Understanding, responding to, and preventing terrorism.

• Author: Cohn, Marjorie

INTRODUCTION

ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, nineteen individuals hijacked and commandeered U.S. airplanes, turned them into guided missiles and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C., killing more than 3000 people. These crimes against humanity were condemned around the world. (1) Three weeks later, the United States and the United Kingdom began bombing Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration threatened a major invasion of Iraq.

Little of the outrage at the September 11 attacks has led to a comprehensive inquiry into the roots of the rage that fueled them. The following is an attempt to explain the genesis for the terrorism directed at the United States. It is inextricably bound up with the globalization of poverty, Washington's continued support for Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, U.S. bombing and sponsorship of the devastating economic sanctions against Iraq, and the alliance between the United States and Arab monarchies such as Saudi Arabia, where the U.S. maintains a significant military presence.

Distinctions will be drawn between individual terrorism (the September 11 attacks); International State terrorism (United States and United Kingdom bombing of Afghanistan); State regime or Government terror (Israel's occupation and massacre of the Palestinians); State-sponsored or State-supported terrorism (United States financial and military support for Israel); and a national liberation struggle (Palestine).

The following will analyze why both the United States bombing of Afghanistan and Israel's massacre of the Palestinians violate international law.

It will further explain why an invasion of Iraq would be unlawful as well as misguided.

Finally, it will offer suggestions, in the context of international law, for creating peaceful alternatives to respond to terrorism and to deter it in the future.

THE GLOBALIZATION OF POVERTY AND ECONOMIC COLONIALISM

On September 12, Rahul Mahajan wrote: "The main practitioner of attacks that either deliberately target civilians or are so indiscriminate that it makes no difference, is no shadowy Middle Eastern terrorist, but our own government." Mahajan cited the bombings of Afghanistan, Iraq, Serbia and Sudan, as well as the crippling sanctions against Iraq. (2)

The political and economic policies and practices of the U.S. government and U.S.-based global corporations contribute to the conditions that create, according to Jerrold Post, a psychological profiler at the CIA for 21 years, "roiling hatred within the Arab world directed at the United States... America doesn't have the vaguest idea how much hatred." He maintains that terrorists exploit "feelings of despair over economic conditions ... and [over] totalitarian regimes." (3)

Although George W. Bush characterized the September 11 strikes as an attack on the global economy, that sentiment does not ring true in many of the developing countries. After meeting with Bush on October 20, 2001, Malaysian President Mahathir bin Mohamad mocked Bush's position, saying, "if I had a billion U.S. dollars, I suspect I too would be very committed to a fully globalized world without any barriers and without any constraints on what I can do with my money and how I can make even more money." (4) Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo also linked political discontent with poverty at the World Economic Forum, saying: "These resources could have gone into the fight against poverty ... Where there is great poverty," she observed, "you will also have the breeding ground for the recruits, for the evil ideologues who spread terror." (5)

Our European allies see the relationship between poverty and terrorism as well. European Union External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten told a forum on transatlantic affairs organized by the Washington-based German Marshall Fund: "I am not so naive as to think that if you drop 20 million EuroAid packages on Sudan or Somalia, or multiply that by 10 on Afghanistan, that terrorism is going to disappear tomorrow." But, he said, "I do think there is a relationship between global inequity and state breakdown and violence and instability." (6) Dick Cheney is not convinced. When asked if fighting global poverty would be part of the war on terror, Cheney ducked the question, saying: "There is a debate whether or not poverty contributes" to terrorism. (7)

Notwithstanding Cheney's denial, the hatred that fueled 19 people to kill themselves and take thousands with them has its origin in a history of the United States government's exploitation of people in oil-rich nations around the world. Although Bush accuses the terrorists of targeting our freedom and democracy, it was not the Statue of Liberty that was destroyed. It was the World Trade Center -- symbol of the U.S.-led global economic system, and the Pentagon -- heart of the United States military, that took the hits.

AN ATTACK ON U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

Those who committed these crimes against humanity were attacking American foreign policy, not the American people. The 3,000 plus civilians who died on September 11 were likely considered "collateral damage" by the hijackers and their co-conspirators.

In the last decade, much to the consternation of many in the Arab countries, the United States has dropped tens of thousands of bombs on Iraq, killing many civilians, using napalm, cluster bombs and depleted uranium, in what the Los Angeles Times described as a "massacre" and a "massive slaughter." As a result of the bombing and devastating economic sanctions, between 4,000 and 5,000 Iraqi children still die every month. When asked by Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes on May 12, 1996 for her reaction to the deaths of a half-million Iraqi children, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said, "we think the price is worth it." Evidently, the perpetrators of the September 11 attack thought the price of 3,000 plus innocent lives was worth it. "That is the philosophy of terrorism," wrote Mahajan. "The people who crashed planes into the World Trade Center killed almost 4000 people because they resented U.S. domination of the Middle East. The U.S. government helped to kill 500,000 children in Iraq in order to preserv e that domination." (8)

Bush aimed the largest concentration of American firepower since World War II at Afghanistan. Even though none of the hijackers came from Afghanistan, and many hailed from and were funded by Saudi Arabia, the U.S. maintains friendly relations with that country, one of the world's largest suppliers of oil. (9) "The stark truth is," said Edward L. Morse, former deputy assistant secretary of state for international energy policy in the Ronald Reagan administration, "that we're dependent on [Saudi Arabia, country] that directly or indirectly finances people who are a direct threat to you and me as individuals." (10) Oil has been the principal motivator for much of United States foreign policy. (11) But "from the perspective of local people beneath whose land the oil lies...the partnership between oil transnationals and repressive regimes has been ruinous, destroying subsistence cultures while offering little in return.... Oil and related extractive industries have arguably done more to tarnish America's image abr oad than any other commercial pursuit." (12)

United States dependency on foreign oil stems from both domestic consumption needs and corporate profits from its sale. Although only 5 percent of the world's population lives in the United States, it consumes one-quarter of the world's energy and a larger proportion of the world's raw materials. (13) The U.S. spends $56 billion on the oil and an additional $25 billion on the military defense of oil-exporting countries in the Middle East. (14)

The United States' oil-based foreign policy has also benefited corporations seeking profitable investments. Washington supported California-based UNOCAL and other oil companies in their attempted deals with the Taliban to build an oil pipeline across Afghanistan to Pakistan, to transport up to two hundred billion barrels of oil and gas through Central Asia. (15) Prior to September 11, the U.S. Energy Information Administration documented Afghanistan's strategic "geographic position as a potential transit route for oil and natural gas exports from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea. This potential includes proposed multi-billion dollar oil and natural gas export pipelines through Afghanistan." (16)

After the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, a U.S. State Department spokesman saw nothing objectionable about the Taliban's brand of Islam. Osama bin Laden was trained by the CIA in terror tactics to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. In the 1980s, the United States supplied more than $2 billion in guns and money to the fundamentalist mujaheddin in Afghanistan, the largest covert action program since World War II. (17) On September 11, the United States became the victim of what the CIA calls "blowback." (8)

THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL AXIS OF TERROR

The United States government has warned it may use military force in other countries besides Afghanistan. Cheney has said the United States is considering military or other types of action against "40 to 50 countries." He warns that the new war on terror may last 50 years or more.

The war on terror is good for business. A month after the September 11 attacks, the Pentagon awarded the largest military contract in American history, $20 billion, to Texas-based Lockheed Martin to build more than 3,000 supersonic stealth fighter jets for the U.S. military.

Five days before Bush proposed a $48.3 billion increase in military spending, he dubbed Iran, Iraq and North Korea the new "axis of evil" in his January 30, 2002 State of the Union address. (19) None of these three countries poses a real threat to United States security. (20) Indeed, there has been a sustained outcry against Bush's mischaracterization among our allies, who accuse the United States of...