The "New" War on Terror? (I didn't write this...but it's great)

From The Desk of Avron (Note: Get to the web page I'm talking about by clicking on the title of this post)

Just thought I would weigh in on the whole war thing. Since I am not into "beliefs" per se`., I'll just show you what a really bright guy named Noam Chomsky says: (This is an excerpt from the link listed)

What is the War Against Terrorism?

Well, let’s go to the third question, ‘What is the war against terrorism?’ and a side question, ‘What’s terrorism?’. The war against terrorism has been described in high places as a struggle against a plague, a cancer which is spread by barbarians, by “depraved opponents of civilization itself.” That’s a feeling that I share. The words I’m quoting, however, happen to be from 20 years ago. Those are…that’s President Reagan and his Secretary of State. The Reagan administration came into office 20 years ago declaring that the war against international terrorism would be the core of our foreign policy….describing it in terms of the kind I just mentioned and others. And it was the core of our foreign policy. The Reagan administration responded to this plague spread by depraved opponents of civilization itself by creating an extraordinary international terrorist network, totally unprecedented in scale, which carried out massive atrocities all over the world, primarily….well, partly nearby, but not only there. I won’t run through the record, you’re all educated people, so I’m sure you learned about it in High School. [crowd laughter]

Reagan-US War Against Nicaragua

But I’ll just mention one case which is totally uncontroversial, so we might as well not argue about it, by no means the most extreme but uncontroversial. It’s uncontroversial because of the judgments of the highest international authorities the International Court of Justice, the World Court, and the UN Security Council. So this one is uncontroversial, at least among people who have some minimal concern for international law, human rights, justice and other things like that. And now I’ll leave you an exercise. You can estimate the size of that category by simply asking how often this uncontroversial case has been mentioned in the commentary of the last month. And it’s a particularly relevant one, not only because it is uncontroversial, but because it does offer a precedent as to how a law abiding state would respond to…did respond in fact to international terrorism, which is uncontroversial. And was even more extreme than the events of September 11th. I’m talking about the Reagan-US war against Nicaragua which left tens of thousands of people dead, the country ruined, perhaps beyond recovery.
Nicaragua’s Response
Nicaragua did respond. They didn’t respond by setting off bombs in Washington. They responded by taking it to the World Court, presenting a case, they had no problem putting together evidence. The World Court accepted their case, ruled in their favor, ordered the…condemned what they called the “unlawful use of force,” which is another word for international terrorism, by the United States, ordered the United States to terminate the crime and to pay massive reparations. The United States, of course, dismissed the court judgment with total contempt and announced that it would not accept the jurisdiction of the court henceforth. Then Nicaragua then went to the UN Security Council which considered a resolution calling on all states to observe international law. No one was mentioned but everyone understood. The United States vetoed the resolution. It now stands as the only state on record which has both been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism and has vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on states to observe international law. Nicaragua then went to the General Assembly where there is technically no veto but a negative US vote amounts to a veto. It passed a similar resolution with only the United States, Israel, and El Salvador opposed. The following year again, this time the United States could only rally Israel to the cause, so 2 votes opposed to observing international law. At that point, Nicaragua couldn’t do anything lawful. It tried all the measures. They don’t work in a world that is ruled by force.
This case is uncontroversial but it’s by no means the most extreme. We gain a lot of insight into our own culture and society and what’s happening now by asking ‘how much we know about all this? How much we talk about it? How much you learn about it in school? How much it’s all over the front pages?’ And this is only the beginning. The United States responded to the World Court and the Security Council by immediately escalating the war very quickly, that was a bipartisan decision incidentally. The terms of the war were also changed. For the first time there were official orders given…official orders to the terrorist army to attack what are called “soft targets,” meaning undefended civilian targets, and to keep away from the Nicaraguan army. They were able to do that because the United States had total control of the air over Nicaragua and the mercenary army was supplied with advanced communication equipment, it wasn’t a guerilla army in the normal sense and could get instructions about the disposition of the Nicaraguan army forces so they could attack agricultural collectives, health clinics, and so on…soft targets with impunity. Those were the official orders.
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Hmmmm... Kinda puts a whole new spin on things when you find out more "truth", doesn't it? Please read the entire article. Then read more. And More....and more. See why I have no "Beliefs" and at least try to stay away from "opinion"? I don't have the luxury of opinion; there's too much to be known that I will only scrape the surface of in my lifetime...but I will scrape as much as I can. Avron