Socialist Action /July 2002
U.S. Phony War on Terror: Iraq Invasion
Threat, Afghanistan Murder
By GERRY FOLEY
Although the U.S. war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan has now
faded into history, Washington's airborne terrorism against the Afghan people
is still continuing.
On July 1, American planes blew away a wedding party in the village of
Kakarak. Official estimates of the number killed were about 40. Most were
women and children.
Symptomatically, this massacre came at the same time that a plan for
a massive U.S. invasion and air assault on Iraq was leaked to the press.
Such an attack, if actually carried out, could unleash a veritable holocaust
Whether U.S. rulers have the capacity and the determination to carry
out such an operation or not, the leaking of such a plan could only be intended
to intimidate. And for the sake of intimidation, a show of ruthlessness
can be considered useful.
Furthermore, the slaughter in Kakarak was only the latest of a series
of U.S. terrorist atrocities against Afghani civilians, supposedly errors
of the U.S. military, which, as a British Guardian report claimed,
is getting a reputation for "shooting first and asking questions later."
The first U.S. air atrocity since the collapse of the Taliban was in
mid-December, when American planes blew away a convoy carrying tribespeople
to the inauguration of Hamid Karzai, Washington's protegé. It turned
out that the bombing was at the behest of a local warlord who had a grievance
against the nomadic group traveling in the convoy. Some 60 tribesmen were
reported killed, and 40 injured.
Then in January, U.S. planes bombed another group, killing 21 people,
all of whom the U.S. military later had to admit had nothing to do with
al Qaeda or the Taliban.
The Kakarak holocaust forced the Karzai government for the first time
to criticize U.S. military operations. Foreign Minister Abdullah was quoted
in the London Independent as saying:
"This situation has to come to an end. Mistakes can take place,
human errors are possible, but our people should be assured that every measure
was taken to avoid such incidents." He went on to warn against the
danger that "enemies of peace and stability in Afghanistan" could
exploit such incidents to rally opposition to the Karzai government.
Ironically, the latest act of U.S. air terrorism came only a few weeks
after The New York Times published a report noting: "Classified
investigations of the Qaeda threat now under way at the F.B.I. and the C.I.A.
have concluded that the war in Afghanistan failed to diminish the threat
to the United States, the officials said. Instead, the war might have complicated
counterterrorism efforts by dispersing potential attacks across a wider
geographic area."
Socialist Action argued at the onset of the Afghan war that a
full-scale military campaign could not be expected to be effective against
the sort of network of small groups represented by al Qaeda. Now, the U.S.
authorities themselves have confirmed that.
But if the war, with its enormous human and material costs, was not an
effective response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the U.S., what
was its purpose? It could only have been to intimidate the restive peoples
of Third World countries kept in poverty and desperation by imperialist
domination.
If your purpose is to instill fear, obviously there is correspondingly
less reason to be careful about "collateral damage." It is for
the sake of intimidation, obviously, that Washington is continuing the slaughter
in Afghanistan, when it is having to admit that its war there was not effective
against its supposed enemy, al Qaeda.
But now its own protegé government in Kabul is warning the United
States that intimidation can turn into provocation. This could touch off
reactions that even the world's greatest military power may not find so
easy to check.
Socialist Action /July 2002 |