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September
11, 2001
Diagnosis,
Prognosis, Therapy
By
Johan
Galtung
dr hc mult, Professor of Peace
Studies
Director, TRANSCEND: A Network for Peace and
Development
TFF
associate
February 19, 2002
(forthcoming in the Second Edition of "Searching
for Peace: The Road to TRANSCEND" by Johan Galtung,
Carl G. Jacobsen and Kai Frithjof Brand-Jacobsen. London:
Pluto Press, 2002)
1.
Diagnosis.
Politics, like communication is seen in terms of who
does what to whom, how-when-where, and why. The
what-how-when-where of the September 11 attack in New
York and Washington is clear; the problems are who and
why. But why is at least clear up to a certain point.
Like the presidential palace in Santiago, Chile, also
bombed on a September 11 (1973) somebody had something
against what happened inside some buildings: the
capitalism of the US world trade and the militarism of
the US Pentagon for year 2001/1/; the politics of the
Unidad Popular for year 1973.
The text was written in building language, and like
for all texts what is not written may be equally
important: no museum, no cathedral, no parliament. The
19-20 hijackers hit what they wanted, just like the
Chilean Air Force and its masters.
But there could also be a military motivation for
these acts of criminal political violence/2/: to
incapacitate, to put somebody out of action, to "take
them out". That happened to Salvador Allende and later on
to more than 3,000 Chileans; and to 4,000 (or so) in New
York and Washington. But democratic Chile recovered
although it took some time. US-led capitalism, today
called "globalization", was in decline for other reasons,
but US-led militarism is as vigorous as ever. September
11 2001 and 1973 were communicative and political rather
than military.
Any thought/speech/action on these attacks has to
reflect which symbols of America were targeted lest it
becomes dogmatic, a priori. Someone had something against
what emanated from those buildings. That gives us a cue
to why. But who did it?
This is the dominant, mainstream, thriller question,
not why.
2. The dominant,
mainstream discourse: "terrorism".
Answer: terrorism, more precisely Al Qaeda, even more
precisely Osama bin Laden. To explore this discourse
"terrorism" has to be defined, and there seem to be two
different meanings.
First, tactical: "Terrorism" is based on
unpredictability in the who-whom-how-when-where, as
opposed to a regular military campaign with predictable
parties and most methods of killing and destruction. The
where is known as the front-line, the when may move with
the predictability of a Japanese sakura. There is
the additional terrorist element of whom:
civilians/innocents.
There are two subtypes: non-state terrorism,
and state terrorism; from below ("have bombs, but
no air force"), from above ("have both bombs and air
force"). The 09/11/01 kamikaze attack/3/-fascist like all
massive political violence-will enter military history by
using airline carriers with fuel, as bombs.
Terrorism from below is directed against governments
or states as persons or institutions, and of course to
bring about political change. Obviously, most
governments, and the United Nations as a trade union of
governments, are against terrorism from below because,
like secession, it affects vital government interests,
including to be causa sui, game masters.
State terrorism as a military tactic also uses
surprise and focuses on killing civilians to force
capitulation. This is a major theme in modern warfare,
indeed used by the US/UK air forces in their terror
bombing of Germany and Japan 1940-45./4/
In the campaign against Yugoslavia March-June 1999
remarkably few military targets were destroyed whereas
the killing of civilians and destruction of Serbian
infra-structure (factories, power,
transportation/communication schools and hospitals) was
extensive. That brought about capitulation to avoid
genocide./5/
From the circumstance that terrorism is terrorism
whether from below or from above, the conclusion is not
that they are organized the same way. "Above" is almost
by definition hierarchical with a vertical, well
protected, chain of command. "Below" has to use guerilla
tactics with a loosely connected horizontal organization
of small cells with low vulnerability. The connecting
cement, substituting for the vertical chain, wold be a
deeply internalized ideology. Theoretically it is
possible that 19-20 persons organized the 09/11/01
attack, got the money for tickets and flying training in
a simulator, not the more difficult take-off and landing,
and some box-openers. In that case there is no causal
chain of command pointing to the single prime mover so
dear to the US mind. There is nobody to search and punish
or destroy if the cell was a closed system programmed to
self-destruct like some animals upon intercourse. All
that is needed is perfect solidarity and
single-mindedness.
The condition for this hypothesis to be valid is a
context, an ocean of hatred with the capacity for
spontaneous creation of such cells. Central to terrorism
as a tactic is also the idea of provocation: a terrorist
attack leads to a massive state terrorist counter-attack
which then, in turn, enlarges the ocean of hatred that
not only produces terrorists but also feeds them; body,
mind and spirit. The "people" will rise, levée
en masse. The German group Rote Armee Fraktion
(RAF) had this theory, so did the Italian Brigate
Rosse. But it did not work that way. Isolated people
easily overestimate their social support.
However, to crush, pulverize etc. an ocean--rather
than a concrete hierarchy with orderly chains of
command--of hatred and willingness to sacrifice, even
one's own life, will not be easy. The BBC claimed that
the USA had 60 candidate target countries./6/
Second, ideological. "Terrorist" is seen as a
state of mind, with fundamentalism as cognitive
perspective and hatred as emotional resource, an
evil-doer whose only purpose is harm and hurt, violence
for its own sake. The terrorist has no cause beyond this;
and his tactic is chosen accordingly. He will hide in the
dark, lurking, lurching, waiting for his time.
The metaphor for this within the abrahamitic religions
would be Satan himself, Lucifer, known as the leader of
the angels who rebelled against God. That metaphor should
be an important archetype in a country like the USA, no.
1 in the world in believing in the reality of the
devil/7/ and with little difficulty seeing itself as the
instrument of God's will (thus, Colin Powell himself once
declared that "America had been established by divine
providence to lead the world",/8/ George W. Bush that
Jesus Christ is the political philosopher he most
admires/9/). The metaphor fits bin Laden doubly as he
once fought with USA the "evil empire" at the time, the
Soviet Union, but like Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Mohammed
Aidid, Manuel Noriega and to some extent Slobodan
Milosevic turned like Lucifer against the USA, defying
"the enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic.
Fundamentalism as a cognitive outlook has three
pillars:
- Dualism, the world is divided in two parts,
no neutrals;
- Manicheism, who is not with the good, is with
the evil;
- Armageddon, evil yields to nothing else than
violence.
With George Bush's use of "you are either with us or
with the terrorists", and bin Laden's distinction between
believers and infidels/10/, both justifying violence,
they can be classified as fundamentalists. The "war
against terrorism" is between hard Christian
(Baptist/Presbyterian?), and hard Islamic (Wahabbite?)
fudamentalisms./11/ The reinforcing dialectic between the
two is obvious, as is "my terrorism is good, theirs is
bad".
3. The alternative
discourse: "retaliation".
This discourse is found on the margin in the US, is
frequent in the peoples of the West, and often even the
dominant discourse in the Rest. The September 11 was a
retaliation, probably above all motivated by a
combination of hatred, despair and "violence is the only
language they understand", in other words blocked
communication. The second reason for major political
violence, to incapacitate the enemy, presupposes a
naivete unlikely with attackers at that level of
sophistication. But the third reason, to provoke
political change, may have been on their mind, and the
fourth, to provoke a retaliation for their retaliation
big enough to provoke BIG retaliation against the US
possibly also.
This discourse constructs the "other side", OS, so
called because we do no know exactly who they are (could
mean "Osama Side") as at least partly rational, with
causes, motives beyond just inflicting evil. Very
important among these causes is OS retaliating for US
violence. That would locate some of the cause for what
happened to the US in the US itself, and more
particularly in structural violence identified with the
World Trade Center and the direct violence identified
with Pentagon.
But does not that justify the attack? No. Nothing can
justify crimes against peace and humanity, whether by OS
or US. But we can try to understand, explain. Hitler
could partly be understood in terms of the highly violent
second, Versailles Treaty (similar to the first in 1871).
But that does not justify his atrocities. However massive
the causal mass, there is always a residue of free will.
Hitler, US and OS could have decided otherwise.
Understanding is a necessary condition for removing
causes, both in the causal and/or the motivational sense
of that word, thereby making a repeat less likely.
The US track record of violence since the Second World
War, to have a cut-off point relevant for the present
generation, is overwhelming. But US violence was also
caused, by something; there were motives beyond
inflicting the evil, the hurt and harm that is the
essence of violence. Tactically very much of it, maybe
most, can be characterized as state terrorism, but like
terrorism from below motives may be neutral or valid even
if the consequences for the victims and the bereaved are
purely evil.
Right after September 11 Zoltan Grossman made
available a list of "A Century of US Military
Interventions from Wounded Knee to Afghanistan", based on
Congressional Records and the Library of Congress
Congressional Research Service. His list of 134 small and
big, global and domestic, interventions covers the 111
years 1890-2001, with an average of 1.15 interventions
per year before the end of the Second World War, and an
average of 1.29 after that; in other words a small
increase. If we focus on the period after the end of the
Cold War, however, 11 years, there are 22 interventions,
in other words an average of 2.0 per year. This is
compatible with the hypothesis that as empire or hegemony
expands more interventions are needed for protection.
William Blum, in his Rogue
State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
/12/ has much detail in the 300 pages. Some of this can
be debated. But our focus is on the victims, the
bereaved, the displaced, the destruction to man-made and
natural environment, the damage done to social
institutions and to culture by such an enormous
propensity to violence./13/ There is no denial of some
valid motives. But there is a denial that violence was
the only recourse. For each single case an alternative
course of action could be argued, but that is not our
focus here.
Blum has a list of 67 "Global Interventions from 1945"
(Grossman has 56; Blum includes non-military
interventions and much indirect, US-supported violence).
In chronological order:
China 45-51, France 47, Marshall Islands 46-58, Italy
47-70s, Greece 47-49, Philippines 45-53, Korea 45-53,
Albania 49-53, Eastern Europe 48-56, Germany 50s, Iran
53, Guatemala 53-90s, Costa Rica 50s, 70-71, Middle East
56-58, Indonesia 57-58, Haiti 59, Western Europe 50s-60s,
British Guiana 53-64, Iraq 58-63, Soviet Union 40s-60s,
Vietnam 45-73, Cambodia 55-73, Laos 57-73, Thailand
65-73, Ecuador 60-63, Congo-Zaire 77-78, France-Algeria
60s, Brazil 61-63, Peru 65, Dominican Republic 63-65,
Cuba 59-, Indonesia 65, Ghana 66, Uruguay 69-72, Chile
64-73, Greece 67-74, South Africa 60s-80s, Bolivia 64-75,
Australia 72-75, Iraq 72-75, Portugal 74-76, East Timor
75-99, Angola 75-80s, Jamaica 76, Honduras 80s, Nicaragua
78-90s, Philippines 70s, Seychelles 79-81, South Yemen
79-84, South Korea 80, Chad 81-82, Grenada 79-83,
Suriname 82-84, Libya 81-89, Fiji 87, Panama 89,
Afghanistan 79-92, El Salvador 80-92, Haiti 87-94,
Bulgaria 90-91, Albania 91-92, Somalia 93, Iraq 90s, Peru
90s, Mexico 90s, Colombia 90s, Yugoslavia 95-99.
The interventions took the form of bombings in 25
cases:
China 45-46, Korea/China 50-53, Guatemala 54,
Indonesia 58, Cuba 60-61, Guatemala 60, Vietnam 61-73,
Congo 64, Peru 65, Laos 64-73, Cambodia 69-70, Guatemala
67-69, Grenada 83, Lebanon-Syria 83-84, Libya 86, El
Salvador 80s, Nicaragua 80s, Iran 87, Panama 89, Iraq
91-, Kuwait 91, Somalia 93, Sudan 98, Afghanistan 98,
Yugoslavia 99.
Assassinations, attempted or successful, of leaders
including heads of state, were tried in 35 cases, and
assistance in torture in 11 countries (Greece, Iran,
Germany, Vietnam, Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil, Guatemala, El
Salvador, Honduras, Panama). Very vehement are the
actions against leaders who once worked with the USA
because they had an enemy in common: Pol Pot, Manuel
Noriega, Saddam Hussein, Mohammed Aidid and Osama bin
Laden. Blum also has a list of 23 countries where US was
"Perverting Elections", interfering with a democratic
process:
Italy 48-70s, Lebanon 50s, Indonesia 55, Vietnam 55,
Guayana 53-64, Japan 58-70s, Nepal 59, Laos 60, Brazil
62, Dominican Republic 62, Guatemala 63, Bolivia 66,
Chile 64-70, Portugal 74-5, Australia 74-5, Jamaica 76,
Panama 84, 89, Nicaragua 84,90, Haiti 87-88, Bulgaria
91-92, Russia 96, Mongolia 96, Bosnia 98.
Critique details, read the book. But much naivete is
needed to believe this can pass without hatred and thirst
for revenge.
There is a spatial pattern in the sense that
interventions have moved, with considerable overlaps,
through four regions:
Spatial patterns of US interventions: Four
post-WWII regions.
Region I East Asia Confucian-Buddhist
Region II Eastern Europe Orthodox Christian
Region III Latin America Catholic Christian
Region IV West Asia Islam
The first focus of US intervention was in East Asia
(Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia; but also Iran), and extremely
violent.
The second was on Eastern Europe (including the Soviet
Union), the Cold War that fortunately did not become hot,
at least not in Europe even though the Cold War continued
in East Asia. The presence of a counter-superpower had
much to do with that, and when that superpower
disappeared US violence has been exercised on Orthodox
territory, in Serbia and Macedonia.
The third was in Latin America, starting with and
prompted by Cuba, reaching all the countries, more or
less. The violence was micro and meso, not the macro
violence in East Asia, not to mention the mega violence
feared for the European "theater".
The fourth is in West Asia, starting with Palestine
and Iran, then Libya and Lebanon/Syria, and in the 1990s
with Iraq, Saudi-Arabia (for military bases) and
Afghanistan./14/
This change in focus over time may explain the delay
in retaliation in the American homeland. The USA sees
itself as above other countries, under but near God./15/
US violence is not retaliation, but punishment, from
above; hence acceptable and accepted. But in Region I a
war is a sign of bad karma to be improved by mutual
efforts; hence neither capitulation, nor revenge. In
Region II there was no violence. In Region III many Latin
Americans share the US perspective. But Region IV? Never.
Allah is in no way below God, no capitulation,
revenge.
The USA has taken on something they never experienced
before.
Then there is the structural violence brought about by
the rapid expansion of the market system all over the
world. A basic aspect of that system is monetization,
meaning that what is required for basic needs
satisfaction is available only against money, not labor,
for instance. With less than one dollar per day the basic
needs for food, clothes, shelter and health care cannot
be met. As a result people die, probably now to the tune
of 100,000 per day, of under/mal-nutrition, -clothing and
housing and the lack of health services for the diseases
that follow, because they are also monetized and
unsubsidized. At the same time wealth accumulates at the
top. Many people hate this.
As to the motives behind this enormity of direct
violence: it is practically speaking all compatible with
the hypothesis that US direct violence, overt or
covert-CIA-is directed against whatever can be seen as
hostile to US business abroad./16/ That would include
progressive countries and progressive people in any
country, meaning by "progressive" policies that privilege
distribution of economic assets downward in society and
the satisfaction of basic needs for the most needy. If
this is compatible with a favorable "climate" for US
business then OK. But in less developed countries the
political economy will pit these goals against each
other, and the standard US reaction has been violent. We
can talk of a military-industrial complex and of an
international class struggle between and within
countries.
A generation ago retaliation would refer to
colonialism and to 200 British punishment expeditions by
Rule Britannia. Today hatred centers on the USA,
overshadowing former colonial powers like France, Belgium
and Portugal to mention some, and- indeed - Japan as some
kind of "West". Today that military-industrial complex is
clearly symbolized by Pentagon-World Trade Center.
Looking through the 35 (assassinations) + 11 (torture)
+ 25 (bombings) + 67 (global interventions) + 23
(perverting elections) = 161 cases of political violence
the conclusion is inevitable: practically speaking all of
them are compatible with the class conflict (between
countries and within) hypothesis. No case is compatible
with the "clash of civilizations" hypothesis in the sense
that civilizational symbols (like mosques, temples) or
purely religious authorities were targeted. Nor is there
any evidence for classical territorial expansion.
Of course, the justifying rhetoric has been different.
For regions i and ii it has been "containment of Soviet
expansion", rightly pitting freedom-democracy-human
rights against bondage-dictatorship, but silent about the
bondage-dictatorship inherent in foreign policy, and the
horrendous "mistakes" in the theory and practice,
revealed, for instance, by the former Secretary of
Defense Robert
McNamara in his In Retrospect /17/, now a
classic.
For region iii the rhetoric centered on marxism, with
some containment of the Soviet Union (Cuba, Nicaragua),
but more on students, peasants, workers and clerics
(liberation theology). And for region iv the rhetoric has
above all been "terrorism", possibly leading to
"containment of Islamic fundamentalism", which could then
slide into clash of civilizations.
As conflict formation today's enormity of global
injustice succeeds slavery and colonialism and will
probably end like them through change of consciousness
and demoralization at the top. Today most Americans and
many in the West are ignorant about this even if they
feel something disagreeable deeper down; like Germans
under Nazism. They prefer communism/terrorism
rhetoric.
An anti-American analysis? Not at all. But anti
Washington hegemonical, exploitative foreign policy,
certainly.
4. The course of
action flows from the discourse.
The choice of discourse matters. Discourse and the
course of action influence each other, the discourse
serving as action directive, and as rationalization of
the actions taken.
The terrorism discourse leads to two possible
reactions:
A: search and punish, court-ordered police
action; due process
B: search and destroy: uni- or multilateral
military action.
The retaliation discourse also leads to two
reactions:
C: retaliation: hate-violence to hit back, an
eye for an eye.
D: exit from the retaliation cycle; US and OS
change policies.
As the present author believes 10% in the terrorism
discourse (there are some very hard, evil people in the
world) and 90% in the retaliation discourse (sad, but,
however unwise, retaliation is a human inclination fueled
by fundamentalism) reactions, or rather policies, A and D
are preferred. US reaction so far is a mix of B
(preferring military courts to due process/18/) and C;
incapacitation of the presumed enemy and pure revenge;
with some elements of A (UN legitimacy) and D (new
Palestine policy).
There can be, and are, of course also other US
motives. No human being, no power, indeed no superpower
is so single-minded as to act from only one motive. When
the present author was mediator for Afghan groups,
organized by the Afghan University in Peshawar, in
February 2001/19/ there was much talk about a coming US
base between Herat and the Iranian border to protect oil
pipelines from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and for
control of Central Asia in general and Afghanistan in
particular./20/
Then come such traditional factors as reasserting
world leadership, giving content to NATO's new role, and
- indeed - to maintain the world class structure led by
the center of the Center of the CENTER: the elites in the
United States.
What do people in general think on this issue?
Fortunately there was a poll taken by Gallup
International in 33 countries right after September 11,
between 14 and 18 September. Differing from the US polls
people were given a choice: "In your opinion, once the
identity of the terrorists is known, should the American
government launch a military attack on the country or
countries where the terrorists are based or should the
American government seek to extradite the terrorists to
stand trial?" (Let us only add: the latter is the Libya
model).
Only three countries were in favor of "attack": Israel
77%, India 72% and the USA 54%. In Europe the highest in
favor "attack" was France with 29%. The "stand trial"
answer was in overwhelming majority, around 80% in the
other 30 countries (UK 75%, in France 67%; all over Latin
America well above 80%).
In other words, there is a solid basis for Rule of Law
rather than Rule of Force in the world population on this
issue, and also for a peace movement North-South.
Governments, as mentioned, will react strongly against
terrorism, maybe less to protect their people than to
protect themselves and their class interests, the hard
nucleus of a country. They are also afraid of US
retribution by being turncoats, and they were in a state
of shock after September 11, probably also since their
intelligentsia had not warned them sufficiently against
the obvious. This author has been expecting, with
sadness, something like that to happen--like busting the
bridges and blocking the tunnels to Manhattan--since
1988-91, when the US shot down a civilian Iranair plane
over the Gulf, and started the massive destruction of
Iraq, taking on key Muslim countries, non-Arab and Arab.
The surprising thing is that some were surprised.
In short, there is a major people-government split on
this. Of the four courses of action--A, B, C and D--the
two chosen, B and C, are very costly/21/ and can easily
spill over from B to C when the collateral damage gets
very high. But they are also fairly obvious; we have seen
them before, for instance in the Gulf and Yugoslavia. The
other two must be spelt out.
A police action differs from a military action by
being court-ordered and legitimized, and by being
precisely targeted on the suspects to apprehend them and
arraign them into court for possible sentencing and
punishment. The court in this case will have to be
international since punishment is violence from above.
The USA (and some allies) may see the USA as above all
other countries, but most of the world stick to the
equality of the UN Member States. The exception is the UN
Security Council which takes on such roles but cannot do
so in this case: of the five core, veto members, four are
Christian (USA Protestant, UK Anglican, France
Catholic-secular, Russia Orthodox), one is Confucian,
China; and none represents the 56 countries of the world
with a Muslim majority. The International Court of
Justice would be better and so would the coming
International Court of Justice (ICC), but it is not yet
there and the USA will probably not ratify./22/ It
belongs to the picture that the list of accusations
against Henry Kissinger, a former Secretary of State/23/,
is much longer than the list against bin Laden.
Nevertheless, there is the Libya model for the
criminal violence against PanAmerican 103 over Lockerbee,
Scotland; slow and easily criticized, but it worked in
the end. Countries with the Rule of Law as a top value
would support this and not a military action that burns
down the forest and kills those who live there instead of
a dragnet. The action in Afghanistan tries to combine
these elements; but capture alive is unlikely.
But how is it possible to exit from the cycle of
retaliation? The question has to be directed not only to
the US but also to OS, whoever that is - and the answer
is probably changing as US violence develops further. The
point of departure would have to be reflections, not only
reflexes, not so easy:
- for the US: what have we done since they hate us so
much that they do what happened on September 11?
- for the OS: why do we so easily respond with
violence?
The first question presupposes what the Swiss
psychologist Jean Piaget calls "reciprocity", the ability
to see the action of Other as something at least party
caused by Self, by one's own ability to elicit the good,
or the evil, in Other. Obviously, the whole retaliation
discourse is based on that perspective which comes
earlier in girls than in boys but at the end of childhood
should be fully developed. The first period of childhood
is marked and marred by "absolutism", the idea that what
comes from Other of good or evil is entirely caused by
Other, that Other is causa sui. Obviously, the
terrorism discourse fits well within that perspective,
"it has nothing to do with us, they would have done so
regardless"-- very prominent among boys, say, four years
old.
Self-reflection requires courage, and yet there has
hardly been any period with so much reflection both in
the US/West and in the Rest, particularly in Muslim
countries, but "only" at the people level, not among
governments, for the reasons mentioned. In the Islamic
countries this may ultimately lead to some changes/24/,
both toward more nonviolent politics using democratic
approaches and more gandhian approaches, and in the sense
of isolating both terrorists and repressive regimes. They
are often motivated by the same hard branches of
Islam./25/
But how about the US/West? The formula, some "change
of US foreign policy", should signal willingness to
change the course so as to reduce direct and structural
violence, and if at all possible, some reconciliation.
Such signals would have to come now, and the problems are
enormous. But the signals, if clear enough, could also
have an immediate impact.
Here are seven signals indicative of exit from
retaliation:
Military-political, against direct
violence:
[1] Willingness to recognize Palestine as a
state: this has already happened and the US should be
commended for that.
[2] Remove all US military presence from
Arabia, recognizing that this is a sacred land for
very many Muslims, with Mecca and Medina, opening the way
towards democracy in that dictatorship.
[3] Lifting the sanctions on Iraq,
negotiating with the regime, and apologize for Albright's
"it was worth the price" remark. More difficult, this
would require real statesmanship.
[4] Accepting the invitation by President
Khatami for an open, public, high level dialogue on the
relation between Iran/US, and West/Christianity vs Islam
in general. The US fears a dialogue of this type will
be used for propaganda, and some disagreeable things will
probably be said about the USA-CIA supported coup against
the elected prime minister, Mossadegh and in favor the
non-elected shah. But after that critique, which any
mature person is able to stand, comes the constructive
phase where one could only hope Iran is well prepared:
"OK, OK, where do go from here" is an excellent, standard
American formulation.
[5] Hands off Afghanistan. This is
partly because any US presence will strengthen the
argument about ulterior motives and may stimulate an
anti-US coalition, partly as a sign of respect. A UN
presence up to trusteeship level is a viable
alternative.
Economic-political, against structural
violence:
[6] Globalization-free zones, in the
regions where people die from globalization because of
too little money to buy from the market for their basic
needs. The Kyoto protocol already had the Third World as
an exemption so there is nothing new in the idea of
differential approaches. The alternative would be a
Marshall plan for the poorest areas of the world in the
Andes region, Black Africa and South Asia. strengthening
the local, informal economy with a view to basic needs
satisfaction for all.
[7] Reconciliation: learn from the
German approach to the 18 countries they conquered and
the 2 nations they tried to exterminate, the Jews and the
Sinta/Roma. Today Germany has reasonable relations to
all, and a key element went beyond apologies and
compensation to including rewriting of textbooks.
All together this could turn a page in history, and it
would cost very little relative to the enormous expenses
of courses B and C. The political gains would probably
also be enormous. But the psychological costs are
daunting.
To overcome them such processes would have to be
initiated and strongly demanded by civil society. But
will yielding to their demand/26/ not stimulate
terrorism?
It might stimulate some. But it would isolate most of
them by no longer giving them the ocean of hatred in
which they can swim and be stimulated whereas a policy of
military attack will only deepen and widen that ocean. At
the same time it would generate positive processes,
virtuous cycles that would very soon overshadow the
vicious cycles of retaliation, capture people's attention
all over and, like the European Community did for Europe
in the 1950s, constitute a quantum jump in world
politics. This is indeed overdue. Now is the chance.
5.
Prognosis.
How is this going to end? Depends on the choice of
"this". Do we mean the small picture embraced by
Discourse A, the "terrorism" of September 11 and the
punitive action = military action + retaliation? Or the
larger picture covered by Discourse B, a retaliation
cycle embedded in a globalized class conflict?
For the former the answer may be US "victory" with bin
Laden dead, Al Qaeda in Afghanistan "crushed", and US oil
and military interests in Central Asia secured./27/ But
bin Laden may become a martyr, Al Qaeda may change name
and regroup - both processes as global as US corporations
and air force - with a multiplier stimulated by higher
levels of hatred. Punitive force incapacitates but does
not remove the causes that produced terrorism. Terrorism
has no central command that can capitulate. Afghans may
also unite against the USA as proposed by some./28/
A major problem is whether to declare victory. The
punitive approach may produce more capacity for violence,
making victory declarations self-defeating, inviting
attacks next day, as the Algerian government knows from
bitter experience. But a non- declaration of victory
means a drawn-out, never-ending alert very taxing for the
USA and the "allies", government and people. The
question, what is wrong about us since we have so many
enemies? emerges. Alerts relax unless adequately
stimulated.
In a meeting with some State Department people in 1990
the end of terrorism was declared based on curves turning
downward. This was seen as due to the bombing of Libya
1986. My warning was that terrorists may have longer
time perspectives, and hail from more space
than Libya. The US image tends to be a single-shot
phenomenon that peaks and peters out; a better image is a
wave-like phenomenon with ups and downs; depending on US
policy.
We often hear "the world will never be the same
again". For President Bush America lost her innocence
(three buildings being raped by jets being rammed into
their wombs?). Clearly, US, and by implication West/Japan
vulnerability became public knowledge. That the
destructive power of the US is bigger than any other side
is a truism; D(US)>D(OS). But the vulnerability is
also bigger; V(US)>V(OS). If Power=Destructive
power-Vulnerability, then what sign do we put between
D(US)-V(US) and D(OS)-V(OS)? But this all depends on how
we conceive of vulnerability. Destruction is intended for
incapacitation, and vulnerability serves as a multiplier
of destructive power. September 11 witnessed three flying
bombs, nothing relative to the number of US "sorties".
But they had impact on an economy already on the way
down, and on the polity, peeling off one democratic layer
after the other, even if that polity was also on its way
down with the elections November 2000 and the judicial
coup d'etat.
Vulnerability, social and human, has many dimensions.
One formula for the social and global vulnerability is
degree of connectedness. The more
vertical/centralized the society, the more
trade-dependent, the more vulnerable./29/ This was
probably a key factor in 9-11 target selection, and is
replicable. Horizontal connectedness is less vulnerable,
and no connectedness spells no vulnerability. If
self-sufficient villages in Viêt Nam are "taken
out", exterminated, then the spill-over effect on the
rest of society is negligible. There is no doubt where
nuclear arms would have more impact.
A part of the human vulnerability is short time
perspective combined with a single-peaked time cosmology,
easily leading to exaggerated optimism and exaggerated
pessimism. A long time perspective and wave-like time
philosophy, inspire perseverance.
For the larger picture, embedded in the retaliation
discourse and in the class conflict/American Empire
perspective, the prognosis also becomes larger, drawn out
in time. What could be a historical process that could
serve as a metaphor? Very useful, also because the US was
so deeply involved, is slavery.
The system was despicable, the suffering
undescribable, the level of self-righteousness
unbearable. There was retaliation from below, terrorism
we would have said today, like Nat Turner (a native
American bondsman) and his slave revolt in 1831, with 70+
rebels killing 59 whites. The whole dogma of white
superiority was at stake, and the repression was swift,
enormous and effective. Assembly of slaves was forbidden,
so were education and movement. But something important
had nonetheless happened: the Blacks had proven
themselves capable of a revolt, at the same time as their
violence from below served, in the minds of many
slave-owners, to justify their own violence from above.
The similarity, point for point, to the post-September 11
situation is painfully clear. We can almost hear
slave-owners explaining how the slaves were destroying
for themselves; like terrorists harming the poor by
undermining economic growth.
The colonialism metaphor works the same way. There
were revolts and punitive expeditions galore; partly
obscured by self-serving historiography. By and large
they were unsuccessful. But the abolition of colonialism
struggle opens for the role of Gandhi, and makes us ask
an important question: What would have been the gandhian
alternative on September 11?
Anyhow, we know how slavery and colonialism ended:
with abolition, even shortly after Turner, shortly after
Gandhi. What therapy would give the same prognosis for
massive exploitation, the essence of the global class
conflict?
6.
Therapy.
We have already described seven policies as exits from
the retaliation cycle. Had they been practiced some
months before, were they practiced even some months
after--. But they were not, and the killing continues.
What would be the concrete circumstances under which an
other course of action by one side could have produced
basic change in the other?
Let us this time start with OS, the other side, the
Osama side. The gandhian action September 11 would have
been to organize, with the same precision and
synchronization, and on a global scale, massive
demonstrations around all US-Western-Japanese embassies
in the world, surrounding them by the thousands, totally
nonviolently, presenting the facts of global injustice,
inviting dialogue. And not only the economic exploitation
but all dimensions of class: the political monopolies and
manipulation in Palestine and Afghanistan, the military
violence in Iraq and elsewhere, the cultural domination
through the media and other means, the sacrilege in
Arabia./30/
And there would have been a massive world boycott of
the goods and products from the most objectionable, least
socially and ecologically conscious, global corporations
that same day, combined with promotion of concrete action
for an economy privileging basic needs for the most
needy; all of this far beyond Seattle, Gothenburg,
Genova. The demand would be for dialogue between people
and government, assuming that they, democrats all, will
never be scared of meeting people.
Would this have an impact on the hard, corporate
US/West backed by police and military power? In the
longer run yes, and it would have saved thousands of
lives in New York, Washington DC and all over Afghanistan
so far. Soon maybe many, many more.
What would be the steps on the road for that "longer
run"? We know them already because of two excellent and
recent models: the end of the Viêt Nam war, and the
end of the Cold War.
In both cases two factors were operating. There was
heavy resistance to US, ferocious fighting in Viêt
Nam and nuclear arms race in the Cold War, both processes
going on unabatedly. And there was a strong, tenacious,
ever growing, world wide movement against the war and
against both the (nuclear) arms race and the repression
in the post-stalinist countries. Violent governmental
action and non-violent civilian counter-action, in other
words; with the latter gaining the upper hand, stopping
the war and at least temporarily the arms race.
Will it be possible to mount a giant North-South peace
movement, addressing both sides, like it was for the
giant West-East peace movement? Building on the old and
new peace movement in the North, the anti-globalization
movement, and the movements critical both of terrorist
and repressive tendencies in Muslim societies? Probably
yes. And the second condition is already there: just like
in the other two cases the USA has picked a struggle with
no clear ending, very unlike the wars against Baghdad and
Beograd where the capitulation metaphor made sense.
And yet it is worth noting that there was a very
important intermediate step in both cases: US "allies"
oscillating between the USA and the peoples' movements,
increasingly voicing, even publicly, some of the same
concerns, decreasingly giving the USA a blank check to do
whatever the US leadership deems right.
That leads to an important point. Washington is
sensitive to its own people but works with and through
governments abroad. But Washington is also sensitive to
allied governments and always wants support and closed
ranks. A major vulnerability.
When the chips are all down, like for the cases of
slavery and colonialism, massive global injustice is not
a problem of force, counterforce, and cycles of
retaliation. Basically it is a moral problem, just like
the other two. And here the underdog has the upper hand,
low in status, but high on moral standing; and more so
the more nonviolently he conducts the struggle. The
topdog may win the game of force. But not the moral issue
- and when that dawns upon him and his allies, change of
consciousness sets in, and demoralization starts thawing
the frozen heart. The game is over. And deep in the guts
the better among those at the top know this already -
brutally woken up by three planes raping three buildings.
By the September 11 wake-up call.
But we also need some kind of mediation. At some
points terrorists and state terrorists will have to meet
and discuss what they have in common, not only oil, but
also terrorism. A meeting on Larry King Live--a
master of making people open up, the good, the bad and
the ugly--between George W. Bush and bin Laden, or their
second in command, is not very likely - today. But wise
people could meet with both sides first, probe their
goals, both those at the surface and the deeper goals,
their world views, their long term philosophies,
searching for overlaps, for ways of getting out of their
vendetta like two Albanian families predestined to kill
each other suddenly recognizing that the vendetta is the
enemy, not the other family. Who could be better than
three wise men like Jimmy Carter, Fredrik de Klerk and
Nelson Mandela? Or the Pope?
They are profoundly decent. And decent people would
reject all forms of political violence and feel
compassion for all victims, not the tribal compassion
only for their own. The world needs all the decent, good,
men and women - right now.
Read more about, or
order, books mentioned in this
article
"Searching
for Peace: The Road to TRANSCEND"
By Johan Galtung, Carl G. Jacobsen and Kai Frithjof
Brand-Jacobsen.
William Blum
Rogue State. A Guide
to
the World's Only Superpower
Robert McNamara and Brian Vandemark
In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam
Sven Lindqvist
A History of Bombing
Sven Lindqvist
Exterminate all the brutes
Christopher Hitchens
The Trail of Henry Kissinger
Notes
1. Was the fourth plane heading for CIA in Langley,
Virginia? We do not know, but a "CIA station was lost in
attack on Twin Towers" (headline, IHT 6 November
2001). "The station was a base of operations to spy on
and recruit foreign diplomats who were stationed at the
United Nations"- a statement that should cause an outcry
of demands for getting the UN out of the USA as soon as
possible.
2. The September 11 2001 attack was massive political
violence against people and might be referred to as
fascist in content. The September 11 1973 attack was also
political, and also criminal, being directed against a
democratically elected regime, and might be referred to
as fascist ideologically (Kissinger as Secretary of State
felt that the USA cannot stand by and watch a people
voting itself into communism").
3. This suicide form of attack is usually seen as a
way of delivering a bomb right on target, which certainly
is a valid view. But it could also, in addition, be seen
as a way of committing suicide for people deeply steeped
in despair, like those who have suffered or been close to
Palestinian refugee camps for three generations. This
makes the "kamikaze" less apt as a metaphor, a comment
that also applies to the toga, toga, toga attack
on Pearl Harbor 7 December 1941, extremely precise
("surgical", "smart") with almost no civilian losses
("collateral damage").
4. Sven Lindqvist, of Exterminate
All the Brutes fame, traces the theme back to the
Italian bombing of Arab civilians in the desert of
Tripoli in 1911 - in his A
History of Bombing, New Press, 2001. The Italian
air command commented that the bombs had a "wonderful
effect on the morale of the Arabs".
The British bombed Arab towns and villages in Egypt,
Iraq, Jordan, Iran and Afghanistan 1915-20 (gas against
civilians, in Iraq, in 1922). Bombing in the colonies was
used to kill African, Arab and Asian children, women and
men in towns, villages and camps rather than achieving
military objectives.
This carried over into the Second World War. Churchill
gave RAF orders to bomb military targets in Germany in
May 1940; by June neighborhoods where industrial workers
lived were included. Hitler retaliated in September; by
November RAF was ordered to firebomb 20 German cities
(100,000 dead in Hamburg and Dresden). The (in)famous
commander, Arthur "Bomber" Harris, had honed his skills
as squadron chief in Iraq in the 1920s (also dropping a
twenty-pound bomb on the palace of the Afghan king).
The Americans preferred precision bombing until the US
commander, Curtis LeMay picked up the British techniques
and launched the massive firestorm attack on Tokyo,
killing 100,000 civilians. In the 1950s LeMay was the
commander of an atomic strike force. The civilian
"morale" was the target, neglecting that the bombing,
like September 11, could also engender hatred.
Right now there is the doctrine of "smart bombs",
targeted more on infrastructure - in other words killing
more civilians, but indirectly through hunger and
disease, and more slowly.
5. According to the Yugoslav foreign minister reported
by Tim Judah in his book about the war.
6. We shall see, and are told that the methods may not
be the same, and may also change when the immediate anger
cools off. Iraq, Sudan and Somalia are frequently
mentioned, with the Philippines. Ulterior oil motives
would point to Iraq.
7. In a comparative 17 nation public opinion survey
reported in Free Inquiry Summer 1999 "the United
States turns out to be the most religious nation
(average ranking = 1.71), followed by Northern Ireland
(2.43), the Philippines, Ireland, Poland, Italy, New
Zealand, Israel, Austria, Norway, Great Britain, The
Netherlands, West Germany, Russia, Slovenia, Hungary, and
East Germany". - in other words on the top the USA and
Northern Ireland with Protestant majorities (seeing
themselves as Chosen Peoples) and Catholic countries, on
the bottom former Soviet bloc countries. The United
States, however, is N. 1 in believing in "Life after
Death", "The Devil", and "Hell".
8. International Herald Tribune (IHT), 31
August 1995. What theocratic position does that entail to
the person leading the foreign affairs of a country
mandated by God to lead the world?
9. Quoted by Joan Didion in "God's Country", The
New York Review of Books, November 2 2000, p. 70.
10. "These events have divided the world into two
sides-the side of believers and the side of infidels",
from his first text on al-Jazeera television, reproduced
as "Hypocrisy Rears Its Ugly Head", Washington
Post, 8 October 2001, p. A12.
11. Another articulation of this DMA syndrome would be
hard marxism, dividing the world into the evil
bourgeoisie and the good proletariat, with a violent war
called revolution being inevitable.
12. Monroe MA: Common Courage Press, 2000.
13. Compared with this what bin Laden is accused of is
rather paltry: the 1993 bombs in the World Trade Center,
the 1998 bombs at the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es
Salaam, the 2000 bomb attack on the US destroyer Cole in
a Yemen harbor, and 2001 9/11.
14. For bin Laden there is nothing new in this. One of
the most important points in his first text is "Our
nation [the Islamic world] has been tasting this
humiliation for more than 80 years". That brings us back
to 1920 and before that, almost definitely to the
Sykes/Picot treason colonizing, not giving the Arab
nation independence in return for their participation in
defeating the muslim Ottoman Empire, bringing them under
the rule of infidels. In the Washington Post commentary
"this is a reference to the suspension of the Muslim
caliphate in 1924", raising some doubts about WP
arithmetical aptitude (reproduced in The Yomiuri
Shimbun October 31 2001, p. 16).
15. And so does bin Laden, for the killers in the
September 11 attack: "I pray to God to elevate their
status and bless them"
16. And the magnitue of the three types of violence? A
guess:
direct, overt: six million, with Korea,
Viêt Nam and Indonesia weighing very heavily - all
Region I. An element of racism?
direct covert: former CIA agents estimated that
"at least six million people have died as consequence of
U.S. covert operations since World War II", The
Guardian Weekly, December 30, 1987, report from a
meeting of CIA dissidents in New York.
structural: as usual much more. The 100,000 per
day estimater gives us in one year three times the total
direct violence in 40-50 years.
The point here is not quarrels about details. We are
dealing with mega-violence in all three categories. And
it is interesting to compare with the contribution to
official development assistance, in principle meeting
people's basic needs rarher than denying them: the USA is
at the bottom of a list of 22 countries with 0.10% of the
GNP as opposed to what the UN has proposed, 0.70%, and
the world leader, Denmark, with 1.01%.
17. New York: Vintage, 1996. On pp. 321-3 McNamara
summarizes the errors in 11 points. Many, perhaps most of
them, apply to the US punishment attack, like point 4:
"Our misjudgment of friend and foe alike reflected our
profound ignorance of the history, culture and politics
of the people in the area, and the personalities and
habits of their leaders".
18. This is a sad token of the instability of US
democracy and civil liberties when only three bombs can
have that enormous impact on the whole legal structure so
laboriously erected over generations.
19. And an excellent Canadian team from MacMaster
university, Hamilton Ont. under the leadership of Dr
Seddiq Veera, as TRANSCEND mission.
20. This would be similar to the huge US base, Camp
Bondsteel, 20 kms south of Pristina, in Urosevac which
the Americans started constructing right after the
withdrawal of the Serbian troops; in commentaries related
to pipeline corridor VIII.
21. The Japan Times reported that "Cost of War
on Afghanistan may run to $1 billion a month, quoting the
costs of the various types of bombs. Of 40 countries in
the coalition (not counting the USA) only six contribute
military equipment: Canada, Australia, Japan, England,
France and Germany.
22. The USA prefers courts with clear space and time
limitations; the ICC has no such limitation which means
that US personnel may be indicted.
23. Much of that has been skillfully collected by
Christopher Hitchens and published in his articles in
Harper's Magazine, February and March 2001 and his
book The
Trial of Henry Kissinger. In an update in The
Nation, November 5 2001, p.9. He mentions that some
people say, "all this was a long time ago". Hitchens'
answer: "I think that opportunistic, ahistorical
objection may now dissolve. The question of international
viciousness and the use of criminal violence against
civilians is now, so to speak, back on the agenda. It's
important that we male our opposition to such conduct
both steady and consistent".
24. A very good example of Muslim critique is Chandra
Muzaffar, President of the International Movement for a
Just World, based in Malaysia, publishing
Commentary regularly (see www.jaling.my/just). He
writes that "Decent people reject Terrorism and U.S.
Bombing" (article in IHT 5 November 2001).
According to the public opinion data quoted, there must
be many decent people in the world.
25. The Saudi royal family, bin Laden and the Talibans
are all Wahabbite.
26. At the end of his first text bin Laden said that
people in America will not "dream of security before we
live it in Palestine, and not before all the infidel
armies leave the land of Muhammed, peace be upon him". If
bin Laden says 2+2 = 4, do we support terrorism by
agreeing?
27. According to Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume
Dasquie in their Bin Laden, la verité
interdite, Paris 2001, the key issue in September 11
is oil, a point also discussed by Michael Klare in "The
Geopolitics of war?", The Nation, November 5,
2001, pp. 11-15. The US oil politics in the region flows
from an accord between Roosevelt and Ibn Saud on a US
warship in the Suez Canal right after the Yalta meeting
in February 1945. "It is widely believed that Roosevelt
gave the King a promise of US protection in return for
privileged American access to Saudi oil - an arrangement
that remains in full effect today and constitutes the
essential core of the US-Saudi relationship". For Klare
the conflict is between bin Laden and the oil interests
of the US leadership, Bush-Cheney-Rice-Evans (Secretary
of Commerce)-Abraham (Secretary of Energy) over the be or
not to be of the Saudi government and with it "the US
military presence in Saudi Arabia /that/ has steadily
increased over the years" (p. 12). The famous $10 million
check from Prince Walid ibn Talal to the Twin Towers
Fund, "with subsequent statements on US foreign policy"
(from ibn Talal's article "We Want Anti-Terrorism and
Peace in the Middle East", IHT November 1 2001)
was an effort to play on both horses. "I am glad to see
-- /that/ President George W. Bush has stated his desire
to see the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Secretary of State Colin Powell has reiterated this
view". But Mayor Giuliani wants money with no strings
attached and returned the check and bin Laden wants the
end of the Saudis.
28. Among them a former prime minister of Afghanistan
and a former prime minister of Pakistan, both refugees in
Iran. But a drawn-out mountain-based guerrilla war by
Talibans could also be problematic.
29. Thus, the obvious defense against economic
sanctions, a weapon directed against the weak in
society--the children and the old, the weak and the
ill--is more self-reliance at the country level and more
self-reliance at the county level. That, of course, does
not mean self-sufficiency in normal times, but the
capacity for self-sufficiency for basic needs
satisfaction in emergencies. Neither Iraq, nor Yugoslavia
had planned for this; for Afghanistan the sanctions may
have added little to their plight because of low
connectedness, except, of course, for the traders.
30. Even if the Pope had agreed to stationing of a
NATO command in the Vatican (against adequate
compensation, of course), it would still have been an act
of sacrilege to very many Catholics.
©
TFF & the author 2002
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