US misdeeds fuelling violence and terror

15 December 2008

By Paul J. Balles

Paul J. Balles looks at how the USA’s contempt for international law and norms of civilized behaviour, and its sponsorship of state terrorism, are rebounding on it and its allies and friends worldwide.

Thirty-nine women and children and eight teenagers at a wedding could hardly be mistaken for militants. Yet that's what the US military said about the 47 civilians murdered in an air strike in Afghanistan (BBC 11/07/08). Do we imagine, for a minute, that anyone vaguely knowing these people would forgive their tormentors and murderers?

When a superior officer ordered three of his US marines not to take time to process the prisoners according to the rules, the threesome took turns blowing their prisoners’ brains out in Fallujah in 2004 (Los Angeles Times 11/07/08).

How many of us would seriously think that stories of these atrocious misdeeds weren’t broadcast by word of mouth through all of the Arab and Islamic worlds?

"We did a study on 3,000 children in Gaza," says, Dr Eyad al Saraj, a child psychologist. "45 per cent of them said the worst thing they have witnessed was the beating of their fathers by the Israeli soldiers. That was the symbol of security and power for them and it was shattered."

Is it any wonder that these children grow up finding new symbols of power in the model of the man with the Kalashnikov?

After the US media reported Reverend Jeremiah Wright's sermon as an example of a bad influence on Barack Obama, few people wanted to face the truth of what Wright said about the chickens coming home to roost: 

We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to payback for the attack on our embassy. We killed hundreds of hard-working people; mothers and fathers who left home to go that day, not knowing that they would never get back home. We bombed Hiroshima! We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye! Kids playing in the playground, mothers picking up children after school, civilians – not soldiers – people just trying to make it day by day. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant? Because the stuff we have done overseas has now been brought back into our own front yards! America's chickens are coming home to roost! Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred and terrorism begets terrorism.

How many Americans are ready to admit that 9/11 was a crime of our own making?

Paul Craig Roberts, former US underecretary of the Treasury says: "America’s brutal crimes against the Muslim world have invited every Muslim to become a law unto himself – a revolutionary. It is not terror that Washington confronts but revolution."

Here's a “chickens come home to roost” theme in Roberts' view after the carnage in Mumbai. Roberts describes the provocation to terror well, and his analysis bears repeating:

The attack on Mumbai required radicalized Muslims. Radicalized Muslims resulted from the US overthrowing the elected government in Iran and imposed the Shah [the faux Shah Pahlavi]; from the US stationing troops in Saudi Arabia; from the US invading and attempting to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, bombing weddings, funerals and children’s soccer games; from the US violating international and US law by torturing its Muslim victims; from the US enlisting Pakistan in its war against the Taliban; from the US violating Pakistan’s sovereignty by conducting military operations on Pakistani territory, killing Pakistani civilians; from the US government supporting a half century of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their lands, towns and villages; from the assault of American culture on Muslim values; from the US purchasing the government of Egypt to act as its puppet; from US arrogance that America is the supreme arbiter of morality.

Military interrogator Matthew Alexander's reactions to abuses of prisoners are revealing of the policies and practices that lead to resistance. According to experts on terror, inhumane treatment produces nothing of any value; it leads only to hatred and a desire for revenge.

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on US and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our programme of detainee abuse.

How do we expect the family, friends, relatives and members of the tribes of the victims of our policies and practices to react?

Call it what you will – chickens coming home to roost, revolution, resistance, victims – but don’t dismiss the arrogant immorality of brutalizing the world as someone else’s evil.