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March
3, 2002
Paul Cox
Boycott
Mel Gibson's
"We Were Soldiers"
Frederick
Hudson
Toward
a Nonviolent Africa:
Bill Sutherland's Quest
Eric Schaeffer
Dear
Christie Whitman:
Take This Job and Shove It
John Chuckman
Why
the Rest of Planet is Unnerved by America
March
2, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Sweat,
Sex, Feet and
the Working Class
March
1, 2002
Brendan
Sexton III
What's
Wrong With Black Hawk Down: an Actor Speaks Out
Terry
Diggs
Why
Twain's Pudd'nhead
Wilson Still Matters
David
Krieger
Nuclear
Terrorism
and US Nuclear Policy
February
28, 2002
James
T. Phillips
Baghdad,
Spring 1992
Gideon
Samet
Sharon
Must Go
Rep. Ron
Paul
Before
We Bomb Iraq
M. Shahid
Alam
Samuel
Huntington:
Peddling Civilizational Wars
St. Clair
/ Cockburn
Rumble
from the Jungle:
Ecaudorian Farmers Fight
DynCorp's ChemWar
February
27, 2002
Eric Hobsbawm
The
Future of War and Peace
John Troyer
About
that WTC Memorial
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Wired
for Democracy
or Business?
Alexander
Cockburn
Daniel
Pearl: Should His
Editors Have Sent Him There?
February
26, 2002
Jonathan
Steele
Kabul's
Loss
Vasily
Streltsov
The
Pentagon in
the Transcaucusas
CounterPunch
Wire
How
Corporations Use Shadowy "527" Groups to Influence
Politicians
Lt. Col.
Robert Bowman
ABM
Treaty: Alive or Dead?
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
A
Prayer for America
February
25, 2002
John Clarke
Interrogated
at US Border
Blankfort,
Poirier, Zeltzer
ADL
Blinks, Settles Spying Case
Alex Lynch
Naked
from Sin:
The Ordeal of Nahla
and Sami Al-Arian
John Chuckman
Ashcroft
Speaks in Tongues
February
24, 2002
David
Vest
Skate
Date
February
23, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Axis
of Evil and
Media Monopolies
Bahour/Dahan
Cracks
in the Occupation
February
22, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Axel
of Evil: Sex Crimes
and the Constitution
February
21, 2002
Gary Leupp
The
Philippines: Second Front in US's Global War
David
Vest
Reagan
Clone Project?
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Chicago
School and Corporate America: Rotten to the Core
February
20, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
The
Shallow Throat Document
Kay Lee
The
Prison Guard Who Never Owned Up to His Crimes
February
19, 2002
David
Orr
Waylon
Jennings, the Duke,
and the Navajo
John Chuckman
The
Devil and Georgie Bush
Prudence
Crowther
Giblet
Gravitas
Ramzi
Kysia
Caught
in the Iraq DMZ
February
18, 2002
Ron Jacobs
The
US and Iran
George
Lewandowski
Empire
in Declline
Lenni
Brenner
Life
and Death of a Folk Hero
February
17, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Lost
in a Pit of Desperation
February
16, 2002
Phillip
Cryan
Colombia
in War Time
February
15, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
From
New York to Porto Alegre
Robert
O'Brien
The
View from Porto Alegre
Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting
the Assassins
February
14, 2002
Levy and
Easton
Ante
Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans
Joan Claybrook
Dear
Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron
John Chuckman
Time
for a Woman Prez
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
February
13, 2002
Sen. Russ
Feingold
War
Powers and
the War on Terror
Tom Turnipseed
Bush's
Folly
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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March 3, 2002
The 'War on Terrorism'
for Dummies
By Bernard Weiner
Don't know about you, but all this war and politics
stuff can be mighty confusing. So I picked up a copy of "The
'War on Terrorism' for Dummies," a kind of primer on current
events, and now feel much better-educated. Here are some of their
answers.
Q. Is this all about oil and greed and profits?
A. Not all. Life is complex. Politics is even more
complex. (Not as complex as marriages, but close.) The Persian
Gulf historically has been a shaky area politically. The developed
world has to find another, more stable area to service its oil
needs. The next large commercial oil reserve is in the Caspian
Sea area of Central Asia, but how to bring that oil and gas to
market without having to go through Russia? Obviously, a more
southern route. True, oil and gas companies had plans for a pipeline
through Afghanistan long before the year 2001, but they put their
plans on hold while the political situation there was so chaotic.
When the authoritarian Taliban finally brought order to the country,
the U.S. government began talks with the Taliban leadership --
some of those talks were in Texas -- about that old pipeline
idea. Eventually, the Taliban said no, whether because the money
offered wasn't enough or out of ideological reasons isn't clear.
Then the terror of 9/11 happened and the bombing of Afghanistan
began. The Taliban were removed from power, a new government
installed, and now talks are progressing on the joint Pakistan/Afghanistan
pipeline, to handle the Caspian Sea oil from the former Soviet
"stan" republics.
Now the above facts might seem to suggest
that the true answer to the question posed above is Yes. But,
as we said, things are often much more complex than they seem
to be on the surface. We can't forget that the U.S. mainland
was attacked in a most vicious way -- nearly 3000 people lost
their lives in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon,
and another plane was on its way to a populated target before
it crashed into the ground in Pennsylvania. Any American leader,
beholden to oil companies or not, would have had to respond to
protect American citizens and property. Osama bin Laden and his
al-Qaeda terrorist network have made it very clear that they
are not finished, and that there is no such animal as an "innocent
civilian." American "infidels" must die, period.
The nation responded by going on the offense in rooting out as
many terrorists as possible, and disabling their financing and
operational network.
So, yes, access to cheap oil and gas
is one, maybe even THE major, ingredient in the mix of why the
U.S. is behaving the way it is -- as it certainly was in the
Persian Gulf war under Poppa Bush -- but greed and profit are
not the ONLY reasons.
Q. Did the Bush Administration know about or
participate in any way with the events leading to the terrorist
attacks on 9/11?
A. All the facts are not yet in. At this point,
it appears that the Bush Administration knew that a major attack
of some sort was going to happen -- for months prior to 9/11,
Osama had been telling his supporters that "something big"
was planned against America, probably in America -- but the U.S.
probably didn't have specific intelligence as to what that meant.
There are conspiracy theorists around
who question why Air Force fighters weren't scrambled in time
to shoot down the suicide jet-bombers, why the CIA chief in Dubai
may have met with bin Laden in July, why many institutional investors
bought "put options" (gambling that the stock would
go down) on airline stocks before 9/11, and so on. And perhaps
more information about these and other questions will be revealed
in time, as more investigative digging unearths more facts, but
right now what's out there is mostly conjecture and circumstantial
evidence, devoid of smoking guns. At the time of the 9/11 terrorist
mass-murders, it's likely that chaos and ill-preparedness and
the usual bureaucratic bungling and incompetency prevailed.
Now, having said all that, one must note
that the events of 9/11 arrived at ju st the right time for the
beleagured Bush Administration. Its conservative agenda was bogged
down in Congress because the Senate was now controlled by the
Democrats, Bush was taking great heat (and was the butt of stand-up
comedians) for being an ineffectual dolt, and so on. Suddenly,
bin Laden hands Bush the gift of terrorism on American soil,
and, lo and behold, he is a different man, the public is solidly
behind his responses to terrorism, the Democrats are cowed into
silence, the conservative agenda is back on track.
True, the Bush administration has played
the "patriotism" and "national security"
cards to rationalize whatever policies and bills it wants passed.
But that only reveals how cynical and manipulative they are,
not that they were necessarily involved in a mass-murder conspiracy
with Islamic extremists. (But why has Dick Cheney warned Congressional
leaders not to delve too deeply into pre-9/11 events? Hmm.)
Q. Is John Ashcroft a proto-fascist?
A. Yes. If he were an official in the Taliban,
he'd feel quite at home. But before going into his record, let
us remember that Ashcroft was chosen by Bush. Ashcroft is the
lightning rod taking the heat, but it's the Bush Administration
that creates and approves his policies. Now to Ashcroft: You
may remember that after he lost his Senate re-election bid to
a dead man, his appointment to be Attorney General made it through
the Senate with one vote to spare. He was villified as a narrow-minded
supporter of racist organizations, a hard-line, uptight, puritanical
theocrat who would force his right-wing agenda on the country.
Ashcroft swore he would do no such thing. He lied. The events
of 9/11 gave him the opportunity to fly his far-right, draconian
agenda under the political radar by couching everything under
the rubrics of "national security" and "homeland
defense." He has shredded the U.S. Constitution -- on everything
from vitiating attorney-client confidentiality to permitting
phone taps and black-bag jobs and computer privacy violations
-- and has made it virtually impossible for the press and ordinary
citizens to find out what's going on under the Freedom of Information
Act. (In addition, Ashcroft has reversed his states'-rights philosophy
and is trying to overturn the "death with dignity"
act voted into law by Oregon citizens and medical-marijuana laws
voted into law by citizens of a number of states.) It's not just
his puritanically spending public monies to clothe naked statues;
this guy is bad news for the Constitution.
Q. What is Enron all about, and why should ordinary
citizens care?
A. Enron is reflective of Reagan/Bush-era corporate
greed, and the public be damned. It's very common these days
for large, high-priced auditing firms to be in bed with those
they supposedly are auditing. Enron was all about making money
for the firm's executives and directors -- including huge sums
made from multitudinous military contracts. Enron covered its
ass not only by its alignment with shoddy auditing firms but
by buying political influence; millions of dollars were given
to political officeholders, three-fourths of them Republican.
Kenneth Lay, the CEO of Enron, for years favored Bush with his
largesse, in Texas and in Washington, D.C., and got all kinds
of favors in return, including deregulation (read: letting corporations
do whatever they want, devoid of much oversight) and letting
Lay pick those who would oversee his industry. The Bush Administration
is like an Enron alumni reunion, with the officials in charge
of investigating Enron formerly working for Enron. There may
even be Enron tie-ins to the Afghanistan pipeline plan. Bush
himself pretends that he barely knows Mr. Lay. It's all rather
nauseating, especially when you realize there are a lot of undiscovered
Enrons out there.
Q. Will Bush be impeached?
A. Whoa! Let's not get ahead of ourselves here.
Impeachment (or resignation) certainly is a possibility down
the road, as this influence-peddling scandal unwinds and deepens.
But Bush isn't going to get cornered easily. He's bobbing and
weaving pretty good, trying to keep the public convinced that
Enron is only a business scandal and doesn't involve him or his
administration at all; but it seems clear (and most Americans
agree in recent polls) that Bush is hiding something that could
prove a major political embarrassment for him and his Administration.
To that end, he's trying to keep all documents relating to Enron
locked up tight in the White House. Congress may subpoena documents
and back up their demands by taking the Administration to court
-- as the Government Accounting Office, the non-partisan investigatory
arm of the Congress, is doing -- and he'll drag that out as long
as possible, hoping that the case might take years to get to
the U.S. Supreme Court. There, he's counting on his conservative
majority -- the one that installed him in office -- coming through
again to save him. The key fight here, which is just beginning,
is whether an Independent Counsel, one with no ties to Enron
and not beholden to the Bush Administration, will be appointed
to investigate. The Democrats are starting to call for a special
prosecutor, and the Bush Administration is digging in its heels
mightily, saying that the Justice Department (the same department
loaded with former Enron employees and consultants) can handle
the job quite well, thank you very much, you're either with us
or with the forces of evil.
Q. Why are the Democrats acting so cowardly
in confronting Bush's domestic and foreign policies?
A. Leaving aside the fact that many Democrats --
coming from the same corporate-culture mentality -- agree with
Bush on many things, including the advisability of the "war
on terrorism," a great many feel they can't risk being anything
other than a Loyal Opposition while the country is "at war."
(There has been no Declaration of War by the Congress, and Bush
is not about to ask for one, since doing so would imply that
the Legislative Branch should share power with the Executive.
The Bush Administration wants to share power with no one, in
or out of the country.) The Democrats feel they would be branded
"unpatriotic," or "soft on terrorism," and
not get re-elected, and, understandably, that they would not
be able effectively to battle Bush's non-war-related policies,
such as on drugs-for-seniors or Medicare reform or education
or whatever. So they're doing a kind of soft-shoe shuffle in
place while waiting to see if and when the climate of the electorate
begins to shift away from automatic support for Bush. Since this
is just now starting to happen, you can expect to see the Democrats
become a bit bolder. Perhaps as more and more American troops
become engaged in more and more countries, and more body bags
begin coming back to this country, and the draft is re-instituted,
the Democrats will come out of their shells and assert a more
courageous attitude. But ordinary citizens probably will have
to lead them once again.
Q. Is there any possibility that the Bush Administration
will attempt to alter U.S. policy in the Middle East and elsewhere,
so that more terrorists don't grow out of the soil of mass poverty,
lack of hope, dictatorial regimes and Western slights to their
religion?
A. No. There is not the slightest indication that
the Bush Adminstration gives a fig for making any changes. It's
the world's only superpower, so it thinks it can do whatever
it wants. Military power and threats are expected to keep recalictrant
countries in line. If changes were made in U.S. policy and terrorism
began to recede, the necessary objective conditions for keeping
Bush in power and the country in a state of insecure fright,
would begin to deteriorate. So don't hold your breath that the
situation will improve until Bush and those supporting him are
removed from office.
Q. Are you really part of the "Dummies"
publishing empire?
A. No. And you're not dummies either. Organize,
agitate, educate -- and defeat Republican candidates in November,
thus ensuring (if the Senate and House are both once again in
Democrat party hands) that Bush's hard-right agenda goes nowhere
for two years. During that time -- assuming Bush hasn't been
impeached or resigned by then -- we all build the electoral foundation
for his removal from office in 2004.
Bernard Weiner,
Ph.D., has taught American politics and international relations
at Western Washington University and San Diego State University.
He was with the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly 20 years.
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