------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Oct. 25, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
TERROR BOMBING OF AFGHANISTAN Pentagon Targets Villages, Food Depots, UN & Red Cross Centers, Creating 1.5 Million Refugees By Fred Goldstein As the debate goes on within the inner circles in Washington over whether to widen the war, the U.S. government is showing why it is regarded as the primary terrorist power in the world with its relentless bombing of one of the poorest, most defenseless countries in the world. Under the guise of fighting terrorism, the Pentagon has sent over 2,000 bombs and missiles raining down upon Afghanistan, killing civilians, destroying the infrastructure of the cities so as to make them unlivable, and creating a million and a half refugees who have been forced to move away from shelter, the food supply and medical care. And it is planning to increase its attacks. The casualties--innocent civilians who will die, become malnourished or ill, lose all means of livelihood, and whose lives will be traumatized and dislocated--will far exceed the casualties of the horrendous Sept. 11 attacks in the United States that destroyed thousands of innocent people. The village of Karam, an hour from the Pakistan border in eastern Afghanistan, was destroyed by bombs on Oct. 12. There were reports of 200 people killed. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said such claims were lies. But CNN camera crews toured the area two days later and showed the rubble, the bodies, the bomb craters and an unexploded U.S. bomb in the midst of what remained of the village. An Associated Press report carried in the New York Times of Oct. 14 described the destruction in Karam and the horribly wounded victims, including many children, who had been taken to a hospital in Jalalabad. "One villager, Toray," wrote the Times, "stood by the ruins of his former home, its roof gone, and clutched a scrap of metal bearing the word 'fin guided missile' in English." The day before, the Navy dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on a residential neighborhood in Kabul, killing four people and wounding eight. The bomb came from a Navy FA-18 in the Arabian Sea. Earlier in the week a cruise missile killed four civilian workers at a United Nations office. JETS DESTROY RED CROSS FOOD DEPOT On Oct. 16 Navy F-18 jets dropped 1,000-pound bombs on a Red Cross storage complex in Kabul full of food and shelter materials. "The Red Cross," wrote the Times of Oct. 17, "said each of the five warehouses in its compound was marked on the roof with a large red cross. The raids occurred about 1 p.m. in daylight, the agency said." The bombing destroyed about a third of the food supply. The bombing of the food supply only aggravated the war crisis in Kabul. A New York Times article on Oct. 16 quoted Shirjan, an unemployed former government worker: "Most of the people who live in Kabul now are selling their belongings to get food. There are no jobs for the people." This is a brazen repeat of the tactics used against Iraq and Yugoslavia of terrorizing the civilian population. The strikes are designed to force capitulation when the air war against military targets drags on, as it is doing in Afghan istan. And, just as in the Gulf War, the Pentagon has established "kill boxes" or areas on the outskirts of Kabul and Kandahar where U.S. pilots and gunners are authorized to fire on anything that moves that they think is a military target. This is how many civilians, including an entire caravan of refugee farmers, were killed by U.S. pilots during the Yugoslav war. The escalation of U.S. military terror is proceeding rapidly. Washington had earlier said that the bombing would end after a few days. Instead, it has continued for 12 days, as of this writing. On the 12th day, 100 fighters and bombers flew missions attacking 12 areas of the country, the most intense bombing of any day so far. In addition, the Pentagon has brought in the AC-130 turboprop slow-flying gunship, which can fire over 2,000 rounds per minute of high-caliber shells and stay on target with computer-controlled aiming devices. This terror device can destroy buildings. It was used in Vietnam in a less developed form. WASHINGTON WANTS TO DESTROY STATE This escalating campaign of massive destruction cannot be explained simply by a drive to get Osama bin Laden. The fact that the Taliban have offered to negotiate several times but have been flatly turned down by the Bush administration demonstrates that Washington's goals go far beyond that limited objective. Whatever else, the Pentagon wants to demonstrate its ability to destroy a state by military force. It wants to field test its new generations of destructive firepower on a living people and put on display for all the oppressed peoples and governments of the world its terror machine. It is an act of warning, an act of intimidation, and possibly a prelude to an expanded war. To be sure, the Taliban is one of the most reactionary political regimes in the world. Its brutal oppression of women is absolute. But the destruction of the Taliban by the Pentagon is the worst possible outcome of the present situation. Victory for the U.S. government, a government that only serves the rich multinational corporations and protects exploitation, will only strengthen imperialist domination of the region, to the vast detriment of all the peoples of Central Asia and the Middle East. Everything must be done to resist the Pentagon onslaught in Afghanistan. Washington has so far been unable to achieve victory and is running into significant political complications. It is unable to cobble together a viable coalition of cutthroats to be installed by Washington should the Taliban collapse. It has also come up against the India-Pakistan conflict because of the abrupt change in diplomacy necessitated by Sept. 11. Prior to Sept. 11, U.S. diplomacy towards India was to warm relations in pursuit of economic penetration. Even more important was the pursuit of India to bring it into an anti-China political and military bloc. To this end, sanctions were set aside which had been imposed after India's nuclear tests and friendly diplomacy had begun to blossom. After Sept. 11, Pakistan was suddenly the key to the war effort in Central Asia. India was suddenly left out in the cold. And Secretary of State Colin Powell is trying to keep the situation from escalating out of control. All these complications notwithstanding, the overriding preoccupation in high government circles in Washington is which way to take the war, and when. STRUGGLE OVER NEXT PHASE OF WAR The New York Times of Oct. 12 gave a slight glimpse into the debate. "A tight-knit group of Pentagon officials and defense experts outside government is working to mobilize support for a military operation to oust President Saddam Hussein of Iraq as the next phase of the war." "The group," continued the Times, "which some in the State Department and on Capitol Hill refer to as the 'Wolfowitz cabal,' after Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, is laying the groundwork for a strategy that envisions the use of ground troops to install an Iraqi opposition group based in London at the helm of a new government, the officials and experts said." The Times continues: "The group has largely excluded the State Department. On Sept. 19 and 20, the Defense Policy Board, a prestigious bipartisan board of national security experts that advises the Pentagon, met for 19 hours to discuss the ramifications of the attacks of Sept. 11. The members of the group agreed on the need to turn to Iraq as soon as the initial phase of the war against Afghanistan and Mr. Bin Laden is over." Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his deputy Wolfowitz took part in the meetings. The 18-member board includes former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; R. James Woolsey, director of the CIA under President Clinton; former vice president Dan Quayle; James Schlesinger, former defense secretary; Harold Brown, President Jimmy Carter's defense secretary; David Jeremiah, former deputy chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Richard Perle, former Reagan administration security adviser; and Newt Gingrich. "The State Department, including officials who work on Iraq policy, was not briefed on the two-day meeting," according to the Times. To show the extent of the struggle, the Times said that "the Knight Ridder newspaper group reported today that senior Pentagon officials authorized Mr. Woolsey to fly to London last month on a government plane, accompanied by Justice and Defense Department officials, on a mission to gather evidence linking Mr. Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks." The State Department was unaware of the trip. This current inside Washington, which is not limited to the Pentagon, is causing consternation in sections of the ruling class at home and in the imperialist capitals of Europe. The Oct. 16 Washington Post carried an article entitled "Allies Are Cautious on the 'Bush Doctrine.'" The "Bush Doctrine," as defined by President Bush, consists of "you are either with us or you are with the terrorists," according to the Post. But a corollary to the "doctrine" is that "the United States will be the unilateral judge of whether a country is supporting terrorism and will determine the appropriate methods, including the use of military force," to impose its will. 'COALITION BUILDING' VS. 'UNILATERALISM' The current that promotes this so-called "doctrine" is the current that wants to widen the war. On the other hand, the current that is more fearful of becoming isolated in an adventure and being overcome by a mass uprising is promoting "coalition building"as a form of restraint upon the adventurers. Thus the struggle over the course of the war is taking the form of coalition versus unilateralism. Since the European imperialists are weak compared to the U.S., and the reactionary client regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan and so on are even weaker, the fearful wing is sure that any coalition will act as a restraint upon the more aggressive factions. Richard Perle, a member of the Defense Advisory Board, expresses the views of those who want to rapidly and drastically widen the war. "Perle has advocated using military force against one or two other countries," reports the Post, "including Iraq, to make a point beyond Afghanistan. 'Whether it is Saddam Hussein or Assad or the Lebanese or the Sudanese ... the regimes involved have to be persuaded that we will use whatever tool is necessary and that they are truly in jeopardy,' he said. 'The best way to give that the necessary reality is to do it in a couple of places.'" At the end of the day, concluded Perle, "no American president can concede that responsibility [to attack] to a coalition or anybody else." As against this right-wing view, 28 former U.S. ambassadors and envoys to the Middle East and South Asia sent a letter to Bush advocating working with the regimes in the region in a coalition. The coalition argument was summed up by Brent Scowcroft, former Bush national security adviser and one of the architects of the Gulf War. He wrote in a piece in the Washington Post of Oct. 16: "We already hear voices declaring that the United States is too focused on a multilateral approach. The United States knows what needs to be done, these voices say, and we should just go ahead and do it. Coalition partners just tie our hands, and they will exact a price for their support." After enumerating all the difficulties of the war now underway, Scowcroft declares that "success means a coalition, a broad coalition, a willing and enthusiastic coalition. That will take unbelievable effort and entails endless frustrations. But we did it in 1990 and we can do it again. ... It can help erase the reputation the United States has been developing of being unilateral and indifferent, if not arrogant, to others." In other words, this former general is fearful of the anti- imperialist explosion that could take place if Washington is not careful to shore up its support among its imperialist allies and clients in Central Asia and the Middle East. Where the Bush administration will come down in this struggle is an open question. What is important for the workers, the oppressed, and all the revolutionary and progressive forces at home and abroad who are fighting against the war is to escalate their efforts in the struggle. U.S. imperialism is an aggressive military power that had to exercise restraint during the entire period of the Cold War because of the existence of the Soviet Union. There are elements in the ruling class who still feel anger that the U.S. did not use more massive military force to try to vanquish the Vietnamese. There are other elements that are still frustrated that the U.S. military did not try to occupy Baghdad in 1991. Others are frustrated that they had to limit their war in Yugoslavia because of the necessity to come to agreement with the European imperialists on targeting and other military matters. Those tendencies and others have all surfaced since Sept. 11, and are promoting their agendas within the summits of the government. The anti-war movement, the workers and the oppressed, all progressives and revolutionaries must be keenly attuned to the inherent dangers of a wider war as they open up the struggle to stop the war in Afghanistan. The movement should try with all its might to make the most massive possible showing of anti-war opposition. This is the surest way it can make a contribution to forestalling a wider war. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. 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