The Idea that Nicaragua Might Have The Right To Defend Itself

Well, one illuminating aspect of our own attitude toward terrorism is the 
reaction to the idea that Nicaragua might have the right to defend itself.
Actually I went through this in some detail with database searches and that
sort of thing. The idea that Nicaragua might have the right to defend 
itself was considered outrageous. There is virtually nothing in mainstream
commentary indicating that Nicaragua might have that right. And that fact 
was exploited by the Reagan administration and its propaganda in an 
interesting way. Those of you who were around in that time will remember 
that they periodically floated rumors that the Nicaraguans were getting 
MIG jets, jets from Russia. At that point the hawks and the doves split. 
The hawks said, 'ok, let's bomb 'em.' The doves said, `wait a minute, 
let's see if the rumors are true. And if the rumors are true, then let's 
bomb them. Because they are a threat to the United States.' Why, 
incidentally were they getting MIGs. Well they tried to get jet planes 
from European countries but the United States put pressure on its allies 
so that it wouldn't send them means of defense because they wanted them to
turn to the Russians. That's good for propaganda purposes. Then they become
a threat to us. Remember, they were just 2 days march from Harlingen, Texas.
We actually declared a national emergency in 1985 to protect the country
from the threat of Nicaragua. And it stayed in force. So it was much better
for them to get arms from the Russians. Why would they want jet planes? 
Well, for the reasons I already mentioned. The United States had total 
control over their airspace, was over flying it and using that to provide 
instructions to the terrorist army to enable them to attack soft targets 
without running into the army that might defend them. Everyone knew that 
that was the reason. They are not going to use their jet planes for 
anything else. But the idea that Nicaragua should be permitted to defend 
its airspace against a superpower attack that is directing terrorist 
forces to attack undefended civilian targets, that was considered in the 
United States as outrageous and uniformly so. Exceptions are so slight, 
you know I can practically list them. I don't suggest that you take my 
word for this. Have a look. That includes our own senators, incidentally.

Honduras - The Appointment of John Negroponte as Ambassador to the United 
Nations

Another illustration of how we regard terrorism is happening right now. 
The US has just appointed an ambassador to the United Nations to lead the 
war against terrorism a couple weeks ago. Who is he? Well, his name is 
John Negroponte. He was the US ambassador in the fiefdom, which is what it
is, of Honduras in the early 1980's. There was a little fuss made about the
fact that he must have been aware, as he certainly was, of the large-scale 
murders and other atrocities that were being carried out by the security 
forces in Honduras that we were supporting. But that's a small part of it.
As proconsul of Honduras, as he was called there, he was the local 
supervisor for the terrorist war based in Honduras, for which his 
government was condemned by the world court and then the Security Council 
in a vetoed resolution. And he was just appointed as the UN Ambassador to 
lead the war against terror. Another small experiment you can do is check 
and see what the reaction was to this. Well, I will tell you what you are 
going to find, but find it for yourself. Now that tells us a lot about the
war against terrorism and a lot about ourselves.

After the United States took over the country again under the conditions 
that were so graphically described by the press, the country was pretty 
much destroyed in the 1980's, but it has totally collapsed since in every 
respect just about. Economically it has declined sharply since the US take
over, democratically and in every other respect. It's now the second 
poorest country in the Hemisphere. I should say....I'm not going to talk 
about it, but I mentioned that I picked up Nicaragua because it is an 
uncontroversial case. If you look at the other states in the region, the 
state terror was far more extreme and it again traces back to Washington 
and that's by no means all.

US & UK Backed South African Attacks

It was happening elsewhere in the world too, take say Africa. During the 
Reagan years alone, South African attacks, backed by the United States and
Britain, US/UK-backed South African attacks against the neighboring 
countries killed about a million and a half people and left 60 billion 
dollars in damage and countries destroyed.  And if we go around the world,
we can add more examples.

Now that was the first war against terror of which I've given a small 
sample. Are we supposed to pay attention to that? Or kind of think that 
that might be relevant? After all it's not exactly ancient history. Well, 
evidently not as you can tell by looking at the current discussion of the 
war on terror which has been the leading topic for the last month.

Haiti, Guatemala, and Nicaragua

I mentioned that Nicaragua has now become the 2nd poorest country in the 
hemisphere. What's the poorest country? Well that's of course Haiti which 
also happens to be the victim of most US intervention in the 20th century 
by a long shot. We left it totally devastated. It's the poorest country. 
Nicaragua is second ranked in degree of US intervention in the 20th 
century. It is the 2nd poorest. Actually, it is vying with Guatemala. They
interchange every year or two as to who's the second poorest. And they also
vie as to who is the leading target of US military intervention. We're 
supposed to think that all of this is some sort of accident. That is has 
nothing to do with anything that happened in history. Maybe.

Colombia and Turkey

The worst human rights violator in the 1990's is Colombia, by a long shot.
It's also the, by far, the leading recipient of US military aid in the
1990's maintaining the terror and human rights violations. In 1999,
Colombia  replaced Turkey as the leading recipient of US arms worldwide,
that is excluding Israel and Egypt which are a separate category. And that
tells us a lot more about the war on terror right now, in fact.

Why was Turkey getting such a huge flow of US arms? Well if you take a 
look at the flow of US arms to Turkey, Turkey always got a lot of US arms.
It's strategically placed, a member of NATO, and so on. But the arms flow 
to Turkey went up very sharply in 1984. It didn't have anything to do with
the cold war. I mean Russian was collapsing. And it stayed high from 1984 
to 1999 when it reduced and it was replaced in the lead by Colombia. What 
happened from 1984 to 1999? Well, in 1984, [Turkey] launched a major 
terrorist war against Kurds in southeastern Turkey. And that's when US aid
went up, military aid. And this was not pistols. This was jet planes,
tanks, military training, and so on. And it stayed high as the atrocities 
escalated through the 1990's. Aid followed it. The peak year was 1997. In 
1997, US military aid to Turkey was more than in the entire period 1950 to
1983, that is the cold war period, which is an indication of how much the 
cold war has affected policy. And the results were awesome. This led to
2-3 million refugees. Some of the worst ethnic cleansing of the late
1990's. Tens of thousands of people killed, 3500 towns and villages
destroyed, way more than Kosovo, even under NATO bombs. And the United
States was providing 80% of the arms, increasing as the atrocities
increased, peaking in 1997. It declined in 1999 because, once again,
terror worked as it usually does when carried out by its major agents,
mainly the powerful. Soby 1999, Turkish terror, called of course counter-
terror, but as I said, that's universal, it worked. Therefore Turkey was
replaced by Colombia which had not yet succeeded in its terrorist war. And
therefore had to move into first place as recipient of US arms.

Self Congratulation on the Part of Western Intellectuals

Well, what makes this all particularly striking is that all of this was 
taking place right in the midst of a huge flood of self-congratulation on 
the part of Western intellectuals which probably has no counterpart in 
history. I mean you all remember it. It was just a couple years ago. 
Massive self-adulation about how for the first time in history we are so 
magnificent; that we are standing up for principles and values; dedicated 
to ending inhumanity everywhere in the new era of this-and-that, and 
so-on-and-so-forth. And we certainly can't tolerate atrocities right near 
the borders of NATO. That was repeated over and over. Only within the 
borders of NATO where we can not only can tolerate much worse atrocities 
but contribute to them. Another insight into Western civilization and our 
own, is how often was this brought up? Try to look. I won't repeat it. But
it's instructive. It's a pretty impressive feat for a propaganda system to 
carry this off in a free society. It's pretty amazing. I don't think you 
could do this in a totalitarian state.

Turkey is Very Grateful

And Turkey is very grateful. Just a few days ago, Prime Minister Ecevit 
announced that Turkey would join the coalition against terror, very 
enthusiastically, even more so than others. In fact, he said they would 
contribute troops which others have not willing to do. And he explained 
why. He said, We owe a debt of gratitude to the United States because the 
United States was the only country that was willing to contribute so 
massively to our own, in his words "counter-terrorist" war, that is to our
own massive ethnic cleansing and atrocities and terror. Other countries 
helped a little, but they stayed back. The United States, on the other 
hand, contributed enthusiastically and decisively and was able to do so 
because of the silence, servility might be the right word, of the educated
classes who could easily find out about it. It's a free country after all. 
You can read human rights reports. You can read all sorts of stuff. But we
chose to contribute to the atrocities and Turkey is very happy, they owe us
a debt of gratitude for that and therefore will contribute troops just as 
during the war in Serbia. Turkey was very much praised for using its
F-16's which we supplied it to bomb Serbia exactly as it had been doing
with the same planes against its own population up until the time when it 
finally succeeded in crushing internal terror as they called it. And as 
usual, as always, resistance does include terror. Its true of the American
Revolution. That's true of every case I know. Just as its true that those 
who have a monopoly of violence talk about themselves as carrying out 
counter terror.

The Coalition - Including Algeria, Russia, China, Indonesia

Now that's pretty impressive and that has to do with the coalition that is
now being organized to fight the war against terror. And it's very 
interesting to see how that coalition is being described. So have a look 
at this morning's Christian Science Monitor. That's a good newspaper. One 
of the best international newspapers, with real coverage of the world. The
lead story, the front-page story, is about how the United States, you know 
people used to dislike the United States but now they are beginning to 
respect it, and they are very happy about the way that the US is leading 
the war against terror. And the prime example, well in fact the only 
serious example, the others are a joke, is Algeria. Turns out that Algeria
is very enthusiastic about the US war against terror. The person who wrote 
the article is an expert on Africa. He must know that Algeria is one of 
the most vicious terrorist states in the world and has been carrying out 
horrendous terror against its own population in the past couple of years, 
in fact. For a while, this was under wraps. But it was finally exposed in 
France by defectors from the Algerian army. It's all over the place there 
and in England and so on. But here, we're very proud because one of the 
worst terrorist states in the world is now enthusiastically welcoming the 
US war on terror and in fact is cheering on the United States to lead the 
war. That shows how popular we are getting.

And if you look at the coalition that is being formed against terror it 
tells you a lot more. A leading member of the coalition is Russia which is
delighted to have the United States support its murderous terrorist war in 
Chechnya instead of occasionally criticizing it in the background. China 
is joining enthusiastically. It's delighted to have support for the 
atrocities it's carrying out in western China against, what it called, 
Muslim secessionists. Turkey, as I mentioned, is very happy with the war 
against terror. They are experts. Algeria, Indonesia delighted to have 
even more US support for atrocities it is carrying out in Ache and 
elsewhere. Now we can run through the list, the list of the states that 
have joined the coalition against terror is quite impressive. They have a 
characteristic in common. They are certainly among the leading terrorist 
states in the world. And they happen to be led by the world champion.

What is Terrorism?

Well that brings us back to the question, what is terrorism? I have been 
assuming we understand it. Well, what is it? Well, there happen to be some
easy answers to this. There is an official definition. You can find it in 
the US code or in US army manuals. A brief statement of it taken from a US
army manual, is fair enough, is that terror is the calculated use of 
violence or the threat of violence to attain political or religious 
ideological goals through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear. 
That's terrorism. That's a fair enough definition. I think it is 
reasonable to accept that. The problem is that it can't be accepted 
because if you accept that, all the wrong consequences follow. For example,
all the consequences I have just been reviewing. Now there is a major 
effort right now at the UN to try to develop a comprehensive treaty on 
terrorism. When Kofi Annan got the Nobel prize the other day, you will 
notice he was reported as saying that we should stop wasting time on this 
and really get down to it.

But there's a problem. If you use the official definition of terrorism in 
the comprehensive treaty you are going to get completely the wrong results.
So that can't be done. In fact, it is even worse than that. If you take 
a look at the definition of Low Intensity Warfare which is official US 
policy you find that it is a very close paraphrase of what I just read. In
fact, Low Intensity Conflict is just another name for terrorism. That's why
all countries, as far as I know, call whatever horrendous acts they are 
carrying out, counter terrorism. We happen to call it Counter Insurgency 
or Low Intensity Conflict. So that's a serious problem. You can't use the 
actual definitions. You've got to carefully find a definition that doesn't
have all the wrong consequences.

Why did the United States and Israel Vote Against a Major Resolution 
Condemning Terrorism?

There are some other problems. Some of them came up in December 1987, at 
the peak of the first war on terrorism, that's when the furor over the 
plague was peaking. The United Nations General Assembly passed a very 
strong resolution against terrorism, condemning the plague in the 
strongest terms, calling on every state to fight against it in every 
possible way. It passed unanimously. One country, Honduras abstained. Two 
votes against; the usual two, United States and Israel. Why should the 
United States and Israel vote against a major resolution condemning 
terrorism in the strongest terms, in fact pretty much the terms that the 
Reagan administration was using? Well, there is a reason. There is one 
paragraph in that long resolution which says that nothing in this 
resolution infringes on the rights of people struggling against racist and
colonialist regimes or foreign military occupation to continue with their 
resistance with the assistance of others, other states, states outside in 
their just cause. Well, the United States and Israel can't accept that. 
The main reason that they couldn't at the time was because of South Africa.
South Africa was an ally, officially called an ally. There was a 
terrorist force in South Africa. It was called the African National 
Congress. They were a terrorist force officially. South Africa in contrast
was an ally and we certainly couldn't support actions by a terrorist group 
struggling against a racist regime. That would be impossible.

And of course there is another one. Namely the Israeli occupied 
territories, now going into its 35th year. Supported primarily by the 
United States in blocking a diplomatic settlement for 30 years now, still 
is. And you can't have that. There is another one at the time. Israel was 
occupying Southern Lebanon and was being combated by what the US calls a 
terrorist force, Hizbullah, which in fact succeeded in driving Israel out 
of Lebanon. And we can't allow anyone to struggle against a military 
occupation when it is one that we support so therefore the US and Israel 
had to vote against the major UN resolution on terrorism. And I mentioned 
before that a US vote against...is essentially a veto. Which is only half 
the story. It also vetoes it from history. So none of this was every 
reported and none of it appeared in the annals of terrorism. If you look 
at the scholarly work on terrorism and so on, nothing that I just 
mentioned appears. The reason is that it has got the wrong people holding 
the guns. You have to carefully hone the definitions and the scholarship 
and so on so that you come out with the right conclusions; otherwise it is
not respectable scholarship and honorable journalism. Well, these are some 
of problems that are hampering the effort to develop a comprehensive 
treaty against terrorism. Maybe we should have an academic conference or 
something to try to see if we can figure out a way of defining terrorism 
so that it comes out with just the right answers, not the wrong answers. 
That won't be easy.


4. What are the Origins of the September 11 Crime?

Well, let's drop that and turn to the 4th question, What are the origins 
of the September 11 crimes? Here we have to make a distinction between 2 
categories which shouldn't be run together. One is the actual agents of 
the crime, the other is kind of a reservoir of at least sympathy, 
sometimes support that they appeal to even among people who very much 
oppose the criminals and the actions. And those are 2 different things.

Category 1: The Likely Perpetrators

Well, with regard to the perpetrators, in a certain sense we are not 
really clear. The United States either is unable or unwilling to provide 
any evidence, any meaningful evidence. There was a sort of a play a week 
or two ago when Tony Blair was set up to try to present it. I don't 
exactly know what the purpose of this was. Maybe so that the US could look
as though it's holding back on some secret evidence that it can't reveal or
that Tony Blair could strike proper Churchillian poses or something or 
other. Whatever the PR [public relations] reasons were, he gave a 
presentation which was in serious circles considered so absurd that it was
barely even mentioned. So the Wall Street Journal, for example, one of the 
more serious papers had a small story on page 12, I think, in which they 
pointed out that there was not much evidence and then they quoted some 
high US official as saying that it didn't matter whether there was any 
evidence because they were going to do it anyway. So why bother with the 
evidence? The more ideological press, like the New York Times and others, 
they had big front-page headlines. But the Wall Street Journal reaction 
was reasonable and if you look at the so-called evidence you can see why. 
But let's assume that it's true. It is astonishing to me how weak the 
evidence was. I sort of thought you could do better than that without any 
intelligence service [audience laughter]. In fact, remember this was after
weeks of the most intensive investigation in history of all the 
intelligence services of the western world working overtime trying to put 
something together. And it was a prima facie, it was a very strong case 
even before you had anything. And it ended up about where it started, with
a prima facie case. So let's assume that it is true. So let 's assume that,
it looked obvious the first day, still does, that the actual perpetrators 
come from the radical Islamic, here called, fundamentalist networks of 
which the bin Laden network is undoubtedly a significant part. Whether 
they were involved or not nobody knows. It doesn't really matter much.

Where did they come from?

That's the background, those networks. Well, where do they come from? We 
know all about that. Nobody knows about that better than the CIA because 
it helped organize them and it nurtured them for a long time. They were 
brought together in the 1980's actually by the CIA and its associates 
elsewhere: Pakistan, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China was 
involved, they may have been involved a little bit earlier, maybe by 1978.
The idea was to try to harass the Russians, the common enemy. According to 
President Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the US 
got involved in mid 1979. Do you remember, just to put the dates right, 
that Russia invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. Ok. According to 
Brzezinski, the US support for the mojahedin fighting against the 
government began 6 months earlier. He is very proud of that. He says we 
drew the Russians into, in his words, an Afghan trap, by supporting the 
mojahedin, getting them to invade, getting them into the trap. Now then we
could develop this terrific mercenary army. Not a small one, maybe 100,000 
men or so bringing together the best killers they could find, who were 
radical Islamist fanatics from around North Africa, Saudi Arabia....
anywhere they could find them. They were often called the Afghanis but 
many of them, like bin Laden, were not Afghans. They were brought by the 
CIA and its friends from elsewhere. Whether Brzezinski is telling the 
truth or not, I don't know. He may have been bragging, he is apparently 
very proud of it, knowing the consequences incidentally. But maybe it's 
true. We'll know someday if the documents are ever released. Anyway, 
that's his perception. By January 1980 it is not even in doubt that the US
was organizing the Afghanis and this massive military force to try to cause
the Russians maximal trouble. It was a legitimate thing for the Afghans to 
fight the Russian invasion. But the US intervention was not helping the 
Afghans. In fact, it helped destroy the country and much more. The 
Afghanis, so called, had their own...it did force the Russians to withdrew,
finally. Although many analysts believe that it probably delayed their 
withdrawal because they were trying to get out of it. Anyway, whatever, 
they did withdraw.