"MY GOVERNMENT IS THE WORLD'S
LEADING PURVEYOR OF VIOLENCE."
Martin Luther King, Jnr., 1967.

SHOCKED & HORRIFIED

By Larry Mosqueda, Ph.D., The Evergreen State College
---- 15 September 2001 ----
 

Like all Americans, on Tuesday, 9-11, I was shocked and
horrified to watch the WTC Twin Towers attacked by hijacked
planes and collapse, resulting in the deaths of perhaps up to
10,000 innocent people.  I had not been that shocked and
horrified since January 16, 1991, when then President Bush
attacked Baghdad, and the rest of Iraq and began killing 200,000
people during that "war" (slaughter). This includes the infamous
"highway of death" in the last days of the slaughter when U.S.
pilots literally shot in the back retreating Iraqi civilians and soldiers.
I continue to be horrified by the sanctions on Iraq, which have
resulted in the death of over 1,000,000 Iraqis, including over
500,000 children, about whom former Secretary of State Madeline
Allbright has stated, their deaths "are worth the cost".

Over the course of my life I have been shocked and horrified
by a variety of U.S. governmental actions, such as the U.S.
sponsored coup against democracy in Guatemala in 1954 which
resulted in the deaths of over 120,000 Guatemalan peasants by
U.S. installed dictatorships over the course of four decades.
Last Tuesday's events reminded me of the horror I felt when
the U.S. overthrew the government of the Dominican Republic
in 1965 and helped to murder 3,000 people. And it reminded me
of the shock I felt in 1973, when the U.S. sponsored a coup in
Chile against the democratic government of Salvador Allende
and helped to murder another 30,000 people, including U.S.
citizens.  Last Tuesday's events reminded me of the shock
and horror I felt in 1965 when the U.S. sponsored a coup in
Indonesia that resulted in the murder of over 800,000 people,
and the subsequent slaughter in 1975 of over 250,000 innocent
people in East Timor by the Indonesian regime, with the direct
complicity of President Ford and Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger.  I was reminded of the shock and horror I felt during
the U.S. sponsored  terrorist contra war (the World Court declared
the U.S. government a war criminal in 1984 for the mining of the
harbors) against Nicaragua in the 1980s which resulted in the
deaths of over 30,000 innocent people (or as the U.S. government
used to call them before the term "collateral  damage" was invented
--"soft targets").  I was reminded of being horrified by the U. S. war
against the people of El Salvador in the 1980s, which resulted in
the brutal deaths of over 80,000 people, or "soft targets".  I was
reminded of the shock and horror I felt during the U.S. sponsored
terror war against the peoples of southern Africa (especially Angola)
that began in the 1970's and continues to this day, and has resulted
in the  deaths and mutilations of over 1,000,000. I was reminded
of the shock and horror I felt as the U.S. invaded Panama over the
Christmas season of 1989  and killed over 8,000 in an attempt to
capture George H. Bush's CIA partner, now turned enemy, Manual
Noriega.  I was reminded of the horror I felt when I learned about
how the Shah of  Iran was installed in a U.S. sponsored brutal
coup that resulted in the deaths of over 70,000 Iranians from
1952-1979. And the continuing shock as I learned that the Ayatollah
Khomani, who overthrew the Shah in 1979, and  who was the U.S.
public enemy for decade of the 1980s, was also on the CIA payroll,
while he was in exile in Paris in the 1970s.  I was reminded of the
shock and horror that I felt as I learned about the  how the U.S.
has "manufactured consent" since 1948 for its support of Israel,
to the exclusion of virtually any rights for the Palestinians in their
native lands resulting in ever worsening day-to-day conditions for
the people of Palestine. I was shocked as I learned about the
hundreds of towns and villages that were literally wiped off the
face of the earth in the early days of Israeli colonization. I was
horrified in 1982 as the villagers of Sabra and Shatila were
massacred by Israeli allies with direct Israeli complicity and
direction. The untold thousands who died on that day match
the scene of horror that we saw last Tuesday. But those scenes
were not repeated over and over again on the national media to
inflame the American  public.  The events and images of last
Tuesday have been appropriately compared to  the horrific
events and images of Lebanon in the 1980s with resulted in
the deaths of tens of thousand of people, with no reference to
the fact that  the country that inflicted the terror on Lebanon
was Israel, with U.S. backing.

I still continue to be shocked at how mainstream commentators
refer to "Israeli settlers" in the "occupied territories" with no
sense of irony as they report on who are the aggressors in
the region.

Of course, the largest and most shocking war crime of the
second half of the 20th century was the U.S. assault on Indochina
from 1954-1975, especially Vietnam, where over 4,000,000 people
were bombed, napalmed, crushed, shot and individually "hands on"
murdered in the "Phoenix Program" (this is where Oliver North got
his start). Many U.S. Vietnam veterans were also victimized  by this
war and had the best of intentions, but the policy makers themselves
knew the criminality of their actions and policies as revealed in their
own words in "The Pentagon Papers," released by Daniel Ellsberg
of the RAND Corporation. In 1974 Ellsberg noted that our Presidents
from Truman to Nixon continually lied to the U.S. public about the
purpose and conduct of the war. He has stated that, "It is a tribute
to the American people that our leaders perceived that they had to
lie to us, it is not a tribute to us that we were so easily misled."

I was continually shocked and horrified as the U.S. attacked
and bombed with impunity the nation of Libya in the 1980s,
including killing the infant daughter of Khadafi. I was shocked
as the U.S. bombed and invaded Grenada in 1983. I was horrified
by U.S. military and CIA actions in Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan,
Sudan, Brazil, Argentina, and Yugoslavia. The deaths in these
actions ran into the hundreds of thousands.  The above list is
by no means complete or comprehensive. It is merely a  list
that is easily accessible and not unknown, especially to the
economic and intellectual elites. It has just been conveniently
eliminated from the public discourse and public consciousness.
And for the most part, the analysis that the U.S. actions have
resulted in the deaths of primarily civilians (over 90%) is not
unknown to these elites and policy makers. A conservative
number for those who have been killed by U.S. terror and
military action since World War II is 8,000,000 people.

Repeat -- 8,000,000 people.

This does not include the wounded, the imprisoned, the
displaced, the refugees, etc. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated
in 1967, during the Vietnam War, "My government is the
world's leading purveyor of violence."

Shocking and horrifying.

Nothing that I have written is meant to disparage or disrespect
those who were victims and those who suffered death or the
loss of a loved one during this week's events. It is not meant to
"justify" any action by those who bombed the Twin Towers
or the Pentagon. It is meant to put it in a context.
 

[World-Action: A HUGE AMOUNT OF EVIDENCE
IS NOW SHOWING THAT IT IS PEOPLE IN THE
HIGHEST ECHELONS OF THE AMERICAN
GOVERNMENT WHO PLANNED AND
EXECUTED THE ATTACKS OF SEPT 11, 2001.]
 

If we believe that the actions were those of "madmen", they
are "madmen" who are able to keep a secret for 2 years or more
among over 100 people, as they trained to execute a complex plan.
While not the acts of madmen, they are  apparently the acts of
"fanatics" who, depending on who they really are, can find real
grievances, but whose actions are illegitimate.  Osama Bin Laden
at this point has been accused by the media and the government
of being the mastermind of Tuesday's bombings. Given the
government's track record on lying to the America people, that
should not be accepted as fact at this time. If indeed Bin Laden
is the mastermind of this action, he is responsible for the deaths
of perhaps 10,000 people - a shocking and horrible crime.

Ed Herman in his book The Real Terror Network:
Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda does not justify any terrorism
but points out that states often engage in "wholesale" terror, while
those whom governments  define as "terrorist" engage is "retail"
terrorism. While qualitatively  the results are the same for the
individual victims of terrorism, there is a clear quantitative difference.
And as Herman and others point out, the seeds, the roots, of much
of the "retail" terror are in fact found in the "wholesale"
terror of states.

Again this is not to justify, in any way, the actions of last Tuesday,
but to put them in a context and suggest an explanation.  Perhaps
most shocking and horrific, if indeed Bin Laden is the mastermind
of Tuesday's actions; he has clearly had significant training in
logistics, armaments, and military training, etc. by competent and
expert military personnel. And indeed he has. During the 1980s,
he was recruited, trained and funded by the CIA in Afghanistan to
fight against the Russians. As long as he visited his terror on
Russians and his enemies in Afghanistan, he was "our man" in
that country.  The same is true of Saddam Hussein of Iraq, who
was a CIA asset in Iraq  during the 1980s. Hussein could gas his
own people, repress the  population, and invade his neighbor (Iran)
as long as he did it with U.S. approval. The same was true of Manuel
Noriega of Panama, who was a contemporary and CIA partner of
George H. Bush in the 1980s. Noriega's main crime for Bush, the
father, was not that he dealt drugs (he did, but the U.S. and Bush
knew this before 1989), but that Noriega was no longer going to
cooperate in  the ongoing U.S. terrorist contra war against Nicaragua.
This information is not unknown or really controversial among elite
policy makers. To repeat, this not to justify any of the actions of
last Tuesday, but to put it in its horrifying context.

As shocking as the events of last Tuesday were, they are likely
to generate even more horrific actions by the U.S. government
that will add significantly to the 8,000,000 figure stated above.
This response may well be qualitatively and quantitatively worse
than the events of Tuesday. The New York Times headline of
9/14/01 states that, "Bush And Top Aides Proclaim Policy Of
Ending States That Back Terror" as if that was a rationale,
measured, or even sane option. States that have been identified
for possible elimination are "a number of Asian and African
countries, like Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, and even Pakistan."

This is beyond shocking and  horrific - it is just as
potentially suicidal, homicidal, and more insane than
the hijackers themselves.

Also, qualitatively, these actions will be even worse than the
original bombers if one accepts the mainstream premise that
those involved are "madmen", "religious fanatics", or a
"terrorist group." If so, they are acting as either individuals
or as a small group. The U.S. actions may continue the homicidal
policies of a few thousand elites for the past 50 years, involving
both political parties.  The retail terror is that of desperate and
sometime fanatical small groups and individuals who often have
legitimate grievances, but engage in individual criminal and
illegitimate activities; the wholesale terror is that of "rational"
educated men where the pain, suffering, and deaths of millions
of people are contemplated, planned, and too often, executed,
for the purpose of furthering a nebulous concept called
the "national interest".

Space does not allow a full explanation of the elites' Orwellian
concept of  the "national interest", but it can be summarized as the
protection and expansion of hegemony and an imperial empire.

The American public is being prepared for war while being fed
a continuous stream of shocking and horrific repeated images
of Tuesday's events and heartfelt stories from the survivors and
the loved ones of those who lost family members. These stories
are real and should not be diminished. In  fact, those who lost family
members can be considered a representative sample of humanity
of the 8,000,000 who have been lost previously. If we multiply by
800 -1000 times the amount of pain, angst, and anger being
currently felt by the American public, we might begin to understand
how much of the rest of the world feels as they are continually
victimized.

Some particularly poignant images are the heart wrenching
public stories that we are seeing and hearing of family members
with pictures and flyers searching for their loved ones. These
images are virtually the same as  those of the "Mothers of the
Disappeared" who searched for their (primarily) adult children
in places such as Argentina, where over 11,000 were "disappeared"
in 1976-1982, again with U.S. approval. Just as the mothers of
Argentina deserved our respect and compassion, so do the
relatives of those who are searching for their relatives now.

However we should not allow ourselves to be manipulated by
the media and U.S. government into turning real grief and anger
into a national policy of wholesale terror and genocide against
innocent civilians in Asia and Africa. What we are seeing in military
terms is called "softening the target." The target here is the American
public and we are being ideologically and emotionally prepared for
the slaughter that may commence soon.  None of the previously
identified Asian and African countries are democracies, which
means that the people of these countries have virtually no impact
on developing the policies of their governments, even if we assume
that these governments are complicit in Tuesday's actions. When
one examines the recent history of these countries, one will find
that the American  government had direct and indirect influences
on creating the conditions for the existence of some of these
governments. This is especially true of the Taliban government
of Afghanistan itself.

The New York Metropolitan Area has about 21,000,000 people
or about 8 % of  the U.S. population. Almost everyone in America
knows someone who has been killed, injured or traumatized by
the events of Tuesday. I know that I do. Many people are calling
for "revenge" or "vengeance" and comments such as "kill them all"
have been circulated on the TV, radio, and email. A few more
potentially benign comments have called for "justice." This is only
potentially benign since that term may be defined by people such
as Bush and Colin Powell. Powell is an unrepentant participant in
the Vietnam War, the terrorist contra war against Nicaragua, and
the Gulf war, at each level becoming more responsible for the
planning and execution of the policies. Those affected, all of us,
must do everything in our power to prevent a wider war and even
greater atrocity, do everything possible to stop the  genocide if it
starts, and hold those responsible for their potential war crimes
during and after the war. If there is a great war in 2001 and it is not
catastrophic (a real possibility), the crimes of that war will be revisited
upon the U.S. over the next generation. That is not some kind of
religious prophecy or threat, it is merely a straightforward political
analysis. If indeed it is Bin Laden, the world must not deal only with
him as an individual criminal, but eliminate the conditions that create
the injustices and war crimes that will inevitably lead to more of these
types of attacks in the future. The phrase "No Justice, No Peace" is
more than a  slogan used in a march, it is an observable historical
fact.

It is time to end the horror
 

In a few short pages it is impossible to delineate all
of the events described over the past week or to give
a comprehensive accounting of U.S. foreign policy.
Below are a few resources for up to date news and
some background reading, by Noam Chomsky, the
noted analyst. The titles of the books explain their
relevance for this topic.
 

For the most current information see:
http://www.commondreams.org
 

For information on how the media distorts the news see:
http://www.fair.org
 

For excellent links on the Middle East see:
http://al-awda.org/newyork/links.html
 

For background reading by Noam Chomsky see:
Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass
Media (with Ed Herman)  Fateful Triangle: The United States,
Israel and the Palestinians: Deterring Democracy
 
 

9-11 ATTACK:  THE TRUTH
 

W O R L D - A C T I O N
 

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