Socialist Action /May 1999
Commentary by Mumia Abu Jamal: NATO/U.S.
Out of Yugoslavia!
As a deadly rain of high-tech bombs falls on Yugoslavia, a deadening
rain of propaganda falls on Americans, media-manipulated lies designed to
prime the populace into supporting harsher military measures against a sovereign
nation, in the name of protecting human rights.
NATO is but a fig leaf for American "interests," and the bombing
of Yugoslavia is but a global demonstration of the ruthlessness of the American
empire.
A demonstration? The monstrous atomic bombing of Japan, after it was
virtually beaten in World War II, was not a military necessity but a political
one, designed to demonstrate to the Russians that the U.S. was, and would
ever be, boss. It was a massive, deadly demonstration.
So too, the Yugoslavia bombing treats Serbs as the U.S. treated Japanese
during the war-as props to demonstrate the power of the empire.
Let us consider the claims that the U.S. is concerned about "human
rights" or about the "rights of ethnic minorities," as the
corporate press projects hourly. What of America's largest national minority-African
Americans?
The world-respected Amnesty International group, speaking through its
secretary general, Pierre Sane, announced just days before the bombing,
"Human-rights violations in the United States of America are persistent,
widespread, and appear to disproportionately affect people of racial or
ethnic minority backgrounds."
Sane was critical of police violence and executions in the U.S. Further,
internationally, let's see how the U.S. responds to "liberation movements"
of the oppressed. When fighters for Puerto Rican independence began to raise
their voices, the U.S. didn't support this "ethnic minority,"
they sought (and continue) to crush, incarcerate, and silence them.
Consider the case of the Palestinians, the Kurds, the East Timorese,
the Colombian rebels-who has the U.S. consistently supported, the oppressed
or the U.S.-armed governments?
This isn't about "human rights." It isn't about "ethnic
minorities." And it also isn't about "genocide." It's about
establishing who's "boss" in the next century. It's about keeping
Russia in its place. It's about keeping the European Union under the thumb
of Wall Street.
The bombing of Serbia is an echo of the bombing of three other countries
in the past six months-of Iraq, Sudan, and Afghanistan. And for precisely
the same reason-to show it can be done, no matter what so-called "international
law" states. It is to instill terror throughout the world, in order
for U.S. capital to institute what former president George Bush tried to
do, but failed: establish a New World Order.
Days before the bombing, NATO signed up Poland, Hungary, and the former
Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) as its newest members, thereby virtually
isolating Russia. Only Serbia and the Yugoslav states have refused to join
NATO-their bombing is their punishment.
Our brilliant, revered nationalist leader, Malcolm X, taught us to examine
history. If we look at history, the bombing of Yugoslavia becomes clear.
Empires are maintained, not by reason, but by ruthless terror. It was
so in Rome. It is so in the U.S.
The brilliant revolutionary, Dr. Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black
Panther Party, explained, "The United States was no longer a nation.
We called it an empire. An empire is a nation-state that has transformed
itself into a power controlling all the world's lands and people."
(1973)
Huey was right then, and our response then was to oppose the empire.
We must do that now.
Down with imperialism! Stop the bombing, NATO/U.S. out of Yugoslavia!
© MAJ 1999
Socialist Action /May 1999 |