plead the first, not the fifth

Introduction

The 9/11 attacks were crimes against humanity. The dynamics and forces that led to them should invite close study and a wise response. This should include a reevaluation of the destructive, interventionist aspects of a U.S. foreign policy which maintained sanctions on Iraq for a decade that were killing 5,000 children a month and a U.S. foreign policy which uncritically supports the repressive 37-year-old Israeli military occupation of Palestinian land.

Yes, Osama Bin Laden was cynically appropriating both of these causes which he had shown no interest in before, but the genuine injustice that they represent to millions feeds the lack of local political will in the region to address terrorism. This briefly maintained archive was started in February 2002 as a way of filing material I had both found on the Internet (see below) and written (see right) relating to the "War Against Terrorism." It is a personal archive that does not attempt to be comprehensive.

To briefly sum up my feelings about the "War on Terror"

While there is a desperate need to address global terrorism, step one should be a recognition that many of our actions as Western nation states in the Middle East (in Iraq and Palestine in particular) can be reasonably and fairly defined as 'terrorism' (presumably one reason why the U.S. State Department's definition excludes governments from its definition); step two should be that we end these injustices immediately and unilaterally; and step three should be that, in the course of hunting down those responsible for the crimes against humanity perpetrated on 9/11, we must scrupulously adhere to international law and human rights conventions, and undertake any military action only with utter trepidation and the prioritising of the avoidance of further civilian casualties at all costs.

In the wake of world goodwill towards the U.S. in the wake of 9/11, the U.S. had a historic opportunity to heal historical rifts and build new bridges with the Arab and Islamic Worlds. It is becoming increasingly clear that this opportunity is being deliberately avoided by the ideologues that shape U.S. foreign policy, who seized the opportunity to implement an even more interventionist agenda under cover of the anti-Arab and anti-Islamic backlash that followed 9/11 in America. The Bush administration's acceptance of Israel's ongoing brutal repression of the Palestinian people as a part of the "War Against Terrorism" is one of the most shameful aspects of this trend.

Nigel Parry

Editor's Note: The text above was written in February 2002. Looking back at the final two paragraphs as I was adding another resource to this page in October 2004, just a couple of weeks before the 2004 Presidential election, it is tragic to see the exact opposite of what I had hoped for has come to pass.

Analysts in the U.S. government agree, even if it took them 3 years to reach the same conclusion. The Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication, [PDF format, 1.8MB] from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense For Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, published in September 2004, is an eye-opener. Here's an excerpt from section 2.3, "What is the Problem? Who Are We Dealing With?"

The information campaign — or as some still would have it, "the war of ideas," or the struggle for "hearts and minds" — is important to every war effort. In this war it is an essential objective, because the larger goals of U.S. strategy depend on separating the vast majority of non-violent Muslims from the radical-militant Islamist-Jihadists. But American efforts have not only failed in this respect: they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended.

American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies.

Muslims do not "hate our freedom," but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.

Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy. Moreover, saying that "freedom is the future of the Middle East" is seen as patronizing, suggesting that Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of the old Communist World — but Muslims do not feel this way: they feel oppressed, but not enslaved.

Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim self determination.

Therefore, the dramatic narrative since 9/11 has essentially borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars. American actions and the flow of events have elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims. Fighting groups portray themselves as the true defenders of an Ummah (the entire Muslim community) invaded and under attack — to broad public support.

What was a marginal network is now an Ummah-wide movement of fighting groups. Not only has there been a proliferation of "terrorist" groups: the unifying context of a shared cause creates a sense of affiliation across the many cultural and sectarian boundaries that divide Islam.

Finally, Muslims see Americans as strangely narcissistic — namely, that the war is all about us. As the Muslims see it, everything about the war is — for Americans — really no more than an extension of American domestic politics and its great game. This perception is of course necessarily heightened by election-year atmospherics, but nonetheless sustains their impression that when Americans talk to Muslims they are really just talking to themselves.

• Afghans are still dying as air strikes go on. But no one is counting, by Ian Traynor in Kabul, The Guardian, 12 February 2002.
• Storm over Afghan civilian victims, by Ian Traynor in Kabul and Julian Borger in Washington, The Guardian, 12 February 2002.
• Killing Innocents: Does Anyone Out There Care?, by Ed McManus, Common Dreams, 7 February 2002.
• Human-Rights Group to Estimate Civilians Killed in U.S. Campaign, by Chip Cummins, The Wall Street Journal, 7 February 2002.
• Operation Enduring Freedom: Why a Higher Rate of Civilian Bombing Casualties, Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Report #11, 18 January 2002 (revised 24 January 2002).
• Afghanistan's civilian deaths mount, BBC News Online, 3 January 2002 (PDF format, 60K).
• Daily Casualty Count of Afghan Civilians Killed in U.S. Bombing Attacks from 7 October 2001 to 24 January 2002, raw data from research by Marc Herold (PDF format, 202K).
• Al-Jazeera/Afghanistan updates from Ali Abunimah, abunimah.org, 19 November-10 December 2001.
• Fox: Civilian Casualties Not News, Action Alert, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, 8 November 2001.
• CNN Says Focus on Civilian Casualties Would Be "Perverse", Action Alert, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, 1 November 2001.
• Special Report: Afghanistan, The Guardian newspaper (UK).