Who Is A Terrorist?
By Ghali Hassan
27 July, 2004
Countercurrents.org
Under the cover of "war on terror", the US and its "coalition" of lackeys are conducting a war of injustice, abuse of human rights and atrocities of enormous magnitude against defenceless people, and in violation of international laws and norms of civilized nations. The war on terror is not really a war on terrorism per se, because you cannot wage war on few criminals. To bring criminals to justice, you use the law and due process. The American "war on terror" is a convenient ploy to deflect attention from the US imperial aim to dominate the world.
Let's define terrorism from Western perspectives. According to the Oxford Dictionary, "terrorism is the use of violent action in order to achieve political aims or to force a government to act". According to a US Army manual "terrorism is the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature. This is done through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear"(1). The British government defined terrorism as "the use, or threat, of action which is violent, damaging or disrupting, and is intended to influence the government or intimidate the public and is for purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause"(2). However, it is important to remember that these definitions of terrorism are only used by the West, when discussing the terrorism of the "others". For example, these definitions of terrorism are not considered appropriate when discussing the daily acts of terrorism practised by Israel against the Palestinian people and by the US
against the Iraqi people.As Noam Chomsky has written, "the official definition of terrorism [in the West] is 'counter terrorism' or 'counterinsurgency'". This is what the US calls the resistance in Iraq, "insurgency". It was the official policy of the Nazis during the occupation of Europe. The Nazis called the French resistance "terrorists", and Hitler's army was 'fighting a counterinsurgency to protect the population and the Vichy regime from the terrorists'. A carbon copy is available in Iraq today.
The "war on terror" is not the result of 9/11; it is an old cliché. The Reagan Administration christened the "war on terror" in 1981, and the Bush Administration is a relic of the Reagan Administration. In the 1980s, the US sponsored several states such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, South Africa, Canada and others to finance and implement its terrorist operations abroad. The US also continues to finance and support countless undemocratic and dictatorial regimes worldwide.
The proxy war against Nicaragua directed by the CIA to attack civilian targets inside Nicaragua is one of few good examples. Thousands of innocent Latin American civilians were killed by the proxy army of the CIA, the Contras that waged its war from bases inside Honduras against Nicaragua. The US-backed atrocities and terror were condemned by the International Court of Justice in The Hague as "unlawful use of force". The pretext was that "Nicaragua is preparing to invade the US". Nicaragua has not attacked or threatened to attack the US at any time. Ambassador Negroponte, who is currently the US proconsul in Iraq, oversaw the expansion of US training camp and military base on Honduran territory, where US-trained Contras terrorists, and where the military secretly detained, tortured and executed Honduran suspected dissidents.
In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and occupied large parts of Lebanon for the next 22 years. Lebanon, a small country that has never made war with Israel during the whole period of the Arab-Israeli conflict or threatened Israel. Thousands of innocent civilians have been killed by Israel's terror machine. The UN Security Council condemned Israel terror atrocities in Southern Lebanon against defenceless villagers. The current Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's crucial role in the killings of refugees at Sabre and Shatila, Qibya, and elsewhere gives him a civilian death toll that exceeds that of 9/11 death tolls by many folds. The Kahan Commission found Ariel Sharon, among other Israelis, had responsibility for the massacre at Sabre and Shatila camps. As a reward for his five decades-long career in crimes against humanity, Mr. Sharon is called "a man of peace" by his mate and admirer, President G. W. Bush.
In 1985, Israel bombed Tunisia on "no credible pretext" and killed 75 people. The US praised Israel atrocities, which was condemned by the Security Council of the UN as an "act of armed aggression". Again in 1987 the Security Council of the UN adopted a resolution condemning terrorism in the strongest terms and called on all nations to combat terrorism. Only the US and Israel voted against the resolution.
Since 1948, Zionist Jews from Eastern Europe have embarked on a policy of "ethnic cleansing" and land confiscation in Palestine in order to create the "Jewish state" of Israel. Israel's terror and brutal military occupation of Palestine today were in violation of all international laws and norms. The
Palestinian people have been living under the most brutal and criminal form of occupation by foreign power for four decades. The policy is unconditionally supported by the US. Israel deliberate policy of demolition of Palestinian houses and public property, and mass expropriation of Palestinian land on behalf of the settlers designed to create intolerable conditions of life and force the Palestinians to leave. The deliberate killings of Palestinians, including women and children, must qualify Israel
for the status of a terrorist state.In 1998, the Clinton Administration bombed Al-Shifa Pharmaceutical plant in Sudan destroying the country's major pharmaceutical and veterinary medicine. The bombing led to the death of "several thousands" of people, and many more thousands condemned to death for lack of medicine. Sudan has not attacked or threatened to attack the US at any time.
On October 7, 2001, the US attacked Afghanistan on the pretext that the Taliban regime did not want to surrender Osama bin Laden to the US. The US refused to provide the Taliban regime with any evidence against bin Laden for his alleged participation in the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon
attacks. U.S. bombs have killed more than 3,500 civilians in the first few months of the war, according to a study released on December 10 by Professor Marc W. Herold, of the University of New Hampshire. Afghanistan has not attacked or threatened to attack the US at any time.In 1990, the US attacked Iraq on the pretext to "liberate Kuwait" from Iraqi forces. The orchestrated war on Iraq led to the destruction of Iraq infrastructure and civilian installations considered vital for the lives of the population of Iraq. The war and the 13 years of economic sanctions have resulted in a massive humanitarian crisis in Iraq. This followed in 2003 by full-scale invasion and occupation of Iraq by US forces. The US wars on Iraq have completely destroyed the Iraqi nation and the fabric of Iraq's civil society. Furthermore, from 1991 until the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US-UK waged "low intensity war" on Iraq, masquerading as the "no-fly" zones enforcement in Western media, and rightly described by Noam Chomsky as "a euphemism for state-directed international terrorism" against the people of Iraq and the nation of Iraq.
Dr. Gideon Polya, a senior Australian Biochemist, calculated the "excess mortality", which is "the difference between the accrual deaths observed in a country and the mortality expected for a properly run, peaceful society with the same demographics"(3). Dr. Polya found that "the total access mortality in Iraq using the United Nations data, is 1.5 million for the period 1991-2004". Furthermore, Dr Polya wrote, "[m]y estimates of 'access mortality' for Iraq are consistent with the under-5 infant mortality in
Iraq, estimated from UNICEF data to be 1.2 million in the period 1991-2004". This is consistent with other reports. Professor Joy Gordon of Fairfield University in the USA, who wrote: "Since the program [economic sanctions] began, an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five have died
as a result of the sanctions ? almost three times as many as the number of Japanese killed during the U.S. atomic bomb attacks" (4). Furthermore, Professor Thomas Nagy of George Washington University noted: "For more than ten years, the United States has deliberately pursued a policy of destroying
the water treatment system of Iraq, knowing full well the cost in Iraqi lives. The [UN] has estimated that more than 500,000 Iraqi children have died as a result of sanctions, and that 5,000 Iraqi children continue to die every month for this reason"(5).In an imperialist policy designed to force the Iraqi people to submit to the US brutal rule, thousands of Iraqis have been killed by the US military in cities like Baghdad, Fallujah, Najef and Karbala, thousands more have been detained without charges, and prisoners have been murdered and tortured by
American guards at Abu Ghraib prison and other facilities.The last few weeks have witnessed the US forces bombing civilian houses in Fallujah on six occasions, killing dozens of innocent civilians, including women and children, each time. The excuse for this barbarity is that the US intended to kill a "terrorist" by the name of al-Zarqawi. According to the
people of Fallujah, "al-Zarqawi does not exist. He is a made-up figure". The US occupation forces in Iraq have been claiming that al-Zarqawi and his Arab and non-Iraqi Muslim fighters are hiding out in Fallujah. Dr Muhammad al-Hamadani, a Fallujah resident told Aljazeera News that he had no knowledge about any non-Iraqi fighters in the town. "As a Fallujah citizen, and head of the Fallujah Scientific Forum, I can tell you that I have never seen or heard anything about non-Iraqi fighters in Fallujah". "We hear about al-Zarqawi in the media, but have never seen or felt his presence or any of
his followers in Fallujah", he said. Al-Zarqawi proves to be a good bogeyman for the time being. The underlying objective of this is that the US is misleading the public and using the rhetoric of antiterrorism as a cover for terrorism. It is part of Western propaganda to instil fear and hatred into
the Western mind against Muslims.Iraq has not attacked or threatened to attack the US at any time. This was all done on the rationale of to " disarm Iraq from 'weapons of mass destruction'". Of course that proved to be completely untrue, and Iraq's so-called WMD has been destroyed in the summer of 1991 in a genuine attempt to allow for the lifting of the genocidal economic sanctions. The Iraqi people will unlikely forget or forgive the Americans for the crimes committed in their names.
The American media analyst Edward Herman wrote, "it is the West and Western interests that have pushed terrorism to the forefront, not the 'terrorists'. The West has done this because they want to use terrorism as an ideological instrument of propaganda and control". The only truth about this "war on terror" is that it has no end in sight, and it will absorb resources vital to the well being of societies. It is a war on the poor and powerless.
Ghali Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia. He can be contacted on:
[email protected]
(1) US Army Operational Concept for Terrorism Counteraction (TRADOC PamphletNo. 525-37, 1984).
(2) Mark Curtis, Web of Deceit p.93. London: Vintage (2003).
(3) Gideon Polya, Iraqi death tool amounts to a Holocaust, Australasian
Science, June 2004. http://www.control.com.au/bi2004/255conScience.pdf
(4) Joy Gordon, Cool war, Harper's Magazine, November 2002.
(5) Thomas J. Nagy, The Secret Behind the Sanctions: How the U.S.
Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply, The Progressive, September
2001.