Turning The Tide?
The superficial bright and shiny skin of our progressive technological
civilization cracked under the harsh reality of these times to expose its
true festering rotting underbelly last week. America, a country supposedly
founded under the grace of a supreme deity and seemingly protected by His
divine power—until now-- fell victim to a force of terror utilizing and
attacking the very symbols of the supposedly great accomplishments of the
twentieth century. But the 21st Century has ushered in a new and
terrifying time where nothing is sacrosanct and no one is safe.
In reality, the rest of the world has been living under those conditions
for quite some time. The United States, assured of its supremacy
both politically and ideologically, has carried the policies of manifest
destiny forward on the global economic front for decades, assuming the
mantle of judge and jury on every matter of individual freedoms, perceived
injustice, and supposed tyranny. Every traditional religious, political
and socio/ethnic national group abroad is fearful that we will find some
element or resource that we desire in their region and subvert them to
obtain it.
Our 18th century American descendant Roman-Euro-Anglo-Christian perceptions
of the outside world have led us into taking on the role of world policeman,
confidant, banker, confessor, and professor to every undeveloped struggling
third world country with resources deemed important to our interests.
And while we may decry the horrific consequences of the immoral acts of
the recent past we must accept the responsibility for having done our part
to teach the rest of the world just how to perform such acts.
For 50 years the American government and corporate America has held
hands in supporting countless terrorists and insurrections to promote our
own international interests. Under the guise of political and economic
idealism we have assassinated leaders, supplied monies, weapons, and advisors
to train “idealistic thugs” to pursue their goals while furthering our
own. The death and destruction of these acts has accumulated far
more victims than recent days but attracts less attention because we have
utilized less sophisticated methods, no less brutal in their results than
airplanes and jet fuel. We provide cash, weapons and training to
soldiers of fortune in Mexico to murder and terrorize Indians who initially
wanted nothing more than the right to plant communal plots of corn.
Then we bristle when they organize and begin to retaliate labeling them
insurgents in their own land. Always we view those helping to further
our interests as patriots, and those opposing us as terrorists. We
stay out of struggles between European whites, as in Ireland, yet involve
ourselves immediately if non-Christian peoples are involved—as in Serbia/Bosnia/Croatia,
or non-Europeans-- as in South/Middle Americas, Africa, or the Far and
Middle East.
Only a week before the World Trade Centers destruction, we offered
our former allies against the Soviets in Afghanistan (the vehemently anti-American
Taliban) forty three million dollars to declare opium farms (one of the
few remaining cash crops available to devastated Afghani farmers) “against
the will of God”. Ostensibly this was in support of anti-drug efforts,
when in reality we are desperately trying to pave the way for our large
corporate interests in the Chechen oilfields, and the pipeline that must
eventually pass through Afghanistan. At the same time we dedicate
ourselves to the political positions of their sworn enemies the Israelis,
station troops in the lands considered Holy to Islam--maintaining a large
military presence, and then act surprised that bin Laden, a veteran of
decades of guerilla war against the Soviets, is today harbored and
supported by the Tribal Chieftains he fought beside, utilizing his fortune
and risking his life on their behalf. Where once we considered him
a valuable ally and patriot, he now has become a terrorist and few ask
why or what turned him so passionately against us.
In the long run, the truth might be better served examining who stands
to gain the most economically and politically from these tragedies.
Surely the CIA knew what was in the wind. A pilot who trained with bin
Laden presented the plan in detail a few years ago when he was arrested
in the Phillippines. He outlined a plan to hijack and utilize a commercial
airliner to facilitate a suicide attack on CIA Headquarters in Langley,
Virginia.
Who is so naive that they do not believe that there are those capable
of withholding vital intelligence to further other covert interests?
It would not be the first time..
The simple answer—to blame it on fatalistic fundamental fanatic Islamists
is almost too expedient and convenient to be acceptable. And though
it may turn out to be true, it is also the most hoped for answer to the
question of responsibility. Americans love having an evil enemy or
empire to war against almost as much as fanatic Islamists love to teach
their children about the “Great Satan” America, the Babylon of the modern
world.
For those Americans naive enough to wonder what we have done to engender
such hatred and labels, we must remind them that while our purposes may
or may not be altruistic, we are the great “meddler”. Our economic
favors are usually only bestowed on that small segment of the population
in a direct position to help us control or access the resources we desire.
In the Middle East, our development of their petroleum makes a few vulgarly
rich while giving the remaining populations, wallowing in poverty and envy—or
attempting to hold on to traditional ways—a genuine reason for despising
us. Further propaganda and our obvious wealth makes us an easy target
for those who have lost loved ones in the many conflicts over oil, not
to mention our alliance with their longtime enemy—the State of Israel.
Globally, we are known to do “whatever it takes”, utilizing our vast
resources of economic power and military might overtly or covertly to support
our interests.
“In 1973 the people of Chile watched in horror similar to our own,
as their capitol building was bombed, their elected President assassinated,
and their friends and family herded into the National Stadium and other
detention centers, then battered and killed by the thousands. U.S. Agency
files more than establish the deep involvement and responsibility of the
CIA for the Pinochet coup and its violent aftermath. The CIA is also responsible
for the bloody 1954 coup in Guatemala and the frightening repression which
followed. The United Nations Truth Commission report of 1999 severely criticized
our intelligence community for its close collaboration with and support
for the Guatemalan military throughout its counter-insurgency campaign.
The army was found responsible for some 93% of the war crimes, which included
the torture, murder and “disappearance” of some 200,000 civilians and the
massacre of some 660 Mayan villages. The U.N. also ruled that the
army was guilty of genocide; the same army the CIA had chosen as its close
friend and partner. These actions were not taken to protect American lives
from terrorists, but rather, to coldly guard our cash flow.”(*J. Harbury)
The late 1950s CIA assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, and our
support of the swindling despot Joseph Mobutu is another sad story of a
whole Nation suffering as a direct result of our covert policies.
The “War On Drugs” is by far the largest international conspiracy to
affect the policies of foreign nations for purposes other than the one
so obviously stated. Another far-reaching conglomerate goal, the
pursuit of intensely profitable and heretofore unavailable fossil fuels
utilizes much of the covert support offered by US intelligence agencies
and black ops groups, often without the knowledge or consent of those who
we suppose to be representing the “People” of the United States.
It has been well documented by former military and government personnel
as to how far covert national groups are willing to go in their support
of terrorists and thugs to further “our” economic or political agendas
abroad.
We proudly put forward the concept of free enterprise while aiding
economic and political terrorism the world over. As a result, the
common foreign citizen is often left hating our comparatively wealthy guts
for supporting tyrannical forces of terror and coercion while we pour money
and military resources into the already well to do self-serving upper classes.
Meanwhile those middle to upper class citizens are getting pumped full
of the same TV commercial propaganda for consumerism and cultural homogenization
that we are.
The question “what do we do about terrorists” should lead us first
to the mirror—to examine the dirty laundry not only of our distant but
our recent past. Our commitment to this technological and economic
homogenization of the world (that so many traditional peoples object to)
is what engenders so much resentment. Traditional people do not automatically
assume, as we do, that the world is a better place for this technological,
consumerist, and predominantly Christian-led civilization. It is
arguable whether the supposed advances we have created and accumulated
have increased the quality of our lives. It is certain that it has
not led, for a greater part of the world, to a safer more comfortable life.
It is only here, where generations of fattened Americans have led safe
and ‘civilized’ lives of plenty, that people have the time and energy to
intellectually debate the finer points and elements of our condition.
Only in the wealthy areas of the world is there talk of the social, political,
and spiritual evolution of our species. Elsewhere the world is consumed
by the realities of a dangerous and insecure future, compounded by the
lack of peace and necessities in their daily life. There are many
whole cities that resemble the aftermath in New York, where people live
in daily fear and have for many years.
We have been led down this dangerous path of elitism and supposed security
by wealthy conglomerate corporations and entities selling consumerism as
the God of the 21st century. Aided by the premeditated utilization
of world television to further the willynilly global expansion of an international
commerce wholly dependant on finite, and therefore extremely profitable
resources, they pursue their goals ruthlessly, using covert entities to
maintain their powerful grip on the throat of the world.
The civilization is sick at its very center. We have only begun
to see the tip of this iceberg. Technology has far more terrible
weapons waiting on the near horizon than airplanes. And there are
many more bin Ladens waiting in the wings.
If the People of America want immediate solutions—
1) end the international war on drugs and put the money into compassionate
treatment and rehabilitation;
2) put an immediate end to the commitment to further develop fossil
fuels and put the monies toward research and development of renewable energy;
3) support commercial free public broadcasting forums as an immediate
alternative to commercial media outlets (especially TV and radio);
4) demand that all overseas corporate interests be responsive first
to the interests of Native Indigenous National Peoples, before they can
go forward with the exploitation of natural resources.
No? You say this is not feasible? Then learn to live with events
like the World Trade Center catastrophe, as the rest of the world has,
and expect these kind of events to touch each of us (who haven’t been already)
in a very personal way.
It is a tide that cannot be turned without embracing the responsibility
to endure sacrifice and make radical changes in our world economic view.
Additionally, there must be an accounting of the covert political strategies
that offend our moral and ethnic values. Finally, we must come to
a common perception of where we are heading as a world community.
As the tsunami of terrorism rises higher above us, the necessity of common
goals becomes absolute.
c2001 James BlueWolf
exerpt * c2001 J Harbury