More Q & A: On Terror And War

A number of folks feel that current events -- particularlyin the last few days -- have dramatically changed the logic and morality of whathas been done in Afghanistan, calling into question much of the analysis andassessment that has been offered by critics of the war. Here are some of thequestions we have been asked, and our brief replies. 

1. You geniuses have expressed skepticism that Osama binLaden was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. What now, Sherlock?

Actually, what we and other advocates of democraticjudicial values argued was not bin Laden's innocence, but that evidenceregarding his involvement was not presented. On November 14 -- more than fiveweeks after the bombing began -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair declared thatthe evidence "now leaves no doubt whatever" that bin Laden wasresponsible. But isn't the evidence supposed to precede, not follow, thepunishment? In any event, however, Blair's evidence even at this point is notdecisive -- the only real addition to Blair's earlier dossier are quotes from anunpublicized bin Laden video -- that Britain doesn't have a copy of, but hasknowledge of, reports the Los Angeles Times (15 Nov. 2001) -- that arenot given in context and fall short of an admission. Bin Laden's guilt seemsvery likely, but the point is not to convince Blair or one allied government oranother or even us, but public opinion in the Muslim world. Despite Washington'sinitial promise to present evidence publicly, it has yet to do so.

Not only did we never dispute the possibility that binLaden was involved in some way, we instead offered an explanation of why hemight very well have been involved, what he was seeking, etc. We suggested thathis motive, were he responsible, was probably to draw the U.S. into a massiveresponse, destabilizing the region, a result that still may occur.

More to the intent of the question, if, when a vigilantemob tries to lynch someone, it turns out that their suspect actually was guilty,that doesn't make the mob's actions any less vigilante. And this is true even ifthe mob doesn't kill a great many people (mostly victims, not culprits) in theprocess of going after their suspect, as has been occurring in Afghanistan.

2. You nattering nabobs of negativity have warned aboutmass starvation, genocide, and catastrophe. You must feel pretty stupid now,huh?

No. Opponents of U.S. policy, ourselves included, indicatedthat human rights and aid organizations warned that the bombing could lead to amillion or even millions of deaths. And we pointed out that ignoring thiswarning, regardless of whether the horror came to pass or not, was an absolutelydevastating commentary upon our ruling and media elites, and on others as well.That remains exactly the case. We also urged that it was a priority to pressurethe U.S. to stop the bombing, stop the war, and aid in averting thiscatastrophe. That is still the priority, in fact.

As to what damage has already been done, no one knows. Whathas happened, for example, to the large fraction of the population that has fledto the heavily-mined countryside? And many harmful consequences of U.S. policywill not be felt until later. What will be the future effects, for example, oflosses in grain planting that was disrupted in October? When eyes turn away, whowill be there to assess it?

That a country embarks on a policy that puts a million ormore innocent civilians at risk for political purposes is mass-scale terrorism. If -- and it remains a big if, regrettably -- the catastrophe is averted thatwill certainly be a reason to celebrate, but it will not be not reason to laudthose who aggravated the prospects of disaster in the first place. PlayingRussian Roulette is stupid -- even if you don't end up blowing your head off.Shooting a gun with a bullet in a random chamber at someone else is immoral,whether or not you end up committing murder.

At the current time prospects are still very unclear. Yes,the U.S. could cease hostilities and assist food distribution, thereby reducingthe prospect of catastrophic starvation. But the U.S. seems intent on rejectingany military let-up, and any pressure we can bring to bear urging this course ofaction is no less a priority now than it was yesterday or last week. Aidagencies warned that the crucial factor was how much food could be gotten inplace before the winter snows and that the bombing interfered with getting thefood in. Whether enough time now remains and whether the necessary effort ismade before the snow arrives remains the critical question.

3. Wasn't your pooh-poohing of U.S. food drops a littlepremature, given that the war has provided a means to now get food in by land?

No. The food drops were pure PR, perhaps doing more harmthan good. And while left critics of the war certainly argued this, they did soby quoting the World Food Program, the Red Cross, and others aid agencies, andeven the Financial Times, all of whom issued scathing denunciations ofthis propaganda tool. Nothing has changed about that. What has now occurred isthat the Northern Alliance has occupied Kabul, and what’s left of the Talibanhas retreated, it appears, to the mountains, virtually without a fight, underthe weight of the most powerful non-nuclear bombs ever created, perhaps with theintention of waging an ongoing guerilla war from outside the main cities.

The end to major fighting in the north may well havewelcome humanitarian consequences. But what does that lead us to conclude aboutthe morality of U.S. actions? Suppose the Taliban were to release, tomorrow, aproclamation declaring "we left the cities for the mountains so that thebombing would halt -- not having us as a target -- and the way would be clearfor food aid to get to our fellow citizens. We have sacrificed our hold onpower, to avert starvation among our people."

Would we take that seriously? It would be true that theirhaving left the field of battle created the conditions mentioned in thequestion. It would be true that it was a choice on their part, and that theycould have instead fought on, leading into the winter, etc. Nevertheless, wewould deduce based on our knowledge of their past policies that they made thechoice out of their own strategic concerns, not out of concern for thosesuffering hunger. When the U.S. claims to care about the Afghan poor, we shouldnot relinquish our critical faculties, just as we wouldn't were the Taliban tomake the claim.

Note, incidentally, that it was not the case that U.S.planners "knew" they could force the Taliban out of the northerncities before winter. Every indication suggests that the Taliban retreat was asmuch a surprise to the Pentagon as to everyone else. Just two days ago Secretaryof Defense Rumsfeld was warning that though victory wouldn't take years, itwould take months (which, he observed, meant that he had 23 months in which tooperate).

4. Do you still think we're targeting civilians in ourbombing?

We never thought or stated that the bombing was targetingcivilians per se. We did say that the direct violent affects on civilians werepredictable. U.S. military planners know how often their smart bombs, not tomention their dumb bombs, miss, and how often their cluster bombs fail todetonate, thereby spewing future death traps across the land.

But the real issue, from the beginning, was not thehundreds of civilians killed by bombs, horrible as that is, but the tens orhundreds of thousands, or maybe more, who might succumb quietly out of camerarange. Some will be victims of the destruction of what little civilianinfrastructure there is in the country: for example, electrical transmissionfrom the power station at the Kajaki Dam has been knocked out, creating(according to UN officials) the risk of massive flooding and crop failures (Independent,8 Nov. 2001). Some will be driven into the landmine-infested countryside. Butthe potentially most disastrous effect of the bombing -- as we alwaysmaintained, and as various aid agencies have warned -- has been to put hugenumbers of people at risk of starvation. And this remains the case. And we saidthat the latter was the most abominably heinous aspect of the project -- beyondthat it was undertaken outside the law, indeed specifically to delegitimate thelaw, and to maintain military credibility, and to propel a "war onterrorism" whose purpose to no small degree is to organize domestic fear inpursuit of elite agendas of financial redistribution from poor to rich anddraconian social reaction against civil liberties.

5. Those Northern Alliance fighters proved prettyeffective, no? So wasn't your bad-mouthing them foolish?

Criticism of the Northern Alliance has been not that theyare incompetent soldiers, but social monsters, slightly different in kind fromthe Taliban, but small improvement morally. Nothing in the past few days changesthe historical record of the Northern Alliance, and indeed, the first sketchyreports of executions and looting in cities newly fallen under their controlsuggests that their thuggish practices continue. As RAWA, perhaps the foremostorganization fighting for the rights of women in Afghanistan, announced as theNorthern Alliance entered Kabul, "The retreat of the terrorist Taliban fromKabul is a positive development, but the entering of the rapist and looterNorthern Alliance in the city is nothing but dreadful and shocking news forabout 2 million residents of Kabul whose wounds of the years 1992-96 have nothealed yet. Thousands of people who fled Kabul during the past two months weresaying that they feared coming to power of the NA in Kabul much more than beingscared by the US bombing."

Moreover, while they are no doubt capable warriors, whathas occurred has little or perhaps even nothing to do with their battlefieldabilities, since there was no battle. The Taliban essentially withdrew without afight, apparently choosing to cede the cities to continue the struggle from themountains, depending on how much there is left to them, under the onslaught ofthe bombing.

6. Since the anthrax probably has a domestic source andsince the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 probably was accidental, doesn'tyour whining about creating more terrorists seem a little alarmist?

Not at all -- unfortunately -- since people who are newlypushed to desperation by current policies, by the starvation, by the othercontinuing policies in the region, all now highlighted and aggravated, do notovernight manifest their commitment via terrorist attack, of course. Theassessment of this miserable and depressing prediction against actual outcomesis in the future, not the present. It is not unlike when critics warned back inthe 1980s that supporting bin Laden and the Mujahideen would have horriblefuture blowback ramifications. To say a week or two, or even a year or two afterthat prediction that it was proved false would have been a bit premature,obviously.

7. And your worries about uprisings throughout the Araband Muslim worlds (including nuclear-armed Pakistan) were rather exaggerated,were they not?

We and other critics said that the policies undertaken inAfghanistan and proposed for the rest of the world risked such destabilization.They did, and they still do. Does anyone think that Pakistan's stability isassured as the battle moves to the southern Pashtun region of Afghanistan, aregion with many cross-border ties to Pakistan? And if the U.S. decides toexpand the "war on terrorism" to some new defenseless venue, say theSudan, or perhaps a not entirely defenseless venue, say Iraq, the prospects ofgeneral social dissolution in the region will enlarge, again.

Numerous surveys in Arab and Muslim nations show extremelyhigh levels of opposition to the U.S. war, even in supposedly friendly states.Most people are not inclined to heed bin Laden's call to holy war, but as theU.S. pushes its dictatorial allies to join Washington's holy war, instability islikely to spread.

8. Isn't it time to celebrate the demise of the Talibanand return to healing our country, setting aside all the negative talk aboutU.S. criminality, and all the opposition to U.S. policies?

If the Taliban were finished as a social force, that wouldbe something worth "celebrating" in that the Taliban is a horrendouslyreactionary and violent organization impeding justice by its very existence andpractices. But, regrettably, it is quite possible that they are off planningtheir next actions, not disintegrating.

As to setting aside criticisms of the U.S., nothing couldbe less constructive.

First, to continue to criticize and more importantly raisedissent to pressure an end to bombing and undertaking food aid in all endangeredregions is paramount. The alternative is too horrible to even entertain.

Second, addressing the just grievances of people throughoutthe Middle East and the world regarding U.S. foreign policies is necessary bothon behalf of those who suffer the impact of those policies, and also toeliminate the cause of support for terrorism against the U.S.

And third, the events in NYC, Washington, and Afghanistan,we are told by our government, auger a larger project, a war on terrorism, whosecharacter, as we can already see, is to be quite like that of the Cold War. Itwill, if it actually transpires as intended, marshal hate and fear throughmanipulation and misrepresentation into support for policies that further enrichand empower the already rich and powerful. Everyone, at some level, knows this.The average American is not surprised that corporations and the government seekto use fear of terror to redistribute funds upward by means of regressive taxreforms and boondoggle military spending, to gut public programs, to stiflepublic debate by calls for patriotism from the media, and to restrict rights bydraconian legislation. But not as commonly understood is that active dissent cancurb these trends and can foster opposite ones on behalf of the poor, of thosewho work, and of those who need civil liberties. And dissenters continuing todissent and to make known the power of dissent, are thus absolutely essential,in this, now as at any other time.

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