Chomsky: The Boston Bombings Gave Americans a Taste of the Terrorism the U.S. Inflicts Abroad Every Day

[CuteOldGuy]

When will we learn? Why do we apparently taunt the terrorists, daring them to attack? Why do we insist on alienating the very people we need on our side?

Here's the article:

April is usually a cheerful month in New England, with the first signs of spring, and the harsh winter at last receding. Not this year.

There are few in Boston who were not touched in some way by the marathon bombings on April 15 and the tense week that followed. Several friends of mine were at the finish line when the bombs went off. Others live close to where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the second suspect, was captured. The young police officer Sean Collier was murdered right outside my office building.

It's rare for privileged Westerners to see, graphically, what many others experience daily - for example, in a remote village in Yemen, the same week as the marathon bombings.

On April 23, Yemeni activist and journalist Farea Al-Muslimi, who had studied at an American high school, testified before a US Senate committee that right after the marathon bombings, a drone strike in his home village in Yemen killed its target.

The strike terrorized the villagers, turning them into enemies of the United States - something that years of jihadi propaganda had failed to accomplish.

His neighbors had admired the US, Al-Muslimi told the committee, but "Now, however, when they think of America, they think of the fear they feel at the drones over their heads. What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my village, one drone strike accomplished in an instant."

Rack up another triumph for President Obama's global assassination program, which creates hatred of the United States and threats to its citizens more rapidly than it kills people who are suspected of posing a possible danger to us someday.

The target of the Yemeni village assassination, which was carried out to induce maximum terror in the population, was well-known and could easily have been apprehended, Al-Muslimi said. This is another familiar feature of the global terror operations.

There was no direct way to prevent the Boston murders. There are some easy ways to prevent likely future ones: by not inciting them. That's also true of another case of a suspect murdered, his body disposed of without autopsy, when he could easily have been apprehended and brought to trial: Osama bin Laden.

This murder too had consequences. To locate bin Laden, the CIA launched a fraudulent vaccination campaign in a poor neighborhood, then switched it, uncompleted, to a richer area where the suspect was thought to be.

The CIA operation violated fundamental principles as old as the Hippocratic oath. It also endangered health workers associated with a polio vaccination program in Pakistan, several of whom were abducted and killed, prompting the UN to withdraw its anti-polio team.

The CIA ruse also will lead to the deaths of unknown numbers of Pakistanis who have been deprived of protection from polio because they fear that foreign killers may still be exploiting vaccination programs.

Columbia University health scientist Leslie Roberts estimated that 100,000 cases of polio may follow this incident; he told Scientific American that "people would say this disease, this crippled child is because the US was so crazy to get Osama bin Laden."

And they may choose to react, as aggrieved people sometimes do, in ways that will cause their tormentors consternation and outrage.

Even more severe consequences were narrowly averted. The US Navy SEALs were under orders to fight their way out if necessary. Pakistan has a well-trained army, committed to defending the state. Had the invaders been confronted, Washington would not have left them to their fate. Rather, the full force of the US killing machine might have been used to extricate them, quite possibly leading to nuclear war.

There is a long and highly instructive history showing the willingness of state authorities to risk the fate of their populations, sometimes severely, for the sake of their policy objectives, not least the most powerful state in the world. We ignore it at our peril.

There is no need to ignore it right now. A remedy is investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill's just-published Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battleground.

In chilling detail, Scahill describes the effects on the ground of US military operations, terror strikes from the air (drones), and the exploits of the secret army of the executive branch, the Joint Special Operations Command, which rapidly expanded under President George W. Bush, then became a weapon of choice for President Obama.

We should bear in mind an astute observation by the author and activist Fred Branfman, who almost single-handedly exposed the true horrors of the US "secret wars" in Laos in the 1960s, and their extensions beyond.

Considering today's JSOC-CIA-drones/killing machines, Branfman reminds us about the Senate testimony in 1969 of Monteagle Stearns, US deputy chief of mission in Laos from 1969 to 1972.

Asked why the US rapidly escalated its bombing after President Johnson had ordered a halt over North Vietnam in November 1968, Stearns said, "Well, we had all those planes sitting around and couldn't just let them stay there with nothing to do." So we can use them to drive poor peasants in remote villages of northern Laos into caves to survive, even penetrating within the caves with our advanced technology.

JSOC and the drones are a self-generating terror machine that will grow and expand, meanwhile creating new potential targets as they sweep much of the world. And the executive won't want them just "sitting around."

It wouldn't hurt to contemplate another slice of history, at the dawn of the 20th century.

In his book "Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines and the Rise of the Surveillance State," the historian Alfred McCoy explores in depth the US pacification of the Philippines after an invasion that killed hundreds of thousands through savagery and torture.

The conquerors established a sophisticated surveillance and control system, using the most advanced technology of the day to ensure obedience, with consequences for the Philippines that reach to the present.

And as McCoy demonstrates, it wasn't long before the successes found their way home, where such methods were employed to control the domestic population - in softer ways to be sure, but not very attractive ones.

We can expect the same. The dangers of unexamined and unregulated monopoly power, particularly in the state executive, are hardly news. The right reaction is not passive acquiescence.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-pol...tter834803&t=9

[JD Barleycorn]

Why bother reading that asshole. Noam has always been and will always be an asshole, a communist asshole. Even an asshole can be right once in a while. So if even he is concerned about Obama (though he doesn't name him) maybe you other lefties should listen.

[Guest040616]

Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

Why bother reading that asshole. Noam has always been and will always be an asshole, a communist asshole. Even an asshole can be right once in a while. So if even he is concerned about Obama (though he doesn't name him) maybe you other lefties should listen.

So says Frick to Frack!

[timpage]

Yeah, I just bet those Yemeni's were great big admirers of the United States.

Fuck them, and fuck the terrorist shitbird they were harboring in their little dusty, sewer-running-in-the-streets village. They're afraid of us now? Good. Maybe they won't let terrorists live among them anymore because now they know we will fuck their shit up if they do.

And, by the way, fuck you COG.

[Guest040616]

Originally Posted by timpage

And, by the way, fuck you COG.

I'll second that motion!

[Old Dingus]

As long as it was a valid target and we believed we had good reason for eliminating the individual, I say:

FUCK EM!

When they quit attacking Americans and bringing jihad against us, then we can discuss not blowing them away.

Old Dingus

[Guest032516]

Love this quote:

"What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my village, one drone strike accomplished in an instant."

Yeah, right. The people in these villages might not have been willing to join the jihadists, but generally they were perfectly alright with letting the jihadists operate a base from which they could strike the US and other countries.

That's the same bullshit the Taliban pulled in Afghanistan. They took Al Qaeda's money and let them operate in their territory and then professed to be shocked - shocked! - that the US would bomb Afghanistan.

[CuteOldGuy]

Originally Posted by timpage

And, by the way, fuck you COG.

And a Happy Fuck You to you, as well, TimmyPageBoy!

There, see? We CAN all get along!

[JD Barleycorn]

I imagine most of these guys are trying to look up NORM Chomsky.

[jbravo_123]

Yeah, just another example how aggressive American actions overseas comes back to bite us in the ass.

The problem with being a bully for so long is that we believe that no one will ever be able to stand up to us. We're going to be surprised when someone punches us in the nose one day and knocks us on our ass.

[Old Dingus]

Well, let's pick a few "winners" and say "adios" to the rest.

Let's keep the UK, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Quatar, South Africa, maybe Japan, and cut off everything from the rest.

Put our fleets to sea and build more nuclear carriers, etc. If the new bases are at sea, we do not need to pay leases for military bases and all the BS that goes with it. Much better security for our military if no one gets access (at sea). Let the bastards fight it out amongst themselves, winner take all.

Put money and effort into rooting out all illegals, all "students" whose visas expired, and anybody named COG (just kidding - sorta).

Save our money and build much better fences around our country.

We could balance the books in just a couple of years and then put our money into education, quality of life for all Americans, and R&D.

The dream lives!

Old Dingus

[WTF]

Blowback. You neocons need to look it up.

[Jewish Lawyer]

I think everyone has some truth on their side in this post. On the one hand, I can see why they hate us for blowing their shit up. On the other hand, they are harboring terrorists and probably are going to hate us anyway.
I can only assume we have told their governments we are going to keep on blowing shit up until they root out terrorists on their own.
We are fucked either way - so what can we do that will keep us safe here at home and spend as little money as possible, and stop the killing as much as possible?

[CJ7]

soooooooooooo

at the end of the day, we need to pack up, get on planes, ships, and bicycles and get our asses home, then leave those shitstained sob's to their own design forever more ... and that's killing each other, not us.

[jbravo_123]

Originally Posted by Jewish Lawyer

I think everyone has some truth on their side in this post. On the one hand, I can see why they hate us for blowing their shit up. On the other hand, they are harboring terrorists and probably are going to hate us anyway.
I can only assume we have told their governments we are going to keep on blowing shit up until they root out terrorists on their own.
We are fucked either way - so what can we do that will keep us safe here at home and spend as little money as possible, and stop the killing as much as possible?

Yeah as with most real life large scale problems, there's no single simple easy solution to this (otherwise we would've done it by now).

I think it's pretty clear though at this point that a pure military method at trying to solve the problem isn't working. We're great at going into a country and overthrowing a government. The problem is afterwards when we have to nation build and work with the locals - we seem to just suck at that.

Honestly, I believe that education and economics is going to be needed to solve the problem in the long term. People who are healthy, have a decent lives, and are educated aren't willing to blow themselves up to kill others. When you look at the people in those parts of the world and the poverty + lack of education they grow up with, it doesn't surprise me that religious extremism and the idea of a great afterlife appeals to so many of them.