Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

A war on terrorism or a terrorist war?

Peter Symon | 24.02.2002 09:07

So far the United Nations has not been able to come up with an agreed definition of terrorism because "terrorism", like one's attitude to many other matters, is determined by class position. It also comes into the question of independence and sovereignty and whether one is on the side of the colonialists and imperialists or on the side of those who are for national liberation and independence.

During the recent Argentinean crisis when massive street demonstrations and strikes took place against the President and the government's policies, the demonstrators were called "terrorists". One of these so-called "terrorists"
was a young girl who was shot dead by the police when she "stole" some food from a supermarket. Was she a terrorist or merely a starving child trying to get some food for herself and her family?

The poverty stricken and unemployed are not terrorists but are legitimately using the only weapons they have to fight for a better life, for work and the means to get out of their grinding poverty.

In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Israelis regularly brand the Palestinians as terrorists. Yet the Palestinians are responding to the military terror unleashed against the whole Palestinian people over many decades by the Israeli authorities.

They are also responding to the refusal of the Israelis to accept their legitimate demand for the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

The actions of the Israeli Government are an example of modern state terrorism unleashed against any people who take up the struggle for their national liberation.

When in South Africa the ANC established a military arm called the "Spear of the Nation", which undertook some military actions against the infrastructure of apartheid. They were branded as terrorists by the apartheid regime. Most people would now regard them as freedom fighters.

During this period the ANC leadership, when undertaking military actions was particularly careful to avoid any casualties among innocent civilians.

The class nature of "terrorism" is again illustrated by the "catch all" nature of legislation now being enacted by almost all the governments of Western countries, using the pretext of the alleged threat from terrorism.

The legislation is so sweeping that it justifies the term "creeping fascism". It is capable of being used against anyone that the governments of the day wish to suppress — conservationists protecting forests, trade
unions defending their jobs by pickets or sit-ins, those demonstrating against privatisation or aircraft noise and so on. Even refugees escaping from oppression are being branded as potential terrorists.

The enactment of such "catch all" legislation is no accident. The ruling classes of these western countries are preparing for the day when, as a result of economic crisis, unemployment and gathering poverty, the people of many countries will be protesting as they have been doing in Argentina and many other countries in recent times.

Terrorism can only be defined as meaning the deliberate targetting of civilians which has always been rejected by communist parties. First of all the casualties are innocent and not personally responsible for the circumstances that have given rise to the protest actions.

Secondly, such actions invariably play into the hands of the conservative ruling class governments and the privately owned mass media. They use incidents to justify their repressive responses and the tirades of abuse from the media as they attempt to protect the exploitation, oppression and wars undertaken by the capitalist controllers.

No better proof of this can be seen than in the response of the US Government to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre. The perpetrators of this undoubted terrorist act have not yet been revealed. No real proof has yet been produced to confirm that it was the work of Al Queda or bin Laden.

However, leaving aside the controversial question as to who organised it and who carried it out, the event is being used to justify the war against Afghanistan and other countries.

The US leadership is using the incident to justify what has been termed "infinite war" by no less than the Pentagon. War and military intervention are to be carried into many countries and each intervention and war will be accompanied by the establishment of governments which will do the bidding of the US masters together with the establishment of US military bases. This is exactly what has already happened in Afghanistan. It is part of the long-term plans of the US to establish its total world domination.

The use of deliberate provocations by the US leaders is a long-standing policy. To justify the sending of American troops to Vietnam the Tonkin Gulf incident was staged. It was alleged that Vietnamese naval vessels had fired US warships in the Tonkin Gulf on.

Legislation was rushed overnight through the US Congress and the alleged incident was used by the government of President Johnson to pour American forces into Vietnam. It was admitted many years later that the incident was a concoction and never took place.

Much earlier, in 1898, as the US needed a justification to go to war against Spain and replace the Spanish colonisation of Cuba with its own domination, the US sank one of its own warships "The Maine" in Havana harbour. (260 personnel died on the ship although the ship's officers were conveniently on shore at the time).

But this incident was used to justify the dispatch of US military forces to occupy Cuba and establish its domination of Cuba until they were thrown out by the Cuban independence struggle of the 1950s led by Fidel Castro. Castro today is branded as a terrorist by some in the US.

The US is preparing the circumstances for what could be another provocation against Cuba by the imprisonment at the US held Guantanomo base on Cuba with alleged members of the Al Queda organisation from Afghanistan.

Of all the many US bases around the world, why choose this particular one? It is not difficult to see how these prisoners might be used as time goes on to justify the bombing of Cuba because it has allegedly harboured "terrorists".

On a somewhat smaller scale, it is known that police agents are smuggled into the ranks of demonstrators to provoke violence and the destruction of property to justify the repressive actions of police and military authorities. This happened during recent anti-globalisation demonstrations
in Genoa, Italy.

During the Vietnam War, soldiers dressed in the uniform of the Vietnam Liberation Army would enter villages, burn houses and shoot their occupants in an attempt to turn villagers against the Vietnamese liberation army.

Rejecting terrorism as a legitimate weapon to be used by the communist and working class movement, Lenin in his book What Is To Be Done (1902) wrote:

"The Economists and the present-day terrorists have one common root, namely, subservience to spontaneity. The Economists bow to the spontaneity of 'the labour movement pure and simple', while the terrorists bow to the spontaneity of the passionate indignation of intellectuals, who lack the ability or opportunity to connect the revolutionary struggle and the working-class movement into an integral whole.

"It is difficult for those who have lost their belief, or who have never believed, that [it] is possible, to find some outlet for their indignation and revolutionary energy other than terror...

"Svoboda" advocates terror as a means of 'exciting' the working-class movement and of giving it a 'strong impetus'... Are there not enough outrages committed in Russian life without special 'excitants' having to be
invented? The fact is that the working masses are roused to a high pitch of excitement by the social evils in Russian life, but we are unable to gather and concentrate all these drops and streamlets of popular resentment ... into a single gigantic torrent.

"... calls for terror and calls to lend the economic struggle itself a political character are merely two different forms of evading the most pressing duty now resting upon Russian revolutionaries namely, the organisation of comprehensive political agitation. "Svoboda" desires to substitute terror for agitation..." (LCW Vol 5 p 419-420. Emphasis in the original).

When a crime has been committed one of the first questions to ask is: "Who is confronted by such difficulties and circumstances that a crime would be considered as a way out?" and "Who benefits from the crime?"

When these questions are applied to the destruction of the World Trade Centre (WTC) the assertion that it was the work of a hate-filled Osama bin Laden (who, after all, was created and financed by the US in the first place and had worked with the CIA over many years) becomes a nonsense.

The attack on the WTC took place against the background of a deep economic crisis creeping over the whole of the capitalist world that had commenced well before September 11.

The most recent and vivid manifestation of this economic crisis is the bankruptcy of Argentina, one of the most industrialised countries in Latin America. The Argentinean people have held massive demonstrations against the policies of successive governments. The police have fired on them leading to about 30 deaths so far.

A revolutionary government was elected in Venezuela in 1998 that threatens to spread some of the ideas of the Cuban revolution onto the continent of South America. The new leadership is pledged to overcome the poverty of the
masses of the Venezuelan people and to introduce popular people's democratic principles.

Venezuela is a major oil producing country and the idea that this wealth should go to the working people is indeed revolutionary. Will the example of Venezuela spread to Argentina?

There is also a long-term decline in the overall economic position of the United States. The economic centre of the world is shifting slowly but decisively from the US and Europe to Asia with China's economic growth being central to this shift.

Despite the Asian economic crisis of 1998 and the current recession affecting all the developed capitalist countries, socialist China has maintained an annual seven per cent or more growth rate. One of the real objectives of the war against Afghanistan is to surround China with US military bases.

Every recent meeting of the heads of the Western powers, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO has been associated with massive popular demonstrations by tens of thousands of protestors.

The demonstrations have become so massive that meetings are held behind high fences and barricades and protected by thousands of police and troops.

Another event which would strike fear into the hearts of the imperialist powers was the Friendship Treaty entered into between the Russia Federation and the People's Republic of China, thereby ending many decades of animosity which had weakened the anti-imperialist front of major powers.

The war against Afghanistan and the establishment of US bases in Central Asia is to drive a wedge between these two powers.

Not unrelated to the building of warmer relations between Russia and China is the re-emergence of ideas calling for the reformation of a new union of at least some of the former republics that made up the Soviet Union.

There is strong support for this idea among the people or Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and elsewhere in what are now "independent" republics. Furthermore, strong Communist Parties remain active in almost all of the former Soviet republics.

It is on the background of these and many other events that the question of motive — who needed and who stands to benefit from the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon — has to be answered.

I would urge all readers to think very seriously about these questions. The whole world is facing perhaps the most dangerous period in all history in which a cycle of endless and escalating war, waged with the most horrendous
weapons, could lead to unparalleled and massive destruction and even to the end of human civilisation.

For more information check out www.cpa.org.au

Peter Symon
- Homepage: www.cpa.org.au

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech