The purpose of these talking points is both to provide factual grounding for those feeling very uneasy about the course of the "War On Terror" but not able to readily express these sentiments, and to persuade those currently in support of U.S. policy to at the very least rethink this support.
This page is a work in progress: New links, new talking points, and more fleshing of existing talking points will be added as time allows. So please check back frequently. The page was last updated October 15, 2003. Those with suggestions for additional links or talking points, or additional text itself, are invited to pass along your ideas. Other comments and criticism are of course welcomed also.
If you've come across this page via an external link and like what you see, you might also be interested in NACC's other September 11th and "War On Terror" resources, as well as the organisation in general.
Note. None of the what follows is intended to somehow apologize for, or attempt to justify, the atrocities of September 11th. Rather, to make the point that while a "War On Terrorism" is an admirable undertaking in the abstract (though we could do without the martial verbiage), it's virtually meaningless if only carried out upon those terrorists we don't happen to like at a particular moment in time. It's especially meaningless if not applied to the United States itself, which is, after all, the Terrorist nation whose atrocities we, as U.S. citizens, can most readily eliminate.
"Terrorism", as defined in the dictionary is: the use or threat of violence against civilians, in order to attain a political goal. The list of instances in which the United States -- already considered by many a "Rogue Nation" because of its general disregard for International Law -- has engaged in Terrorism would fill up scores upon scores of pages (indeed, entire books have been written on the subject). The late Eqbal Ahmad conducted a study of the topic, estimating that state-sponsored Terrorism (of the U.S. variety) has been responsible for 100,000 times as many deaths as has private Terrorism (of the bin Laden variety). For general background on this point, Professor Noam Chomsky's books are perhaps the best place to start. See especially The Culture Of Terrorism, Deterring Democracy, Pirates And Emperors, The Political Economy Of Human Rights (two volumes), and Year 501: The Conquest Continues. Also highly recommended: Another Century Of War? and Confronting The Third World by Gabriel Kolko and The Limits Of Power by Gabriel and Joyce Kolko, Killing Hope and Rogue State by William Blum (see also this good summation from a recent lecture), Instruments Of Statecraft by Michael McClintock, and The Rise And Fall Of Economic Liberalism by Frederic Clairmont.
Regrettably, the Bush Administration has used September 11th as a cover for stepping up military aid to known human rights violators (that is to say, aiding and abetting terrorists), in all tripling the level of military aid to Latin America while "dominating" arms sales to the Third World generally; as well as greatly increasing U.S. military spending, aiding an Iraq-based Iranian terrorist group, attempting to overturn a 200-year-old human rights law, running legal interference on behalf of rights-abusing corporations, trading human rights for oil, and engaging in torture during interrogations. In this "relaxed" atmosphere, the Philippine government has been accused of staging "terrorist" bombings in order to cash in, and, "Yemeni authorities are deliberately pitting national security against human rights as they pursue a policy of torture, arbitrary arrests, incommunicado detentions and forced deportations of foreign nationals." Human Rights Watch's World Report 2003 harshly condemns the U.S. and its "War On Terror", concluding that, "Global support for the war on terrorism is diminishing partly because the United States too often neglects human rights in its conduct of the war," and that, "Terrorists violate basic human rights principles because they target civilians. But the United States undermines those principles when it overlooks human rights abuses by anti-terror allies such as Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia and Afghan warlords."
Here are some notable examples (unfortunately there are many, many more) of U.S.-sponsored International Terrorism:
Afghanistan Then... The United States recruited, armed, and trained the Mujahideen (beginning six months before the Soviet invasion, according to Zbigniew Brzezinski), whose methods were terrifying to say the least. Caught between the Soviet rock and the Mujahideen hard place, the Afghan population suffered horribly for more than a decade.
...And Now. The U.S. bombing of Afghanistan has killed over 3,000 civilians. The State Department writes this toll off as "collateral damage", claiming civilian casualties are "inevitable" in a time of war. Yet the indiscriminate bombing of population centers is strictly forbidden by the Geneva Conventions (see below, "What Would Have Been An Appropriate Response To September 11th?") precisely because it inevitably results in civilian casualties, no matter how "smart" the bomb being used. Additionally, in throwing its support behind the "Northern Alliance" for its Afghanistan operation, the United States is aiding a notorious group of Terrorists, one which was so brutal in its previous rule in Kabul that the Taliban was actually seen as a relief when it came to power. One of the major "selling points" of the "Northern Alliance" was the abysmal treatment of women by the Taliban. It's been widely reported that life has greatly improved for Afghan women. Both Human Rights Watch and RAWA, however, have issued numerous reports explaining that this is in fact not the case. The repression of the general population has continued, too -- including by U.S. Forces. Afghanistan's senior judge has outlawed cable television because, he says, it's "clearly contrary to Islam and against morality." Worst of all, the Bush Administration ordered all food aid (Afghanistan was and is suffering through a long, brutal drought, and millions survive only through a massive international aid campaign) cut off shortly after September 11th. Aid was later restored, but due to the U.S. air war, and factional violence on the ground, isn't wholly reliable. Nobody knows how many people were killed by the interruption of aid coupled with the chaos caused by the bombing, but it is known that before September 11th, approximately 5 million people were in need of aid, while in late September that number had grown to 7.5 million. As it becomes clear that the U.S. has abandoned Afghanistan again, on August 18th, 2002, the UN World Food Programme announced that it is being forced to cut rations to the now 6 millions requiring food aid, for lack of previously promised funds. The UN is also cautioning refugees against returning home, saying the country "is still unsafe and the living conditions are bad." As of early 2003, as the Bush Administration has its sights set firmly on Iraq, Afghanistan appears to have been entirely abandoned.
Colombia. Colombia, perhaps the hemisphere's worst human rights violator, is also currently the hemisphere's top recipient of U.S. military aid, purportedly utilised to help fight the "War On Drugs". In fact, what is taking place even as we speak is one of the most horrific Terror operations in the world. As, "Recent signs indicate that violence is becoming increasingly entrenched," so James Petras writes in a recent issue of Monthly Review magazine, "The entire Colombian economy is now subordinated to the U.S. military strategy; and the military strategy is directed by a scorched earth, total war policy." One hears and reads much of violence committed by the Colombian guerillas (which does exist, and should certainly be denounced), hence the supposed need for this scorched earth policy. But 80% of the killings are committed by government-linked (which is to say, U.S.-linked) paramilitaries. Colombian peasants are not only caught in the guerilla-paramilitary crossfire, but the aerial fumigation policy (again, closely tied to the U.S.), chemical warfare in other words, is destroying all crops and the land on which they're grown, thereby devastating the peasants' means of livelihood. See the Columbia Report website for much more information.
East Timor. The Indonesian annexation and subsequent repression of East Timor resulted in the largest mass slaughter (in terms of percentage of population) since the Holocaust -- and was carried out almost exclusively with U.S.-supplied armaments. The East Timorese finally won independence in 1999, but their struggle for justice is not finished. The East Timor Action Network/US is at the forefront of this struggle.
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Tokyo. The atomic and fire bombings of these four cities killed something on the order of a half-million civilians. Not only were these monumental war crimes, but given the politcal as opposed to strategic nature of the bombings (the U.S., which had broken the Japanese military code was aware that Japanese surrender was imminent; as was German surrender at the time of the Dresden bombing), might well be considered acts of International Terrorism, probably the most barbaric in world history. It might also be worth noting that the United States, in the process of "liberating" France from the Nazi occupation, dropped Napalm upon French villages.
Iraq. The U.S.-led attack upon the citizenry of Iraq is, to but it baldly, one of the most egregious crimes against humanity ever perpetrated. Iraqis already speak of having "lost a generation" after 12 years of punishing economic sanctions coupled with repeated Anglo-American bombing of Iraqi infrastructure -- a combination that continues to cause, to this day, roughly 90,000 deaths per year (40,000 of them children under five years old) -- consequences that American planners predicted while devising the policies. That another full-scale military slaughter -- one that had been in the current administration's sights since before the 2000 election -- has been carried out upon this country is almost too sadistic to even comprehend. Sickeningly, just as the U.S. used bribes and coercion to assemble its Gulf War coalition, it played political and diplomatic games in an unsuccessful attempt to gain world acquiescence of yet another massacre. Yes, Saddam Hussein was a tyrant -- one that the United States avidly and crucially supported through the era of his worst depredations. But his grip upon the populace had been tightened by the sanctions regime, and most of those suffering and dying for his sins were not yet born when Iraq invaded Kuwait. It's also worth noting that those contending to fill the vacuum in the case of Saddam's exit from power don't look too good by comparison, and the United States is already making overtures to former Ba'ath party officials to help keep order in post-Saddam Iraq. For more information, and to help out, Global Exchange offers a helpful list of things you can do to stop a new war. Additionally, Citizens Concerned for the People of Iraq, the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, Iraq Peace Team and Voices In The Wilderness are four organizations performing incredibly heroic work to end the war upon Iraq; and Madre has released an excellent factsheet, which one can print and distribute. (See also "'Preemptive' War" below.)
Israel/Palestine. Palestinian suicide bombers are indeed terrorists, and ought to be condemned. But the Israeli occupation, now in its thirty-fifth year, is as harsh and brutal a form of terrorism as any in the world. Israel is now apparently planning forcible expulsion of the Palestinians (who were, recall, forcibly expelled from their homes in Israel's 1948 creation) to take place in the very near future. The United States alone among world nations supports the occupation, and regularly vetoes Security Council resolutions demanding its end. Crucially, the occupation is underwritten by billions of dollars of military aid, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. Perhaps the best introduction to the conflict is through the Electronic Intifada.
Nicaragua. The 1984 elections were the mostly widely observed Third World elections in world history. The observers universally proclaimed that while it wasn't perfect, not only was it an astonishingly free and fair election by Third World standards, but boasted a much higher voter-turnout and pluralistic voting spread than could be seen in most of the First World -- including the United States. Yet the United States proceeded, through its proxy army the Contras, to wage a gigantic terrorist war upon the country -- specifically targetting civilians (which it labelled "soft targets"). In 1986, Nicaragua appealed to the World Court to force the United States to cease its attack. After the World Court ruled that the United States should do exactly this (as well as pay reparations), the U.S. increased the level of terror and violence, proceeding to pummel Nicaragua into dust: Nicaragua remains to this day one of the very poorest nations in the hemisphere.
Turkey. Throughout most of the '90s, Turkey, a respected NATO member, was the largest recipient (after Israel) of U.S. military aid. Not coincidentally, during this time the Turkish government was conducting a depraved ethnic "cleansing" campaign against the Turkish Kurds (and even, at times, crossing the border to bomb Kurds in Iraq -- with U.S. approval). This at the same time that Yugoslavia felt the brunt of U.S. bombardment for its much smaller (though still terrible) "cleansing" campaign against the Kosovo Albanians.
Hundreds of them, according to Amnesty International. Perhaps the most notorious, Emmanuel Constant, was responsible for the brutal repression in Haiti in the early '90s. Currently living in the U.S., he has been tried in absentia, with mountains of evidence having been adduced, and found guilty. Haiti has repeatedly asked the United States to turn him over, including since September 11th, but here he remains. Additionally, zealotous Cubans living in Florida, including Orlando Bosch, have repeatedly carried out Terrorist attacks upon Cuba, with the full knowledge (and frequently assistance) of the State Department. Also, much of the IRA's funding is derived from Irish Americans living in Boston and New York. And dare we mention that planners of past Terrorist activities committed by the United States itself -- George Bushes Sr. & Jr., Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Donald Rumsfeld, Ronald Reagan, Robert McNamara, Bill Clinton, George Schultz, et al. -- are essentially being "harbored" in the United States?
Most notably the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia (now renamed the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation"), from which most of Latin America's most heinous military butchers have graduated. Every year thousands of people descend upon the School to publicize and protest its bloody and shameful legacy. But considering their use in teaching the tools of death and destruction, shouldn't all U.S. military bases and boot camps, especially those located on foreign soil, be considered "Terrorist Training Camps"?
The Bush Doctrine, declared on September 17th, 2002, essentially grants to the United States the right to intervene into the affairs of other nations at any time it sees fit (dovetailing nicely with its already stated intention to dominate the world by militarising outer space). Call it a Monroe Doctrine for the 21st Century. The United Nations Charter, however, explicitly prohibits such actions. Being an international treaty, the UN Charter supersedes the Bush Doctrine, thereby rendering its calls to arms illegal. Some might argue that the attack of Iraq was legal under the Charter, as an Iraqi attack of the United States was "imminent". Not only is such an assertion stunningly absurd (neither the U.S. intelligence apparatus nor the other countries in the Middle East corroborated), but the precise opposite was true: the United States openly mobilised and threatened to invade Iraq (and then of course did so). One could, in other words, quite plausibly argue that Iraq could have legally attacked the United States to defend itself against the imminent U.S. onslaught.
It's not terribly capable of acknowledging the fact, but the United States not only maintains the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, but also operates a chemical weapons program (the devastating effects of which are still being felt in Vietnam, for example). It has used "Depleted" Uranium munitions (with horrifying results) upon Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan. The U.S. dropped an estimated 500 tons of DU upon Afghanistan -- more than the State Department acknowledges having dropped on Iraq. A recent field report suggests that non-depleted -- that is, natural -- Uranium munitions were used in Afghanistan, while another analysis warns that Natural Uranium munitions -- which create levels of radioactive contamination 100 times higher than "Depleted" Uranium munitions -- were planned for Iraq II as well. Not only Iraqi civilians, but also U.S. soldiers -- whom the Pentagon acknowledges it will not be able to properly equip -- will be in danger. The U.S. has also fired "Depleted" Uranium weapons in Vieques and near Okinawa, and, according to Major Doug Rokke, as practice rounds within the United States itself -- without having cleaned it up. DU is also used to make concrete, and is used as a counterweight in Boeing airliners -- including those that crashed into and were incinerated at the World Trade Center. See our Peacelinks page for more info on DU.
In intentionally destroying civilian infrastructure (including, critically, water treatment facilities) the United States has in essence conducted biological warfare upon those places as well -- not to mention having conducted biological warfare upon its own citizens and military personnel. Would it be too impolitic to ask the United States to get its own house in order before worrying about others'? Similarly, the U.S. is planning to deploy land mines in Iraq -- and extensively utilised cluster bombs -- which would (and did) greatly heighten the toll taken upon civilians. As for Iraq, at the time Saddam Hussein stopped cooperating with weapons inspectors (in December of 1998, because the U.S. was using the inspections as a cover for spying operations) Iraq had been almost completely disarmed -- a reality acknowledged in 2001 by both Congressional Research Service and Colin Powell. It now appears that it was disarmed long before the United States' latest war upon it. It was, in other words, in compliance with UN Resolution 687. As of September 2002, former UN employees Scott Ritter and Hans von Sponeck, both having recently returned to Iraq to assess the credibility of the State Department's claims, insist that Iraq is largely or entirely disarmed (as the U.S. has apparently known -- but kept secret -- for quite some time). The pre-war inspections, despite being "aided" by U.S. intelligence "garbage after garbage after garbage", corroborated their assertions (though CNN doesn't want you to know that). Indeed, the hysterical scare-mongering over Iraq's weapons capabilities was just that: hysterical scare-mongering.
The United States, on the other hand, which to this day continues to flood the region with armaments, is in violation of UN 687 (which mandates Iraqi disarmament in the context of region-wide disarmament) Meanwhile, the Bush Administration; in smearing the Blix inspections team, mobilising for war with the inspections barely under way, and promising to launch a war even if the inspectors return a clean bill of health, had made it clear that its "disarmament" bluster is a sick ruse.
Many (though certainly not all) pundits -- including many opposed to an Iraq war -- are downplaying the importance of oil as a determinant in the Administration's rush to war. But the industry can barely restrain itself, so eager is it to take control of the Iraqi oil fields. The ever-straight-talking Department Of Energy weighs in as well. Not, it's not all about oil (not that the other reasons are any prettier). But the black gold's important shouldn't be diminished as one of the primary factors.
The United States immediately called for the Taliban to hand over bin Laden, which the Taliban agreed to do if the United States could prove that he was responsible for the attacks. The U.S. refused to divulge evidence, leaving it to Tony Blair, whose remarkably meagre dossier begins: "This document does not purport to provide a prosecutable case against Osama Bin Laden in a court of law." One year later, bin Laden's connection to the hijackers is still unknown. Yet, despite the magnitude of the crime, the only way to legally bring the perpetrators to justice would have been to "provide a prosecutable case", and try those responsible in a court of law. Bombing the poorest country in the world to shreds, killing 3,000-plus innocent civilians (plus untold thousands more by starvation -- both last winter and this coming winter) and replacing one group of murderous religious fundamentalists with another because bin Laden might have (nobody knows, though past history suggests otherwise, and a recent report from an American officer confirms the disconnected nature of the organisation) known about the attacks or in some way aided the perpetrators, and because the government of Afghanistan was allowing him to reside there at the time, makes no logical or moral sense whatever.
Further, military attacks upon sovereign nations, without the prior approval of the UN Security Council are expressly forbidden by the UN Charter. The Security Council and General Assembly Resolutions concerning September 11th do not, in any manner, authorise the United States to use force in bringing the perpetrators to justice. (It is true that Article 51 of the Charter grants a nation the right to self-defense against an ongoing attack, "until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security." But this right does not apply here, as not only was the attack no longer underway, but also was perpetrated by a sub-national group. To put it another way: to invoke Article 51 of the Charter as justification for the war in Afghanistan, beginning a full month after the attacks ended, without Security Council involvement at any time since, and even though the September 11th attacks were clearly not committed by Afghan military forces, and even though all of the perpetrators were Saudi and Egyptian nationals is so far beyond absurd that probably Orwell himself couldn't have dreamed it up.) Thus, the war in Afghanistan constitutes a war crime (as did the war in Yugoslavia), and its planners should be held responsible as surely as Milosevic, the Nazis, and imperial Japan were held responsible for theirs. (Indeed, the State Department acknowledges that it is the fear that this would be the case which impelled the United States to oppose the International Criminal Court.)
Further still, even if the U.S. had received Security Council authorization to invade Afghanistan, its methods would still have constituted a war crime. "Indiscriminate" bombing of civilians and population centers is explicitly forbidden by Article 51 of the 1977 Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions, as such bombing inevitably results in innocent people being killed (as we have seen yet again in Afghanistan, and as is openly acknolwedged by the State Department) -- whether or not this was the intent. Also, the deployment of "Depleted" Uranium munitions -- in other words, the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction -- is a war crime, as is the use of "anti-personnel" munitions, such as cluster bombs. The methods planned for future wars leave it in little doubt that the U.S. war machine will stop at nothing to achieve its strategic goals.
How, then, might the United States have responded -- apart from tracking down the perpetrators -- in the hopes of preventing future attacks? First and most important, the United States should have ceased committing and supporting terrorist activities worldwide. Secondly, the U.S. should discontinue other policies which clearly sow the breeding ground of terrorist atrocities: supporting tyrannical dictators and fundamentalist regimes, pulling out of international treaties, implementing (through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) punishing austerity programs, filling the world and the nation with military arms (including to many of the actors in the "worst war in the world"), ignoring calls for ecological sanity, etc.. Third, the United States should use its massive wealth and its international standing to eradicate those conditions (poverty, disease, insufficient resources, illiteracy) which most readily incubate terror. In fact, by diverting just ten percent of its annual military budget to this purpose, the United States could single-handedly eliminate world poverty. Ten percent! To state it another way, the UN Human Development Report's estimate of the amount of money needed to provide basic health and nutrition for everyone in the world is $4 Billion less than Americans and Europeans spend on pet food.
While the eradication of the threat of terrorist attacks upon the United States through the means employed by the United States would have been illegal and immoral, it's interesting to note that the "War On Terror" hasn't even accomplished this. Rather, as was perfectly predictable, the opposite appears to be the case:
We've all heard the conspiracy theories. Some of them seem incredibly outlandish indeed. But many of the questions are certainly compelling. We stress here that we don't know what happened, and aren't positing any theories. But we'd certainly like to know.