Co-editors: Seán Mac Mathúna • John Heathcote
Consulting editor: Themistocles Hoetis
Field Correspondent: Allen Hougland
Terrorism,
Television and the Rage for Vengeance What happened on September 11th
2001 was horrific in the scale of tragedy visited upon the
people of New York City; the speed and reach of today's
communications allowed a large part of the world's
population to see the carnage wreaked by the attack on the
World Trade Centre. Although the scale of the
devastation and the grotesque scenes of human suffering and
despair being transmitted across the world shocked us all;
it would be naïve to suggest that the event itself was
a total surprise. One only has to read through the back
pages of this publication to realise that this has been a
disaster waiting to happen. Anyone who takes even the most
passing interest in politics; otherwise known as the world
outside your own front door; has been waiting for the
momentum into anarchy spreading out from the incompatible
States of Palestine and Israel to reach the West. For those of us who watched
with a terrible feeling of apprehension for what will
follow, our tears are for the dead; but our fear is for the
living; and those who refuse to learn from the lessons of
history. For let us be clear, this will be remembered as the
first, not the only, bloodbath which the West will suffer.
What I write is not to detract from the horror and emptiness
felt by the families of those who have died; or the
suffering I say this because even in the
first hours, when the whole world it seemed, had followed
the unravelling of the most sophisticated, modern urban
society in the World; the character and bravery of the
people caught up in the New York disaster was counterpointed
by the empty rhetoric of a government which seemed to have
disappeared into a vacuum. Far from the risk of any
personal danger, the Bush Administration seemed to try and
cover its lack of any crisis strategy with an increasingly
vengeful rhetoric. We can suppose now that any evidence
pointing to organisations or countries other than
Afghanistan and the notorious Osmin
bin Laden will be
disregarded in the rush for revenge The consequences of the current
political mood in the West; with any dissenting voices being
censored or ignored are clear. (On the early evening PM
programme on BBC4 for instance the newscaster apologised for
the strength of anti-American feeling expressed by "Muslim
guests' on the BBC TV political Q&A 'Question Time'
aired the previous night.) One only has to read through
the back pages of Flame to realise that the Freedom and
prosperous life we lead in the West have been bought at a
terrible, and continuing price for many in the rest of the
World. The dominant economic system is
running the planet into the ground, and destroying the homes
of the last few indigenous peoples. The recently convened UN
Conference on Racism, was dramatically and arrogantly
abandoned by the US and Israel. The Kyoto Protocols on the
Environment were rendered more or less meaningless by the US
withdrawal; these are indicators of the respect that the US
Government has given to the World Community in recent
months. Most people in the world have
shrugged and sighed; they long ago gave up any hope that the
US would follow any agenda which did not fit into the
general design of free-trade / corporate monopolism which
has successfully been imposed on four-fifths of the
planet. When President Bush declared
that the US was in a 'state of war' following the bombings,
many people in the world assumed that maybe he had awoken,
like a modern day Rip Van Winkle, from a deep sleep,
coloured with over-the-Rainbow dreams of a world that never
really existed outside Hollyweird. (It is worth noting the number
of big budget movies now on hold; featuring stars such as
the Republican Schwarznegger who have probably never even
seen a war zone; with the usual array of rizla thin plots
about square jawed men saving the world from terrorists
Perhaps it will be noted that the real heroes in events like
that are the 'ordinary people'; the firefighters, emergency
services and survivors who risked their lives saving
others.) Perhaps George W. was never
awake, or sober enough to take in the almost continual TV
War that the rest of his countrymen have watched over cans
of bud and piles of nachos over the last two
decades. From Panama City to the nightly
firework show over Baghdad, all seen as they happened
courtesy of CNN; to the high altitude bombing of Yugoslavia
where we were asked to accept trainloads of civilians as
collateral damage, and TV stations as legitimate targets,
there has been an almost continual involvement by the US
military across the globe. Less televisual of course, but
equally important, has been the continuing aerial
bombardment of Iraq; already impoverished by sanctions and
suffering the long term effects of the DU (Depleted Uranium)
armament strewn across their countries by the Western
Alliance. And of course most taboo
subject of all to mention is the primarily American
involvement in arming and financing the State of Israel.
The Palestinians were promised
by previous US administrations that the security of their
people, and the borders of their meager land, were
guaranteed by the worlds foremost military and economic
power, without whom the State of Israel would not
exist. Over the last six months we
have seen in Israel and the US respectively the joint by
Sharon, a man who should be tried in a war crimes court for
crimes perpetrated in the Lebanon; and the assumption of
power by Bush, the dull son of a rich political spy
surrounded by right-wing isolationists. Occasionally we hear of tanks
rolling into some village or town in Palestine, of 'targeted
killings' which may or may not have hit the right target; of
some fourteen year-old stone throwing boy, or child caught
in crossfire being shot dead. Most people are unaware of the
economic stranglehold that Israel maintains over the tiny
Palestinian State and its people; are unaware of the vast
sums paid into the Israeli budget by the US taxpayer and the
phenomenal amounts that are immediately transformed into the
latest, most deadly military hardware on the
planet. According to The
Guardian (17th September 2001), the recent assault on
Ramallah adds to a catalogue of Israeli actions since the
attack on America on 11th September. In the past week,
Israel has: At least 15 Palestinians have
been killed in these assaults. The hardening of Israel's
stand against ceasefire talks appears driven by Ariel
Sharon's desire to block the possibility of the Palestinians
- and Syria - assuming any role in Washington's coalition, a
possibility he views as "very dangerous". In short, many people in the
Arab world feel that the Palestinian people were led into a
trap; a gigantic Sabra or Chatali; and that the guarantor of
their security has not only turned it's back on their
suffering, but given aid to their oppressor. When we in the West hear of
another Palestinian town razed to the ground; to make way
for another settlement of pious Americans wanting their
slice of the Promised Land; or watch footage of Israeli F-16
jets and Apache Helicopter gunships sending missiles into
the side of some dilapidated Palestinian apartment block; we
need to make the connection between what happened on
September 11th 2001 and what we see on our TV
screens. For if we fail to understand
what inspires young men to take a plane full of people and
steer it into a building full of people, it will happen
again; maybe again in ways less televisual, but perhaps far
more dreadful in consequence. We all wait with trepidation
for the first wave of violence that will inevitably be
unleashed over the pathetic ruins of Afghanistan perhaps;
which everyone seems to accept will have to cause suffering
at least the equal of the WTC attack. In some strange
parallel with the flawed principles used to support the
death penalty, we are led to believe that suffering of
retribution heals the wounds of the victims. Instability in
this part of the world might well leave us with a
fundamentalist coup in Pakistan - which already has the
nuclear bomb. We are also asked to believe
that this is a struggle which can be won by force majeure;
or the destruction of life and property; without realising
that the enemy is amongst the dispossessed, many of whom do
not even have a homeland. The declaration that this is a
new sort of War is perhaps the only really perceptive
statement from the bunker ensconced pResident this
week. It is a war which challenges
not just the US world hegemony; but it's appearance of
invincible impregnability upon which rests the whole
risk-and-loss economic system. It also challenges the very
principles which the US citizens hold dearest ; ideas of
Freedom and personal liberty. As Gore Vidal noted in a BBC
Radio 4 interview broadcast in the wake of the atrocity, the
imposition of a kind of martial law in the US by the
Government will have been keenly noted by the 4 million or
so members of the 'Patriot Movement' cradling their rifles
in the hills of Montana. BBC TV (News 24, 17th
September) also showed an excerpt of an interview with Dick
Cheney, US vice-president justifying enlargement of the CIA
and payment to criminals (remember Lucky Luciano?). We can
only guess at the extension in their power of action given
to them by the Bush government in the last few
days. Even in Britain, the so-called
Labour Home Secretary has admitted to the possibility of
introducing identity cards - whatever possible protection
that will give anyone. One hopes that the ludicrous
missile defence shield will be quietly shelved -with maybe
some of the billions saved being spent on the less glamorous
project called diplomacy. The myth of high-tech
surveillance being of any use in protecting a country's
citizens, rather than just controlling them has been laid
bare in the US by the failure to appreciate the
determination of their enemy; and advise their politicians
how to remove the causes of that suicidal
bitterness. Or maybe they did, but the
politicians were serving different masters; or riding
different horses at the same time. Somewhere in the chain of
communication, some very important issues seem to have been
neglected, ignored, or missed; which is not comforting in
the worlds premier superpower. It is only necessary to add
here that all of the above is written in the vain hope that
if enough of us challenge this slide into a War with no
specific enemy, no specific objective other than to win; we
will see a war without end. For those religious
fundamentalists, both here in the West, and elsewhere; the
World is polarised in a strangely binary way; between good
and evil. Different histories give us
different faces for the same God; and when life itself
ceases to have meaning or sweetness, people turn to their
God to justify anything that will let them feel they are
righting the balance between justice and
injustice. Unless we can stand back and
untangle the history that has brought us to this point and
understand that ways of bringing peace are braver than
making war; all these true believers, Muslim, Jewish and
Crusader
- the true horsemen of the Apocalypse - will start to drive
this chariot over the edge.
