Another socialist blog

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will get the death penalty as sure as the sun will come up on January 20. The alleged mastermind of September 11th was arraigned in a military tribunal at Guantanamo today. As of yesterday his lawyers still hadn’t seen the evidence against him, which may be forever classified Top Secret. No matter; this tribunal isn’t going to be about actual due process, only the pretense of due process.

The defendant has supposedly confessed. At least his captors/torturers, who have shown zero regard for the rule of law so far, say so. Jonathan Stein made an interesting comment about Mohammed back in 2007:

The two questions I have are:

(1) Were these admissions the product of torture? I mean torture in the immediate sense and in the “KSM has been through the black site prison system for three years and has probably been tortured dozens of times, creating a lasting psychological effect that might impair his ability to think, judge, and communicate.” If KSM were to be tried in a court of law, would his confessions hold up?

(2) Should we be suspicious of the timing? Who knows when these admissions were actually made. All we do know — as Josh Marshall points out — is that their release is timed to knock Alberto Gonzales and the Attorney General flap off the front pages. Remember when Jose Padilla’s arrest was announced? John Ashcroft interrupted a trip to Russia to declare that the U.S. had arrested a domestic terrorist and heroically stopped his “dirty bomb” attack. As it turned out, Padilla had been arrested a month before and Ashcroft’s announcement was timed to knock a bunch of bad news out of the headlines. And the government could never prove the “dirty bomb” charge.

It’s a true shame that even when a really nasty guy is caught and proven guilty, alert citizens have to be suspicious and skeptical of the Administration’s behavior. But it poisoned the well from which we all drink.

Stein makes a good point about the timing. Here Mohammed is, being arraigned on the exact day when the news would otherwise be dominated by the first ever nomination of a person of color to be President of the United States. The so-called trial is scheduled for September, ensuring that we will have a steady diet of September 11th all that month and clear through to election day.

The news is full of reports about the foiled plot to attach Fort Dix. It is being reported widely as a “terrorist” attack. Though many news organizations are being careful about it, the Washington Post called it a terrorist plot, and ABC News called the suspects a “terror cell” on their web site and used the word “terrorist” to describe the plot in their broadcast this morning. The FBI has been helping the media along, calling the suspects “homegrown terrorists”.

There was a time when the word “terrorism” had a clear meaning: killing or threatening to kill innocent civilians to achieve a political goal. Using that definition, the Fort Dix attack would of course not be terroristic, because the alleged targets were soldiers. This is not hairsplitting. Soldiers are capable of defending themselves, unlike civilians who generally can’t confront an armed opponent. They aren’t likely to respond to an attack by being terrified. If you don’t agree with that, then you must think Pearl Harbor was a terrorist attack.

But clarity does not serve the purposes of our government. So they use the word “terrorism” to describe almost any opposition to the U.S. Under the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, free speech activities can be construed as terrorist if the prosecutor chooses to do so. And blowing up innocent civilians? Depends on which side you’re on. Luis Posada Carriles is back on the street with his immigration charges dismissed, and his extradition unlikely. Who knows, maybe he’ll get a pardon and a medal.

Luis Posada Carriles faces trial this week for immigration fraud, a trivial charge for a man accused of bombing an airliner and killing all 73 people aboard. Posada enjoys a special status among accused terrorists: he’s a friend of the American right wing because he’s an anti-Castro militant and a former CIA operative.

That means he gets a pass on several terrorist bombings including the 1976 bombing of Cubana Flight 455, and a series of bombings of tourist hotels and other tourist sites in Havana in 1997. Or, at least, Posada gets as much of a pass as the Bush administration can arrange. The government is cooperating with the defense to bar potentially damaging evidence from Posasa’s trial, including any mention of his ties with the CIA. On the other hand, a grand jury in New Jersey is weighing evidence in the tourist bombing cases, and there is a growing international clamor for Posada to be extradited.

Both Cuba and Venezuela have demanded Posada’s extradition. The Bush administration has refused, on the grounds—wait for it—that Posada would face torture if he were extradited. As Jon Stewart has pointed out, this administration is no longer capable of doing anything that is not ironic.

It goes without saying that the director of the CIA in 1976, George H.W. Bush, who was Posada’s boss when the airliner was brought down, won’t be facing prosecution.

The Bush regime has since 2001 been telling us that they are starting wars to protect us from terrorism. I pointed out some time ago that far from being a force against terrorism, the U.S. government is itself terrorist, and the so-called War on Terror™ will only create more enemies and more terrorism against us. They went ahead with the wars.

Then terrorism went way up according to the National Counterterrorism Center, so the government stopped producing terrorism statistics to avoid embarrassment. Presumably terrorism kept increasing despite this decisive action against it.

When reporters ask the obvious question, whether terrorism has been increased because of the actions of the U.S. and its allies, the response is to dodge the question and condemn the questioners as somehow sympathetic to the terrorists.

Now comes Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, who has perhaps the most complete database on suicide attacks in the world. His research shows that contrary to the Bush regime’s propaganda,

• Suicide bombers are targeting those they see as foreign occupiers and their collaborators.
• Three quarters of the attackers are from Iraq or from Sunni-dominated states bordering Iraq (i.e., not Iran). Indeed there have been no confirmed Shiite suicide bombers at all.
• More than 50 percent of the targets were military.
• Hundreds of bombers have already laid down their lives in suicide bombings, but the supply of future suicide bombers is getting larger, not smaller. Indeed, most of the bombers are “walk-in volunteers,” not people who’ve been carefully brainwashed by a terrorist organization.

And, not surprisingly, suicide bombing is increasing. Pape notes that:

Since our invasion, suicide terrorism has been essentially doubling in Iraq every year that we’ve had more or less 150,000 American combat soldiers stationed there….

Before the invasion there hadn’t been a suicide bombing in Iraq’s history.

September 11th shames me back to work on my blog. I can’t remain silent while the Republicans celebrate September 11th, the best thing that ever happened to them, for the fifth time. At the time of the attacks I was Co-Chair of the Socialist Party USA. My comments at the time, on behalf of the Party, were brief. Let’s see whether they still hold up.

The facts of what happened at the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon are not yet clear. Of course there is continuous media coverage of the disaster, repetition of rumors as fact, and wild speculation as to who might be responsible.

We should spend the coming days mourning the dead. Instead, it’s safe to cynically predict that there will be swift, “decisive” military action by the Bush administration against some perceived enemy, any enemy, without regard for the evidence. As in the aftermath of the TWA Flight 800 disaster, there will be a flurry of “anti-terrorist” legislation that will restrict individual rights and punish foreigners. There will be a sudden bipartisan consensus on huge increases in military spending. None of these thoughtless reactions can work.

National security is not something that can be won by intimidation. Only peace with justice can be a secure peace. We will renew our own efforts to transform the United States into a country that has no enemies—not because our enemies have been vanquished, but because we are capable of getting along with our neighbors.

Well, it didn’t take Nostradamus to predict the war against Afghanistan and the Patriot Act. I’m bitterly satisfied to see the correctness of that “any enemy, without regard for the evidence” idea. I don’t know, maybe stretching that to cover the war in Iraq is overdoing it.

Today we will be treated to uncounted media events designed to make us remember the Republican version of history: that we have done nothing to provoke terrorist attack, that opposition to the war is pro-terrorist, and that our enemy is like Hitler, and that we should somehow feel simultaneously safer, and scared to death. These are the lies that have worked before. On the evidence they will work again in November.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has urged the U.S. government to create blacklists of condemned political speech — not only by those who advocate violence, but also by those who believe that U.S. government actions may encourage violent reprisals. The latter group, which Friedman called “just one notch less despicable than the terrorists,” includes a majority of Americans, according to recent polls.

I’m proud to be among the despicable, though I can hardly claim to be bravely standing alone.

The “despicable” idea that there may be a connection between acts of terrorism and particular policies by Western countries is one that is widely held by the citizens of those countries. Asked by the CNN/Gallup poll on July 7, “Do you think the terrorists attacked London today mostly because Great Britain supports the United States in the war in Iraq?” 56 percent of Americans agreed. In a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll (7/7-10/05), 54 percent said “the war with Iraq has made the U.S….less safe from terrorism.” Since they see a connection between Iraq and terrorism, a majority of Americans are what Friedman calls “excuse makers” who “deserve to be exposed.”

Friedman’s column urged the government to create quarterly lists of “hatemongers” and “excuse makers”–as well as “truth tellers,” Muslims who agree with Friedman’s critique of Islam. Friedman’s proposed list of “excuse makers” would have to include his New York Times colleague Bob Herbert, who wrote in his July 25 column, “There is still no indication that the Bush administration recognizes the utter folly of its war in Iraq, which has been like a constant spray of gasoline on the fire of global terrorism.”

Bill O’Reilly has called for outright criminalization of opposition to the war (Radio Factor, 6/20/05):

You must know the difference between dissent from the Iraq War and the war on terror and undermining it. And any American that undermines that war, with our soldiers in the field, or undermines the war on terror, with 3,000 dead on 9/11, is a traitor. Everybody got it? Dissent, fine; undermining, you’re a traitor. Got it? So, all those clowns over at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send over the FBI and just put them in chains, because they, you know, they’re undermining everything and they don’t care, couldn’t care less.

There you have it. We must destroy freedom to save it.

In the wake of the July 7 terrorist bombings in London, Tony Blair has been at great pains to deny that British foreign policy contributed in any way to the attacks. This is especially difficult to pull off in the face of the recent report from Chatham House, Security, Terrorism and the UK, which says what seems so obvious: Britain’s alliance with the United States has made Britain a target.

The report … says that the UK is at particular risk because it is the closest ally of the US and has closely supported the deployment of British troops in the military campaigns to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam’s regime in Iraq.

The report claims that there is “no doubt” that the invasion of Iraq has imposed particular difficulties for the UK and for the wider coalition against terrorism. According to the paper, the situation in Iraq has “given a boost to the Al-Qaeda network’s propaganda, recruitment and fundraising”, whilst providing an ideal targeting and training area for Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists.

No surprise there. That’s what we predicted before Bush started the war in Iraq, and before he started the war in Afghanistan. So what are Blair and Bush doing to misdirect attention away from the elephant in the room?

Simple. To any question about the causes of the attacks, they respond as if they’d been asked about justification for the attacks. That way they get to deflect any examination of their own actions, and repeat over and over for the cameras that there is no justification for terrorism. Of course there isn’t any excuse for terrorism. We didn’t ask you whether you thought there was an excuse. We asked whether you provoked it. A Chatham House representative, to her credit, kept her own eye on the ball:

Clearly the British and American governments will continue to lower this discussion to new intellectual lows. It’s as if nothing they’ve ever done has ever provoked anger in the world.

Indeed. What Blair, Bush and their political allies want you to believe is that terrorism exists for no reason at all. Terrorists are just evil people, they tell us, and there’s no sense examining their motives any further than that. It’s a neat, tidy formula, perfect for the pliant citizens of the empire, simultaneously dismissing curiosity about the world abroad, and critical thought about the government at home.

Let’s raise a glass to America’s allies in the war against terrorism, who are helping us make the world a better place. Right?

Mukhtaran Bibi is a Pakistani woman who was the victim of a notorious gang rape. The rape was ordered by officials of her own tribe, as punishment for a crime her brother was alleged to have committed. To punish her brother, she was sentenced to be raped by four men and made to walk home undressed in front of the whole village.

Bibi has become an activist working to stop violence against women. She was scheduled to visit the Asian American Network Against Abuse of Women in the United States soon. But the Pakistani government—our allies in the war against terror, remember—don’t want her to talk about that, apparently. Pakistan placed her under house arrest, then coerced her into giving a news conference in which she denied wanting to leave the country.

Meanwhile, in Uzbekistan—another of America’s allies in the so-called war on terror, 700 people were massacred by government troops in a crackdown against dissidents. President Islam Karimov said the dead, many of them unarmed women and children, were “Islamic radicals” and “criminals.” Karimov bans opposition parties, has jailed 6,000 dissidents, and tortures many of them.

Good thing Karimov is on our side in the struggle against evil dictators. Because America takes that democracy shit very seriously.

The arrest of Abu Faraj al-Libbi last week has been hailed by the Washington propaganda machine as “a critical victory in the war on terror”. Bush called him a “top general” and “a major facilitator and chief planner for the Al- Qaeda network”. Condoleezza Rice said he was “a very important figure.” Whoops and backslaps all around, because it looks like the Bush administration finally caught a break after its long streak of worsening news on global terrorism.

Except that they didn’t catch a break, because the guy’s not a major terrorist at all. He didn’t even rate a place on the FBI’s most wanted list. The Bush adminsitration is hyping his arrest because they need a big flashy arrest to distract us from an endless stream of bad news from Iraq and Afghanistan. As to al-Libbi’s absence from the FBI’s most wanted list, a conspicuous omission given that he’s supposed to be the number 3 man in Al Qaeda, the FBI explains it away, with a straight face, thus: “We did not want him to know he was wanted.”

A former close associate of Bin Laden now living in London laughed: “What I remember of him is he used to make the coffee and do the photocopying.”

When he’s our terrorist.

Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative, is wanted in Venezuela for bombing a Cuban airliner in 1976, in which 73 people were killed. Posada Carriles has also boasted of being responsible for a series of bomb attacks on Havana tourist spots in the 1990s. He’s reportedly in the United States seeking asylum, which will put the nominally anti-terrorist Bush administration in a bit of a spot.

If the right-wing political hacks in the Bush administration had any shame or conscience at all, they’d comply with our extradition treaty with Venezuela and send this terrorist to be tried in a court of law. Or, the fact that he’s anti-Castro might get him a Get Out of Jail Free card from the White House. Hell, if Jeb Bush needed votes Posada might even get a pardon.

Perhaps they actually do feel embarrassment, though: State Department official Roger Noriega claims the Bush administration doesn’t know for sure if Posada is in the United States. Uh huh.