I haven’t received anthrax in the mail, but I was busy otherwise - I am in the middle of relocating from Manhattan to a less target-rich environment for the winter - hence the disruption of the Media Watch campaign.
1) Why Taliban do not just give up Bin Laden?
Asking Taliban to extradite/surrender/give-up Osama Bin Laden is like asking US government to surrender Bill Gates. He is rich and important member of Taliban Afghanistan society. I’ve heard the surprised comments in American media that Taliban were not handing over Bin Laden even despite the heavy bombing. But that of course, probably just hardened their resolve. And I don’t believe that anybody at Pentagon seriously believed that Taliban would hand over Bin Laden. Bombing is not aimed to accomplish that. Air strikes just naturally precede the ground offensive.
The introduction of foreign (British SAS and US Rangers) ground forces in Afghanistan, however, produced mixed blessing - it may be the only effective way to extricate Bin Laden out of Afghanistan, but it presents a serious diplomatic obstacle for continuous coalition with Islamic countries, that are highly sensitive on West not letting them handle their internal affairs. But Blair’s hawkishness is not that surprising: after all Middle East is British mess originally - Osama is dating the apparent causes for his terror campaign to 80 years ago, i.e. at the time the US was not yet the pre-emptive hyper-power, and that role was, instead, played by the UK.
2) Why can the US/UK military operation be hardly called a success so far?
Two strategically important cities (Mazar-i-Sharif and Kabul) are still in the hands of Taliban. By holding Mazar-i-Sharif, Taliban virtually split Northern Alliance in two: the Northern part supplied by Russians and the Southern part supplied by Iran, while denying them access to the bridge over Amur Dar to Uzbek city of Termez, where all the Western support waits for them.
Meanwhile the bombing continues:
>From his hilltop village, Afghan Malai watched the two jets swoop low over Karam, three miles away across a valley, reports The Observer: 'They came low over it and then there was a huge explosion and flames reaching high into the air. There was more explosive in these bombs than the ones the Russians used.'
Serious blunders like that by American warplanes may have killed at least 100 civilians in Afghanistan, according to eye-witness accounts obtained by The Observer. Until now Western politicians have been quick to dismiss the claims as propaganda. Britain's International Development Secretary, Clare Short, said 'there had not been so many civilian casualties'. Now apparent confirmation of serious casualties among non-combatants is beginning to emerge.
If the evidence is accurate, an attack on Karam village, 18 miles west of Jalalabad, last Thursday was the most lethal blunder yet by the Allied forces, and will seriously shake the increasingly fragile coalition built by President Bush and Tony Blair (Jason Burke, Peshawar Sunday October 21, 2001, The Observer). To underscore the seriousness of the situation, the United Nations is set to issue an unprecedented appeal to the United States and its coalition allies to halt the war on Afghanistan and allow time for a huge relief operation.
UN sources in Pakistan said growing concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the country - in part, they say, caused by the relentless bombing campaign - has forced them to take the radical step. Aid officials estimate that up to 7.5 million Afghans might be threatened with starvation.
Still, despite US airstrikes, Taliban Radio is back on the air, with some broadcasts trying to offer reassurance to the Afghan public that nothing of importance had been hit, while also accusing the US and Britain of committing "genocide" in Afghanistan. While this sound like Serbian Television in 1999, the emphasis should be on the fact that Taliban Radio is indeed back on the air, while everybody now at least acknowledges civilian casualties. It looks like in this war the ‘collateral damage’ exceeds the targeted damage. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/monitoring/media_reports/newsid _1595000/1595633.stm
3) What makes terrorism superior to conventional warfare?
Terrorism seems to be superior to air-power in terms of military efficiency: it is more precise, causes less unintentional collateral damage, yet it is vastly more debilitating (angst inducing) for the attacked side. Al Qaeda is virtually running out of targets, while the US never even had them to begin with. Missiles hit dirt all over Afghanistan. We saw some undecipherable rubble and heard about large numbers of civilian casualties, while witnessing Taliban announcing with wide grins on their faces that on their side everything was normal and that they felt not at all disturbed by American bombing. And for Al Qaeda headquarters we don’t even know where there are. On the other hand, in the heart of the world’s “leading” democracy, nothing is normal: the House of Representatives and Senate, the Capitol Hill, had to be evacuated. And all it took was a 34 cents postage stamp. Not a million dollar cruise missile.
There is a definite pattern to Osama’s madness: there was no suicide bomber in New York subway, or poisoning of water - the attacks were directed at the military headquarters (Pentagon), financial center (WTC and downtown Manhattan), large media houses (NBC, CBS, etc.) and the political might (Capitol Hill). However, while the attacks were targeted, the methods that were used to convey them caused indiscriminate suffering of innocents. The use of biological agents in particular is by its nature indiscriminate - that’s why it is banned by international conventions - there is no way to say if ten years from now someone somewhere in the States would get infected by anthrax from some spore over-looked in some mail-room where one of those letters passed through.
But more than the end targets - the vehicles used to reach them are targets in themselves - the airplanes, the principal method to foster face- to-face communication in the modern business world, were grounded for a week and the industry never fully recovered. Now the mail - the backbone of business communication - is yet another source of fear. The men with the box-cutters attacked air travel. The anthrax bacteria attacked postal service. In this puzzle, Internet should be next, as a third degree of separation in the means of communication. With communication channels obstructed, business is paralyzed. And it already is.
Than there is the time that is consumed by the events - in media, in policy making, in business, in everyday life of every ordinary person. It seems that 80% of all resources in the US are devoted to coping with this events. And the events came about in time of weakening economy, when recession word was already on everybody’s mouth. Now, instead on working on getting out of recession, everybody is dealing with the war. And the government is, it has to, digging deep in the pockets of the future generations to mend the troubles of today.
On top of that there is the psychological effect of being under the siege (and the US is de facto under siege right now) for a prolonged period of time - particularly for younger generations - which could be conveniently witnessed observing people from the former Yugoslavia or Israel/Palestine. If this war does not end quickly the US is running into a danger of militarization of its society and perpetual re-enactment of stories like this: http://www.badgerherald.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2001/10/15/3bcbdb2 e7efbe "We are not forcing patriotism and not endorsing any religion," Madison resident Monty Clifcorn said. "The United States of America and God are inseparable." - after Madison school board removed a week old ban on reciting the Pledge of Alliance.
Afghanistan or Al Qaeda they don’t have that particular vulnerability, since they are already living in that state even more so than Israel/Palestine or post-Yugoslav societies do. The sooner this war is over the less damaging for the US society it shall be.
4) Media between truth, political correctness and patriotism:
Media already changed - everybody has a ‘dissent’ angle now written in and the radios are playing the questionable songs on purpose (Spreading the Disease by Anthrax, being the most appropriate example) - this is the second stage, when media are relaxing from their earlier posturing in denial and joining the flow (which includes dissent).
Tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators took the streets of London, Berlin, Hamburg today, reported Dutch RTL4 News and NPS Journaal. Both stations had 90 second items on the subject during their prime time newscasts. In the US, in the article Operation Enduring Protest, Liza Featherstone, wrote for <> The Nation on October 19, 2001, the most comprehensive review of the anti-war dissent in the US and abroad, with this capturing moment: “Punk-rock icon Patti Smith--who cut a sexy, stringy-haired spectacle, wearing a blue wool cap, a white T-shirt and non-ironic crucifix--gruffly urged the assembled to "wrestle the world from fools!" Smith saved the gathering from turning into a 1960s flashback (other performers had perpetrated folk songs, including the dead-tired "I Ain't Gonna Study War No More").”
Here is more on anti-war protests in London and Berlin:
http://www.mwaw.org
http://www.friedensini.de
http://www.arbeiterfotografie.com/galerie/reportage/
And then there was the heated discussion (Channel 25, Manhattan) worth of Al Jazeera programming between a representative of PLO in the US (bent on repeating that Palestinians would be satisfied with just 22% of their historic land if Israel agrees to that) and the employee of Israeli embassy, a young rambunctious fellow short on arguments, who failed to convince me in Israel’s righteousness with the claim that Israel indeed returned Sinai to Egypt, although Sinai was three times the size of Israel (this sounded way too much like a Serb nationalist claiming that Serbia allowed Bosnians to have some of their state back, so therefore Karadzic and Mladic should be deemed good guys now).
For the record, aid to Israel and Egypt, while it varies in amount per year, is fixed at a 3-2 ratio, with Israel receiving the higher portion. In addition, much of the aid to Israel is with no strings attached, while aid to Egypt is funneled through USAID et al, meaning a good proportion of it is left in this country or given to U.S. companies working in Egypt. (Anthony Chase, Center for International Studies, University of Chicago)
Still, the levels of censorship in the US are unacceptably high for a free, democratic society - here is the story:
PENTAGON SUPRESSES PUBLIC SATELLITE IMAGES
The Pentagon has spent millions of dollars to prevent the public from seeing civilian satellite pictures of the effects of bombing in Afghanistan, the UK Guardian reported Oct. 17. The images, taken by the company Space Imaging from Ikonos, an advanced private satellite launched in 1999, are the best available to civilians. The decision to shut down access to the images was taken Oct. 11, after reports of heavy civilian casualties from the overnight bombing of training camps near Darunta, northwest of Jalalabad. Instead of invoking its legal powers to exercise "shutter control" over civilian satellites launched from the US, the Pentagon bought exclusive rights to all Ikonos pictures of Afghanistan. The US military does not need the pictures for its own purposes, because it already has seven imaging satellites in orbit. The decision to use commercial rather than legal powers to bar access to the images was criticized by many. Since images of the bombed bases would not have shown the position of US forces or compromised military security, the ban could be challenged by news media as a breach of the First Amendment. The only alternative source of satellite images is the Russian Cosmos system. But Russia has not yet decided to step into the information void created by the Pentagon deal with Space Imaging.
5) Is the English-speaking Empire running a risk of being left holding the bag?
Was that suit with large pink dots that Chinese made Bush (and Putin) wear a synonym for a ‘dunce’s hat’? In Germany the Green Party (Die Gruenen) is in turmoil: the party's leadership backs Bundeskanzler Schroeder's support for America's war on Afghanistan, the traditionally pacifist rank and file are dead against, according to RTL News. And in Berlin the SPD might have to form a coalition with former East German communists - which was the only party in Germany that took a public stand opposing the bombing of Afghanistan. Iran’s Al Khamenei warned the US that bombing of Taliban is dragging the world into war. In South France, high school kids made up a situationist mock protest with slogans like “Long Live Osama” - they were taken in for questioning. They were NOT from Arab immigrant families. And Britain will not extradite terrorist suspects to the US, because the US still has death penalty on the books. New York Mayor Giuliani declined $10M from Saudi prince because the prince said that September 11 events were thanks to US foreign policies - which is perhaps true but rather bold coming from one of the chief benefactors of those policies such as Saudi royalty is. This all puts the “unequivocal” global support of the US war on terrorism into a perspective.
On the other hand - at some places that “support” is taken quite too literally: (New York, October 18, 2001) Claiming the presence of "extremist religious forces," the government of China is suppressing peaceful political and religious activity in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, Human Rights Watch said in a backgrounder released today. Xinjiang, a vast, oil-rich province in China's northwest, is home to 18 million people, some 40 percent of whom are ethnic Uighurs, a Muslim, Turkic-speaking ethnic group, many of whom advocate independence from Beijing. The alleged links of Uighur separatists to the al-Qaeda terrorist network is likely to be a topic of discussion at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shanghai this weekend, where President Bush has put anti-terrorism efforts high on the agenda.
Meanwhile at other places things are slowly slipping out of control:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/default.stm
Thursday, 18 October, 2001, 11:33 GMT 12:33 UK
Nato warning to Macedonia
Nato has given its strongest warning yet to the Macedonian authorities about their delay in ratifying the deal to end the conflict with ethnic Albanian rebels. The alliance's secretary general, George Robertson, said on arrival in Macedonia on Thursday that the delays could lead to renewed violence, and were preventing the return of thousands of refugees.
6) And what happens when the bombing stops?
As in the game of musical chairs, one participant will remain unseated when the music stops. There is no question that the US would win the war - because ultimately, in the long run, the winning of wars depends on availability of resources, and ability to adapt (development of new technologies) - and eventually the US can come up with new vaccines faster than Al Qaeda may come up with new diseases - but there is a question whether the US would be the same after such a victory, or would it be damaged, or, maybe, would it be more mature?
Osama is very media conscious - having “actor’s awareness of the lens,” and being “a man of homoerotic narcissism” (John Le Carre, The Globe and Mail, 10/13/01) - everything that he did so far was aimed to be a media spectacle: the World Trade Center obsession, the two simultaneous embassies bombed, the USS Cole, the Pentagon, anthrax - nothing is an end in itself, all is done for a spectacle of terror.
Osama is, also, right about the treatment of the Arab world by the ‘great powers.’ The talk about injustice and humiliation does have historic grounds. The massive killing of civilians in Iraq, coupled with economic sanctions and relentless years of bombing is not just. The US uncritical support of Israel is offensive. And the fact that the ‘great powers’ did everything to prevent the development of modern states in the Arab world is overwhelmingly sad.
But Osama is not messiah he wants his followers believe he is: his real motives are more down to Earth and ultimately of equally imperialist nature as the motives are of those whom he declared his enemies. As the recent literature Nobel prize winner V. S. Naipaul once wrote: “Islamic fundamentalism is imperialist.” What we essentially now witness is the fight over the control of the largest reserves of the most important natural resource for the modern world: OIL.
The oil economy is a demand-side economy - since the largest consumer/importer (the U.S.) dictates the price and the pace of consumption/production - while the suppliers are kept divided and quarreling in their late baroque style; Bin Laden wants to change this to supply-side economy (even setting once the price at $144 a barrel - roughly 5 times the going price) by uniting the Arab world under his dadaist flag. The US is too dependent on the road and air traffic (that consumes oil) - everybody has a car, that’s the botched, polluting American way of life - and that makes the US highly vulnerable to the eventually competing oil-supplier empire.
While every decade the US manages to decrease its oil imports from the Middle East in an effort to prevent suppliers dictate (now its at about the 1/4 of all imports), in a long run this is not the solution, since Middle East is blessed with 2/3 of world’s oil reserves - i.e. even when other wells will go dry, the Mid-East oil will still flow. And when the US found a way around Mid-East oil - trying to tap into the second largest reserves at the Caspian oil basin, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Bin Laden moved to Afghanistan, trying to lay a claim to that oil there, too.
The Chevron angle and the Caspian oil:
The spread of Islamic fundamentalist insurgency north from Afghanistan threatens the rich oil resources of the Caspian Basin, which multinational corporations hope to massively exploit in the 21st century. The key contract was signed between Kazakhstan and Chevron in 1994, granting the company a stake in all oil development there (RFE Newsline, Sept. 3, 1999). Chevron has increased its stake since then by buying out more of Kazakhstan's shares, and now holds a 50% share (ibid, May 22, 2000). Chevron has also formed a partnership with Shell and Mobil to build a pipeline connecting the Kazakhstan oilfields to Baku, Azerbaijan, and then via Turkey to Western markets (Dec. 10, 1998). The Chevron-led partnership is competing with the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, a Russia- Kazakhstan-Oman joint venture which is developing a pipeline route through Russia (March 12, 1996).
Vice President Dick Cheney helped broker the Chevron-Kazakhstan deal when he sat on the Kazakhstan Oil Advisory Board in the mid-'90s (Amarillo Globe-News, June 13, 1998). Chevron also has one former corporate board member in the Bush Administration--National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, whose financial disclosure statement indicates she held at least $250,000 in Chevron stock and had income of more than $555,000 last year (Florida Sun-Sentinel, June 3, 2001; Dec. 18, 2000). Chevron even has a Bahamas-registered tanker named the Condoleezza Rice (www.usmm.org/socalships.html).
Another vulnerability: Houston Ship Channel - 45 feet deep, 520 feet wide, dug through the shallow Galveston bay, serves the largest port in the US in foreign water-bound commerce and the largest petrochemical complex in the US (2nd in the world) - for example: Condoleeza sunk sideways in that channel would seriously disturb oil supply to this country.
7) Anecdotal evidence:
Alternatives to the US foreign policy:
http://ios.org/pubs/iosj_art_rethinking_foreign_policy.asp
Why would it be better to kill Osama than to capture him alive (answered by The New York Times)?
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/22/national/22LEGA.html
>From colonel Qaddafi: The Libyan government has had an international warrant out for the arrest of Osama Bin Laden and some accomplices years longer than the USA, charging him with the murder of a German secret policeman and his wife. So, Qadaffi would have the right to try Osama before Americans do, in event Osama gets caught alive.
Try to smoke out Osama out of his cave:
http://www.gotlaughs.com/funpages/bin2.cfm
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Rebuilding done at Raccoon Space:
http://balkansnet.org/wtc-kids.html
>From NYC Mayoral elections: in our remaining high-rise democracy we have Marijuana Reform Party, American Dream party, Green candidates for Mayor and a Libertarian guy who lists “street smart” under his educational background. Much better voting choices that the US presidential elections last year.
>From the 2001 Hamptons International Film Festival:
This year the Festival had a conflict & resolution category showing 26 short films from or about former Yugoslavia. In a documentary by Zvonimir Juric, The Fortress, about the old fortress in the city of Osijek, one young man is describing the first action taken in Croatia against the Yugoslav Army: taking over the Osijek military infirmary by 8 young Croats who didn’t even had firearms at that time. He said that he was sad that nobody remembers that date: it was September 11, 1991. Well, I think everybody now remembers that date...
From Internet:
Now, the real kicker: A pilot they want us to believe was trained at a Florida puddle-jumper school for Piper Cubs and Cessnas, conducts a well-controlled downward spiral, descending the last 7,000 feet in two- and-a-half minutes, brings the plane in so low and flat that it clips
the electrical wires across the street from the Pentagon, and flies it with pinpoint accuracy into the side of this building at 460 nauts. When the theory about learning to fly this well at the puddle-jumper school began to lose ground, it was added that they received further training on a flight simulator. This is like saying you prepared your teenager for her first drive on I-40 at rush hour by buying her a video driving game.
From Canada:
They have looked upon the most affluent and overweight people in the world, seen softness and
not understood that underneath, there is iron and resolve and unfathomable will. They have seen the startling diversity of race and religion and ethnicity and heard the cacophony of voices in that
remarkable country, and failed to grasp that beneath the heart of every hyphenated American,
there rages the heart of an American, period.
* Christie Blatchford [National Post (a Canadian national newspaper), September 12, 2001]
>From L. Farrakhan (Nation of Islam) - again, I haven’t seen him in American media after September 11, but new issue of The Economist has a short article on himself:
“Timothy McVeigh’s behavior was unChristianlike, and, those who perpetrated this crime against America, their conduct was absolutely unMuslimlike. In the Holy Qur’an, God teaches us, "Let not hatred of a people incite you to act unjustly." While this is good counsel from God for the Muslims, it is also good counsel for Christians and Jews and the President of the United States of America and the American people. The Qur’an admits that some of us will be hateful of others, but Allah demands that we let not hatred of any people cause us to act unjustly. The hatred that deprived these human beings of their sanity and their humanity is based on something far deeper. I heard Colin Powell, our Secretary of State, say that we’re going to rip up these cells of terrorism and we will seek them out and hunt them down wherever they’re found; and I heard a female general, General Kennedy, on television say yesterday, "we’re not interested in capturing Osama bin Laden and taking this through any court. We want the head of this viper and all of those who are like him."
These people are talking about violating international law, violating any law that will impede them from their pursuit. If Osama bin Laden were presented to the American people on a slab, this would not suffice the blood lust that this terrible tragedy has unleashed in America.
As our Secretary of State said that we will rip up these nests of terrorists, I appeal to the President and I appeal to the Secretary of State to take the courage to look at the foreign policy of our nation. If it is our foreign policy that has produced this danger and hatred toward America, as you go into such a war, we have to ask ourselves, what have we done to produce this? Not the American people, not the soldiers that are in the armed forces of America, but what have the policy makers of this country done to produce this?
I have gone all over this world preaching atonement, reconciliation, and responsibility, and into every nation into which I have gone, I have not found people hating the people of America. Whenever they speak disparagingly of this country, they speak of America’s foreign policy, policies that are made that the American people know nothing about. I sincerely hope and I pray that the policymakers of this nation, who have made policy based on corporate greed, I would hope that this terrible tragedy would cause the policy makers of our nation to look again at how we formulate foreign policy.”
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