement that Saddam
Hussein must be overthrown, but no agreement about how to get it done.
[The complete article]
Iraq: the phantom threat
Scott Ritter, Christian Science Monitor, January 23, 2002
There is a substantial lack of clarity and credible sources on the
actual nature of the Iraqi threat to the US. A wider debate on US policy
toward Iraq is imperative, especially in light of the increasing war
talk out of Washington. Rather than relying on information from dubious
sources, let's put all the facts on the table. The conclusions drawn
from such a debate could pull us back from the brink of an unnecessary
and costly war.
[The complete article]
U.S. suspends funding to Iraqi opposition group
Robin Wright, Los Angeles Times, January 5, 2002
Despite the growing drumbeat to expand the war on terrorism to Iraq,
U.S. officials this week suspended key funding to the leading Iraqi
group opposing President Saddam Hussein because it has failed to account
for tens of millions of dollars in U.S. aid.
[The complete article]
America's morality has been distorted by 11 September
'It's as if all the lessons of history, in Afghanistan and the Middle East, have been tossed into a bin'
Robert Fisk, The Independent, March 7, 2002
I'm beginning to suspect that 11 September is turning into a curse
far greater than the original bloodbath of that day, that America's
absorption with that terrible event is in danger of distorting our
morality. Is the anarchy of Afghanistan and the continuing slaughter in
the Middle East really to be the memorial for the thousands who died on
11 September?
[The complete article]
For their eyes only
Julian Borger, The Guardian, March 6, 2002
The democratic principle of open government is under pressure from a
US administration obsessed with secrecy and media manipulation. The
United States possesses an extraordinary institution which sets it apart
from almost every other nation on Earth and helps define America as an
open democracy. It is called the 1966 Freedom of Information Act, and it
is in serious trouble.
[The complete article]
Shades of gray
In Colombia, U.S. must not turn a blind eye to corruption, abuses of authority
Lynn Holland, Foreign Policy in Focus, March 1, 2002
As a result of the United State's new "War on Terrorism," Colombia's
bloody civil war has finally entered the limelight of international
attention after spending thirty-eight years in the shadows. The events
of 9-11 have permitted the Bush administration to paint U.S. foreign
policy as a matter of black and white choices. But Colombia's
internecine conflict -- and the role the United States is to play in
that conflict -- make for a study in shades of gray.
[The complete article]
Taliban draw strength from tribal roots
Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times, March 7, 2002
Traditional political enmities and tribal rivalries have allowed the
Taliban to regroup around Gardez in eastern Paktia province in
Afghanistan, from where they will coordinate guerrilla operations in
many parts of the country. Although United States officials claim that
Taliban and al-Qaeda resistance in Gardez is weakening, the realities on
the ground would appear to indicate otherwise.
[The complete article]
Ghosts of Vietnam era haunt US in endgame for Afghanistan
Rupert Cornwell, The Independent, March 5, 2002
"What is more important to the history of the world? Some stirred-up
Muslims, or the liberation of central Europe and the end of the Cold
War?" Thus did Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's national
security adviser, once dismiss charges that by its support for the
Afghan mujahedin in 1979 America had created a terrorist monster.
[The complete article]
With God on their side
Duncan Campbell, The Guardian, March 5, 2002
On his recent visit to China, President Bush informed his hosts that
"95% of Americans", including the president, believed in God. While
those figures may be accurate in the same way that the Florida
presidential election results in 2000 were accurate, he is right in
saying that a much larger percentage of Americans believe in God, heaven
and hell than most other nationalities do. The attorney general John
Ashcroft, who comes from the Pentecostal wing of the Christian church,
informed a recent gathering of Christian broadcasters that "civilised
people - Muslims, Christians and Jews - all understand that the source
of freedom and human dignity is the creator." Since the current war is
being fought on behalf of "civilisation", this would seem to indicate
that those 5% who do not believe in God should now also be classified as
the enemy.
[The complete article]
Bush's little shop of horrors
Where fear is always on sale—and the truth is made to order
Geoffrey Gray, Village Voice, March 5, 2002
The Bush administration likes to brand the fight against terrorism
as a new kind of war, with new enemies and new rules, but using fear to
push policy has been an actual play in the White House book since the
Truman administration began commissioning behavioral studies on "emotion
management" during the early days of Cold War hysteria.
[The complete article]
When things turn weird, the weird turn pro
Propaganda, the Pentagon and The Rendon Group
Jeff Stein, Tom Paine.com, February 26, 2002
Rendon has had a lot of plum assignments since Desert Storm,
including a $23 million propaganda campaign in 1991 aimed at undermining
Saddam Hussein with smuggled leaflets and radio broadcasts beamed into
Iraq. [...] If the Rendon Group’s track record against Saddam Hussein is
any guide, however, the company’s real expertise is in spending
taxpayer dollars.
[The complete article]
Former senior CIA officer: Why the "war on terror" won't work
Bill Christison, Counterpunch, March 4, 2002
Bill Christison joined the CIA in 1950, and served on the analysis
side of the Agency for 28 years. From the early 1970s he served as
National Intelligence Officer (principal adviser to the Director of
Central Intelligence on certain areas) for, at various times, Southeast
Asia, South Asia and Africa. Before he retired in 1979 he was Director
of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis, a 250-person
unit.. These remarks, which he has made available to CounterPunch, have
been recently delivered to various peace groups in New Mexico.
[The complete article]
Secret finger-pointing over Danny Pearl's death
G. Pascal Zachary, AlterNet, March 4, 2002
For weeks during the ordeal of Pearl's captivity -- and the
uncertainty about whether he was dead or alive -- Wall Street Journal
senior editors privately debated amongst themselves whether they somehow
had put Pearl in harm's way. And not in any general, existential sense,
but whether the paper's controversial decision to hand over an al Qaeda
laptop computer to the Department of Defense and the CIA late last year
had blown back on them.
[The complete article]
War on the third world
An insidious result of September 11 is that the US treats many non-whites as terrorists
George Monbiot, The Guardian, March 5, 2002
Those of us who opposed the bombing of Afghanistan warned that the
war between nations would not stop there. Now, as Tony Blair prepares
the British people for an attack on Iraq, the conflict seems to be
proliferating faster than most of us predicted. But there is another
danger, which we have tended to neglect: that of escalating hostilities
within the nations waging this war. The racial profiling which has
become the unacknowledged focus of America's new security policy is in
danger of provoking the very clash of cultures its authors appear to
perceive.
[The complete article]
Rogue states? America ought to know
The hyperpower sets its own rules
Phyllis Bennis, Tom Paine.com, March 1, 2002
It's hard for most Americans to think of the United States as a
rogue state. We're a democracy, after all. Our elections are free and
fair (well, some of the time). But our foreign policy is far less
accountable to democratic ideals, or to the global community than we
like to think. The problem isn't isolationism -- we're engaged (at least
our military forces and our U.S. manufactured weapons are) all over the
world. The problem is unilateralism -- our tendency to act out our
unchallenged 'super-power of super-powers' role without concern for what
others in the world think.
[The complete article]
Report on Colombia from the North American Congress on Latin America
Adam Isacson, February 2002
In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, it was not
clear what would become of the United States' large and growing military
aid program in Colombia. With higher-profile missions in Afghanistan
and the "homeland," might Washington reverse its steady descent into
Colombia's messy, complicated conflict? Or would Colombia, with three
groups on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist
organizations, become a new front in the "war on terrorism," breathing
new life into the failed "Plan Colombia" drug-war strategy?
[The complete article]
The "War on Terrorism" for Dummies
Bernard Weiner, Counterpunch, March 3, 2002
Don't know about you, but all this war and politics stuff can be
mighty confusing. So I picked up a copy of "The 'War on Terrorism' for
Dummies," a kind of primer on current events, and now feel much
better-educated. Here are some of their answers.
[The complete article]
The textile lobby v. the war on terrorism
Franklin Foer, New Republic, February 28, 2002
Ever since he signed on as America's ally in the war on terrorism,
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has been asking for one simple
favor in return: the suspension of U.S. tariffs and quotas on Pakistani
textiles. And, last Monday, Musharraf finally got a definitive response
to his request: No.
[The complete article]
How bin Laden got away
Philip Smucker, The Christian Science Monitor, March 4, 2002
A day-by-day account of how Osama bin Laden eluded the world's most powerful military machine.
[The complete article]
The end of the modern world
Michael Mehaffy and Nikos Salingaros, Open Democracy, February 27, 2002
The 20th century ushered in a historic era of optimism for the
rational, "modern" future of humanity. As the century fades into
history, that modernist dream lies in pieces — but new outlines are
emerging for a wiser, more hopeful future.
History may well record that the "modern" world ended on 11 September 2001.
On that day anti-modern extremists with medieval sensibilities
launched a horrific attack upon a pinnacle symbol of twentieth-century
modernity: the coolly rational towers of the World Trade Center, in New
York City.
We now know that the organizer of that attack, Mohammed Atta, was a
professional planner educated in Germany, and a skyscraper-hating
anti-modernist. Atta personally flew the first plane into the north
tower.
Atta was a religious fundamentalist of the most extreme sort, to be
sure, along with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban regime. But clearly
Atta felt more than a hatred of the west’s libertine ways. He hated the
west’s hegemony in the third world, and he hated the western modernist
buildings that he saw wiping out the traditional vitality of its cities.
The thesis Atta wrote to get his master’s degree at Hamburg University
was on the preservation of the ancient Syrian city of Aleppo, against
the onslaught of western modernism.
[The complete article]
The aftermath of war
Paul Rogers, Open Democracy, February 27, 2002
As US forces pound the Afghan government’s opponents, military
supply and logistical problems augur a lengthier preparation for its
planned assault on Iraq. But meanwhile, the tentacles of war are
spreading across the globe – from the Philippines and Nepal to Colombia –
amidst US research into new types of nuclear weaponry.
[The complete article]
Briton held as terror suspect threatens to sue FBI
Owen Bowcott, The Guardian, March 4, 2002
The British law student at the centre of an international security
alert - during which Canadian and US warplanes were scrambled to
intercept a civilian airliner heading into New York's JFK airport -
yesterday condemned his treatment at the hands of the FBI.
[The complete article]
Whack Iraq? Striking Hussein is ill-conceived
R.C. Longworth, Chicago Tribune, March 3, 2002
Well, that was a tidy little war in Afghanistan. We won, more or
less. Not many casualties, and we caught a few of those Al Qaeda guys,
if not the big shots. What's next? Why, Iraq, of course. It's time to
get rid of Saddam Hussein. Everyone agrees. So why not? Actually, there
are lots of reasons why not. But Washington seems so intent on attacking
Iraq, as the first point on President Bush's "axis of evil," that bombs
will be falling on Baghdad before any questions are asked or objections
raised.
[The complete article]
When 9/11 consipracy theories go bad
David Corn, AlterNet, March 1, 2002
Please stop sending me those emails. You know who are. And you know
what emails I mean ... Okay, I'll spell it out -- those forwarded emails
suggesting, or flat-out stating, the CIA and the U.S. government were
somehow involved in the horrific September 11 attacks.
[The complete article]
Iran/Contra rehab
David Corn, The Nation, March 11, 2002
The Bush Administration is turning into one big rehab center for the Iran/contra schemers of the Reagan/Bush White House.
[The complete article]
|
|
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.
|
|
|
