I. War Without End
II. From Cuba to Afghanistan
The United States is the only country in the world where the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, are not viewed as a consequence of U.S. policy…
This is commonly understood outside the United States. Yet in official and media circles in the United States, almost no memory evidently exists of the policies of just a few years ago, in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, that promoted radical, fundamentalist Islamic “holy warriors” as “freedom fighters”…
Throughout the 1990s, voices were heard repeatedly in the Arab and Muslim world warning of the monster that had been created by U.S. intelligence in Afghanistan. The United States rejected any responsibility when the holy warriors turned on other Islamic societies, notably in Algeria and Pakistan…
The Islamic fundamentalism sponsored by the United States to promote its strategic interests (in a comparable way, Israel aided Hamas to weaken the PLO) is closely associated with the phenomenon of international terrorism, which lately has replaced communism as the embodiment of the “Threat,” that metaphysical force the U.S. requires to define its foreign policy. For some 20 years before September 11, western corporate media toiled diligently to transform the “Enemy” from communism to terrorism—a very selective definition of terrorism that was being implanted in the collective consciousness of its audience.
The New Red Scare
It would be a mistake to imagine that George W. Bush declared war on terrorism on September 11. Rather he “re-declared” a war that Ronald Reagan had first created and financed, in the mid-1980s. While Jimmy Carter had used “human rights” as a focus for imposing U.S. hegemony, Ronald Reagan replaced that doctrine with his own war against “international terrorism.”
III. Terrorist Wars in the Middle East
Israeli State Terror
For more than 35 years, the violent and bitter history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflicts have centered around a history of collaboration between U.S. and Israeli military and intelligence services and their coincidence of interests. Israeli covert operations have backed up U.S. clandestine schemes, especially in the Middle East, but also in Central America, southern Africa, and elsewhere in a global conquest in which U.S. domination has reached its apex under George W. Bush.
IV. End Game: The Fundamentalists Ascend
In considering nuclear force, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld advised the Pentagon to “think the unthinkable.”
The U.S. is considering military action against “40 to 50 countries,” announced Vice President Dick Cheney.
“If we ... just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now,” was how the Chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, put it.
It is terrifying when the world's only superpower is in the hands of a cabal that seems not merely to believe in Armageddon, but to relish the thought. The links between Christian fundamentalists and the pro-Israel Zionist fundamentalists have been noted earlier. They all love the bomb.
The open talk of the U.S. use of nuclear weapons in Iraq, including pre-emptive use, only increases the likelihood that Israel will avail itself of this option, as it asserts itself into the conflict, something most observers think is inevitable. And Washington's atomic warmongering does nothing to foster nuclear restraint in Russia or China, much less North Korea.
While Washington demanded that Iraq and North Korea abide by U.N. resolutions and international treaties and forgo nuclear capability, it steadfastly flouted such resolutions and treaties over the years, actively assisting Israel and apartheid South Africa in nuclear development. Though the apartheid regime is gone, along with its atomic weapons program (having simply been moved north to a more pro-U.S. neighbor), Israel became one of the nuclear superpowers, willing since the October 1973 war to use them on its neighbors. Both Israel and the United States speak fondly of neutron bombs, miniature thermonuclear devices designed to kill as many people as possible while inflicting as little property damage as possible. They are reportedly a staple in the Israeli nuclear arsenal, a convenient weapon in future Middle East wars. Indeed, Israel's nuclear program is a source of deep resentment and fear in the Middle East, and there is no likelihood it will be constrained.
The U.S. no longer pays even lip service to non-proliferation, having rejected the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and moved ahead with a National Missile Defense program, reviving the Star Wars fantasies of the Reagan era and seriously threatening the weaponization of space.
We hope the lessons to be learned from studying this history of U.S. terrorism and imperialism in the 1980s and 1990s are clear. Washington's accusations must always be viewed with a jaundiced eye, its motives with skepticism. U.S. imperialism's hypocrisy knows no bounds, and its greed is unbridled. America's triumphalism is not motivated by a longing for world-wide democracy, peace, and order. It is nothing but a call for world-wide, brutal exploitation and dominion, led by a cabal that has not learned the lesson of Ozymandias.
Source: covertaction.org/roots_cover_Exerpts.htm
"Collaboratively compiled and edited by Ellen Ray and William H. Schaap (founding editors of "CovertAction Quarterly), Covert Action: The Roots Of Terrorism collects key articles from CovertAction Quarterly magazine, the better to assemble a background to the terrorist attacks of September 11th and strive to understand the current "war on terrorism". Ranging from assassination and death squads to narcotrafficking and regime change, individual insights emerge from a wide variety of learned authors who sharply and concisely bring to light turmoil abroad and at home in this highly recommended and informative resource for non-specialist general readers with an interest the currently "War on Terrorism" being pursued by the American government and its allies." www.history-us.com
Ozymandias
In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desart knows: --
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand." -- The City's gone, --
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, -- and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
— Horace Smith, published 1818
