• Greg's parents, Phyllis and Orlando Rodriguez
  - Our son Greg is among the many missing from the World Trade Center attack... our government is heading in the direction of violent revenge, with the prospect of sons, daughters, parents, friends in distant lands dying, suffering, and nursing further grievances against us. It is not the way to go. It will not avenge our son's death... Let us grieve. Let us reflect and pray. Let us think about a rational response that brings real peace and justice to our world.
  (from an unpublished letter to the New York Times)

• Deora's parents, Derril Bodley and Deborah Borza
  - We must not retaliate in kind as if our cause allows us to... Let this passing be a start of a new conversation that is all-inclusive, tolerant of people's beliefs, that includes everyone's God, that includes everyone of color and provides a future for all mankind to live and harmony and respect.
  (from the 9/22 SF Chronicle. Deora died on flight 93 in Pennsylvania.)

• Craig's wife, Amber Amundson
  - My husband, Craig Scott Amundson, of the U.S. Army lost his life in the line of duty at the Pentagon on Sept. 11 as the world looked on in horror and disbelief. Losing my 28-year-old husband and father of our two young children is a terrible and painful experience. His death is also part of an immense national loss and I am comforted by knowing that so many of you share my grief. But because I have lost Craig as part of this historic tragedy, my anguish is compounded exponentially by fear that his death will be used to justify violence against other innocent victims. I have heard angry rhetoric by some Americans, including many of our nation's leaders... Your words and imminent acts of revenge only amplify our family's suffering...
  (from a letter published in the 9/25 Chicago Tribune)

• Abe's nephew, Matthew Lasar
  - In his speech at the National Cathedral memorial service, President Bush praised an unnamed man "who could have saved himself" but instead "stayed until the end at the side of his quadriplegic friend." On Sept. 27, Lasar spoke publicly: That man was my uncle, Abe Zeimanowitz. I mourn the death of my uncle, and I want his murderers brought to justice. But I am not making this statement to demand bloody vengeance... I do not feel that my uncle's compassionate, heroic sacrifice will be honored by what the U.S. appears poised to do.
  (from a 9/27 advisory by the Institute for Public Accuracy.)

Around the World, Lift Every Voice
(From the Oct. 2001 "Citizen's Watch" newsletter from Tri-Valley CAREs.)

• UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan
  - Making progress in the areas of nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament is more important than ever in the aftermath of last week's appalling terrorist attack on the United States. The States Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) agreed last year that this challenge could not be overcome by halfway measures. Indeed, they concluded that "the total elimination of nuclear weapons is the only absolute guarantee against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons." Regrettably, several important treaties aimed at nuclear non-proliferation, nuclear disarmament or nuclear reductions still await entry into force. It is vitally important for the world community to continue its efforts to implement the commitments already made and to further identify the ways and means of achieving nuclear disarmament as soon as possible.
  (from a 9/17 message to the International Atomic Energy Agency.)

• Statement of the Afghan Women's Mission
  - [W]e strongly urge the United States government and its allies not to carry out military attacks on Afghanistan in retaliation for these violent acts. Afghanistan is a country devastated by more than two decades of war... When the fundamentalist Taliban regime took over most of Afghanistan in 1996, the situation only worsened for Afghans... Afghans have been suffering the results of extreme war, poverty, disease, hunger, lack of education, health care and shelter for too long, Afghans comprise the second largest refugee group in the world today... To attack Afghanistan now would be to attack a weak and defenseless people.
  (from a 9/13 press release.)

• Nobel Peace Laureate and co-founder of Peace People, Maired Corrigan Maguirre, Northern Ireland
  - We understand the depth of feelings of loss and pain but we would appeal that there be no retaliation. Violence serves no purpose. Violence solves no problems. Retaliation would mean the future deaths of many more people. This would, in turn, add to an increasing sense of fear, anxiety, and hopelessness, being felt around the world.
  (from a 9/12 statement.)

• Professor of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University in Pakistan, Pervez Hoodbhoy
  - If the lesson is that America needs to assert its military might, then the future will be as grim as can be... Ultimately, the security of the United States lies in its re-engaging with the people of the world, especially with those it has previously harmed.
  (from Black Tuesday: The View From Islamabad 9/16.)

• Amnesty International statement
  - Governments must take strong action against racist attacks directed at the Muslim, Asian and Middle Eastern populations in their countries, whether they are citizens or foreigners. You cannot claim to speak in the name of freedom if those on your territory do not feel equally protected. Governments are using the "war on terrorism" to introduce draconian measures to limit civil liberties... they must be resisted.
  (from the 9/26 statement of the international secretariat.)

• The Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, speaking from India
  -While I express my sympathy, I have appealed to the U.S. president not to respond with more violence as violence is not an appropriate answer... Only nonviolent means can counter terrorism in the long-term.
  (from Reuters news service 9/17.)

• Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, USA
  - The Pope has called for "peaceful negotiations and dialogue" in the current crisis... Some have rushed to portray us who are opposed to the Bush administration's plans as naive and lacking realism. But... it is we who are the realists and those who would rush to war and escalate the cycle of violence are completely out of touch with reality and the lessons of history.
  (Statement 10/1.)

Two Who Voted Against War, 60 Years Apart

No: The lonely stand against giving President Bush the power to act against terrorism recalls Rep. Jeannette Rankin, who was the one in December 1941.

By Theo Lippman Jr.

Baltimore Sun, October 7, 2001 (Fair Use Notice)

ONE IS THE loneliest number, especially when it's a high visibility congressional vote against a measure practically the whole nation supports - as was the case Sept. 14, when the House of Representatives voted 420 to 1 to give the president power to retaliate against the terrorist attacks on America. California Democrat Barbara Lee defended her lonely stand by saying that authorizing military force to stop terrorism wouldn't work, and "I felt let's not do anything that could escalate this madness out of control."

Being that out of step with public opinion can ruin a political career, but it can also be immortalizing. Take the case of Jeannette Rankin. Rankin was the lonely one in the House's 1941 vote of 388 to 1 for a declaration of war against Japan the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

It was the most dramatic of her many acts in support of pacifism, feminism and social justice in four years in Congress and seven decades as a lobbyist, advocate, organizer and protest leader.

Politically speaking, the 1941 vote was a disaster for Rankin, as had been her vote against the declaration of war against Germany in 1917. But today two private organizations bearing her name work for peace and the well-being of women, and a statue of her is on very prominent display in her home state.

Jeannette Pickering Rankin was born to a well-to-do Republican family near Missoula, Mont., in 1880. After stints as teacher and social worker, she worked for the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She rose in its ranks, and when Montana gave women the vote, she won a seat as the first woman in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The day she joined the House, President Woodrow Wilson asked for a declaration of war against Germany. The measure was sure to pass the House. Friends and family tried to talk her out of opposing it. Her fellow suffragists feared such a vote by the only woman in Congress would hurt the effort for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution giving women the vote nationally.

After a 14-hour debate, in which she did not participate, she said at roll call, "I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war. I vote no." The measure passed 374-50. She did not return to Congress after the 1918 election.

After the war, she became a delegate to the Women's International Conference for Peace and Justice, of which she became an officer. She spent much of her time in Washington, lobbying for her causes - for the Women's Peace Union and National Council for the Prevention of War, but also for such things as child labor laws for the National Consumers League.

She decided she needed an East Coast base. Tired of Montana winters, she settled in Georgia, near the state university and Brenau, a woman's college that gave her an appointment to a "Chair of Peace." Opponents labeled her a communist. She sued a newspaper that ran a story to that effect, winning a public apology and $1,000.

As the 1930s rolled on toward that famous date which lives in infamy, Rankin became involved with other pacifist efforts, including the Emergency Peace Campaign, which counted the Quakers among its principal patrons. She testified frequently before congressional committees, opposing military preparedness legislation.

In 1940, she announced she would run for Congress again back in Montana, as a Republican. She campaigned in high schools, urging students to ask their parents to oppose the nation's involvement in a new world war. She won.

Eleanor Roosevelt tried to get her to support Franklin D. Roosevelt. She refused. In February, May, June, October and November of 1941, she pushed unsuccessfully for legislation that would, among other things, require congressional approval for moving troops out of the hemisphere.

On Dec. 8, the House rushed through a declaration of war in less than an hour. She tried to speak against the measure on the floor, but she was blocked until the roll call vote reached her. "As a woman, I can't go to war," she said, "and I refuse to send anyone else."

She was booed - in the House that day, later in press and pulpit. Only a few voices saluted her "courage." Rankin was not re-elected in 1942. (Barbara Lee is unlikely to suffer that fate. Her district includes Oakland and Berkeley. Even critics of her vote have called it "heroic" and "an act of conscience.")

Throughout World War II, Rankin spoke against Roosevelt and his policies. She accused him of provoking the attack on Pearl Harbor. She traveled and spoke in the post-war years, but there was no peace movement to animate.

Vietnam changed that.

In 1968, at age 87, she accepted a request to lead a Women's Strike for Peace march on Congress. The marchers called themselves the Jeannette Rankin Brigade.

She remained active in her causes until her death in 1973.

Her spirit abides at the Jeannette Rankin Foundation in Georgia, which gives education grants to "mature, unemployed women workers," and at the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center in Missoula, which works "to teach the fundamental skills of peacemaking."

And she is one of the two Montanans chosen by the state to be honored with a statue in the Capitol's Statuary Hall Collection.

Theo Lippman Jr. is a retired editorial writer for The Sun.

Copyright © 2001, The Baltimore Sun

Thoughts in the Presence of Fear

By Wendell Berry

I. The time will soon come when we will not be able to remember the horrors of September 11 without remembering also the unquestioning technological and economic optimism that ended on that day.

II. This optimism rested on the proposition that we were living in a "new world order" and a "new economy" that would "grow" on and on, bringing a prosperity of which every new increment would be "unprecedented."

III. The dominant politicians, corporate officers, and investors who believed this proposition did not acknowledge that the prosperity was limited to a tiny percent of the world's people, and to an ever smaller number of people even in the United States; that it was founded upon the oppressive labor of poor people all over the world; and that its ecological costs increasingly threatened all life, including the lives of the supposedly prosperous.

IV. The "developed" nations had given to the "free market" the status of a god, and were sacrificing to it their farmers, farmlands, and communities, their forests, wetlands, and prairies, their ecosystems and watersheds. They had accepted universal pollution and global warming as normal costs of doing business.

V. There was, as a consequence, a growing worldwide effort on behalf of economic decentralization, economic justice, and ecological responsibility. We must recognize that the events of September 11 make this effort more necessary than ever. We citizens of the industrial countries must continue the labor of self-criticism and self-correction. We must recognize our mistakes.

VI. The paramount doctrine of the economic and technological euphoria of recent decades has been that everything depends on innovation. It was understood as desirable, and even necessary, that we should go on and on from one technological innovation to the next, which would cause the economy to "grow" and make everything better and better. This of course implied at every point a hatred of the past, of all [past] innovations [which] , whatever their value might have been, were discounted as of no value at all.

VII. We did not anticipate anything like what has now happened. We did not foresee that all our sequence of innovations might be at once overridden by a greater one: the invention of a new kind of war that would turn our previous innovations against us, discovering and exploiting the debits and the dangers that we had ignored. We never considered the possibility that we might be trapped in the webwork of communication and transport that was supposed to make us free.

VIII. Nor did we foresee that the weaponry and the war science that we marketed and taught to the world would become available, not just to recognized national governments, which possess so uncannily the power to legitimate large-scale violence, but also to "rogue nations," dissident or fanatical groups and individuals whose violence, though never worse than that of nations, is judged by the nations to be illegitimate.

IX. We had accepted uncritically the belief that technology is only good; that it cannot serve evil as well as good; that it cannot serve our enemies as well as ourselves; that it cannot be used to destroy what is good, including our homelands and our lives.

X. We had accepted too the corollary belief that an economy (either as a money economy or as a life-support system) that is global in extent, technologically complex, and centralized is invulnerable to terrorism, sabotage, or war, and that it is protectable by "national defense."

XI. We now have a clear, inescapable choice that we must make. We can continue to promote a global economic system of unlimited "free trade" among corporations, held together by long and highly vulnerable lines of communication and supply, but now recognizing that such a system will have to be protected by a hugely expensive police force that will be worldwide, whether maintained by one nation or several or all, and that such a police force will be effective precisely to the extent that it oversways the freedom and privacy of the citizens of every nation.

XII. Or we can promote a decentralized world economy which would have the aim of assuring to every nation and region a local self-sufficiency in life-supporting goods. This would not eliminate international trade, but it would tend toward a trade in surpluses after local needs had been met.

XIII. One of the gravest dangers to us now, second only to further terrorist attacks against our people, is that we will attempt to go on as before with the corporate program of global "free trade," whatever the cost in freedom and civil rights, without self-questioning or self-criticism or public debate.

XIV. This is why the substitution of rhetoric for thought, always a temptation in a national crisis, must be resisted by officials and citizens alike. It is hard for ordinary citizens to know what is actually happening in Washington in a time of such great trouble; for all we know, serious and difficult thought may be taking place there. But the talk that we are hearing from politicians, bureaucrats, and commentators has so far tended to reduce the complex problems now facing us to issues of unity, security, normality, and retaliation.

XV. National self-righteousness, like personal self-righteousness, is a mistake. It is misleading. It is a sign of weakness. Any war that we may make now against terrorism will come as a new installment in a history of war in which we have fully participated. We are not innocent of making war against civilian populations. The modern doctrine of such warfare was set forth and enacted by General William Tecumseh Sherman, who held that a civilian population could be declared guilty and rightly subjected to military punishment. We have never repudiated that doctrine.

XVI. It is a mistake also -- as events since September 11 have shown -- to suppose that a government can promote and participate in a global economy and at the same time act exclusively in its own interest by abrogating its international treaties and standing apart from international cooperation on moral issues.

XVII. And surely, in our country, under our Constitution, it is a fundamental error to suppose that any crisis or emergency can justify any form of political oppression. Since September 11, far too many public voices have presumed to "speak for us" in saying that Americans will gladly accept a reduction of freedom in exchange for greater "security." Some would, maybe. But some others would accept a reduction in security (and in global trade) far more willingly than they would accept any abridgement of our Constitutional rights.

XVIII. In a time such as this, when we have been seriously and most cruelly hurt by those who hate us, and when we must consider ourselves to be gravely threatened by those same people, it is hard to speak of the ways of peace and to remember that Christ enjoined us to love our enemies, but this is no less necessary for being difficult.

XIX. Even now we dare not forget that since the attack on Pearl Harbor -- to which the present attack has been often and not usefully compared -- we humans have suffered an almost uninterrupted sequence of wars, none of which has brought peace or made us more peaceable.

XX. The aim and result of war necessarily is not peace but victory, and any victory won by violence necessarily justifies the violence that won it and leads to further violence. If we are serious about innovation, must we not conclude that we need something new to replace our perpetual "war to end war"?

XXI. What leads to peace is not violence but peaceableness, which is not passivity, but an alert, informed, practiced, and active state of being. We should recognize that while we have extravagantly subsidized the means of war, we have almost totally neglected the ways of peaceableness. We have, for example, several national military academies, but not one peace academy. We have ignored the teachings and the examples of Christ, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and other peaceable leaders. And here we have an inescapable duty to notice also that war is profitable, whereas the means of peaceableness, being cheap or free, make no money.

XXII. The key to peaceableness is continuous practice. It is wrong to suppose that we can exploit and impoverish the poorer countries, while arming them and instructing them in the newest means of war, and then reasonably expect them to be peaceable.

XXIII. We must not again allow public emotion or the public media to caricature our enemies. If our enemies are now to be some nations of Islam, then we should undertake to know those enemies. Our schools should begin to teach the histories, cultures, arts, and language of the Islamic nations. And our leaders should have the humility and the wisdom to ask the reasons some of those people have for hating us.

XXIV. Starting with the economies of food and farming, we should promote at home, and encourage abroad, the ideal of local self-sufficiency. We should recognize that this is the surest, the safest, and the cheapest way for the world to live. We should not countenance the loss or destruction of any local capacity to produce necessary goods.

XXV. We should reconsider and renew and extend our efforts to protect the natural foundations of the human economy: soil, water, and air. We should protect every intact ecosystem and watershed that we have left, and begin restoration of those that have been damaged.

XXVI. The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, neither by job-training nor by industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or "accessing" what we now call "information" -- which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than> other things; it means putting first things first.

XXVII. The first thing we must begin to teach our children (and learn ourselves) is that we cannot spend and consume endlessly. We have got to learn to save and conserve. We do need a "new economy," but one that is founded on thrift and care, on saving and conserving, not on excess and waste. An economy based on waste is inherently and hopelessly violent, and war is its inevitable by-product. We need a peaceable economy.

The Ultimate Hatred is Nuclear

By Bruce Blair
The New York Times, October 22, 2001 (Fair Use Notice)

Washington -- Bioterrorism, like the anthrax threats currently rattling America, is horrific. But perhaps the ultimate horror in our newly uncertain world is the prospect of terrorists with nuclear weapons. There is no evidence that any terrorist has nuclear materials now, but the possibility is serious enough so that the government should be heightening security at home by monitoring foreign nations' weapons more closely and planning for military raids, if necessary, to keep weapons out of the wrong hands.

Sophisticated terrorists would be able to make an atomic bomb if they could get the necessary fissile materials -- highly enriched uranium or plutonium. Huge quantities exist around the world. Detonated in Manhattan, a relatively small bomb -- say 15 kilotons in yield, equivalent to the one used on Hiroshima -- could immediately kill 100,000 and cause another 100,000 deaths in the lingering aftermath.

A terrorist wouldn't even need nuclear bomb materials to wreak nuclear havoc on a smaller scale: lethal radioactivity could spew out from a bomb made of nuclear waste and dynamite or from a nuclear power plant attacked by a hijacked plane or a truckload of explosives.

Our first line of defense against nuclear terrorism is at home. Security measures around nuclear power plants, like restrictions on how close planes may fly to them, are already being reviewed, and they should be strengthened as much as possible. But we should also immediately impose better inspection and security regimes at American seaports. Tens of thousands of cargo containers on ships arrive at American ports every day, and given the terrorist networks' extensive business ties around the world, the potential that one of those containers might carry a nuclear device is decidedly too high.

America's actual nuclear arsenal and its fissile materials are heavily guarded, but it's important to make sure security is just as tight abroad.

There has been concern for years about the vulnerability of Russian bombs and bomb materials. More than 1,000 tons of bomb-grade plutonium and uranium remain in the former Soviet Union, half stored in its raw form and half inside 20,000 bombs. The United States is already working with Russia in a limited way to secure its nuclear materials and facilities by installing fences and surveillance sensors, but only half of the needed security improvements have been completed. Congress has been balking at continuing to finance this program with $1 billion a year, while it actually should be spending more. Last year, Russia's top security officials urgently sought American help in shoring up security at nuclear weapons sites, but bureaucratic squabbling between the Defense and Energy Departments delayed and diluted the American response. In the end, the Russians got little of the help they had sought.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and other American security agencies should be working with Russian law enforcement not only against terrorists, but to help Russia eliminate organized crime, which could make big profits selling nuclear materials to willing buyers.

Even more pressing, given the American military campaign in Afghanistan and the angry protests by some Pakistanis against their country's cooperation, is ensuring the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Pakistan is estimated to have between 30 and 50 partially disassembled atomic weapons, from 1 to 15 kilotons in yield, stored at several locations 50 to 250 miles from Afghanistan. If the regime were destabilized or toppled, nuclear security would weaken. Moreover, there are radicals within the Pakistani government and military forces, and it is possible that insiders might collude to steal bombs and add them to the arsenal of Osama bin Laden or some other extremist. Pakistani weapons are believed to lack sophisticated locks that would prevent their unauthorized use.

Besides urging Pakistan to strengthen security where its weapons are stored and/or to disable its nuclear devices, the United States should be offering to help out by providing security equipment and guards. And regardless of the degree of cooperation between the two countries, American surveillance and intelligence efforts should be aimed at independently keeping track of the Pakistani arsenal.

To guard against the worst possibility -- Pakistani weapons in the hands of our enemies -- America should have plans ready to provide security without Pakistan's permission, if emergency circumstances dictate, and even to take Pakistan's weapons out of the country if the need arises. Special operations forces in the region should be kept on high alert for quick, covert incursions to disable or even relocate the weapons to prevent their capture by unauthorized people. Nuclear emergency search teams, which are trained in bomb detection and dismantling, should be ready to accompany such military operations. The teams, some from Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, know the basic design of Pakistani weapons from defectors' reports and could devise disabling procedures on the spot.

An even better idea might be to get American and Russian military-civilian bomb response teams together to conduct search and disable missions in Central Asia -- and perhaps in Russia itself in an emergency. The mutual benefits would be considerable, and joint operations to protect everyone against nuclear terror could have lasting positive effects on future United States- Russian cooperation.

Obviously, the elimination of nuclear weapons would not eliminate terrorism. But just as obviously, the need for nuclear safety and security has never been clearer.

Bruce G. Blair is president of the Center for Defense Information.

Terrorism: Theirs and Ours
By Eqbal Ahmad

(A Presentation at the University of Colorado, Boulder, October 12, 1998. Eqbal Ahmad , Professor Emeritus of International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, also served as a managing editor of the quarterly Race and Class. A prolific writer, he died in 1999.)

In the 1930s and 1940s, the Jewish underground in Palestine was described a "terrorist." Then new things happened. By 1942, the Holocaust was occurring, and a certain liberal sympathy with the Jewish people had built up in the Western world. At that point, the terrorists of Palestine, who were Zionists, suddenly started to be described, by 1944-45, as "freedom fighters." At least two Israeli Prime Ministers, including Menachem Begin, have actually, you can find in the books and posters with their pictures, saying "Terrorists, Reward This Much." The highest reward I have noted so far was 100,000 British pounds on the head of Menachem Begin, the terrorist. Then from 1969 to 1990 the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization, occupied the center stage as the terrorist organization. Yasir Arafat has been described repeatedly by the great sage of American journalism, William Safire of the New York Times, as the "Chief of Terrorism."

That's Yasir Arafat. Now, on September 29, 1998, I was rather amused to notice a picture of Yasir Arafat to the right of President Bill Clinton. To his left is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Clinton is looking towards Arafat and Arafat is looking literally like a meek mouse. Just a few years earlier he used to appear with this very menacing look around him, with a gun appearing menacing from his belt. You remember those pictures, and you remember the next one.

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan received a group of bearded men. These bearded men I was writing about in those days in The New Yorker, actually did. They were very ferocious-looking bearded men with turbans looking like they came from another century. President Reagan received them in the White House. After receiving them he spoke to the press. He pointed towards them, I'm sure some of you will recall that moment, and said, "These are the moral equivalent of America's founding fathers". These were the Afghan Mujahiddin. They were at the time, guns in hand, battling the Evil Empire. They were the moral equivalent of our founding fathers!

In August 1998, another American President ordered missile strikes from the American navy based in the Indian Ocean to kill Osama Bin Laden and his men in the camps in Afghanistan. I do not wish to embarrass you with the reminder that Mr. Bin Laden, whom fifteen American missiles were fired to hit in Afghanistan, was only a few years ago the moral equivalent of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson! He got angry over the fact that he has been demoted from "Moral Equivalent" of your "Founding Fathers". So he is taking out his anger in different ways. I'll come back to that subject more seriously in a moment. You see, why I have recalled all these stories is to point out to you that the matter of terrorism is rather complicated.

Terrorists change. The terrorist of yesterday is the hero of today, and the hero of yesterday becomes the terrorist of today. This is a serious matter of the constantly changing world of images in which we have to keep our heads straight to know what is terrorism and what is not. But more importantly, to know what causes it, and how to stop it. The next point about our terrorism is that posture of inconsistency necessarily evades definition. If you are not going to be consistent, you're not going to define. I have examined at least twenty official documents on terrorism. Not one defines the word. All of them explain it, express it emotively, polemically, to arouse our emotions rather than exercise our intelligence. I give you only one example, which is representative. October 25, 1984. George Shultz, then Secretary of State of the U.S., is speaking at the New York Park Avenue Synagogue. It's a long speech on terrorism. In the State Department Bulletin of seven single-spaced pages, there is not a single definition of terrorism.

What we get is the following: Definition number one: "Terrorism is a modern barbarism that we call terrorism." Definition number two is even more brilliant: "Terrorism is a form of political violence." Aren't you surprised? It is a form of political violence, says George Shultz, Secretary of State of the U.S. Number three: "Terrorism is a threat to Western civilization." Number four: "Terrorism is a menace to Western moral values." Did you notice, does it tell you anything other than arouse your emotions? This is typical. They don't define terrorism because definitions involve a commitment to analysis, comprehension and adherence to some norms of consistency. That's the second characteristic of the official literature on terrorism.

The third characteristic is that the absence of definition does not prevent officials from being globalistic. We may not define terrorism, but it is a menace to the moral values of Western civilization. It is a menace also to mankind. It's a menace to good order. Therefore, you must stamp it out worldwide. Our reach has to be global. You need a global reach to kill it. Anti-terrorist policies therefore have to be global. Same speech of George Shultz: "There is no question about our ability to use force where and when it is needed to counter terrorism." There is no geographical limit. On a single day the missiles hit Afghanistan and Sudan. Those two countries are 2,300 miles apart, and they were hit by missiles belonging to a country roughly 8,000 miles away. Reach is global.

A fourth characteristic: claims of power are not only globalist they are also omniscient. We know where they are; therefore we know where to hit. We have the means to know. We have the instruments of knowledge. We are omniscient. Shultz: "We know the difference between terrorists and freedom fighters, and as we look around, we have no trouble telling one from the other."!!!!!! Only Osama Bin Laden doesn't know that he was an ally one day and an enemy another. That's very confusing for Osama Bin Laden. I'll come back to his story towards the end. It's a real story. Five. The official approach eschews causation. You don't look at causes of anybody becoming terrorist. Cause? What cause? They ask us to be looking, to be sympathetic to these people. Another example. The New York Times December 18, 1985, reported that the foreign minister of Yugoslavia, you remember the days when there was a Yugoslavia, requested the Secretary of State of the U.S. to consider the causes of Palestinian terrorism. The Secretary of State, George Shultz, and I am quoting from the New York Times , "went a bit red in the face. He pounded the table and told the visiting foreign minister, there is no connection with any cause. Period." Why look for causes?

Number six. The moral revulsion that we must feel against terrorism is selective. We are to feel the terror of those groups, which are officially disapproved. We are to applaud the terror of those groups of whom officials do approve. Hence, President Reagan, "I am a contra." He actually said that. We know the contras of Nicaragua were anything, by any definition, but terrorists. The media, to move away from the officials, heed the dominant view of terrorism. The dominant approach also excludes from consideration, more importantly to me, the terror of friendly governments. To that question I will return because it excused among others the terror of Pinochet (who killed one of my closest friends) and Orlando Letelier; and it excused the terror of Zia-ul-Haq, who killed many of my friends in Pakistan.

All I want to tell you is that according to my ignorant calculations, the ratio of people killed by the state terror of Zia-ul-Haq, Pinochet, Argentinian, Brazilian, Indonesian type, versus the killing of the PLO and other terrorist types is literally, conservatively, one to one hundred thousand. That's the ratio. History unfortunately recognizes and accords visibility to power and not to weakness. Therefore, visibility has been accorded historically to dominant groups. In our time, the time that began with this day, Columbus Day. The time that begins with Columbus Day is a time of extraordinary unrecorded holocausts. Great civilizations have been wiped out. The Mayas, the Incas, the Aztecs, the American Indians, the Canadian Indians were all wiped out. Their voices have not been heard, even to this day fully. Now they are beginning to be heard, but not fully. They are heard, yes, but only when the dominant power suffers, only when resistance has a semblance of costing, of exacting a price. When a Custer is killed or when a Gordon is besieged. That's when you know that they were Indians fighting, Arabs fighting and dying.

My last point of this section: U.S. policy in the Cold War period has sponsored terrorist regimes one after another. Somoza, Batista, all kinds of tyrants have been America's friends. You know that. There was a reason for that. I or you are not guilty. Nicaragua, contra. Afghanistan, mujahiddin. El Salvador, etc. Now the second side. You've suffered enough. So suffer more. There ain't much good on the other side either. You shouldn't imagine that I have come to praise the other side.

But keep the balance in mind. Keep the imbalance in mind and first ask ourselves, What is terrorism? Our first job should be to define the damn thing, name it, give it a description of some kind, other than "moral equivalent of founding fathers" or "a moral outrage to Western civilization". I will stay with you with Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: "Terror is an intense, overpowering fear." He uses terrorizing, terrorism, "the use of terrorizing methods of governing or resisting a government." This simple definition has one great virtue, that of fairness. It's fair. It focuses on the use of coercive violence, violence that is used illegally, extra-constitutionally, to coerce. And this definition is correct because it treats terror for what it is, whether the government or private people commit it.

Have you noticed something? Motivation is left out of it. We're not talking about whether the cause is just or unjust. We're talking about consensus, consent, absence of consent, legality, absence of legality, constitutionality, absence of constitutionality. Why do we keep motives out? Because motives differ. Motives differ and make no difference.

I have identified in my work five types of terrorism. First, state terrorism. Second, religious terrorism : terrorism inspired by religion, Catholics killing Protestants; Sunnis killing Shiites, Shiites killing Sunnis, God, religion, sacred terror, you can call it if you wish. State, church. Crime. Mafia. All kinds of crimes commit terror. There is pathology . You're pathological. You're sick. You want the attention of the whole world. You've got to kill a president. You will. You terrorize. You hold up a bus. Fifth, there is political terror of the private group; be they Indian, Vietnamese, Algerian, Palestinian, Baader-Meinhof, the Red Brigade. Political terror of the private group. Oppositional terror.

Keep these five in mind. Keep in mind one more thing. Sometimes these five can converge on each other. You start with protest terror. You go crazy. You become pathological. You continue. They converge. State terror can take the form of private terror. For example, we're all familiar with the death squads in Latin America or in Pakistan. Government has employed private people to kill its opponents. It's not quite official. It's privatized. Convergence. Or the political terrorist who goes crazy and becomes pathological. Or the criminal who joins politics. In Afghanistan, in Central America, the CIA employed in its covert operations drug pushers. Drugs and guns often go together. Smuggling of all things often go together.

Of the five types of terror, the focus is on only one, the least important in terms of cost to human lives and human property [Political Terror of those who want to be heard]. The highest cost is state terror. The second highest cost is religious terror, although in the twentieth century religious terror has, relatively speaking, declined. If you are looking historically, massive costs. The next highest cost is crime. Next highest, pathology. A Rand Corporation study by Brian Jenkins, for a ten-year period up to 1988, showed 50% of terror was committed without any political cause at all. No politics. Simply crime and pathology. So the focus is on only one, the political terrorist, the PLO, the Bin Laden, whoever you want to take. Why do they do it? What makes the terrorist tick? I would like to knock them out quickly to you.

First, the need to be heard. Imagine, we are dealing with a minority group, the political, private terrorist. First, the need to be heard. Normally, and there are exceptions, there is an effort to be heard, to get your grievances heard by people. They're not hearing it. A minority acts. The majority applauds. The Palestinians, for example, the super terrorists of our time, were dispossessed in 1948. From 1948 to 1968 they went to every court in the world. They knocked at every door in the world. They were told that they became dispossessed because some radio told them to go away- an Arab radio, which was a lie. Nobody was listening to the truth. Finally, they invented a new form of terror, literally their invention: the airplane hijacking. Between 1968 and 1975 they pulled the world up by its ears. They dragged us out and said, Listen, Listen. We listened. We still haven't done them justice, but at least we all know. Even the Israelis acknowledge. Remember Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, saying in 1970, "There are no Palestinians." They do not exist. They damn well exist now. We are cheating them at Oslo. At least there are some people to cheat now. We can't just push them out. The need to be heard is essential. One motivation there. Mix of anger and helplessness produces an urge to strike out. You are angry. You are feeling helpless. You want retribution. You want to wreak retributive justice. The experience of violence by a stronger party has historically turned victims into terrorists. Battered children are known to become abusive parents and violent adults. You know that. That's what happens to peoples and nations. When they are battered, they hit back.

State terror very often breeds collective terror. Do you recall the fact that the Jews were never terrorists? By and large Jews were not known to commit terror except during and after the Holocaust. Most studies show that the majority of members of the worst terrorist groups in Israel or in Palestine, the Stern and the Irgun gangs, were people who were immigrants from the most anti-Semitic countries of Eastern Europe and Germany. Similarly, the young Shiites of Lebanon or the lestinians from the refugee camps are battered people. They become very violent. The ghettos are violent internally. They become violent externally when there is a clear, identifiable external target, an enemy where you can say, "Yes, this one did it to me". Then they can strike back. Example is a bad thing. Example spreads.

There was a highly publicized Beirut hijacking of the TWA plane. After that hijacking, there were hijacking attempts at nine different American airports. Pathological groups or individuals modeling on the others.

Even more serious are examples set by governments. When governments engage in terror, they set very large examples. When they engage in supporting terror, they engage in other sets of examples. Absence of revolutionary ideology is central to victim terrorism. Revolutionaries do not commit unthinking terror. Those of you who are familiar with revolutionary theory know the debates, the disputes, the quarrels, the fights within revolutionary groups of Europe, the fight between anarchists and Marxists, for example. But the Marxists have always argued that revolutionary terror, if ever engaged in, must be sociologically and psychologically selective. Don't hijack a plane. Don't hold hostages. Don't kill children, for God's sake. Have you recalled also that the great revolutions, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Algerian, the Cuban, never engaged in hijacking type of terrorism? They did engage in terrorism, but it was highly selective, highly sociological, still deplorable, but there was an organized, highly limited, selective character to it. So absence of revolutionary ideology that begins more or less in the post-World War II period has been central to this phenomenon.

My final question is - These conditions have existed for a long time. But why then this flurry of private political terrorism? Why now so much of it and so visible? The answer is modern technology. You have a cause. You can communicate it through radio and television. They will all come swarming if you have taken an aircraft and are holding 150 Americans hostage. They will all hear your cause. You have a modern weapon through which you can shoot a mile away. They can't reach you. And you have the modern means of communicating. When you put together the cause, the instrument of coercion and the instrument of communication, politics is made. A new kind of politics becomes possible.

To this challenge rulers from one country after another have been responding with traditional methods. The traditional method of shooting it out, whether it's missiles or some other means. The Israelis are very proud of it. The Americans are very proud of it. The French became very proud of it. Now the Pakistanis are very proud of it. The Pakistanis say, "Our commandos are the best." Frankly, it won't work.A central problem of our time are the political minds, rooted in the past, and modern times, producing new realities.

Therefore in conclusion, what is my recommendation to America? Quickly.

First, avoid extremes of double standards. If you're going to practice double standards, you will be paid with double standards. Don't use it. Don't condone Israeli terror, Pakistani terror, Nicaraguan terror, El Salvadoran terror, on the one hand, and then complain about Afghan terror or Palestinian terror. It doesn't work. Try to be even-handed. A superpower cannot promote terror in one place and reasonably expect to discourage terrorism in another place. It won't work in this shrunken world. Do not condone the terror of your allies. Condemn them. Fight them. Punish them.

Please eschew, avoid covert operations and low-intensity warfare. These are breeding grounds of terror and drugs. Violence and drugs are bred there. The structure of covert operations, I've made a film about it, which has been very popular in Europe, called Dealing with the Demon .. I have shown that wherever covert operations have been, there has been the central drug problem. That has been also the center of the drug trade. Because the structure of covert operations, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Central America, is very hospitable to drug trade. Avoid it. Give it up. It doesn't help.

Please focus on causes and help ameliorate causes. Try to look at causes and solve problems.

Do not concentrate on military solutions. Do not seek military solutions. Terrorism is a political problem. Seek political solutions. Diplomacy works. Take the example of the last attack on Bin Laden. You don't know what you're attacking. They say they know, but they don't know. They were trying to kill Qadaffi. They killed his four-year-old daughter. The poor baby hadn't done anything. Qadaffi is still alive. They tried to kill Saddam Hussein. They killed Laila Bin Attar, a prominent artist, an innocent woman. They tried to kill Bin Laden and his men. Not one but twenty-five other people died. They tried to destroy a chemical factory in Sudan. Now they are admitting that they destroyed an innocent factory, one-half of the production of medicine in Sudan has been destroyed, not a chemical factory.

You don't know. You think you know. Four of your missiles fell in Pakistan. One was slightly damaged. Two were totally damaged. One was totally intact. For ten years the American government has kept an embargo on Pakistan because Pakistan is trying, stupidly, to build nuclear weapons and missiles.

So we have a technology embargo on my country. One of the missiles was intact. What do you think a Pakistani official told the Washington Post? He said it was a gift from Allah. We wanted U.S. technology. Now we have got the technology, and our scientists are examining this missile very carefully. It fell into the wrong hands.

So don't do that. Look for political solutions. Do not look for military solutions. They cause more problems than they solve. Please help reinforce, strengthen the framework of international law. There was a criminal court in Rome. Why didn't they go to it first to get their warrant against Bin Laden, if they have some evidence? Get a warrant, then go after him. Internationally. Enforce the U.N. Enforce the International Court of Justice, this unilateralism makes us look very stupid and them relatively smaller. Q&A

The question here is that I mentioned that I would go somewhat into the story of Bin Laden, the Saudi in Afghanistan and didn't do so, could I go into some detail? The point about Bin Laden would be roughly the same as the point between Sheikh Abdul Rahman, who was accused and convicted of encouraging the blowing up of the World Trade Center in New York City. The New Yorker did a long story on him.

It's the same as that of Aimal Kansi, the Pakistani Baluch who was also convicted of the murder of two CIA agents. Let me see if I can be very short on this. Jihad, which has been translated a thousand times as "holy war," is not quite just that. Jihad is an Arabic word that means, "to struggle." It could be struggle by violence or struggle by non-violent means. There are two forms, the small jihad and the big jihad. The small jihad involves violence. The big jihad involves the struggles with self. Those are the concepts. The reason I mention it is that in Islamic history, jihad as an international violent phenomenon had disappeared in the last four hundred years, for all practical purposes. It was revived suddenly with American help in the 1980s. When the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan, Zia ul-Haq, the military dictator of Pakistan, which borders on Afghanistan, saw an opportunity and launched a jihad there against godless communism. The U.S. saw a God-sent opportunity to mobilize one billion Muslims against what Reagan called the Evil Empire.

Money started pouring in. CIA agents starting going all over the Muslim world recruiting people to fight in the great jihad. Bin Laden was one of the early prize recruits. He was not only an Arab. He was also a Saudi. He was not only a Saudi. He was also a multimillionaire, willing to put his own money into the matter. Bin Laden went around recruiting people for the jihad against communism. I first met him in 1986. He was recommended to me by an American official of whom I do not know whether he was or was not an agent. I was talking to him and said, "Who are the Arabs here who would be very interesting?" By here I meant in Afghanistan and Pakistan He said, "You must meet Osama." I went to see Osama. There he was, rich, bringing in recruits from Algeria, from Sudan, from Egypt, just like Sheikh Abdul Rahman. This fellow was an ally. He remained an ally.

He turns at a particular moment. In 1990 the U.S. goes into Saudi Arabia with forces. Saudi Arabia is the holy place of Muslims, Mecca and Medina. There had never been foreign troops there. In 1990, during the Gulf War, they went in, in the name of helping Saudi Arabia defeat Saddam Hussein. Osama Bin Laden remained quiet. Saddam was defeated, but the American troops stayed on in the land of the kaba (the sacred site of Islam in Mecca), foreign troops. He wrote letter after letter saying, Why are you here? Get out! You came to help but you have stayed on. Finally he started a jihad against the other occupiers. His mission is to get American troops out of Saudi Arabia. His earlier mission was to get Russian troops out of Afghanistan. See what I was saying earlier about covert operations?

A second point to be made about him is these are tribal people, people who are really tribal. Being a millionaire doesn't matter. Their code of ethics is tribal. The tribal code of ethics consists of two words: loyalty and revenge. You are my friend. You keep your word. I am loyal to you. You break your word, I go on my path of revenge. For him, America has broken its word. The loyal friend has betrayed. The one to whom you swore blood loyalty has betrayed you. They're going to go for you. They're going to do a lot more. These are the chickens of the Afghanistan war coming home to roost.

This is why I said to stop covert operations. There is a price attached to those that the American people cannot calculate and Kissinger type of people do not know, don't have the history to know.

Return to Resources Main Page

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. we believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

WAND

Home