"Osama is Dead. The Struggle Continues.
Osama Bin Laden was summarily executed one week ago. We say in the news and on the internet that the killing of “bully,” “terrorist” or “fundamentalist” who “killed thousands” and “wanted to kill thousands more” is a good thing. We argue that in the face of “evil” the appropriate thing to do is to shoot the evil-doer. If we had the courage to apply this logic consistently they would be fighting alongside Osama not celebrating his death.
The total cost in human lives of all terrorist attacks since 1980 according to the FBI is less than 20 000. The FBI includes attacks on US military barracks as acts of terrorism, along with politically motivated vandalism. 94% of acts of terrorism have been committed by non-Islamic groups or individuals. The loss of 20 000 lives is tragic. The response of the US is not tragic. It’s is an ongoing obscenity that has so far cost the lives of more than half a million innocents.
It’s not even fair to talk about the US “responding” to terrorism. It’s not fair to talk about the more than half a million left lying dead in its pursuit of Bin Laden as accidents. The US has always been a terrorist state and has always sought to impose its will through acts of terror. A conservative estimate places total casualties of US foreign policy at 27 000 000.
You could start the history of US imperialism with the invasion of the Americas and the genocide of 2 000 000 indigenous people. You could start it with the invasion of Mexico in 1856 and theft of half of Mexican territory. That cost Mexico 20 000 lives and re-imposed slavery, which the Mexican government had abolished, on the stolen land. You could start with the US suppression of the Philippine independence movement 1899-1902 which cost the Philippines up to 1 000 000 lives. But given that a rhetoric of “weapons of mass destruction” that has accompanied the War on Terror (despite their conspicuous absence) a good date to pick would be 6 August 1945. On this date the US dropped an atomic bomb on the civilian population of Hiroshima killing 87 000 people. Three days later, despite the Japanese having already been defeated militarily, the US dropped a second bomb, again on a civilian target, killing a further 70 000 people. With the flash of nuclear explosions, the US became a superpower.
Post WW2 democracy was the hegemonic ideology. Communist or capitalist, all governments claimed legitimacy as representatives, not guardians, of the masses. The US claimed to be the embodiment of this new ideology, a post-colonial superpower which would not subject other peoples. Instead, it would merely arbitrate on whose claim to represent the masses were legitimate and whose were not. As with all other empires claiming to represent a higher good than their self-interest, this was a transparent lie. Any reading of US foreign policy since World War Two reveals that the for the ruling class in the US expansion of their wealth and power as always been and the forefront of their agendas.
In 1954 the USA overthrew the elected government of Jacobo Árbenz Guzman in Guatemala. The subsequent US supported dictatorship “accidentally” killed 140 000 people with arms paid for by the US. On the 1st of September 1973 the US supported a military coup against a democratic government in Chile. As a direct result, more than 1000 people were killed, many of them tortured. In Latin America the US has also occupied the Dominican Republic (1965), Grenada (1983), Panama (1988), and Haiti (1959). All of these countries are abjectly poor. Only Cuba, which the US attempted and failed to invade in 1961, enjoys decent standards of health care and education. Through the 1980s the US funded and trained death squads also operated in El Salvador where they killed perhaps 30 000. In Nicaragua, they were instructed to attack soft targets like primary schools. They killed perhaps 5 000 people. The US government funded the Nicaraguan terrorists by illegal arms sales to Iran. Not one person who orchestrated the Iran Contra had to seek refuge in a remote mountain range to save their lives. Not one even served a prison sentence.
In the Middle East, the US sponsored a coup in Iran in 1953. It then supported the oppressive rule of the Shah for 26 years. Hundreds of political prisoners were executed while a consortium of multinationals exported the country’s oil wealth without any improvement in living standards for the majority. When the Shah was overthrown in 1976, the US threw its support behind Iraq and encouraged war between the two countries, both of which it had supplied with arms. This series of conflicts cost 750 000 lives. That’s before the campaign against Sadam beginning in the 1980s in which half a million children were starved to death by US sanctions even before Second Gulf War began. Neither George Snr nor Jnr are being prosecuted for war crimes. Nor is there a push to indiscriminately bomb the United States as for “supporting terrorism.”
The number of dead in Iran and Iraq pales into comparison compared to the 2 000 000 killed in the US war on Vietnam which also included illegal bombing of Laos and Cambodia. The US dropped 1kg of explosive per square meter of Vietnamese territory as well as using chemical agents. It is impossible to think of the civilian casualties in this invasion as “accidents.” The US has refused to pay any compensation to Vietnam as despite no Vietnamese violence towards the US outside their own country ever, the US declares that in the war “damage was mutual.” Not one of the intellectual authors of the terrorism of the Vietnamese People spent time in gaol. Much less were they summarily executed in accordance for what apparently counts as justice for terrorists.
Stepping back from armed conflict, US inhumanity is visible in its actions in the United Nations. The US was the only country in the entire general assembly to vote against providing aid in the struggle against apartheid (1978), to abolish biological and chemical weapons (1982), to end the militarization of space (1983), against the declaration of a human right to food (2007) and for ban on research into chemical and biological weapons (2008). US veto has prevented the UN from taking action against Israeli occupation of Palestine . Not a single US ambassador to the UN has been publically hanged.
The US has not been content with killing people directly through armed intervention. It has been working consistently to destroy the biosphere itself. The US contains 5% of the world’s population. It produces 45% of the world’s carbon emissions, 33% of the world’s solid waste and 75% of the world’s toxic waste. The US consumes obscenely, accounting for 25% of world energy consumption and 33% of total consumption. 40% of food produced in the US is thrown in the bin and 70% of grain is fed to animals. Not one supermarket CEO has had marines storm their house and shoot them dead. Not one oil baron has had families wiped out by missile strikes.
You don’t need to look historically to conceive of the US as terrorist state. You don’t need to take into account about the US prison population including Mumia Abu Jamal and Lenoard Peltzer locked away for speaking the truth. You don’t need to consider 10 000 casualties of the war on drugs inside the US alone. You don’t need to go back to the Bush administration. Barrack Obama, expert on constitutional law, has defended the use of National Security clauses in civil suits brought against the government for mistreatment of detainees. Obama says that the relatives of those whom the US (accidentally) tortures to death have no right to legal redress because revealing details of the cases would harm the state. Obama says that those such as Bradley Manning who reveal the extent of US terrorism deserve to be detained indefinitely and subject to torture. Barrack Obama is doing everything he can to maintain the US empire and is adding his proportion to the twenty seven million lives that this empire has cost the world so far. To a much greater extent than Osama could dream about, Osama is a “bully,” a “terrorist” who has “killed thousands” and “would like to kill thousands more.” How long until a team of Navy Seals storms his compound and shoots him dead, armed or not.
Osama Bin Laden knew that US imperialism was the worst thing in the world. He tried to make it stop and in the end it cost him his life. Who amongst us can claim such dignity? We can’t even see the injustice that got him killed.