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DÛke
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This is an article by an "American" (since it matters after all) journalist. It was taken from a Los Angeles newspaper:
First, I'm not gonna leave. I'm gonna stay here. I'm gonna voice my opinion. I'm gonna bring in the news from all over the world that I hear. You either sit down and accuse me of stirring up trouble, or you can actually open your mind and read about different point of views. DON'T agree, just open your mind...and read.
*******************
“The Wickedness and Awesome Cruelty of a Crushed and Humiliated People” -- By Robert Fisk - 12 September 2001
So it has come to this. The entire modern history of the Middle East the collapse of the Ottoman empire, the Balfour declaration, Lawrence of Arabia's lies, the Arab revolt, the foundation of the state of Israel, four Arab-Israeli wars and the 34 years of Israel's brutal occupation of Arab land all erased within hours as those who claim to represent a crushed, humiliated population struck back with the wickedness and awesome cruelty of a doomed people. Is it fair is it moral to write this so soon, without proof, when the last act of barbarism, in Oklahoma, turned out to be the work of home-grown Americans? I fear it is. America is at war and, unless I am mistaken, many thousands more are now scheduled to die in the Middle East, perhaps in America too. Some of us warned of "the explosion to come''. But we never dreamt this nightmare.
And yes, Osama bin Laden comes to mind, his money, his theology, his frightening dedication to destroy American power. I have sat in front of bin Laden as he described how his men helped to destroy the Russian army in Afghanistan and thus the Soviet Union. Their boundless confidence allowed them to declare war on America. But this is not the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about American missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia paid and uniformed by America's Israeli ally hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee camps.
No, there is no doubting the utter, indescribable evil of what has happened in the United States. That Palestinians could celebrate the massacre of 20,000, perhaps 35,000 innocent people is not only a symbol of their despair but of their political immaturity, of their failure to grasp what they had always been accusing their Israeli enemies of doing: acting disproportionately. All the years of rhetoric, all the promises to strike at the heart of America, to cut off the head of "the American snake'' we took for empty threats. How could a backward, conservative, undemocratic and corrupt group of regimes and small, violent organizations fulfill such preposterous promises? Now we know.
And in the hours that followed yesterday's annihilation, I began to remember those other extraordinary assaults upon the US and its allies, miniature now by comparison with yesterday's
casualties. Did not the suicide bombers who killed 241 American servicemen and 100 French paratroops in Beirut on 23 October 1983, time their attacks with unthinkable precision?
There were just seven seconds between the Marine bombing and the destruction of the French three miles away. Then there were the attacks on US bases in Saudi Arabia, and last year's attempt almost successful it now turns out to sink the USS Cole in Aden. And then how easy was our failure to recognize the new weapon of the Middle East, which neither Americans nor any
other Westerners could equal: the despair-driven, desperate suicide bomber.
And there will be, inevitably, and quite immorally, an attempt to obscure the historical wrongs and the injustices that lie behind yesterday's firestorms. We will be told about "mindless terrorism'', the "mindless" bit being essential if we are not to realise how hated America has become in the land of the birth of three great religions.
Ask an Arab how he responds to 20,000 or 30,000 innocent deaths and he or she will respond, as decent people should, that it is an unspeakable crime. But they will ask why we did not use such words about the sanctions that have destroyed the lives of perhaps half a million children in Iraq, why we did not rage about the 17,500 civilians killed in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. And those basic reasons why the Middle East caught fire last September the Israeli occupation of Arab land, the dispossession of Palestinians, the bombardments and state-sponsored executions ... all these must be obscured lest they provide the smallest fractional reason for yesterday's
mass savagery.
No, Israel was not to blame though we can be sure that Saddam Hussein and the other grotesque dictators will claim so but the malign influence of history and our share in its burden must surely stand in the dark with the suicide bombers. Our broken promises perhaps even our destruction of the Ottoman Empire, led inevitably to this tragedy. America has bankrolled
Israel's wars for so many years that it believed this would be cost-free. No longer so. But, of course, the US will want to strike back against "world terror'', and last night's bombardment of Kabul may have been the opening salvo. Indeed, who could ever point the finger at Americans now for using that pejorative and sometimes racist word "terrorism''?
Eight years ago, I helped to make a television series that tried to explain why so many Muslims had come to hate the West. Last night, I remembered some of those Muslims in that film, their families burnt by American-made bombs and weapons. They talked about how no one would help them but God. Theology versus technology, the suicide bomber against the nuclear
power. Now we have learnt what this means.
*******************
”Is the world's favorite hate figure to blame? Osama bin Laden”
-- By Robert Fisk - 12 September 2001
I can imagine how Osama bin Laden received the news of the atrocities in the United States. In all, I must have spent five hours listening to him in Sudan and then in the Afghan mountains, as he described the inevitable collapse of the US, just as he and his comrades in the Afghan war helped to destroy the Red Army.
He will have watched satellite television; he will have sat in the corner of his room, brushing his teeth as he always did, with a mishwak stick, and thinking for up to a minute before speaking. He once told me with pride how his men had attacked the Americans in Somalia. He acknowledged that he personally knew two of the Saudis executed for bombing an American military base in Riyadh. Could he be behind the slaughter in America?
If Mr bin Laden was really guilty of all the things for which he has been blamed, he would need an army of 10,000. And there is something deeply disturbing about the world's habit of turning to the latest hate figure whenever blood is shed. But when events of this momentous scale take place, there is a new legitimacy in casting one's eyes at those who have constantly threatened America.
Mr bin Laden had a kind of religious experience during the Afghan war. A Russian shell had fallen at his feet and, in the seconds as he waited for it to explode, he said he had a sudden feeling of calmness. The shell never exploded.
The US must leave the Gulf, he would say every 10 minutes. America must stop all sanctions against the Iraqi people. America must stop using Israel to oppress Palestinians. He was not fighting an anti-colonial war, but a religious one. His supporters would gather round him with the awe of men listening to a messiah. And the words they listened to were fearful in their implications. American civilians would no more be spared than military targets. Yet I also remember one night when Mr bin Laden saw a pile of newspapers in my bag and seized them. By a sputtering oil lamp, he read them, clearly unaware of the world around him. Was this really a man who could damage America?
If the shadow of the Middle East falls over yesterday's destruction, then who else could produce such meticulously timed assaults? The rag-tag Palestinian groups that used to favour hijacking are unlikely to be able to produce a single suicide bomber. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have neither the capability nor the money that this assault needed. Perhaps the groups that moved close to the Lebanese Hizbollah in the 1980s, before the organization became solely a resistance movement. The bombing of the US Marines in 1983 needed precision, timing and infinite planning. But Iran, which supported these groups, is more involved in its internal struggles. Iraq lies broken, its agents more intent on torturing their own people than striking at the the US.
So the mountains of Afghanistan will be photographed from satellite and high-altitude aircraft in the coming days, Mr bin Laden's old training camps highlighted on the overhead projectors in the Pentagon. But to what end? For if this is a war it cannot be fought like other wars. Indeed, can it be fought at all without some costly military adventure overseas? Or is that what Mr bin Laden seeks above all else?
*******************
Hey, look TomB...he's an American. Is he stirring up trouble...like me and Gizmo?
This is an article by an "American" (since it matters after all) journalist. It was taken from a Los Angeles newspaper:
First, I'm not gonna leave. I'm gonna stay here. I'm gonna voice my opinion. I'm gonna bring in the news from all over the world that I hear. You either sit down and accuse me of stirring up trouble, or you can actually open your mind and read about different point of views. DON'T agree, just open your mind...and read.
*******************
“The Wickedness and Awesome Cruelty of a Crushed and Humiliated People” -- By Robert Fisk - 12 September 2001
So it has come to this. The entire modern history of the Middle East the collapse of the Ottoman empire, the Balfour declaration, Lawrence of Arabia's lies, the Arab revolt, the foundation of the state of Israel, four Arab-Israeli wars and the 34 years of Israel's brutal occupation of Arab land all erased within hours as those who claim to represent a crushed, humiliated population struck back with the wickedness and awesome cruelty of a doomed people. Is it fair is it moral to write this so soon, without proof, when the last act of barbarism, in Oklahoma, turned out to be the work of home-grown Americans? I fear it is. America is at war and, unless I am mistaken, many thousands more are now scheduled to die in the Middle East, perhaps in America too. Some of us warned of "the explosion to come''. But we never dreamt this nightmare.
And yes, Osama bin Laden comes to mind, his money, his theology, his frightening dedication to destroy American power. I have sat in front of bin Laden as he described how his men helped to destroy the Russian army in Afghanistan and thus the Soviet Union. Their boundless confidence allowed them to declare war on America. But this is not the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about American missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia paid and uniformed by America's Israeli ally hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee camps.
No, there is no doubting the utter, indescribable evil of what has happened in the United States. That Palestinians could celebrate the massacre of 20,000, perhaps 35,000 innocent people is not only a symbol of their despair but of their political immaturity, of their failure to grasp what they had always been accusing their Israeli enemies of doing: acting disproportionately. All the years of rhetoric, all the promises to strike at the heart of America, to cut off the head of "the American snake'' we took for empty threats. How could a backward, conservative, undemocratic and corrupt group of regimes and small, violent organizations fulfill such preposterous promises? Now we know.
And in the hours that followed yesterday's annihilation, I began to remember those other extraordinary assaults upon the US and its allies, miniature now by comparison with yesterday's
casualties. Did not the suicide bombers who killed 241 American servicemen and 100 French paratroops in Beirut on 23 October 1983, time their attacks with unthinkable precision?
There were just seven seconds between the Marine bombing and the destruction of the French three miles away. Then there were the attacks on US bases in Saudi Arabia, and last year's attempt almost successful it now turns out to sink the USS Cole in Aden. And then how easy was our failure to recognize the new weapon of the Middle East, which neither Americans nor any
other Westerners could equal: the despair-driven, desperate suicide bomber.
And there will be, inevitably, and quite immorally, an attempt to obscure the historical wrongs and the injustices that lie behind yesterday's firestorms. We will be told about "mindless terrorism'', the "mindless" bit being essential if we are not to realise how hated America has become in the land of the birth of three great religions.
Ask an Arab how he responds to 20,000 or 30,000 innocent deaths and he or she will respond, as decent people should, that it is an unspeakable crime. But they will ask why we did not use such words about the sanctions that have destroyed the lives of perhaps half a million children in Iraq, why we did not rage about the 17,500 civilians killed in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. And those basic reasons why the Middle East caught fire last September the Israeli occupation of Arab land, the dispossession of Palestinians, the bombardments and state-sponsored executions ... all these must be obscured lest they provide the smallest fractional reason for yesterday's
mass savagery.
No, Israel was not to blame though we can be sure that Saddam Hussein and the other grotesque dictators will claim so but the malign influence of history and our share in its burden must surely stand in the dark with the suicide bombers. Our broken promises perhaps even our destruction of the Ottoman Empire, led inevitably to this tragedy. America has bankrolled
Israel's wars for so many years that it believed this would be cost-free. No longer so. But, of course, the US will want to strike back against "world terror'', and last night's bombardment of Kabul may have been the opening salvo. Indeed, who could ever point the finger at Americans now for using that pejorative and sometimes racist word "terrorism''?
Eight years ago, I helped to make a television series that tried to explain why so many Muslims had come to hate the West. Last night, I remembered some of those Muslims in that film, their families burnt by American-made bombs and weapons. They talked about how no one would help them but God. Theology versus technology, the suicide bomber against the nuclear
power. Now we have learnt what this means.
*******************
”Is the world's favorite hate figure to blame? Osama bin Laden”
-- By Robert Fisk - 12 September 2001
I can imagine how Osama bin Laden received the news of the atrocities in the United States. In all, I must have spent five hours listening to him in Sudan and then in the Afghan mountains, as he described the inevitable collapse of the US, just as he and his comrades in the Afghan war helped to destroy the Red Army.
He will have watched satellite television; he will have sat in the corner of his room, brushing his teeth as he always did, with a mishwak stick, and thinking for up to a minute before speaking. He once told me with pride how his men had attacked the Americans in Somalia. He acknowledged that he personally knew two of the Saudis executed for bombing an American military base in Riyadh. Could he be behind the slaughter in America?
If Mr bin Laden was really guilty of all the things for which he has been blamed, he would need an army of 10,000. And there is something deeply disturbing about the world's habit of turning to the latest hate figure whenever blood is shed. But when events of this momentous scale take place, there is a new legitimacy in casting one's eyes at those who have constantly threatened America.
Mr bin Laden had a kind of religious experience during the Afghan war. A Russian shell had fallen at his feet and, in the seconds as he waited for it to explode, he said he had a sudden feeling of calmness. The shell never exploded.
The US must leave the Gulf, he would say every 10 minutes. America must stop all sanctions against the Iraqi people. America must stop using Israel to oppress Palestinians. He was not fighting an anti-colonial war, but a religious one. His supporters would gather round him with the awe of men listening to a messiah. And the words they listened to were fearful in their implications. American civilians would no more be spared than military targets. Yet I also remember one night when Mr bin Laden saw a pile of newspapers in my bag and seized them. By a sputtering oil lamp, he read them, clearly unaware of the world around him. Was this really a man who could damage America?
If the shadow of the Middle East falls over yesterday's destruction, then who else could produce such meticulously timed assaults? The rag-tag Palestinian groups that used to favour hijacking are unlikely to be able to produce a single suicide bomber. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have neither the capability nor the money that this assault needed. Perhaps the groups that moved close to the Lebanese Hizbollah in the 1980s, before the organization became solely a resistance movement. The bombing of the US Marines in 1983 needed precision, timing and infinite planning. But Iran, which supported these groups, is more involved in its internal struggles. Iraq lies broken, its agents more intent on torturing their own people than striking at the the US.
So the mountains of Afghanistan will be photographed from satellite and high-altitude aircraft in the coming days, Mr bin Laden's old training camps highlighted on the overhead projectors in the Pentagon. But to what end? For if this is a war it cannot be fought like other wars. Indeed, can it be fought at all without some costly military adventure overseas? Or is that what Mr bin Laden seeks above all else?
*******************
Hey, look TomB...he's an American. Is he stirring up trouble...like me and Gizmo?
