The
Top Five Lies about this War
Anti-War Committee of Students in Solidarity at the University
of Pittsburgh
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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. is trying
to liberate the people of Afghanistan from Taliban tyranny."
Reality:
The U.S., 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 U.S. 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.
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