Is God on our side?

[Doug Millison]

Very depressing to watch the service just now ending
at the National Cathederal in Washington, to hear Rev.
Billy Graham parrot Bush's rhetoric, down to the
detail of quoting Bush's characterization of the
current situation as a "new kind of war". Then Bush
himself,  ignoring the rest of what Graham and the
others had to say about the mystery of evil and God's
ultimate justice, arrogating to the American
military-industrial complex the ability to search out
and destroy evil, as if evil were something external
to the U.S. A moment to grieve and heal, to honor the
dead and the grieving, hijacked by  political and
religious leaders to justify an escalation of the
terror, this saddens me.

Distributed last night by Znet:

FOLKS OUT THERE HAVE A "DISTASTE OF WESTERN
CIVILIZATION AND CULTURAL
VALUES"

Edward S. Herman

One of the most durable features of the U.S. culture
is the inability or
refusal to recognize U.S. crimes. The media have long
been calling for
the Japanese and Germans to admit guilt, apologize,
and pay reparations.
But the idea that this country has committed huge
crimes, and that
current events such as the World Trade Center and
Pentagon attacks may
be rooted in responses to those crimes, is close to
inadmissible.
Editorializing on the recent attacks ("The National
Defense," Sept. 12),
the New York Times does give a bit of weight to the
end of the Cold War
and consequent "resurgent of ethnic hatreds," but that
the United States
and other NATO powers contributed to that resurgence
by their own
actions (e.g., helping dismantle the Soviet Union and
pressing Russian
"reform"; positively encouraging Slovenian and
Croatian exit from
Yugoslavia and the breakup of that state, and without
dealing with the
problem of stranded minorities, etc.) is completely
unrecognized.

The Times then goes on to blame terrorism on
"religious fanaticism...the
anger among those left behind by globalization," and
the "distaste of
Western civilization and cultural values" among the
global dispossessed.
The blinders and self-deception in such a statement
are truly
mind-boggling. As if corporate globalization, pushed
by the U.S.
government and its closest allies, with the help of
the World Trade
Organization, World Bank and IMF, had not unleashed a
tremendous
immiseration process on the Third World, with budget
cuts and import
devastation of artisans and small farmers. Many of
these hundreds of
millions of losers are quite aware of the role of the
United States in
this process. It is the U.S. public who by and large
have been kept in
the dark. 

Vast numbers have also suffered from U.S. policies of
supporting
rightwing rule and state terrorism, in the interest of
combating
"nationalistic regimes maintained in large part by
appeals to the
masses" and threatening to respond to "an increasing
popular demand for
immediate improvement in the low living standards of
the masses," as
fearfully expressed in a 1954 National Security
Council report, whose
contents were never found to be "news fit to print."
In connection with
such policies, in the U.S. sphere of influence a dozen
National Security
States came into existence in the 1960s and 1970s, and
as Noam Chomsky
and I reported back in 1979, of 35 countries using
torture on an
administrative basis in the late 1970s, 26 were
clients of the United
States. The idea that many of those torture victims
and their families,
and the families of the thousands of "disappeared" in
Latin America in
the 1960s through the 1980s, may have harbored some
ill-feelings toward
the United States remains unthinkable to U.S.
commentators.

During the Vietnam war the United States used its
enormous military
power to try to install in South Vietnam a minority
government of U.S.
choice, with its military operations based on the
knowledge that the
people there were the enemy. This country killed
millions and left
Vietnam (and the rest of Indochina) devastated. A Wall
Street Journal
report in 1997 estimated that perhaps 500,000 children
in Vietnam suffer
from serious birth defects resulting from the U.S. use
of chemical
weapons there. Here again there could be a great many
people with
well-grounded hostile feelings toward the United
States.

The same is true of millions in southern Africa, where
the United States
supported Savimbi in Angola and carried out a policy
of "constructive
engagement" with apartheid South Africa as it carried
out a huge
cross-border terroristic operation against the
frontline states in the
1970s and 1980s, with enormous casualties. U.S.
support of "our kind of
guy" Suharto as he killed and stole at home and in
East Timor, and its
long warm relation with Philippine dictator Ferdinand
Marcos, also may
have generated a great deal of hostility toward this
country among the
numerous victims.

Iranians may remember that the United States installed
the Shah as an
amenable dictator in 1953, trained his secret services
in "methods of
interrogation," and lauded him as he ran his regime of
torture; and they
surely remember that the United States supported
Saddam Hussein all
through the 1980s as he carried out his war with them,
and turned a
blind eye to his use of chemical weapons against the
enemy state. Their
civilian airliner 655 that was destroyed in 1988,
killing 290 people,
was downed by a U.S. warship engaged in helping Saddam
Hussein fight his
war with Iran. Many Iranians may know that the
commander of that ship
was given a Legion of Merit award in 1990 for his
"outstanding service"
(but readers of the New York Times would not know this
as the paper has
never mentioned this high level commendation).

The unbending U.S. backing for Israel as that country
has carried out a
long-term policy of expropriating Palestinian land in
a major ethnic
cleansing process, has produced two intifadas--
uprisings reflecting the
desperation of an oppressed people. But these
uprisings and this fight
for elementary rights have had no constructive
consequences because the
United States gives the ethnic cleanser arms,
diplomatic protection, and
carte blanche as regards policy.

All of these victims may well have a distaste for
"Western civilization
and cultural values," but that is because they
recognize that these
include the ruthless imposition of a neoliberal regime
that serves
Western transnational corporate interests, along with
a willingness to
use unlimited force to achieve Western ends. This is
genuine
imperialism, sometimes using economic coercion alone,
sometimes
supplementing it with violence, but with many
millions--perhaps even
billions--of people "unworthy victims." The Times
editors do not
recognize this, or at least do not admit it, because
they are
spokespersons for an imperialism that is riding high
and whose
principals are unprepared to change its policies. This
bodes ill for the
future. But it is of great importance right now to
stress the fact that
imperial terrorism inevitably produces retail
terrorist responses; that
the urgent need is the curbing of the causal force,
which is the
rampaging empire._


..........time to re-read GR and Pynchon's exploration
of the War that never ends, his outrage at same....
  

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