Monthly Review
November 2001

After the Attack … The War on Terrorism

By The Editors
 
There is little we can say directly about the September 11
terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and
the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.--except that these were
acts of utter, inhuman violence, indefensible in every
sense, taking a deep and lasting human toll. Such terrorism
has to be rid from the face of the earth. The difficulty
lies in how to rid the world of it.

Terrorism generates counterterrorism and the United States
has long been a party to this deadly game, as perpetrator
more often than victim.

The U.S. strategy of retaliation in the form of a global war
on terrorism--already commencing on October 7 with
military strikes in Afghanistan--is certain to compound
this tragedy in the months and years ahead. For this reason
it is now more important than ever that the realities of
U.S. militarism and imperialism be brought to light, along
with the role of propaganda in removing them from the
scrutiny of the domestic population.

Militarism and U.S. Capitalism

That the United States is the dominant global empire--the
modern Rome--is crystal clear. Since the 1940s, if not
earlier, the United States has been engaged in a struggle to
maintain and even expand its position as the world’s
foremost military, economic, and political power. Today the
United States accounts for about a third of all world
military expenditures. It is the world’s leading
international arms seller. And it is has rained death and
destruction on more people in more regions of the globe than
any other nation in the period since the Second World War.

Consider the following. The United States has employed its
military forces in other countries over seventy times since
1945, not counting innumerable instances of
counterinsurgency operations by the CIA. In the Middle
East/Islamic world alone, over the last twenty years the
U.S. military:

 - shot down Libyan jets in 1981; 
 - sent military personnel and equipment to the Sinai as part of 
   a multinational force in 1982; 
 - sent marines to Lebanon in 1982; 
 - dispatched an AWACS electronic surveillance plane directed against Libya 
   to Egypt in 1983; 
 - used AWACS electronic surveillance aircraft to aid Saudi Arabia in 
   shooting down Iranian fighter jets in the Persian Gulf in 1984; 
 - fired missiles at and bombed Libya in 1986; 
 - shot down Libyan fighters in 1989; 
 - escorted Kuwaiti oil tankers during the Iran–Iraq war; 
 - fought the Gulf War against Iraq in 1991; 
 - fired missiles and carried out bombing strikes against Iraq on 
   numerous occasions in the last decade; 
 - arried out military exercises in Kuwait (aimed at Iraq) in 1992; 
 - deployed its armed forces in Somalia in 1992; 
 - demolished one of the few pharmaceutical plants in Sudan in a missile 
   attack in 1998; 
 - fired sixty cruise missiles equipped with cluster bombs at Osama bin 
   Laden in Afghanistan in 1998. 
 - commenced war operations in Afghanistan in 2001.* 

More than a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians were killed in
the Gulf War, and as many as a half million children have
died as a result of U.S.–imposed sanctions since the
war. U.S. support for Israel in the form of billions of
dollars of military aid each year coupled with its refusal
to rein in Israel’s territorial ambitions have made it a
principal party to the war of terror inflicted on the
Palestinian people.

What explains this imperialist thrust? U.S. capitalism, as
we have long noted in these pages, has been dependent since
the Second World War on large infusions of military spending
both to support its imperial interests abroad and to prop up
the economy. In this respect the end of the Cold War with
the collapse of the Soviet Union had negative as well as
positive consequences for the U.S. ruling class. How was the
huge military budget of hundreds of billions of dollars a
year to be justified with the disappearance of the “evil
empire”? Tied up with this were the growing challenges to
U.S. economic power from rival capitalist states, which
during the Cold War period had generally submitted to
U.S. ends within the context of the broad Cold War alliance.

In the years that have intervened since the fall of the
Soviet Union, the U.S. ruling class has thus been seeking a
substitute for the Cold War with which to justify its
imperial designs. Various alternatives have been offered: a
war on terrorism; the struggle against “rogue states”;
a “clash of civilizations” (Islam and China vs. the
West, as proposed by Samuel Huntington); a war on the global
drug trade; and humanitarian intervention--all of them up
to now seen as unsatisfactory, but sufficient to keep the
military budget from shrinking drastically after the Cold
War.

Fortunately, a godsend appeared in the form of Saddam
Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. But the rapid victory
over Iraqi forces in the Gulf War was so complete and so
devastating that Hussein could no longer serve as the
credible threat needed to justify U.S. worldwide military
commitments. As General Colin Powell voiced the problem in
1991: “Think hard about it. I’m running out of
demons. I’m running out of villains.”*

There is no doubt that this was viewed as an insoluble
dilemma within the corridors of power in the United
States. Only weeks ago, at this writing, it looked like
President Bush’s proposal to expand U.S. military spending
through the creation of an anti–missile defense system
(abandoning the ABM treaty forged with the Soviet Union) was
going to have some stiff opposition in Congress--although
most of the Bush program would no doubt have been adopted in
the end, since both Republican and Democratic parties have
continually supported increasing military expenditures.

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon have now changed all of that.

The United States is gearing up for what is being touted as
the first war of the millennium. For a Wall Street suffering
from economic stagnation and growing uncertainty, the one
bit of really good news is the skyrocketing virtually
overnight of U.S. military expenditures with more increases
to be expected in the very near future, sending the stocks
of military contractors soaring.

Notwithstanding the shock and horror associated with the
terrorist attacks, the U.S. ruling class was quick enough to
grasp this as an immediate opportunity for a new global
military crusade of a scope approximating that of the Cold
War; hence it wasted no time in fanning the flames of
war. The militaristic response was cast in stone before the
north tower of the World Trade Center fell to the earth. In
President Bush’s major speech to the nation on September 20,
2001, he indicted Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist network
for the attacks and issued threats to the Taliban government
in Afghanistan, indicating that they too were a target for
having harbored the enemy. But he did not stop there. He
also declared that “there are thousands of these
terrorists in more than sixty countries.…Every nation in
every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with
us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward,
any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism
will be regarded by the United States as a hostile
regime.” The United States, was entering into “a
lengthy campaign unlike any we have seen,” which would
include dramatic military strikes and covert actions. Ground
troops would be committed and losses could be expected. The
United States would utilize “every necessary weapon of
war” (the statement purposely did not exclude the use of
nuclear weapons) against these enemies. “God,” Bush
exclaimed, “is not neutral,” evoking the familiar
Christian notion of divine retribution against sinners.

But behind this speech is a still more frightening
reality. Congress has turned over to the President with only
one dissenter (Representative Barbara Lee from California)
the power not only to conduct this ill–defined war as he
pleases; but also to define the enemy itself, which is
already being projected as of worldwide scope. A war is to
be fought, Bush and his administration made clear, and it is
to take place in many different countries--extending to
whole nations (which make better targets than hard to find
terrorists). Yet, the U.S. public is still left in the dark
as to who these additional enemies are--outside of Osama
bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan--or where the
U.S. military will choose to strike next after Afghanistan.

Bush’s speech thus establishes the basis for a series of
military interventions without definite geographical
boundaries or moral restraints on the weapons to be used;
and without any limits on the numbers or types of enemies to
be encountered. On top of this is a plan for greatly
expanded federal powers for the maintenance of internal
security, including the creation of a cabinet–level
Office of Homeland Security.

It is possible that given time the U.S. ruling class will
split over some of these issues: the extent of the
militarization; the number of countries that will be
targeted in this war; and the infringements on the freedom
of U.S. citizens. There will probably be pressure from
allied nations to temper the militarism. But these are
questions of degree. The U.S. power elite appears solidly
behind a global expansion of the U.S. military role and
severe global retaliation for the attacks. There can be no
doubt that the world is facing what István Mészáros in his
Socialism or Barbarism has called “the potentially
deadliest phase of imperialism” resulting from the
global–imperial projection of U.S. power.

The Propaganda of Empire

A core tension in capitalist societies hampered by universal
adult suffrage is how to reconcile inegalitarian economics
with formally egalitarian politics. For those in power, the
concern is an age–old one: how to keep the propertyless
many from abridging the privileges of the wealthy few. Under
democracy, only in a time of a crisis of the system can the
solution be one of brute force. More generally the solution
must be found in the realm of ideology or propaganda.

The point is to depoliticize the masses or delude them so
they will not act in their own interests.

The problem is even greater when the democratic capitalist
society is also a major empire. The mass of the population
must be persuaded to subsidize the expense of empire, though
its benefits are hard to locate. And when the inevitable war
comes the masses must be convinced to fight and die for the
empire. Under conditions of democracy, to be frank and
honest about the purpose and nature of imperialism would be
counterproductive to these aims. Hence in Britain, empire
was justified as a benevolent “white man’s burden.”
And in the United States, empire does not even exist;
“we” are merely protecting the causes of freedom,
democracy, and justice worldwide.

It has proven to be a difficult job in the United States to
enlist popular support for foreign war and empire. Since the
late nineteenth century the U.S. government has worked
aggressively to convince the citizenry of the necessity of
going to war in numerous instances. In cases like the First
World War, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War, the government
employed sophisticated propaganda campaigns to whip the
population into a suitable fury. It was well understood
within the establishment at the time--and subsequently
verified in historical examinations--that the government
needed to lie in order to gain support for its war aims. The
media system, in every case, proved to be a superior
propaganda organ for militarism and empire.

This is the context for understanding the media coverage
since September 11. The historical record suggests we should
expect an avalanche of lies and half–truths in the
service of power, and that is exactly what we have
gotten. The U.S. news media--which love nothing more than
to congratulate themselves for their independence from
government control--did not so much as blink before they
became the explicit agents of militarist and imperialist
propaganda.

One way to grasp the extent of the propaganda barrage is to
ask how a democratic society with a truly independent and
free press would respond to events like those of September
11. In moments of crisis, a democratic media system needs to
generate factual accuracy on everything relevant. It needs
to be skeptical toward those in power and those who wish to
be in power. And it needs to provide the basis for a wide
range of debate over policy proposals to address the crisis,
including historical background and context so that citizens
can make sense of the problems and determine the best
possible solution. Every medium need not do all this, but,
in combination, the system as a whole should make this
readily available to the larger population.

Such a free press would “serve the governed, not the
governors,” as Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black once put
it.

Even allowing for the suddenness and merciless nature of the
attack, none of these responses, which one could reasonably
expect of a free and independent press, were evident in the
U.S. media system in the weeks following September 11. To
the contrary, the Manichean picture conveyed by the media
was as follows: A benevolent, democratic, and peace loving
nation was brutally attacked by insane evil terrorists who
hate the United States for its freedoms and affluent way of
life. The United States must immediately increase its
military and covert forces, locate the surviving culprits
and exterminate them; then prepare for a long–term war to
root out the global terrorist cancer and destroy it. Those
who do not aid the U.S. campaign for just retribution--and
logically, this would mean domestically as well as
internationally--are to be regarded as the accomplices of
the guilty parties, and may well suffer a similar fate.

The reasons for this grossly distorted coverage go beyond
notions of conspiracy, and reflect the weaknesses of
professional journalism as it has been practiced in the
United States, as well as the control of our major news
media by a very small number of very large and powerful
profit–seeking corporations.

Professional journalism emerged around one hundred years
ago, propelled by the need of monopoly newspaper owners to
offer a credible “non–partisan” journalism so that
their business enterprises would not be undermined. To avoid
the taint of partisanship, professionalism makes official or
credentialed sources the basis for news stories. Reporters
report what people in power say, and what they debate. This
tends to give the news an establishment bias. When a
journalist reports what elites are saying, or debating, she
is professional. When she steps outside this range of
official debate to provide alternative perspectives or to
raise issues elites prefer not to discuss, she is no longer
being professional. Most journalists have so internalized
their primary role as stenographers for official sources
that they do not recognize it as a problem for democracy.

In addition to this reliance on official sources, experts
are also crucial to explaining and debating policy,
especially in complex stories like this one. As with
sources, experts are drawn almost entirely from the
establishment, given that their main purpose is to express
the consensus of those in power. Since September 11, the
range of “expert” analysis has been limited mostly to
the military and intelligence communities and their
supporters, with their clear self–interest in the
imposition of military solutions rarely acknowledged and
almost never critically examined.

Since there has been virtually no debate between the
Democrats and Republicans over the proper response, the
military approach has simply been offered as the only
option. The obvious question, which should have been the
first one off of any self–respecting journalist’s tongue,
was beyond the pale: on what grounds are we to believe that
spending tens of billions more on the military and
CIA--the same people who failed to stop the September
attacks with their existing bloated budgets--will solve
this problem?

It is possible in the weeks and months to follow that the
range of debate may broaden in elite circles. It is likely
that some will assume the “liberal” and
“internationalist” position that the United States
should put the brakes on the full–throttle militarism and
jingoism as that would prove to be counterproductive to
long–term U.S. aims in the Middle East and the
world. Those adopting this approach will inevitably argue
that the United States needs to win the “hearts and
minds” of potential adversaries through more
sophisticated peaceful measures, as well as having an
unmatched military. But fundamental issues will remain
decidedly off–limits. The role of the military as the
ultimate source of power will not be questioned. The notion
that the United States is a uniquely benevolent force in the
world will be undisputed. The premise that the United States
and the United States alone--unless it deputizes a nation
like Israel--has a right to invade any country it wants at
any time it wishes will remain undebateable. And any
concerns that U.S. military action will violate
international law-- which it almost certainly will--will
be raised not on principle, but only because it might harm
U.S. interests to be perceived by other nations as a
lawbreaker.

Here we should recall the media coverage of the
U.S. invasion of Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. From the
time the United States launched its ground invasion in
earnest, in 1965, until late 1967 or early 1968, the news
coverage was a classic example of the “big lie” of all
war propaganda. The war was good and necessary for freedom
and democracy; those that opposed it were trivialized,
marginalized, distorted or ignored. By 1968, the coverage
began to take a more charitable stance toward antiwar
positions. But while it reflected growing public opposition
to the war to a certain degree, this coverage was influenced
much more by the break that emerged in U.S. elite opinion by
this time: some on Wall Street and in Washington realized
that the cost of the war was far too high for any
prospective benefits and favored getting out. The news
coverage remained within the confines of elite opinion. The
United States still had a “007” right to invade any
nation it wished; the only debate was whether the invasion
of Vietnam was a proper use of that power. The notion that
the very idea of the United States invading nations like
Vietnam was morally wrong was off–limits, although
surveys revealed that such a view was not uncommon in the
general population.

Another flaw of establishment journalism is that it tends to
avoid contextualization like the plague. The reason for this
is that providing meaningful context and background for
stories, if done properly, will tend to commit the
journalist to a definite position and invite the very free
and open debate that professional journalism is determined
to avoid. So it is that on those stories that receive the
most coverage, like the Middle East, the U.S. population
tends to be every bit as, if not more, ignorant than on
those subjects that receive far less coverage. The
journalism is more likely to produce confusion, cynicism,
and apathy than understanding and informed action.  Coverage
tends to be a barrage of disconnected facts--a perfect
prescription for paralysis. What little contextualization
professional journalism does provide tends to conform to
elite premises.

The lack of context in the journalism since September 11 has
been astonishing by almost any standards. There have been
numerous detailed reports on Osama bin Laden and his reputed
terrorist network, and related investigations of factors
concerning the success or failure of a prospective military
invasion in Afghanistan, but otherwise the cupboard is
bare. Consider the following: There has been a blackout on
the subject of the role of the United States as arguably the
leading terrorist force in the world. In 1998, for example,
Amnesty International released a report which made it clear
that the United States was as responsible for extreme
violations of human rights around the globe--including the
promotion of torture and terrorism and the use of state
violence--as any government or organization in the world.*
The U.S. role in propping up corrupt regimes in Saudi Arabia
and Kuwait, and its appalling record of supporting and
bankrolling the Israeli assault on the Palestinians are
outside the purview of most U.S. residents.

Even relevant information about Osama bin Laden, such as the
fact that he formerly received support from the CIA via
Pakistan in the no–holds–barred war against the
Soviets in Afghanistan, is rarely mentioned and never
highlighted. Few individuals in the United States have
obtained any clue from their news media about the
heterogeneous nature of Islam and the Arab world--aside
from the simplistic distinction between “moderate
states” and “Islamic extremists.”

Beyond the professional code, U.S. media corporations exist
within an institutional context that makes support for
U.S. empire seemingly natural. These giant firms are among
the primary beneficiaries of both neoliberal globalization
(their revenues outside the United States are rapidly
increasing) and the U.S. role as the preeminent world
power. Indeed, the U.S. government is the primary advocate
for the global media firms when trade deals and intellectual
property agreements are being negotiated. For these firms to
provide an understanding of the world in which the
U.S. military and capitalism are not benevolent forces might
be possible in theory, but it is incongruous practically.

In sum, the government, the military, and the corporate
media are all in overdrive to sell the necessity,
inevitability, and virtues of a war on terrorism with few
boundaries, to be carried out by the most powerful military
force on the planet. They need popular support but cannot
afford to tell the simple, disarming truths. Much of the
U.S. population, to its everlasting credit, is skeptical
about such a militaristic response; hence the need for
propaganda.

For those who seek to oppose U.S. militarism and imperialism
and to promote peace in these dire circumstances, the road
ahead is clear. We need to debunk the militaristic lies and
build a broad coalition that will be able to turn back the
war campaign. If we falter and Washington’s warlords are not
stopped, history shows that the cost to humanity will
continue to mount--to be paid mainly in the blood of the
innocent in the poorest most exploited regions of the globe.

- See Ellen C. Collier, Instances of Use of United States
  Forces Abroad, 1798-1993, Congressional Research Service,
  Library of Congress, CRS Issue Brief, October 7,
  1993--available online at
  http://www.fas.org/man/crs/crs_931007.htm.

The Congressional Research Service lists sixty six instances
of the employment of U.S. military forces abroad over the
period 1945-1993 (245 over the period 1798-1993). This list
has be updated for the last eight years, bringing the total
since 1945 to over seventy.

- Quoted in Toronto Star, April 9, 1991. See also David
  N. Gibbs, “Washington’s New Interventionism,”
  Monthly Review, 53 (September 2001), 15-37.

- Amnesty International, The United States of America:
  Rights for All (London: Amnesty International, 1998), see
  especially chapters 7 and 8. Available online at:
  http://web.amnesty.org.