TERRORISM: BLOOD AND OIL -leaflet

TERRORISM: BLOOD AND OIL

As you read these two pages, please try to suspend your belief that the reason we are engaged in bombing, shelling, and decimating Afghanistan is to redress our terrible September 11th injury.

All agree that terrorists must be found and removed from society, and that the roots of terrorism must be understood and eliminated. But is war in Afghanistan, where both the innocent and the accused are terrorized and killed, a reasonable response? Are we engaged in a battle against terrorism (as we are told), or was our September 11 injury used to justify a monetarily based course of action planned years ago? If we find that military action is fundamentally immoral and further compromises our peace and security, what are effective responses that can bring criminals to justice and lead us to peace?
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OUR PRIMARY SOURCES OF INFORMATION

The broadcast and print media that packages and delivers the information we use to form and justify our opinions is wholly owned by a small set of very large corporations. These corporations are in turn tied to military and industrial interests, either directly via defense contracts (GE/Westinghouse), or indirectly via market forces. It was former President General Dwight D. Eisenhower who first gave this country warning that the “military/industrial complex” was an evolving and dangerous worldwide monster.

The broadcast media and major newspaper chains throughout our country were deregulated over the past decade. Since that time previously independent radio and TV stations, newspapers, and magazines have come to be owned by a very few powerful multinational corporations including General Electric, Viacom / Westinghouse, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., Disney Corp., Time/Warner/AOL, and Bertelsmann Corporation. Public radio station KQED-FM and public television station KQED-TV are now openly sponsored and directly influenced by oil, gas, and agra-chemical multinational corporations.

OIL AND AFGHANISTAN

On February 12, 1998, John J. Maresca, Vice President, International Relations for Unocal Oil Corporation, testified before the US House of Representatives, Committee on International Relations. There, Maresca provided information on Central Asian oil and gas reserves located under the Caspian Sea, and on a proposed oil pipeline to deliver that product to market. Maresca outlined how US foreign policy should be reshaped to enable construction of that pipeline. (Maresca’s comments were published on the US House of Representatives website: http://www.house.gov/international_relations/105th/ap/wsap212982.htm.)

Maresca estimated that a pipeline across (you guessed it) Afghanistan and through Pakistan to the Arabian Sea would increase oil profits dramatically:

“By 2010, Western companies could increase production to about 4.5 million barrels a day (Mb/d) -- an increase of more than 500 percent in only 15 years. If this occurs, the region would represent about five percent of the world's total oil production, and almost 20 percent of oil produced among non-OPEC countries.”

He unabashedly went on to explain how such a pipeline could be built in war-torn Afghanistan:

“The territory across which the pipeline would extend is controlled by the Taliban, an Islamic movement that is not recognized as a government by most other nations. From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of our proposed pipeline cannot begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders and our company.”

It is only over the past few years, since Unocal declared that construction of its pipeline would require elimination of the difficult and unstable Afghan government, that the US public was introduced to Osama bin Laden, and to the Taliban.

Whatever underlies the hatred that enabled the suicide terrorists to attack with such inhumanity, the question must be asked: Was our response in Afghanistan pre-written? Were there money based interests waiting for a triggering event?

The children of Afghanistan, along with the elderly, the infirm, and the long-suffering Afghani women are dying in terror as you read this paper. Their terror and their deaths are being delivered in our name with US weapons of mass destruction and, to date, with our blessings. Is the war in Afghanistan a response to terrorism on our soil or merely a cover story for a planned, enormously profitable oil and gas pipeline across that war-torn land?


There Is An Alternative...
JUSTICE NOT VENGENENCE

Published: 10/1/01 in “The Madison Capital Times.”
Republished: <http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1002-06.htm>http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1002-06.htm

Alternatives to War Will Work Best in Long Run
by Gerda Lerner

As of Sept. 11, terror has entered our lives.

Now we have to live like the rest of the world, within the grasp of absolute evil, and nothing will ever be quite the same. Insecurity, fear and a sense of helplessness have become part of the air we breathe. Our leaders, with rare and alarming unanimity, are directing our feelings toward anger and the seeking of revenge.

War is presented to us as the only possible solution and the nation is urged to prepare for a long and costly conflict with uncertain outcome.

Yes, terrorism must be fought with tenacity, endurance and a variety of economic and social policies. Swift and relentless police action against terrorists must be pursued and the guilty must be brought to justice.

But in the process, we must be mindful of the danger of becoming terrorists ourselves. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," was the doctrine of incessantly warring tribes prior to the existence of states. It was superseded once the reign of laws was instituted in human society. Evoking it now is both futile and dangerous. If there is one thing to be learned from the contemporary Arab/Israeli conflict, it is that terror countered by terror only leads to more terror.

The United States has used force, overwhelming military power, international sanctions and years of targeted bombing missions, but Saddam Hussein is as firmly in power in Iraq as ever he was.

This is the time for peaceful alternatives to military responses. Let me propose a beginning:

President Bush's call for a worldwide coalition against terrorism will have a far better chance of success if it is combined with strong efforts to enhance and strengthen the United Nations. Our credibility as leaders of the world community has been deeply compromised by our disregard of the United Nations, our abrogation of or failure to sign international treaties and our announced willingness to go it alone. Therefore we should at once:

Pay our long-overdue dues of $2.3 billion to the United Nations.

Sign the U.N. treaties against genocide, the treaty banning land mines, the treaties banning nuclear and biological weapons.

Strengthen the International Court and pledge to bring all terrorists we can capture under its jurisdiction.

Unless we attack the causes of worldwide terrorism, our capture of a few of its leaders will be an empty victory. One of the major breeding grounds for terrorism has been the existence of refugee camps in which whole populations linger for one or more generations, without outlet, without education, without hope.

We must launch a worldwide campaign under U.N. auspices for the resettlement of refugee populations, with special emphasis on the education and training and the eventual useful employment of young men.

After World War II, the Marshall Plan and U.S.-supported peaceful economic reconstruction turned our fierce enemies, Germany and Japan, into reliable friends within one generation. Allocating some of the vast resources of the U.S. government and of private corporations to the creation of targeted projects for the relief of poverty, droughts and illiteracy in areas which are now breeding grounds for hatred of the United States will bring better long-range results than military action.

The strength of our democracy lies in our Constitution, its Bill of Rights and the long tradition of governmental checks and balances. Let us keep democracy alive by vigorous debate and discourse, by the careful weighing of various alternatives, rather than by a blind and automatic rallying around the president. The decisions made by politicians in the next few weeks and months may affect the lives and resources of the American people for years to come. Let us all be part of the process of decision-making, and let those who claim leadership show it by coming up with alternatives to war.

Gerda Lerner is emerita professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Copyright 2001 The Capital Times