THE TOP FIVE LIES ABOUT THIS WAR
How many people do you know who claim to be skeptical, who pride
themselves on their distrust for authority, who
like to pretend that they're wise to the ways of the world -- and then, every
time there's a war, they swallow the lies of the government with all the gullibility
of a three-year-old child in the lap of a department store Santa Claus? Don't
fall into that trap yourself! Learn to identify and refute official misinformation
when you see it. Let's count down some of the common misconceptions about
this war:
Lie #5: "We're not at war with the Afghan people -- look, we're bringing them food!"
Reality: Afghanistan is in the midst of a severe drought which
threatens literally millions of people with starvation. Even before the threat
of US bombing, the World Food Program (WFP) said that nearly 6 million people
were in need of immediate food assistance. When the threat of war caused massive
movements of refugees and internally displaced people, the WFP raised that
number to 7.5 million. UN agencies were keeping huge numbers of people alive,
but the war danger -- as well as the US demand that Pakistan seal its border
with Afghanistan -- caused the WFP to suspend deliveries of wheat flour to
the country. We have no idea how many people have already died as a result.
Meanwhile, the US dropped 37,000 individually-wrapped packages of food from
the sky. You do the math. That's enough to feed about 37,000 people for one
day, in a country where seven and a half million are in danger of starvation.
Additionally, the spokesman for an international charity active in Afghanistan
told the London Independent that "Random food drops are the worst possible
way of delivering food aid. They cause more problems than they solve."
Not the least of which is the fact that Afghanistan has the highest number
of unexploded land mines in the world. There are already 10 or 15 mine incidents
every day, and with people scrambling into mine-ridden areas to pick up random
packages of food dropped from US planes, that number is only going to go up.
Lie #4: "Oil? Who said anything about oil?"
Reality: The Caspian Sea region has potentially the world's
largest oil reserves, likely making Central Asia the next Middle East. The
problem is piping it out. Afghanistan occupies a strategic position between
the Caspian and the markets of the Indian subcontinent and east Asia. It's
prime territory for building pipelines, which is why the oil company Unocal
-- as well as the US
government -- welcomed the Taliban's rise to power in 1996 as a promising
source of "stability." That turned out to be a pipe dream (so to
speak), but people like our Commander-in-Chief and the oil men around him
have never given up on the tremendous profit possibilities that Central Asia
offers. And if you don't think such considerations are crossing their minds
at this time of crisis, may we suggest a refresher course in The Facts of
Life?
Lie #3: "The US is trying to liberate the people of Afghanistan from Taliban tyranny."
Reality: The US, Russia, and Iran have been aiding a rough coalition
of armed groups called the Northern Alliance. The Northern Alliance's fighters
are drawn mainly from ethnic minority groups in Afghanistan who have been
persecuted by the Taliban. But their record is also a bloody one. Groups like
the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), which have
been fighting against fundamentalism and for democracy in Afghanistan for
years, have publicly stated
that the fundamentalist gangsters of the Northern Alliance are not an acceptable
alternative to the fundamentalist gangsters of the Taliban. No wonder: Human
Rights Watch implicates the Northern Alliance in "indiscriminate aerial
bombardment and shelling, direct attacks on civilians, summary executions,
rape, persecution on the basis of religion or ethnicity, the recruitment and
use of children as soldiers, and the use of antipersonnel landmines."
By now everyone knows that Osama bin Laden was among the mujihadin recruited
by the CIA to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Meet the next generation.
Lie #2: "America is coming together."
Reality: Tens of thousands of people have been laid off in the
airline industry alone. The government quickly responded to the airline industry
crisis with a multi- billion-dollar bailout package for the companies in order
to keep afloat the profits of shareholders and the salaries of CEOs, but when
it came to aiding the thousands of workers laid off, Congressman Dick Armey
said that that would be contrary to "the American spirit." Maybe
it is. Maybe it's the "American spirit" to make common working people
pay for a crisis and to bear the burdens of an expensive war. But it certainly
doesn't have anything to do with "togetherness."
And the biggest lie of them all . . .
Lie #1: "It's possible to win a 'war against terrorism.'"
Reality: Terrorism is a tactic, not a political or social force
in and of itself. Anyone can use it, and the idea that you can wage a "war"
against it is as dishonest as the idea behind the "War on Drugs."
The use of food as a political weapon, indiscriminate aerial bombardment,
and the arming of gangsterish groups of religious fanatics all count as "terrorism"
by any reasonable definition of the word, and the United States has long employed
all of them -- and more. This war is really about sordid
material interests and power (see especially Lies numbers 2 and 4, above),
and in defense of these interests the US is prepared to shift the label "terrorist"
as it sees fit, to apply to all manner of dissident political movements and
not just marginal bands of fanatics like bin Laden's al-Qa'ida. Conversely,
it's willing to call its own terrorists "freedom fighters" (see
Lie number 3
above). Maybe some of them will get transformed into "terrorists"
again in a few years. It's a sick game and a charade, and the government is
manipulating the very real grief and anger of the people of the United States
after the September 11 atrocities to get us all to fall for it again. Don't
believe them for a second.
Produced by the Anti-War Committee of Students in Solidarity at the University of Pittsburgh