Last week, Cuban special forces, in pursuit of anti-Castro terrorists responsible for a campaign of bombings and assassinations, launched an attack on a Miami housing complex, killing several American civilians.
You didn’t hear about it? That’s because it never happened. If it had, Havana would, one imagines, now resemble a parking lot.
But rules governing barbarians don’t inhibit the Empire, and so George Bush has casually authorized ground forces to launch attacks on Pakistani soil — without the permission of the Pakistani government.
At a recent news conference, Pakistani journalists drew the logical conclusion. “Isn’t America a terrorist, will you declare America a terrorist?”they asked President Zardari.
A fair question, one would have thought, given that the US President had just openly and explicitly declared his willingness to flout international law in ways that will almost certainly kill innocent Pakistanis.
Consider events taking place just across the border.
On the evening of 21 August, US special forces attacked the Afghan village of Azizabad, where the locals were holding a memorial for a tribal leader. Claiming they were under attack, the Americans called on air support. According to a New York Times journalist, the bombing killed ninety civilians, including as many as 60 children. The presumed target, a man called Reza Khan, not only had no connection with the Taliban, but actually co-ordinated construction work for a nearby US base.
Bombing campaigns exert an irresistible fascination for US commanders, since they flaunt the technological superiority of the West, in an updated version of the old boast:
“Whatever happens we have got The Maxim Gun, and they have not”.
Bombs from the sky rather than boots on the ground also reduces, at least in the short term, American casualties. Afghan casualties, not so much. Over the last three years, the US has increased its bombing tenfold — and civilian deaths have tripled.
Most of the time, that’s not a problem since, with very few journalists in attendance, the army can usually cover up its collateral damage.
As Tom Engelhardt notes, in his survey of what he calls the “blur of civilian deaths”in Iraq and Afghanistan, the original newspaper accounts of what later became known as the My Lai massacre read like this: “American troops caught a North Vietnamese force in a pincer movement on the central coastal plain yesterday, killing 128 enemy soldiers in day-long fighting”.
The army wrote its initial dispatch from Azizabad according to the same formula. The raid was, it was said, a “successful operation against the Taliban”, in which thirty militants were killed.
As conflicting accounts grew, the official version shifted. Eventually, in response to a cell phone video showing scores of dead children, the army played a trump card: there was a US journalist embedded with the troops, they said, and he confirmed the military’s version.
In a bizarre twist, it now seems that the obliging newshound in question was none other than Lt Col Ollie North of Iran-Contra fame. North, you will recall, came to prominence for lying under oath on behalf of the Reagan administration during the Iran-Contra scandal. He now works (of course!) for Fox News.
The reassurances provided by Oliver North have not, one would think, provided much comfort for the people of Pakistan, as they brace for fresh US attacks. Remarkably, Pakistan’s army chief and Prime Minister have both now declared, in response to Bush’s announcement, that their country will defend its sovereignty and integrity: an implicit threat of force against their supposed ally.
Bush still has a few months to go. It’s not too late to top the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with a fresh catastrophe in Pakistan.
Bush doesn’t need to worry. He can start his new wars and McCain will pick up where he left off – if he wins. And with the American penchant for mindless but ordinary folky candidates, it just might mean that ‘uppity’ Obama won’t be calling the shots. God help us. Who knows what these lawless lunatics are going to inflict next on our hapless world?
I get and agree with the critique and injustice of the whole article but the Cuban analogy is trite and poor and it only detracts from the complexity of the problem as well. It is standard journalism reducing the issue to tit for tat or two wrongs make a right and illicits similar responses in the reader. Crikey is better than this – the analogy part. The rest of the article properly names good issues.
If legitimate Cuban forces knew of a real threat in Miami, it may well be possible to pursuade the American system to take some action allowing the Cuban forces to step back. The Pakastan authorities are powerless to do much but the real damning part of the American approach is that they don’t get the part that they could help Pakistan rather than do it themselves.
This realisation requires lowering emotion but your analogy raises emotions past which reasonable solutions become self evident.
Not content with exporting the its entire productive (eg real) economy to China, the USA seems intend on putting up what’s left of its diplomatic influence up on the block as well.
Of course Bush authorised excursions into Pakistan without reference to the Pakistan government. After all, to actually comply with international law would set a precedent subsequent American presidents of either stripe would not like to bound to. Even a passing knowledge of post world war 2 american history informs one that the US is the world’s greatest terrorist nation in terms of countries invaded, bombed and destabilised, and in terms of the numbers of deaths for which they have been responsible either directly or indirectly.
As your correspondent “Claret” notes, US hypocrisy knows no bounds. One of the great tragedies is that the supine Australian media exist in an ahistorical bubble and never allow a hint of reality to taint their pages and confuse the minds of their readers. Inconvenient facts simply disappear down the memory hole and those who persist in stating the blindingly obvious or questioning the received version are dismissed as “conspiracy theorists” or worse.
Your readers might like to acquaint themselves with some of the 44 pieces of “anti-terror” legislation passed by the Australian parliament since 11 September 2001 in the name of “protecting” us from terrorist attack. It will give some insight into who really poses the danger to our civil liberties, and it sure as hell isn’t the CIA created al-qaeda. Again, if the media did not have an attention span as long as the average gnat they might like to acquaint themselves with some more historical reality. But that is surely asking too much. Hopefully Mr Sparrow will spend some time in reading recent history to better inform his comments.
The hypocrisy of the Americans knows no bounds. I’m glad you made the comparison with Cuba – after Palin’s comments this morning about the US having every right to launch premptive strikes if they know of an attack about to be made on the US, I wanted to say “then it would have been okay for Cuba to have bombed Miami when they learned of the Bay of Pigs invasion?”. The US has consistently authorised terror attacks against Cuba – including the blowing up of a civilian Cuban airliner killing 80 people. The CIA man known to be responsible is living in Miami and being protected by the US government – imagine if it had of been the other way around? It is really scary to think that Palin could be a heartbeat from being President – she said they should go to war with Russia to protect Georgia who were “invaded without provocation”! Yet another US pollie who has no clue about foreign affairs – she has only been outside the US once!!