[mobglob-discuss] Bush's war goes global - Naomi Klein

[Tom Childs]

http://globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20030827/CONAOMI27/TPComment/Columnists
 

Globe and Mail

Bush's war goes global
 
The U.S. President has created a tool kit for any mini-empire looking
to get rid of the opposition

By NAOMI KLEIN
Wednesday, August 27, 2003 


 
The Marriot Hotel in Jakarta was still burning when Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono, Indonesia's Co-ordinating Minister for Political and Security
Affairs, explained the implications of the day's attack.

"Those who criticize about human rights being breached must understand
that all the bombing victims are more important than any human-rights
issue."

In a sentence, we got the best summary yet of the philosophy underlying
President George W. Bush's so-called war on terrorism. Terrorism doesn't
just blow up buildings; it blasts every other issue off the political
map. The spectre of terrorism, real and exaggerated, has become a shield
of impunity, protecting governments around the world from scrutiny for
their human-rights abuses. 

Many have argued that the WoTtm is the U.S. government's thinly veiled
excuse for constructing a classic empire, in the model of Rome or
Britain. Two years into the crusade, it's clear that this is a mistake:
The Bush gang doesn't have the stick-to-it-ness to successfully occupy
one country, let alone a dozen.

Mr. Bush and the gang do, however, have the hustle of good marketers,
and they know how to contract out. What Mr. Bush has created in the war
on terrorism is less a doctrine for world domination than an
easy-to-assemble tool kit for any mini-empire looking to get rid of the
opposition and expand its power.

The war on terrorism was never a war in the traditional sense, it
lacked a clear target or a fixed location. It is, instead, a kind of
brand, an idea that can be easily franchised by any government in the
market for an all-purpose opposition cleanser.

We already know that the WoTtm works on domestic groups that use
terrorist tactics, such as Hamas or the Armed Revolutionary Forces of
Colombia (FARC). That's only its most basic application. WoTtm can be
used on any liberation or opposition movement. It can be applied
liberally to unwanted immigrants, pesky human-rights activists and even
on hard-to-get-out investigative journalists.

It was Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who was the first to adopt
Mr. Bush's franchise, parroting the White House's pledges to "pull up
these wild plants by the root, smash their infrastructure" as he sent
bulldozers into the occupied territories to uproot olive trees, and
tanks to raze civilian homes.

Soon enough, Mr. Sharon's wild plants included human-rights observers
who were bearing witness to the attacks, as well as aid workers and
journalists.

Another franchise soon opened in Spain with Prime Minister Jose Maria
Aznar extending his WoTtm from the Basque guerrilla group ETA to the
Basque separatist movement as a whole, the vast majority of which is
peaceful. Mr. Aznar has resisted calls to negotiate with the Basque
Autonomous Government and banned the political party Batasuna (even
though, as The New York Times noted in June, "no direct link has been
established between Batasuna and terrorist acts"). He has also shut down
Basque human-rights groups, magazines and the only entirely
Basque-language newspaper. In February, the Spanish police raided the
Association of Basque Middle Schools, accusing it of having terrorist
ties.

This appears to be the true message of Mr. Bush's war franchise: Why
negotiate with your political opponents when you can annihilate them? In
the era of WoTtm, little concerns like war crimes and human rights just
don't register.

Among those who have taken careful note of the new rules is Georgia's
President Eduard Shevardnadze. In October, while extraditing five
Chechens to Russia (without due process) for its WoTtm, he stated that
"international human-rights commitments might become pale in comparison
with the importance of the anti-terrorist campaign."

Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri got the same memo. She came
to power pledging to clean up the notoriously corrupt and brutal
military and to bring peace to the fractious country. Instead she has
called off talks with the Free Aceh Movement and in May, invaded the
province, the largest military offensive since the 1975 invasion of East
Timor. The Indonesian human-rights organization Tapol describes the
situation in the oil-rich province as "a living hell, a daily roundup of
trauma and extreme fear, of sweeping villages, of the seizure of people
at random and, hours later, their bodies left lying by the roadside."

Why did the Indonesian government think it could get away with the
invasion after the international outrage that forced it out of East
Timor? Easy: Post-Sept. 11, the government cast Aceh's movement for
national liberation as "terrorist," which means human-rights concerns no
longer apply. Rizal Mallarangeng, a senior adviser to Megawati, called
it the "blessing of Sept. 11."

Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo appears to feel similarly
blessed. Quick to cast her battle against Islamic separatists in the
southern Moro region as part of WoTtm, Ms. Arroyo -- like Mr. Sharon,
Mr. Aznar and Megawati -- abandoned peace negotiations and waged brutal
civil war instead, displacing 90,000 people last year.

She didn't stop there. Last August, speaking to soldiers at a military
academy, Ms. Arroyo extended the war beyond terrorists and armed
separatists to include "those who terrorize factories that provide
jobs," code for trade unions. Labour groups in Philippine free-trade
zones report that union organizers are facing increased threats, and
strikes are being broken up with extreme police violence.

In Colombia, the government's war against leftist guerrillas has long
been used as cover to murder anyone with leftist ties, whether union
activists or indigenous farmers. But even in Colombia, things have
gotten worse since President Alvaro Uribe took office in August, 2002,
on a WoTtm platform.

Last year, 150 union activists were murdered. Like Mr. Sharon, Mr.
Uribe quickly moved to get rid of the witnesses, expelling foreign
observers and playing down the importance of human rights. Only after
"terrorist networks are dismantled . . . will we see full compliance
with human rights," Mr. Uribe said in March.

Sometimes WoTtm is not an excuse to wage a war, but to keep one going.
Mexican President Vicente Fox came to power in 2000 pledging to settle
the Zapatista conflict "in 15 minutes" and to tackle rampant
human-rights abuses committed by the military and police. Now,
post-Sept. 11, Mr. Fox has abandoned both projects. The Mexican
government has made no moves to reinitiate the Zapatista peace process
and last week, Mr. Fox closed down the high-profile office of the
Undersecretary of Human Rights.

This is the era ushered in by Sept. 11, war and repression unleashed
not by a single empire, but a global franchise of them. In Indonesia,
Israel, Spain, Colombia, the Philippines and China, governments have
latched onto to Mr. Bush's deadly WoTtm and are using it to erase their
opponents and tighten their grip on power.

Last week, another war was in the news. In Argentina, the senate voted
to repeal two laws that granted immunity to the sadistic criminals of
the 1976-1983 dictatorship. At the time, the generals called their
campaign of extermination a "war on terror," using a series of
kidnappings and violent attacks by leftist groups as an excuse to seize
power.

The vast majority of the 30,000 people who were disappeared during the
dictatorship weren't terrorists; they were union leaders, artists,
teachers, psychiatrists. As with all wars on terrorism, terrorism wasn't
the target -- it was the excuse to wage the real war on people who dared
to dissent.

Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences and Windows.