Our
War On Terrorism
By Howard Zinn
26 October, 2004
Outlook
I
am calling it "our" war on terrorism because I want to distinguish
it from Bush's war on terrorism, and from Sharon's, and from Putin's.
What their wars have in common is that they are based on an enormous
deception: persuading the people of their countries that you can deal
with terrorism by war. These rulers say you can end our fear of terrorism--of
sudden, deadly, vicious attacks, a fear new to Americans--by drawing
an enormous circle around an area of the world where terrorists come
from (Afghanistan, Palestine, Chechnya) or can be claimed to be connected
with (Iraq), and by sending in tanks and planes to bomb and terrorize
whoever lives within that circle.
Since war is itself
the most extreme form of terrorism, a war on terrorism is profoundly
self-contradictory. Is it strange, or normal, that no major political
figure has pointed this out?
Even within their
limited definition of terrorism, they--the governments of the United
States, Israel, Russia--are clearly failing. As I write this, three
years after the events of September 11, the death toll for American
servicemen has surpassed 1,000, more than 150 Russian children have
died in a terrorist takeover of a school, Afghanistan is in chaos, and
the number of significant terrorist attacks rose to a twenty-one-year
high in 2003, according to official State Department figures. The highly
respected International Institute for Strategic Studies in London has
reported that "over 18,000 potential terrorists are at large with
recruitment accelerating on account of Iraq."
With the failure
so obvious, and the President tripping over his words trying to pretend
otherwise (August 30: "I don't think you can win" and the
next day: "Make no mistake about it, we are winning"), it
astonishes us that the polls show a majority of Americans believing
the President has done "a good job" in the war on terrorism.
I can think of two
reasons for this.
First, the press
and television have not played the role of gadflies, of whistleblowers,
the role that the press should play in a society whose fundamental doctrine
of democracy (see the Declaration of Independence) is that you must
not give blind trust to the government. They have not made clear to
the public--I mean vividly, dramatically clear--what have been the human
consequences of the war in Iraq.
I am speaking not
only of the deaths and mutilations of American youth, but the deaths
and mutilations of Iraqi children. (I am reading at this moment of an
American bombing of houses in the city of Fallujah, leaving four children
dead, with the U.S. military saying this was part of a "precision
strike" on "a building frequently used by terrorists.")
I believe that the American people's natural compassion would come to
the fore if they truly understood that we are terrorizing other people
by our "war on terror."
A second reason
that so many people accept Bush's leadership is that no counterargument
has come from the opposition party. John Kerry has not challenged Bush's
definition of terrorism. He has not been forthright. He has dodged and
feinted, saying that Bush has waged "the wrong war, in the wrong
place, at the wrong time." Is there a right war, a right place,
a right time? Kerry has not spoken clearly, boldly, in such a way as
to appeal to the common sense of the American people, at least half
of whom have turned against the war, with many more looking for the
wise words that a true leader provides. He has not clearly challenged
the fundamental premise of the Bush Administration: that the massive
violence of war is the proper response to the kind of terrorist attack
that took place on September 11, 2001.
Let us begin by recognizing that terrorist acts--the killing of innocent
people to achieve some desired goal--are morally unacceptable and must
be repudiated and opposed by anyone claiming to care about human rights.
The September 11 attacks, the suicide bombings in Israel, the taking
of hostages by Chechen nationalists--all are outside the bounds of any
ethical principles.
This must be emphasized,
because as soon as you suggest that it is important, to consider something
other than violent retaliation, you are accused of sympathizing with
the terrorists. It is a cheap way of ending a discussion without examining
intelligent alternatives to present policy.
Then the question
becomes: What is the appropriate way to respond to such awful acts?
The answer so far, given by Bush, Sharon, and Putin, is military action.
We have enough evidence now to tell us that this does not stop terrorism,
may indeed provoke more terrorism, and at the same time leads to the
deaths of hundreds, even thousands, of innocent people who happen to
live in the vicinity of suspected terrorists.
What can account
for the fact that these obviously ineffective, even counterproductive,
responses have been supported by the people of Russia, Israel, the United
States? It's not hard to figure that out. It is fear, a deep, paralyzing
fear, a dread so profound that one's normal rational faculties are distorted,
and so people rush to embrace policies that have only one thing in their
favor: They make you feel that something is being done. In the absence
of an alternative, in the presence of a policy vacuum, filling that
vacuum with a decisive act becomes acceptable.
And when the opposition
party, the opposition Presidential candidate, can offer nothing to fill
that policy vacuum, the public feels it has no choice but to go along
with what is being done. It is emotionally satisfying, even if rational
thought suggests it does not work and cannot work.
If John Kerry cannot
offer an alternative to war, then it is the responsibility of citizens,
with every possible resource they can muster, to present such an alternative
to the American public.
Yes, we can try
to guard in every possible way against future attacks, by trying to
secure airports, seaports, railroads, other centers of transportation.
Yes, we can try to capture known terrorists. But neither of those actions
can bring an end to terrorism, which comes from the fact that millions
of people in the Middle East and elsewhere are angered by American policies,
and out of these millions come those who will carry their anger to fanatic
extremes.
The CIA senior terrorism
analyst who has written a book signed "Anonymous" has said
bluntly that U.S. policies--supporting Sharon, making war on Afghanistan
and Iraq--"are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world."
Unless we reexamine
our policies--our quartering of soldiers in a hundred countries (the
quartering of foreign soldiers, remember, was one of the grievances
of the American revolutionaries), our support of the occupation of Palestinian
lands, our insistence on controlling the oil of the Middle East--we
will always live in fear. If we were to announce that we will reconsider
those policies, and began to change them, we might start to dry up the
huge reservoir of hatred where terrorists are hatched.
Whoever the next
President will be, it is up to the American people to demand that he
begin a bold reconsideration of the role our country should play in
the world. That is the only possible solution to a future of never-ending,
pervasive fear. That would be "our" war on terrorism.