The War In Afghanistan:
47 Questions and Answers
By Michael Albert and Stephen R. Shalom
Continued...

36. What is a "war on terrorism," and why is it being elevated as the capstone of U. S. foreign policy?

A war on terrorism is a project of attacking whomsoever the U.S. proclaims to be terrorist. In that sense it has many aspects. It can be used to assault opponents who are in fact terrorist, or other opponents who are not terrorist but are labeled to be. It can be used to induce fear in the U.S. population, so as to justify huge military expenditures, violations of civil liberties, and other elite?benefiting policies--much as the Cold War served the same purpose in decades past. It doesn't risk serious conflict as the scale of the engagements and their targets, are entirely up to us. It doesn't legitimate international law, and so it does nothing to risk the U.S. being held accountable for our actions.

In other words, the War on Terrorism, like the Cold War in earlier decades, for reasons having little to nothing to do with its rhetorical aims is quite serviceable to elites, supposing that they are able to convince the population of its efficacy.

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Oil of course plays a greater or lesser role in everything political and economic that happens in the Mideast, sometimes forefront, sometimes background. U.S. geopolitical and economic policies have as one of their prime motives maintaining access to and virtual control over oil sources around the globe. Pursuit of profit per se, and oil profit, are at the foundation of U.S. institutional arrangements in general, and thus impact our large-scale motives, of course. But the idea that oil is the proximate reason for the attack on Afghanistan, is very far fetched, just as the notion that the U.S. engaged in the war in Vietnam to gain access to minerals within Vietnam was far fetched. What is primarily at stake, geopolitically and economically, is not access to specific resources (or pipeline routes) but the rules of global interaction, the further delegitimating of international law, the development of a replacement for the Cold War - in this case, a war on terrorism - as well as actual concerns about terrorism itself.

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There is no way to say with confidence, but since Afghanistan is too poor to fight back and has so few targets of any substance or scale, serious assaults are unlikely to persist too long, one hopes. Nevertheless, Adm. Sir Michael Boyce, the chief of the British defense staff, said military operations "must expect to go through the winter and into next summer at the very least" and President Bush said that the military operation would continue for days, months or even years (NYT, 12 Oct. 2001).

To literally rip the fabric of the society to shreds and continue to obstruct possibilities for serious food aid could yield a holocaust, and even the most callous U.S. policy makers can't possibly be so ignorant as to conclude that the hate that would arise for the U.S. around the world would be in their interests. On the other hand, the war on terrorism has utility only insofar as the U.S. population can be kept focused on it, made fearful due to it, and thus willing to abrogate democratic influence and even a limited say over policymaking, as a result. So if the U.S. government can get away with doing so, a continuing attention to terrorism is to be anticipated.

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Perhaps the greatest danger is that a Taliban-like regime might come to power in Pakistan as a result of war-induced destabilization. Unlike Afghanistan, Pakistan is no minor player: it has nuclear weapons. Even with sober leaders, Pakistan has pursued highly reckless policies with regard to Kashmir, bringing it close to conflict with its nuclear armed neighbor, India.

More generally, there is the danger that the calls for holy war, largely ignored in the Muslim world in recent years, will now gain a wider following.

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First, the attacks on civilians in Afghanistan, and the aggravation of the starvation conditions, is itself terrorist, greatly increasing the terrorism at play in the world.

Second, killing innocent civilians, as has already occurred and will increasingly occur, will likely create more terrorists in Afghanistan and more widely throughout the region. The New York Times reported (10/13/01) of an Afghan village struck by U.S. bombs, with many civilian casualties. "Maulvi Abdullah Haijazi, an elder from a nearby village, had come to assist. 'These people don't support the Taliban,' he said. 'They always say the Taliban are doing this or that and they don't like it. But now they will all fight the Americans. We pray to Allah that we have American soldiers to kill. These bombs from the sky we cannot fight.'" And when they can't kill U.S. soldiers, they can at least join a terror network. This is the bad fruit our rain from the sky nurtures-among survivors.

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Suppose a postal worker attacks his mates and some folks in the post office one morning. The government - not the surviving workers in the post office - moves to capture and prosecute the culprit (not to attack his neighbors, etc. ). But hopefully the government also looks into the conditions that contributed to the postal workers heinous acts, as well. Suppose it discovers that stress levels in post offices are abysmal and contribute to anger and personal dissolution leading to "going postal. " Would the government be giving in to criminal pressures if it advocated a reduction in stress in postal work? No, on the contrary the government would be acting sensibly to reduce just grievances that needed reduction in any event, and which would have the very good by-product of helping reduce the likelihood of other postal workers attacking their workmates.

The same logic holds in this case. For the U.S. to alter its foreign policy to not support despots abroad, to not punish civilian populations abroad, to not support unjust policies by allies abroad, to indeed try to redress huge injustices of economic impoverishment abroad, are all choices that should occur in any event, in their own right, and whose implementation would also, as a desirable side benefit, reduce the conditions that breed the hate and desperation terrorism feeds on.

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The Bush administration has now declared that its vision for the solution of the Israel-Palestine conflict includes a Palestinian state. The Bush administration is now in line with the former Clinton administration. This is better than Bush's previous backtracking, but it is still very far from what is needed. Washington says the boundaries of the Palestinian state are to be worked out by the parties -- the Palestinians and Israel -- but that means that Israel has an effective veto over any settlement, and until there is a settlement, Palestinians remain under Israeli occupation. Everyone now says they support a Palestinian state, including Israel, but the crucial question is whether the specific terms address the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. The issue is not a few square kilometers of desert on one side of the border or the other, but whether there will be Israeli security zones carved out of the Palestinian state, whether Israeli security roads will traverse the Palestinian state, and whether Israeli settlements will remain. In addition, there are the questions of whether Israel will continue to control East Jerusalem which it conquered in 1967 and whether the Palestinians have to foreswear their right to return to lands from which they have been driven out. Until the United States is willing to use its influence to pressure Israel to accept real self-determination for Palestinians, the problem will remain.

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The U.S. government's guiding principle ought to have been to assure the security, safety, and well-being of U.S. citizens without detracting from the security, safety, and well-being of others.

Any response should have avoided targeting civilians or so-called dual-use targets and should have been carried out according to the UN Charter. We should have sought freely-offered Security Council authorization with the UN retaining control of any response.

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It isn't crazy, in the U.S. to have locks on some doors, etc. But it is wise to try to enact policies that reduce poverty and desperation as well, not only because it is moral to do so to benefit those suffering, but because it will dramatically reduce inclinations to steal. Similarly, internationally, it isn't crazy to expend some energies and resources guarding against terrorist attack. But it is wise to try to enact policies that reduce conditions of poverty and disenfranchisement, not only because it is moral to do so to benefit those suffering, but because it will dramatically reduce inclinations to terrorize and prospects for finding allies willing to abet that terrorism.

What else could we do? David Corn offers some suggestions: a large increase of funding for the public health infrastructure (which is today inadequate to deal with a serious biological or chemical terror), funding programs to secure or neutralize Russian nuclear material and to prevent Russian weapons scientists from being exported, stop exporting hand-held guns that can bring down airplanes. Having the federal government take over airport security is a suggestion we made previously; right now the Bush administration opposes Congressional legislation to this effect because it will increase big government. Richard Garwin has additional suggestions. All these make sense. And they are likely to enhance our security, while war is likely to do the opposite.

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First, it can't be achieved via war because, in this case, war kills huge numbers of innocents, reduces the attentiveness to law and justice, and creates huge reservoirs of hate fueling future terrorists possibilities.

Second, it can be achieved without war, however, by following the norms of international law, which, if need be, may even involve military aspects along with diplomacy and other features - but not war as in one country, or a pair, attacking another.

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Peace movements in industrialized nations before September 11 should have attuned themselves to unjust and horrific violence that victimized the weak and was engaged to benefit the powerful. The same holds now.

Peace movements in industrialized nations before September 11 should have opposed unjust wars, particularly perpetrated by their own countries, and any policies making such wars more likely or more brutal. The same holds now.

Peace movements in industrialized nations before September 11 should have examined institutional causes for wars, seeking to reduce those causes as much as possible. The same holds now.

So did anything profound change calling for re-thinking by peace movements?

Yes, one thing did change, quite dramatically. For the first time some of the abhorrent violence has been turned toward the civilian populations of the developed nations. This means that defensive motives will enter developed nation's calculations vis-à-vis international relations with poor countries not solely rhetorically, but in fact. Peace movements will have to pay attention to that new reality even as they also pay attention to on-going structural causes of war and injustice.

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Winning gains against intransigent elites depends on convincing them that to ignore demands will lead to more losses for them than to meet demands. What accomplishes this is always the specter of growing numbers of people taking the side of dissidents, becoming sufficiently aroused and impassioned to work to recruit still more allies, and to manifest their dissent in demonstrations and civil disobedience, and especially of growing numbers whose concerns begin to transcend immediate issues and call into question broader and even more important institutional allegiances of elites.

Thus, peace movements, anti-racist movements, labor movements, anti-capitalist movements, ecology movements, feminist movements, movements against capitalist globalization, movements for great democracy or against incursions on freedom, and any other social movements will benefit to the extent they mutually support one another and convince elites that to ignore their focus is to risk enlarged opposition not only on that issue, but on all others as well. They will suffer losses in their efficacy to the extent that they are isolated from one another, or even pitted against one another.

Peace movements and other movements should support and even take up one another's struggles, to the extent circumstances and resources permit.

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