Znet: ANTITERRORISM AS A COVER FOR TERRORISM

[Doug Millison]

ANTITERRORISM AS A COVER FOR TERRORISM
By Edward S. Herman

During the Cold War the United States supported a string of terror
states, from the immediate post-World War backing given Thailand
dictator Phibun Songkhram, "the first pro-Axis dictator to regain power
after the war," to its support of Suharto, Marcos, Mobutu, Diem,
Duvalier, Trujillo, Somoza, and a string of murderous military regimes
in Latin America. This was all done on the rationale of needing to "stop
Communism," but this excuse was used in cases where the threat was
non-existent and laughable. In May 1954, just one month before the
United States overthrew an elected government in Guatemala with a proxy
army from dictator Somoza's territory in Nicaragua, the National
Security Council issued a report on the threat of "Guatemalan Aggression
in Latin America," and in a mode of panic described that tiny country as
"increasingly an instrument of Soviet aggression in this hemisphere."
Guatemala had not moved an inch outside its territory, was virtually
disarmed by a U.S. boycott, and was quickly overthrown a month later.
Did the NSC really believe their hysterical nonsense? Whether they did
or not this was a wonderfully convenient ploy to deflect attention from
the U.S. desire to dominate the hemisphere, and it was used regularly to
create governments of terror that quickly opened their doors to foreign
investment and kept labor markets as "flexible" as the transnationals
and IMF might desire.

Anticommunism was a superb rhetorical instrument for rationalizing U.S.
support of convenient terrorism, and in the 1954 Guatemala case and
regularly elsewhere the mainstream media helped make it work.

There was some reaction to U.S. support of terror regimes in the Carter
years in the 1970s, with a claim that this country should give a little
more attention to "human rights." This new look never took hold, except
in government rhetoric (and in the Carter years aid to Indonesia was
stepped up as its attack on East Timor reached genocidal levels in
1977-1978, and relations with Marcos, the Brazilian generals and Mobutu
remained solid). But with the coming of Reagan there was a famous
turn-about: from our devotion to human rights we were going to turn our
attention to "terrorism," announced Secretary of State Alexander Haig in
1981. It was alleged that the Soviet Union was behind a terror network,
and in a book that became the bible of the Reagan administration, The
Terror Network, Claire Sterling claimed a Soviet hand everywhere, from
support of terrorists that threatened governments from Italy and Germany
to Argentina and South Africa.

The problem with this new look is that it focused only on retail
terrorism--and selectively--and ignored state terrorism. It attended to
the Red Brigades and Baader-Meinhof gang in Italy and Germany, but
neglected the Cuban refugee terrorist network working out of Miami,
Savimbi and Renamo in Angola and Mozambique, and the Nicaraguan
contras--these were OUR terrorists, therefore "freedom fighters" or
ignored. Even more important, Reagan supported Marcos, Suharto, the
murderous governments of El Salvador and Argentina, and "constructively
engaged" South Africa. These were premier state terrorists; South
Africa, crossing its borders into the neighboring states and killing
scores of thousands, was probably the leading terrorist state in the
1980s. Kaddafi's Libya was an insignificant terrorist state by
comparison. Argentina, which Reagan rushed to embrace in 1981, was also
a violent terrorist state, and in a report on the history of that regime
sponsored by the Alfonsin government after the military government's
ouster in 1984, it was stated that "the armed forces responded to the
terrorists' crimes WITH A TERRORISM INFINITELY WORSE THAN THAT WHICH
THEY WERE COMBATTING." But this had never registered in the U.S.
mainstream media while that terrorism took place; they had always called
the retail terrorists terrorists, but not the "infinitely worse" state
terrorists. The Alfonsin report was given very little attention, and in
a miracle of propaganda service the Reagan administration, supporting
the world's worst terrorists, engaging in it directly by military
actions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and sponsoring terrorism by
supporting the Nicaraguan contras and Savimbi in Angola (among others),
was allowed to be fighting terrorism!

So coming to George W. Bush's new dedication to fighting terrorism, we
are in familiar territory. The rule is that terrorism is what the U.S.
government says it is--if it or its allies or clients do precisely the
same thing as the named terrorists, that is not terrorism, by rule of
affiliation. Thus, if we bombed Serbian civilian facilities to
intimidate that population, killing many hundreds, that cannot be
terrorism because we did it. It isn't put this crudely of course, it is
merely understood, a silent double standard, just as it is tacitly
understood that international law applies to others but not to us.

And if we have refused to allow Iraq to import equipment to repair its
destroyed water treatment plants, and if this and the overall sanctions
regime kills hundreds of thousands of civilians, as we strive to remove
or control Saddam Hussein, this intimidation and large-scale killings is
not terrorism, because we are doing it. U.S. support of the Colombian
army (and indirectly, its paramilitaries) is not sponsoring terrorism,
despite the thousands killed and scores of thousands displaced each
year, because we cannot sponsor terrorism by definition. Similarly,
although Ariel Sharon's crucial role in the killings at Sabra and
Shatila, Qibya, and elsewhere gives him a civilian death toll that
exceeds that of Carlos the Jackal by better than fifteen to one, Carlos
is EVIL, a major terrorist, whereas Sharon is accepted and supported as
Prime Minister of Israel and is not labelled a terrorist. Israel, also,
can invade Lebanon repeatedly, maintain a murderous "contra" army in
Lebanon, and kill and expropriate freely in its occupied territories,
without designation as a terrorist state or sponsor of terrorism, by
rule of affiliation.

And George W. Bush can threaten to attack Afghanistan if its Taliban
rulers (or faction) does not surrender bin Laden, without providing the
Taliban with any evidence of his participation in the World Trade
Center/Pentagon bombings, putting large numbers of Afghanis into flight
for fear of bombing; and Bush can force Pakistan to close its borders,
threatening the several million Afghanis already in peril of starvation
with accelerated death--but nowhere in the mainstream media is this
described as terrorism, although it fits perfectly the dictionary
definition: "a mode of governing, or opposing government, by
intimidation."

I noted earlier that during the Cold War the Red Threat provided the
intellectual cover for support of a string of terror states that served
U.S. political and economic interests. The Bush war on terrorism is
already providing the same kind of cover for supporting OUR terror
regimes, and they have been delighted with the new developments.
Benjamin Netanyahu could barely contain his pleasure at the bombings,
barely catching himself to note his regrets at the deaths! ""It's very
good....Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy."
Sharon immediately stepped up his own campaign of intimidation, and the
new war on terrorism plays into his hands, as Israel has long been
perceived to be only a victim of terror, fighting terrorism, but never
itself engaging in terror; therefore a natural ally in the war on
terrorism from whom we can learn much. Only the Palestinians terrorize
and are never obliged to fight terrorism.

Bush is strengthening ties with Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, and Indonesia,
among other states that engage in serious terror, just as Reagan built
his relationship with South Africa, Argentina, Marcos, and the
governments of El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s. There wasn't an
insurmoutable public relations problem then and there hasn't been a
problem currently, because the mainstream media take it as gospel that
we are virtuous and terrorists are those who we say are terrorists. The
liberal E. J. Dionne, Jr., writes that "Progressives who believe in
justice should be able to back war on terror" (Philadelphia Inquirer,
Sept. 29, 2001). In the great tradition of apologetics for U.S.- and
U.S.-sponsored terrorism, Dionne never bothers to discuss what terror
is; he just takes it as a patriotic premise that his country never
engages in it, or supports it. He follows his predecessors, who never
discussed whether overthrowing the elected government of Guatemala in
1954 was legal, moral, or based on a real Red Threat; or whether perhaps
Reagan's antiterrorism campaign of the 1980s was really a cover for the
support of terrorisms "infinitely worse" than those Reagan and the media
played up.

In sum, the propaganda system works extremely well, providing Big
Brother-quality results under a system of "freedom." The only losers are
what Thorstein Veblen called "the underlying population."