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Why The Surprise?: "I Want To Be A Pilot So That One Day I Can Bomb Americans!"

by Rick Giombetti Thursday, Sep. 13, 2001 at 4:30 PM
rickjgio@speakeasy.org Seattle

Who saw it coming?

There is nothing more ridiculous than listening to people express "shock" and "surprise" at the multiple airplane hijackings and terror attacks on September 11. I'm surprised an attack against the U.S. of this magnitude hasn't happened sooner. One nation can only treat the world as a slave plantation and its peoples as slaves for so long, before the slaves finally rise up. There isn't a region of the world the U.S. hasn't pillaged and raped to some degree over the past 150 years. In a world with 6 billion people, there are always going to be a few who resort to individual and group terrorism to protest the policies of a global empire like the U.S.

Could there have been a better selection of targets to protest U.S. financial hegemony and military violence? First, it was Scam Central: The two 110-story World Trade Center towers, the most prominent symbols of U.S. multinational corporate capitalism. Then it was Violence Central: The Pentagon, home of the badly misnamed Department of "Defense." These attacks are being called "cowardly" by U.S. politicians and media pundits. Cowardly? Compared to the U.S. pilots who dropped bombs from over 15,000 ft. above Serbia for 78 days in 1999, safely out of the range of Serb gunners on the ground and against a nation with no air force to counter the U.S.? I don't think so.

"What balls," is all I have to say. These terror attackers risked being caught and possibly beaten and tortured while in custody. They sacrificed themselves in what may have been the boldest terror attacks in history. And who has ever turned airplanes into bombs for taking out office towers and government buildings? Yeah, it was a group of mean fuckers who did what they did on September 11, but they sure as hell weren't cowards.

Don't get me wrong. I despise individual and group terrorism not only because it causes loss of life. It also represents the ultimate rejection of mass struggle. Now the job of well-meaning U.S. activists just got a whole hell of a lot harder. We can expect some more Bill of Rights shredding legislation and more violent crackdowns on protest because of the terror attacks. We can also expect people to not want to hear peace activist's demands for an end to the destructive and violent policies of the U.S. all over the world. "Show some respect for the victims and victim's families," some people will tell us. If now isn't the time to demand an end to U.S.-backed violence around the world, then when will it be a good time to do so? With the U.S. government preparing(and most likely already carrying out) a fresh round of bombings around the world in retaliation for the terror attacks, now isn't time to be quiet about U.S. violence against defenseless people. The eleven year U.S.-led war of bombs from the air and

draconian sanctions via the U.N. against the people or Iraq is just one example of the kinds of policies we shouldn't back down from denouncing.

When I was still living Fort Collins, Colorado two years ago I attended a talk by the wonderful peace activist Kathy Kelly of Voices In The Wilderness(VITW). VITW has been campaigning against the bombing and U.S. imposed sanctions regime against the people of Iraq for about a decade now. VITW has courageously and openly defied U.S. government enforcement of the unjust U.N. sanctions by smuggling badly needed humanitarian aid into Iraq over the past decade. Kelly offered the small audience who came to see her speak that October evening a chilling anecdote about an Iraqi boy she met while making one of her many humanitarian tours of Iraq. The single digit aged boy described to a crowd at a gathering what he wanted to be when he grew up. He said, "I want to be a pilot so that one day I can bomb Americans!"

That anecdote has haunted me ever since and I knew it was only a matter of time before that angry Iraqi boy's apocalyptic wish would come true. It's a chilling sentiment but it's completely understandable. The only world that poor Iraqi boy and countless other children his age have ever known, if said boy is even alive today, is one of U.S. bombings and sanction's imposed misery. Yet this pre-adolescent boy is(was?) sophisticated enough to figure out that it's the U.S. government that is ordering the bombings and imposing the devastating sanctions against his country, not Saddam Husein. Perhaps it's time for the majority of the U.S. adult population to match this Iraqi boy's sophistication and start demanding that their government end the bombings and the sanctions regime.

The combination of bombings and sanctions has led to a death toll in Iraq over the past decade that easily tops 1 million. I haven't seen much, if any, concern in the mass media about this horrible U.S. caused suffering in Iraq. This is the same mass media that treated the intense six week bombing campaign against Iraq at the begining of 1991 like it was a video game where no Iraqis were being injured or killed(talk about disrepecting the victims of massive military violence!). The bombings have never stopped. Yet about the only time the media covers new bombings is when the president is looking for a boost in his poll numbers and holds a press conference after the fresh round of bombing begins.

The sanctions aren't even a topic of debate in the mass media. Try to find some commentary anywhere about Thomas Nagy's September Progressive article, which demonstrates how the U.S. government intentionally used the U.N. sanctions against Iraq to degrade the country's water supply. Meanwhile, peace activists like Kathy Kelly are hardly mainstays in the media pundit circus. However, every time a U.S. president orders bombings of countries like Iraq or Serbia the mass media gives plenty of airtime to retired military officers for the purpose of fanning the flames of war.

Now peace activists are going to be asked to shut their mouths about U.S. violence around the world out of respect for the thousands of victims of the September 11 terror attacks. What a bunch of bullshit. I say, honor the memory of the victims of September 11: Denounce and oppose U.S. violence everywhere.

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feeling numb

by Michael Thursday, Sep. 13, 2001 at 4:49 PM

I imagine that many will have a difficult time in reading the

above post but I thought it was very well written. It seems

what with all the emotions stirred up by the events of the

other day folks are quick to condem any kind of analysis as

tantamount to idetification with the suicide bombers. Such

a failure of logic makes me feel numb.

I admit to feeling a little

numb but not the kind of numb shock most of my

fellow Americans are feeling. I'm feeling numb that the US

continues to bomb Iraq some ten years after the supposed

war to liberate Kuwait. I feel numb because it was US

built cruise missiles that rained down on Bosnia killing

countless civilians and destroying a Chinese embassy, all

in the name of restoring order. I still numb from the

invasion of Greneda, Panama, and the mining of the harbors

of Nicaragua. In the face of all this numbness I took the

horrible destruction yesterday in stride, even as I have

many friends in Manhattan who were terribly effected. I am

not as callous as I sound. I repeat, the events of

yesterday were horrible and tragic. But they were also

inevitable. To say this aloud in this country is somehow

understood as tantamount to identification with the suicide

bombers. I hope you understand this is not true. I may be

able to understand the helplessness and hopelessness that

drove people to that desperate act without having to

applaud the act. Unfortunately the media in this country

has gone into overdrive whipping up peoples emotions at a

particularly vulnerable time. Many people are eager to

suspend civil liberties in the interest of 'security', as

you might expect nothing less from a country that imprisons

a greater percentage of its population than any other. The

theme of the day is not 'why' but 'who', not where is the

justice but when is the retribution. There is no hope for

us as long as what passes for discourse settles into this

dead end. We are bound to replicate the same actions, the

same policies, which incurred the wrath of the suicide

bombers in the first place.

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Stop The Cheering

by Tanya Thursday, Sep. 13, 2001 at 5:26 PM
hothead@vividnet.com

Yesterday we saw images of the Palestinians cheering in the streets. And people here asked "how could they?" I have never been in that situation, but I assume that if you have been bombarded by a US-backed oppressor for years and years then you would be cheering too. What a sense of revenge those people must feel.

Then people here said, "they should stop." And I agree, stop cheering in the streets, Palestine. But I want those people to stop cheering, not because I don't think they have the right to cheer, but because they're making it easier for the US to justify coming and bombing them directly.

The purpose of showing us those images to a nation just beginning to grapple with such grief and shock, can only be to encourage US citizens to support a Bush-led strike against anyone who may or may not be involved in yesterday's terrorist attacks.

And believe me, when the US military strikes, and thousands and thousands of innocent civilians in that "terrorist-harboring country" are dead under the equivalent of 210 stories of rubble, the survivors of that country will be shown images of US people dancing and cheering in the streets, and asking "how could they?"

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The day that the CIA killed Americans

by Anti-capitalism Thursday, Sep. 13, 2001 at 10:44 PM

We must understand that the US was involved indirectly in the attacks yesterday. Sure the hijackers were part most likely (nothing sure)to Mid-East radical muslim groups but were "enabled" to carry out their attacks. It is virtually impossible to hijack 4 air planes simultaneously in any case I have some problems believing that. Also how on earth could some of these individuals who lived in the US for a while now not be monitored by the FBI and CIA, come on these agencies knew about them don't you think that anyone originating from the Mid-East is not being monitored by intelligence upon arrival in the USA ! With the ever growing state paranoia and surveillance by police such large scale attacks are impossible without the collusion of the state.

Some people will say that this is far fetched but it is not, islamic terrorism plays into the hands of our western governments. The evil forces that drive capitalism are ready to just about anything to protect their inhumane system. And by the ways what do some towers in NYC and a part of the Pentagon hurt the forces of evil in any substantial way, zippo ! Absolutely nothing besides the deaths of several low key CEOs and other of their pawns, besides I would be curious to know if any of the biggest guns of US capitalism were in the WTC yesterday ? I'm sure that they were for some reasons absent...

The only thing that these attacks will do is expand the state's efforts in order to smash furthermore the anti-globalization in all occidental countries, create a war in the Mid-East while pushing us their global neo-liberal agenda down our throats ! S11 the day the CIA started killing Americans by the thousands. These people are the most twisted and evil minded demons of this world !

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the art of war

by Hold bush responsible Thursday, Sep. 13, 2001 at 10:49 PM

Tanya, let's analogize the politics to domestic violence. if you participate in domestic violence both you and your spouse will go to jail once the police arrive under most state's laws.

If you should happen not to fight back but simply see the escalation, call the police, the aggressor who inflicted the marks of injury goes to jail.

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Bush's poor media spin

by Michael Friday, Sep. 14, 2001 at 3:31 AM
//

While I understand the kind of paranoia that spawns the above post where it was implied that the US was complicit in the acts of terror (I am subject to this same paranoia myself), it seems odd to me that President George II appeared so ill prepared to respond at first. I mean if there were intentions to spin the days events into war mongering immediately then they could have been better prepared with a more volatile speech and some pretty graphics reveling details of his plan for retribution. Now that would have made him look more 'in control', at least in the eyes of his few admirers. Instead the President got on a plane that headed for a secure area and later they had to make up some sorry ass excuse about a credible threat to his life to justify actions which most Americans viewed as rather cowardly. Eventually he managed to return to Washington and tour the ruins of the Pentagon and restore his good name among the flag waving hysterics, but for a while there his poor performance was touch and go. Not that he won't rise to occasion and lash out at some hapless scapegoat when he has a chance to collect both thoughts and advisors, but the point is you can't overestimate how much these huge egos hate looking bad. If he knew something about the plan he surely would have been more cunningly prepared. This is what leaves me to believe that the US may not have been involved in the suicide bombings.

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