The military phase: October–December 2001
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- If Bush wants an invasion, it could become
more costly than Vietnam
- By Robert Fisk, The Independent (London),
18 September 2001. President Bush is talking about a
‥crusade” it would be difficult to find a word more
likely to enrage Muslims but if he plans to wage it in
Afghanistan, the United States faces a military campaign
more fraught and potentially even more costly than
Vietnam.
- The algebra of infinite justice
- By Arundhati Roy, The Guardian (London), 29
September 2001. America is at war against people it doesn’t
know. Before it has properly identified or even begun to
comprehend the nature of its enemy, the US government has, in
a rush of publicity and embarrassing rhetoric, cobbled together
an international coalition against terror.
- Fighting terrorism
- By Z. Pallo Jordan, ANC Today, 4 October
2001. After the terrorist bomb attacks on New York City
and Washington, the government of the USA declared “war
on terrorism”. President Bush sounded extremely earnest
in his declaration, but a question arose in my mind: Is
the USA in fact opposed to terrorism? Closer examination
of the dramatis personae involved in the September 11th
outrage sheds a rather different light on US
pronouncements past and present.
- Killing them softly: Starvation and dollar bills
for Afghan kids
- By Norman Solomon, Media Beat, 12 October 2001.
The Pentagon's air drops of food parcels and President
Bush's plea for American children to aid Afghan kids with
dollar bills will go down in history as two of the most cynical
maneuvers of media manipulation in the early 21st century.
- A war in the American tradition
- By John Pilger, The New Statesman (London),
15 October 2001. The ultimate goal of the attacks on
Afghanistan is not the capture of a fanatic, but the
acceleration of western power.
- US War on Afghanistan a Hornets' Nest
- By Rajeev Dhavan, The Hindu, 19 October 2001.
America may have targeted Afghanistan, but it has also targeted
itself. Americans will not be able to sleep easily for many years
to come.
- A War Like No Other? You Bet!
- By David Graham Du Bois, Black Electorate, 27
November 2001. This “war against terrorism” is in
fact an open declaration of war against the peoples of the
developing world; ultimately some four-fifths of humanity.
- This war is not just
- By James Carroll, The Boston Globe, 27 November
2001. In recent days, sage editorial writers, religious leaders,
politicians, liberal pundits, and admired columnists have joined
in the Donald Rumsfeld-Condoleezza Rice chorus praising the
American war in Afghanistan as “just.”
- On Hitchens, the Taliban and fascism
- By David C. Schweickart The Blanket 30 November 2001.
Hitchens' main point was that the Taliban should be
seen as a fascist organization with transnational designs \
that is truly dangerous and needed to be stopped. Parallels
of virulent Islamic fundamentalism and fascism. But the
issue is US real aims.
- The Taliban of the West: This war is threatening
the very freedoms it claims to be defending
- By George Monbiot, The Guardian, 18 December
2001. The world's most comprehensive attempt to defy modernity
has been atomized. But this is not, as almost everyone claims, a
triumph for civilization; for the Taliban has been destroyed by
a regime which is turning its back on the values it claims to
defend.