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“We are committing terrorism in order to ‘send a message’ to terrorists.”

— Howard Zinn
author of
A People’s History of the United States
quoted in The Progressive magazine


The Truth About
American State Terrorism
of the Afghan Peoples


Adapted from the International Action Center fact sheet:


QUESTION: Is the U.S. bombing campaign directed against “terrorists” or the people of Afghanistan?

Afghan children murdered by American-British state terrorists

ANSWER: This American state terror campaign is targeting the people of Afghanistan — civilian men, women and innocent, helpless children.

The U.S. and British militaries have dropped thousands of bombs and fired missiles on homes, schools, mosques, hospitals and villages throughout the country.

The United States Air Force has deliberately targeted every major town and rural area with 1,000-pound to 15,000-pound bombs. The United States Army uses AC-130 “Specter” helicopter gunships, filled with ammunition, firing huge Gatling-guns from which a steady stream of bullets slaughters the people below. On Oct. 22, 2001, in the village of Chowkar-Karez, dozens of civilian people were killed.

“The people there [in Chowkar-Karez] are dead because we wanted them dead.”

— unnamed Pentagon war criminal
quoted by CNN
in the Toronto Globe and Mail
Nov. 3, 2001

Two Afghan men watch the black smoke rising from a nearby burning building

Wazir Akbarhan hospital in Kabul was bombed on the first day, and 13 women were killed in the gynecology department. 200 people were killed in the hospital in Herat. Red Cross facilities were bombed twice in Kabul on Oct. 16.

Cluster bombs — one of the most terrifying and deadly of the U.S. weapons — were used as bombing intensified. In every cluster bomb, hundreds of small bomblets packed with razor shrapnel are dispersed at super-high velocity over a wide area, ripping into people with horrific damage. Cluster bombs are prohibited by the Geneva Convention, because of their indiscriminate nature. The use of cluster bombs against civilian people is a war crime.
(Protocol 1, Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts, Article 51).

A report from the Sydney Morning Herald (Oct. 26, 2001) quotes Dan Kelly, head of UN mine clearing in Afghanistan:

“These bomblets can explode if the villagers so much as touch them. It is a very violent death. You don’t get arms and legs blown off like you do with anti-personnel mines, you get killed.”

Afghan man bending over a hospital bed; in the foreground are bloodstained sheets covering dead people on two other beds.

Civilian people are being deliberately targeted throughout the country. Another deplorable U.S. tactic is repeat bombing to murder rescuers. In Jalalabad, the Sultanpur mosque was bombed during prayer. Then, as neighbors dug out 17 victims who were trapped, the U.S. Air Force jet returned to bomb them minutes later, murdering 120 people.
(“Where the Bodies Are,” Oct. 23, 2001, Geov Parrish, workingforchange.com)

This tactic was also used by sadistic U.S./NATO pilots against the Yugoslavian people in 1999.

Cluster bombs, radioactive depleted uranium ammunition, 15,000-pound “Daisy cutter” fuel-air explosives — this is American state terrorism being committed by the biggest military power in the world against the civilian people of one of the poorest and most underdeveloped countries in existence.



QUESTION: What is the current state of the Afghan people?

Afghan children and adults looking at the rubble of their bombed buildings.

ANSWER: The average life expectancy in Afghanistan is 43 years. Per capita income is $180 per year. Only 13 percent of the entire population has access to drinking water. Barely 12% of the population has sanitation coverage. Literacy is only 20 percent. The infant-mortality rate is a shocking 247 deaths per 1,000 live births. On average, 16,000 mothers die in childbirth every year, one out of every 17 births, the second worst maternal mortality rate in the world.

It’s not just the bombs that are killing people. The dislocation and chaos created by American state terrorism means huge numbers of Afghan people will die from hunger, cold and disease. According to UNICEF officials, more than 100,000 Afghan children will likely die from war-related causes by the end of winter.



QUESTION: Isn’t the war in Afghanistan a defensive reaction to the September 11 attacks?

ANSWER: No, the September 11 attacks are being used as an essential propaganda cover for a long-planned U.S. military takeover of Central Asia and the Caspian basin oil reserves.

Contrary to all the corporate mass-media propaganda about Osama Bin Laden, the September 11 attacks were in fact sponsored by the U.S. government. If you find that impossible to believe, just study the historical information on this site, starting with the link above. The historical record proves that the leaders of the U.S. military/government have more than enough inhuman ruthlessness to slaughter thousands of American citizens — particularly when it serves their purpose of total world domination. U.S. military control of the Caspian basin and Central Asia will give the U.S. a fatal military/economic advantage over Russia and China, and will bring vast oil wealth to American oil companies (which are well represented by the Bush family and many individuals in the illegitimate Bush regime).

After September 11, the U.S. military/government immediately targeted all of Afghanistan and added to its list of “enemies” any country or organization that didn’t readily grovel before the U.S. government’s monumental hypocrisy on terrorism. The government of Afghanistan agreed to negotiate, but asked for evidence indicating the guilt of Osama bin Laden in the September 11 attack. That certainly wasn’t much to ask, but the illegitimate Bush regime refused negotiate or provide any evidence — because they didn’t have any.

One only needs to look at the U.S. policy toward Iraq for a clue. The real motive for the 1991 American state terror campaign against the Iraqi people, and the genocidal sanctions that have followed, is to gain full control of the Persian/Arabian Gulf oil. Two-thirds of the world’s known oil reserves lie in that region. The U.S. military’s so-called Gulf “War” was in fact a one-sided, massive terror campaign against the entire civilian population and infrastructure of Iraq. U.S. military war criminals violently murdered 200,000 civilian men, women and children in the six-week campaign. The genocidal Gulf “War” allowed the Pentagon to establish numerous military bases in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and elsewhere.

Less known are the vast interests of U.S. oil companies, banks and military corporations in South and Central Asia. This unfortunate part of the world is targeted as the next strategic region for oil and natural gas exploitation — and therefore U.S. military domination.

The Caspian Sea region — made up of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan — has a potential value in oil and natural gas of more than $5 trillion. These former Soviet states share a border with Afghanistan, and are precisely the countries in which the U.S. military has now established bases and troops.

The U.S. militarization of the Caspian region began before September 11, and now it is going full-scale. A Unocal Oil Corp. spokesperson, Vice President John J. Maresca testified to the House of Representatives Committee on International Relations on February 12, 1998. He said:

“...the Caspian region contains tremendous untapped hydrocarbon reserves... proven natural gas reserves...equal more than 236 trillion cubic feet. ...[oil reserves] estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels.”

The CIA “set up a secret task force to monitor the region’s politics and gauge its wealth. Covert CIA officers, some well-trained as petroleum engineers, had traveled through southern Russia and the Caspian region to sniff out potential oil reserves. When the policy makers heard the CIA report, [then Secretary of State] Madeleine Albright concluded that ‘working to mold the area’s future is one of the most exciting things we can do.’”
(Time Magazine, May 1998).

The Pentagon has been seeking to mold the region’s governments into a military alliance connected to NATO’s so-called “Partnership for Peace.” After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 these former Soviet states became open to unbridled exploitation for their oil and gas resources by firms whose directors are ex-U.S. military and political leaders. Former Reagan, Bush and Clinton advisers like Gen. Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, former White House Chief of Staff John N. Sununu, former Defense Secretary Richard Cheney, Secretary of State James Baker, former Clinton treasury secretary Lloyd Bentsen — all have become oil and gas company executives involved in the Caspian region.
(Washington Post, July 6, 1997)



QUESTION: Isn’t the U.S. trying to stabilize the region by eliminating a “network of terrorists”?

ANSWER: No, the terrorist U.S. military/government is trying to conquer the region by eliminating the competition.

The myth that “hate cures hate” and “violence cures violence” is the most foolish myth of all. Endless American state terrorism will succeed only in inspiring retaliatory terrorism by vengeful individuals, groups, and, eventually, groups of nations. The self-righteous, arrogant, bullying U.S. military/government is leading the world on a downward spiral to total hell. More war, bombing and assassinations by the U.S. government will only create more hatred of America, more violence, more death and more economic crisis. War criminal American leaders are using the death of thousands of people in New York to justify the hypocritical state terrorism of the U.S. military against innocent Afghan men, women and children — and to hide what the U.S. military/government has done and continues to do to the Iraqi and Palestinian peoples.

There is enormous anger in the Middle East that every month, between 8,000 and 12,000 people — 5,000 of them children under five — die in Iraq as a direct result of the U.S. sanctions, which have gone on for 11 years. So far, a total of about one-and-a-half MILLION Iraqis have died because of American sanctions. At least 50% of the victims were children under the age of five. The youngest children die primarily of dysentery from contaminated water. All of the water purification plants in Iraq were intentionally bombed by U.S. Air Force pilots in 1991. The American sanctions have subsequently prevented Iraqis from getting medicines to treat their suffering children, or even rebuilding most of the water purification plants.

This crime of sadistic genocide has been hidden from the corporate-media-brainwashed American people, of course, but it is very well known among the people of the Middle East. And now, evil U.S. officials have the unmitigated gall to urge another war on the already decimated Iraqi people.

I don’t blame the people of the Middle East for calling America “The Great Satan”. They’re right.

Over 1600 Palestinian men, women and children have been murdered by Israelis, and 19,000 more seriously wounded, since the second Intifada was provoked by the notorious Israeli war criminal Ariel Sharon in September 2000. Palestinian people’s homes are bulldozed, sometimes right on top of them, while sadistic Israeli soldiers, snipers and “settlers” impose a round-the-clock curfew and shoot them if they dare to go outside. Israeli soldiers shoot them while they’re inside too, firing heavy gauge ammo right through the walls of Palestinian homes and routinely killing children.

Every bullet, every attack helicopter, every F-15 and F-16 warplane comes from the United States. Every year the U.S. government takes your tax dollars and gives $4 billion of it to the Israelis, so they can buy military equipment with which to mass-murder Palestinian people. This is unabashed terrorism — state terrorism — and more and more people in the world are calling for an end to U.S.-Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people.



QUESTION: Why does the anti-war movement say that there is also a war at home?

ANSWER: Thousands of Arab people, South Asian people and Muslims have been violently attacked, and even murdered, inside the United States since September 11, 2001. Homes, mosques and stores have been defaced. People of Arab and South Asian descent have been put off airplanes. Main media outlets, like the Wall Street Journal, have called for legitimizing racial profiling. This is racism, pure and simple.

After Timothy McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City Federal building in 1995, killing 168 people, there was no campaign to take White males off of airplanes because people felt “uncomfortable in their presence”. White men were not rounded up and held without charges. Since September 11, however, more than 1,100 people, mostly of South Asian and Middle East origin, have been detained for up to five weeks, many without charges.

Armed, fatigue-wearing military guards standing around at Penn Station

Under the guise of “anti-terrorism”, ultra-racist Attorney General John Ashcroft has pushed through the so-called “anti-terrorism” bill, propagandistically labeled the “USA Patriots Bill”. Only Senator Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin voted against this bill in the Senate, arguing that it allows unconstitutional searches and punishes individuals for vaguely defined associations with “possible terrorists”. This bill legalizes racial profiling, eliminates due process for arrested people, and allows the government to vastly expand the definition of “terrorist” to potentially include millions of people who might want to protest the U.S. government’s genocidal policy, and allows the government to detain immigrants without charges. In addition, it eliminates basic privacy rights, allowing the U.S. government to have nearly limitless authority to carry out electronic surveillance and wire taps of anyone it deems “suspicious”.

U.S. government plans for secret military tribunals of civilians is an extremely dangerous precedent and must be opposed by all. The illegitimate Bush regime is becoming more and more openly fascist. American politics have degenerated to a condition resembling Germany in the early 1930s, when the Nazis first took control. Just as Hitler burned the Reichstag, blamed it on “Communists” and dragged Germany down into a fascist hell, the unelected Bush regime staged the September 11 attacks, blamed it on “Muslim terrorists” and is now dragging America down to a fascist hell.

G.W. Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, supported the Nazis through the Union Banking Corporation. A covert affection for Nazi strategies runs in the family.



QUESTION: Is it true that the U.S. is considering legalizing torture against suspects in detention?

ANSWER: Shocking, but true. The FBI and the so-called “Justice” Department under John Ashcroft are attempting to legitimize the use of torture, making it an approved policy of the United States government against those in captivity who assert their legal rights to remain silent.

According to the Washington Post, the U.S. government is discussing using “pressure tactics, such as those employed occasionally by Israeli interrogators to extract information.” (See www.justiceonline.org for more information.)

And what “pressure tactics” do Israeli interrogators use?

According to a 1998 report by B’Tselem, an Israeli-based human rights organization, interrogation tactics include a combination of sleep deprivation, isolation, psychological torment and direct physical force, including beatings, violent shaking, painful shackling and use of objects designed or used to inflict extreme pain. A prisoner may be shackled to a specially modified chair (to cause pain) with his or her head covered with a filthy sack that has an overwhelming stench of vomit or human refuse. Israeli torture sessions routinely span months, with constant intermittent periods of interrogation and force lasting for days without interruption.



QUESTION: Is the Pentagon censoring the news?

Satellite image with the word ’Censored’ across it in big red letters

ANSWER: Yes, almost all “news” presented on television and in the corporate mass media is only the “news” the Pentagon wants you to believe. Pentagon war criminals are still upset that during the Vietnam War, when the American people learned the horrifying truth about the genocide, and that the U.S. government was routinely lying to them about it (see: The Pentagon Papers, 1970; etc.), the majority of people turned against the war. The U.S. military/government is determined not to repeat that mistake.

The U.S. government’s “National Mapping and Imaging Agency” has signed a contract giving it exclusive control over all satellite imaging of the war in Afghanistan. They bought the commercial rights to all satellites on October 7, the day the bombing of Afghanistan began.

The U.S. government doesn’t want you to see all the victims of the U.S. Air Force, thousands of dead civilian men, women and children lying bloodied and dismembered on the ground.



QUESTION: If Bush’s bombing war is not the answer, what is the answer?

ANSWER: The only real and lasting answer is that the American people must non-violently overthrow the genocidal U.S. government — and replace it with a democracy. The U.S. government is growing increasingly fascist, it is totally out of control and it cannot and will not be reformed.

One of the best non-violent ways to overthrow it is for enough people to simply stop paying taxes to the Federal government. At least 50% of every Federal income tax dollar you pay goes to the Pentagon. If you pay taxes to the U.S. government, you have blood on your hands. Sorry, but it’s true. It’s not something most Americans are willing to face up to, but they’ll have to sooner or later. If enough people would simply stop supporting evil, it would crumble.


“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.”

— Abraham Lincoln
First Inaugural Address
March 4, 1861


Only when a majority of Americans are willing to overthrow the U.S. government and create a real democracy will American taxpayers also stop providing Israel with $4 billion a year — $4 billion which Israel uses to impoverish, terrorize, torture and mass-murder Palestinian people.

Only when the U.S. government is overthrown will the American people end the policy of genocidal sanctions on the Iraqi people.

Only when the U.S. government is overthrown will the tens of thousands of American troops that occupy Saudi Arabia and the Persian Arabian Gulf be removed. The U.S. military is in fact an occupying, colonial-type force, deeply resented by the people of the whole region. Most American people don’t want to do evil things to innocent people around the world — but our government and military certainly do. If the American people actually had control of their government, the evil would stop.

If the American people actually had control of their government, then instead of destroying pharmaceutical factories, like the Al Shifa factory in Sudan that the U.S. military destroyed with 17 cruise missiles in 1998, the U.S. would lift its economic sanctions against Sudan and the other countries of the region. If there is to be peace, the people of Palestine and the people who suffer U.S. military occupation in the region must enjoy genuine freedom and justice.

We need to do much more than merely build a massive anti-war movement. For the sake of the millions of innocent children who have been and will continue to be violently murdered all over the world, we need to totally overthrow the most viciously predatory military/government in the world — our own.

A couple of promising anti-war organizations are the International Action Center and International A.N.S.W.E.R. — Act Now to Stop War & End Racism. They’re not literally revolutionary, yet. But they certainly have a lot of guts and real human hearts, and they always fight against the latest campaigns of American state terrorism. Visit the growing anti-war coalition web site, www.internationalanswer.org, to find out how you can become an organizer in your city or on your campus.


International Action Center

National Office:
39 W. 14 St. #206
NY, NY 10011
(212) 633-6646
www.iacenter.org
iacenter@action-mail.org

West Coast:
2489 Mission St., #28,
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 821-6545
www.actionsf.org
iac@actionsf.org




Related pages


Imperial Hypocrisy: American State Terrorism of the Afghan Peoples, 2001-2002


American Subversion in Afghanistan, 1979 - 1992
Estimated civilian deaths: over 1,000,000 people


The United States Government Committed the September 11 Attacks


America: the Ultimate Terrorist


9-11, Mossad, the CIA and “False Flag Operations”


The Israeli Connection To 9-11


Fox News Special Report: Israeli Spying on the U.S.


Massive Israeli Spy Ring Linked to September 11


The CIA, Insider Trading and the World Trade Center Terror Attack


Fake Terror: the Road to Dictatorship


Operation 911: NO SUICIDE PILOTS




Related sites


Film exposing Pentagon war crimes premieres in US
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/feb2003/afgh-f12.shtml

“A powerful film exposing the US role in the massacre of thousands of unarmed prisoners of war in Afghanistan was shown for the first time in the United States February 6 [2003].

“The US premiere of Afghan Massacre — Convoy of Death was held at American University before a largely student audience. Made by Irish documentary filmmaker Jamie Doran, who was present for the premiere, Afghan Massacre has already been broadcast on national television in Britain, Germany, Australia and Italy, and rights to broadcast it have been sold to networks in a total of 24 countries.

Afghan Massacre is now available on video and can be purchased at the web site of Doran’s film company, Atlantic Celtic Film Corporation at www.acftv.net. Brief video excerpts from the film are posted on Oneworld TV at http://tv.oneworld.net/tapestry?story=584&window=full.

“After a rough cut of the film was screened before the European Parliament last year, it became the subject of articles and commentaries in virtually every major newspaper in Europe, prompting demands by human rights organizations and lawyers for an official investigation. In the US, however, the film has been subjected to a near-total blackout by the media and unremitting hostility from the Bush administration, which unsuccessfully pressured the German government to stop its broadcast in that country.

“Official Washington’s hostility is well founded. Doran’s film provides irrefutable evidence that US forces in Afghanistan carried out a massive war crime. ...

“Some 3,000 of them [Afghan men] were crammed into private container trucks commandeered by [American ally] Doshtum’s forces. During a 20-hour drive to the Sheberghan prison, most of these prisoners died from suffocation in the airless containers. Witnesses interviewed in the film described how soldiers fired into the containers when the prisoners screamed for air and water. Others reported seeing blood dripping from the trucks.

“Several witnesses recounted that US soldiers were present as the prisoners were loaded into the trucks and also when the container doors were opened at Sheberghan and hundreds of dead bodies spilled out. One soldier said that US troops in charge of the operation told their Afghan allies to ‘get rid of them [the bodies] before satellite pictures could be taken.’

“The final stage of this grisly operation was the transport of the dead and wounded prisoners to a barren stretch of desert 10 minutes up the road, called Dasht-i-Leili, where the bodies were unloaded and several hundred prisoners who were still alive were shot to death. Again, witnesses said US Special Forces troops were present during these executions and when bulldozers pushed the corpses into a mass grave.”



WSWS: September 11 Aftermath
http://www.wsws.org/sections/category/news/terr-us.shtml

This is the index page for a wealth of informative articles dealing with all aspects of the American state terrorism of the Afghan peoples since 9-11, and related subjects.



Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace
http://www.ccmep.org/#afghanistan

Information and articles about American state terrorism of Afghan civilian men, women and children.



Afghanistan Peace Organization
http://www.afghanistan.org/index.asp

“We are a number of determined Afghans who like to capitalize on their wisdom and knowledge for the holy cause of peace.

“We realize that it has been impossible for United Nations and the international community to put an end to this problem which affects the whole world, but we believe with knowledge and wisdom Afghans can resolve their differences and enter the twenty first century with peace and understanding.

“May God help us out.”



TalibanOnline - Misconceptions about Taliban
http://muslimthai.com/talibanonline/text/taliban/miscon.htm

Find out what the Taliban themselves say about the nature of Islamic culture in Afghanistan, their ending of all opium production, why they blew up the Buddhist statues, the condition of women in Afghan society before and after the Taliban, and more.




Bibliography

After studying the information in these books it will come as no surprise that the hypocrite U.S. military/government terrorized and mass-murdered thousands of innocent people in Afghanistan who had absolutely nothing to do with the September 11 attacks.


Pirates and Emperors, Old and New:
International Terrorism in the Real World
by Noam Chomsky


The Real Terror Network:
Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda
by Edward S. Herman


Rogue State:
A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
by William Blum


Killing Hope:
U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since WWII
by William Blum


The Culture of Terrorism
by Noam Chomsky


Western State Terrorism
Alexander George, editor; essays by Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, Gerry O’Sullivan and others


Terrorizing the Neighborhood:
American Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era
by Noam Chomsky
Pressure Drop Press, 1991


What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky


Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth
by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie
published originally in France as Bin Laden, la Verite Interdite

This book reveals that FBI deputy director John O’Neill resigned in July 2001 to protest official U.S. government obstruction of his investigation of terrorism.

The authors report that O’Neill told them: “The main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it.”

Osama bin Laden is a Saudi who has worked with the CIA since the 1980s, when they supplied him with U.S.-made Stinger missiles so his forces could shoot down Russian helicopters in Afghanistan.



The Fire This Time:
U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf
by Ramsey Clark


Desert Slaughter:
The Imperialist War Against Iraq
by the Workers League


Apocalypse 1945:
The Destruction of Dresden
by David Irving


Against Empire
by Michael Parenti


The Sword and the Dollar:
Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race
by Michael Parenti


The Beast Reawakens
by Martin A. Lee


Derailing Democracy:
The America the Media Don’t Want You to See
by David McGowan


Inventing Reality:
The Politics of News Media
by Michael Parenti


Manufacturing Consent:
The Political Economy of the Mass Media
by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky


The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media:
Decoding Spin and Lies in Mainstream News
by Norman Solomon


Censored 2000:
The Year’s Top 25 Censored Stories
by Peter Phillips & Project Censored


War, Lies & Videotape:
How media monopoly stifles truth
edited by Lenora Foerstel; multiple authors


On Killing:
The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
Dave Grossman

published by: Little, Brown

Examines the consequences of conditioning American soldiers to overcome the instinctive loathing of killing. Shows how it has increased post-combat stress disorder and how contemporary society — especially the media — replicates the U.S. Army’s conditioning techniques, resulting in increased violence in American society.

Available from: Edward R. Hamilton, Bookseller





Each year 26,000 people are killed or mutilated by landmines - of which 8000 are children. Clear Landmines - www.clearlandmines.com

Click here to clear landmines for free.


A great number of the world’s landmines are unexploded cluster bombs, dropped by the United States Air Force all over Afghanistan, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Iraq and Yugoslavia.



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