One-Finger Salute

Saddam Mediated Meeting Between US Envoy, Arafat: Israeli MK

Here's another for the "US-Saddam: A Love-Hate Relationship" file: Israeli MK Azmi Bishara, speaking on the UC Berkeley campus on 10 April 2003, stated that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein mediated a meeting in 1984 between US envoy Richard Murphy and then-PLO chairman Yasser Arafat. Hussein, whom the historical experts at the Pentagon recently revealed as the worst ruler in history (beating out such lightweights as Hitler, Stalin, Mao - even Bill Clinton), brokered the meeting as part of US efforts, half-assed as usual, to reach a settlement between the Palestinians and Israel.

Saddam, remember, was generally regarded as the most "intransigent" anti-Israel Arab leader before his recent demise. But perhaps this effort at diplomacy was simply another in the long line of deceitful attempts to destroy Israel - like that Saudi initiative last year which offered a full pan-Arab peace in return for an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders (remember that?).

Ironic sidenote to Bishara's talk: among the first people to leave and the only members of the audience who did not join in the standing ovation for Bishara - a visiting Israeli lawmaker - were some fanatic pro-Israel students (including known plagiarist Robert Enayati). Oddly, these are the same students who love to use Bishara as the poster-boy for Israeli "democracy". Funny how that works.

Bad Luck? Al Jazeera, Diplomats Bombed Again

You know, it reaches a point where even the most sober, rational person sees a few too many "funny" parallels and then reaches for the tin-foil hat.

Al Jazeera offices have been bombed for the third time during US-led military actions in a little over a year. The Arabic-language broadcaster's Baghdad offices were hit during a US airstrike on 8 April 2003, leaving an Al Jazeera cameraman dead and another employee missing. Less than a week earlier, their Basra offices, located in a hotel in which Al Jazeera crew were the only guests, were shelled during heavy artillery activity in the city. During the US attack against Afghanistan in 2001, Al Jazeera's Kabul offices were destroyed by an American missile, in an attack which some journalists thought might have been intentional.

After the Basra incident, Al Jazeera said it had provided the Pentagon with detailed information on the location of its other offices in Baghdad and Mosul. We'll see if Al Jazeera's "bad luck" continues in Mosul.

In another development, a convoy transporting the Russian ambassador to Iraq came under US attack on 6 April 2003 on its way to Syria. The accusations began flying immediately. The Russian government accused the US of deliberately targeting the convoy; the Americans, for their part, blamed the Iraqis for setting up the attack by instructing the drivers to go off the planned route.

The mystery analysts at iraqwar.ru have offered a different explanation. According to them, the Americans attacked the Russian convoy for very specific reasons:

...the embassy ceased its activities in many respects because of the danger of an air strike on the embassy. The American command was utterly irritated by the presence of the Russian embassy in Baghdad and believed that some technical intelligence equipment was deployed there that provided the Iraqis with information. Moreover, some officers in the coalition HQ in Qatar openly claimed that it was on the territory of the Russian embassy that the “jammers” hampering the high-precision weapons around Baghdad were operated.

Yesterday morning the Secretary of State Colin Powell demanded of immediate evacuation of the embassy from the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Igor Ivanov. Yesterday evening the Russian minister informed the Americans that on the 6th of April the embassy column would be leaving Baghdad heading for the Syrian border. This gave rise to dissatisfaction among the State Department officials who suggested that the column should move to Jordan.

The coalition special operations HQ were sure that the embassy column would contain secret devices taken from military equipment captured by Iraqis. In this connection one cannot shut out the possibility of “revenge” from the coalition command.

Moreover, experts claim that the purpose of this armed assault could be to damage a few cars where the Russians would have to leave some of the salvage. This is also indicated by the fact that neither the ambassador himself nor journalists in the column were among the injured.

A curiously similar incident involving the US, missiles, and diplomats occured during the NATO assault against Yugoslavia in 1999. In this instance, NATO aircraft struck the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three and wounding 20. The US blamed faulty maps - four years out of date - for what it said was a tragic error. However, a number of reports later provided evidence that the attack was deliberate and had been authorized because the mission was passing along communications on behalf of the Yugoslav army. Why were the Chinese working with the Yugoslavs? The reports mentioned two possible reasons: the Chinese had made a deal for the Stealth bomber shot down early in the campaign and had been monitoring cruise missile strikes against Belgrade with an eye towards developing effective countermeasures against them.

It will be interesting to see how the competing claims over this newest attack against diplomats are resolved over the coming days. Better keep that tin-foil hat handy.

Terrorists

Terrorists. Terrorists are everywhere. From the battlefields of Iraq, to the streets of the United States, to the pages of respected American publications. Terrorists, bent on terror, intent on terrorizing America. These terrorists do not play fair; they operate on a number of levels, betraying trust and using underhanded tactics. They know no boundaries and will stop at nothing to kill Americans or, at the very least, prevent them from shopping to their fullest potential.

This is the scenario being peddled to Americans by national and local governmental officials, the military, and the media. Since the start of the US invasion of Iraq, there has been a huge apparent increase in the amount of "terrorist" activity. But who exactly are these "terrorists"? What kinds of activities are they doing that might be characterized as "terrorism"? How can one single word be used accurately in so many different contexts?

The answer is that the definition of "terror" is undergoing further evolution. Traditionally, the US government and media has employed the term to describe politically motivated violence committed by "enemy" groups. Naturally, politically motivated violence perpetrated by favored groups or states - what the "good guys" do, in Bushian terminology - has never been referred to as "terrorism" but rather discussed in terms of "security", "freedom fighting", and the like. Writers such as Chomsky and Said have subjected this hypocritical usage of the term to detailed analysis.

The new definition of who qualifies as a "terrorist" does not depend on violence, as does the traditional one. Rather, the important distinguishing feature of the new "terrorists" is their political motivation. "Terrorists", in this new meaning of the word, are simply politically motivated opponents or dissidents of the political control of the United States and its allies; whether or not they use violence, much less whether or not they cause "terror", is strictly secondary.

A number of factors have enabled this important shift in meaning to happen, the most important of which include a long history of selective and/or arbitrary use of the term, the experience of September 11, and the political climate resulting from the so-called "war on terror". Yet it is important to recognize that if the meaning of terrorism has shifted to focus more on political opposition and dissidence, "terrorists", even of they do not employ violence, will still be subject to the traditional punishments: execution, imprisonment for long periods of time or, at the very least, lawsuits, harassment, and moral opprobrium. Thus, by making little or no distinction between, for example, non-violent anti-war protestors and people who crash airplanes into skyscrapers, it will be possible to silence dissidence in ways that would have been unacceptable to Americans previously.

This new definition of who qualifies as a "terrorist" is being employed at two different levels by two separate groups. The first, comprising American governmental officials and military personnel, is conscious of what they are doing when they misuse the term "terrorist" or its cognates. The second, consisting of parts of the media and the public, is less aware of the consequences of such disregard for language. Instead, this group takes its lead from the first. Its use of the word is simply applied, without comment and with the expectation that their audience will "get it", will automatically understand, and will conjure up images of faceless fanatics whose preferred modus operandi is extreme violence and who cannot be reasoned with or comprehended, regardless of the person in question. Its employment is uncritical; it is a convenient term whose usage needs no thought and in fact actually discourages it in favor simple emotional response.

Some recent uses of the word "terrorist" and its cognates by officials and the press:

• Perle Compares Hersh to a Terrorist: During a talk show segment, CNN host Wolf Blitzer asked Richard Perle to respond to an article by New Yorker writer Seymour Hersh in which Hersh claimed that a company which Perle was associated with stood to make a considerable amount of money from a war against Iraq. Perle responded by stating that

  Look, Sy Hersh is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist, frankly.

  The accusation surprised even Blitzer:

  BLITZER: Well, on the basis of -- why do you say that? A terrorist?
  
  PERLE: Because he's widely irresponsible. If you read the article, it's first of all, impossible to find any consistent theme in it. But the suggestion that my views are somehow related for the potential for investments in homeland defense is complete nonsense.
  
  BLITZER: But I don't understand. Why do you accuse him of being a terrorist?
  
  PERLE: Because he sets out to do damage and he will do it by whatever innuendo, whatever distortion he can -- look, he hasn't written a serious piece since Maylie (ph).

  Blitzer let Perle off the hook without even getting any kind of real rebuttal to Hersh's charges, much less an explanation for calling Hersh, an award-winning investigative journalist, a "terrorist".
  
  
• Oregon Lawmaker: Anti-war Demonstrators Are Terrorists: Oregon state lawmaker John Minnis proposed a bill that would require an automatic 25-to-life sentence for "terrorism" - a term so vaguely defined as to include non-violent protestors blocking streets. It is incredible that any elected American official would consider peaceful public assembly as legally and morally equivalent to the World Trade Center bombings, an act of terror that killed over 2,000 civilians.
  
  
• Suicide Attacks against Soldiers as Terror: The SF Chronicle ran an article quoting an American general as saying that a suicide attack by an Iraqi soldier against American Marines - members of an invading army - "looks and feels like terrorism". The Chronicle was happy to parrot the military's line, running a banner front-page headline reading "War turns to terror".

  A concerned citizen wrote to the Chronicle asking for an explanation of the rationale behind the use of the word "terror". In his letter, he noted that the attack

  cannot be classified as an act of "terror" according to the United States' own definition of "terrorism". The State Department (URL: http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2000/2419.htm) defines "terrorism" as: "... premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant/*/ targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience."
  
  The term "noncombatant", marked with an asterisk, is qualified:
  
  "For purposes of this definition, the term "noncombatant" is interpreted to include, in addition to civilians, military personnel who at the time of the incident are unarmed or not on duty...We also consider as acts of terrorism attacks on military installations or on armed military personnel when a state of military hostilities does not exist at the site, such as bombings against US bases in Europe, the Philippines, or elsewhere."

  There was no reply to his letter and request for the Chronicle's definition of "terror". However, it should be noted that the newspaper, in an apparent mea culpa, devoted almost an entire recent letters section to readers who had also taken exception to the use of the term "terror" in such a self-serving and uncritical way. Public action of this kind is a necessary part of wider actions to prevent "terrorism" from becoming a synonym for dissent.