This Week:

Quote of the Week

Teaching Tolerance, Teaching Hatred

Who Needs Proof?

Self-Defense for Good Guys and for Evil Guys
Turkey, The Mercenary Terrorist "Role Model"

Greetings,

It may seem obvious to Nygaard Notes readers, but not everything that frightens someone can rightly be called "terrorism." Nor does the term "terrorist" apply to everyone who does something scary. As an example of how un-obvious it is to many of us, however, see this week's "Quote" of the Week.

Over the past few months there has been such a deluge of information about the War Against Terrorism (the WAT?!) that it has often been difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff (and there is, you may have noticed, a lot of chaff). Since my files are now bulging with items from the media that seemed to stick out from the rest, I thought it was time to pass on I a few things that you may have missed. This week I focus on the international arena. Next week I plan to look at some of the goings-on in this country. After that, I will attempt to tie it all together with a look at the evolving "Bush Doctrine" and the ideology from which it comes.

I appreciate the financial donations that I have received lately. Your contributions make it possible to, once again, offer an ad-free issue of Nygaard Notes. And – despite periodic offers to buy advertising in the Notes – I wouldn't have it any other way.

Until next week,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

Kathy Swanson, director of the Minnesota state Office of Traffic Safety, was interviewed by the local paper this week on the state's plan for an "aggressive effort to get drunken and impaired drivers off the road" over the 4th of July holiday weekend. Here's what she said:

"Impaired drivers are terrorists on our roads."

File this one under the "Words Mean Whatever We Want Them to Mean" category. Or, alternatively, it could be filed under "Nobody Will Listen to Anything These Days Unless It Is Linked to Terrorism." Take your pick.

Teaching Tolerance, Teaching Hatred

In his March 16th radio address to the nation, "President" Bush called attention to the "almost 10 million" textbooks that the U.S. was then sending to Afghanistan, books that "will teach tolerance and respect for human dignity, instead of indoctrinating students with fanaticism and bigotry."

On March 23rd, just one week after that inspiring address from the "President," the Washington Post reported that, back in the 1980s "the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation." The vehicle to insert this pro-war propaganda into the Afghan population was the promotion of a certain type of "Islam." As a result, the war texts were embraced by the Taliban and still serve "as the Afghan school system's core curriculum."

Not only did the books specifically "contain anti-Soviet passages," as demanded by "military leaders" in Afghanistan, but "children were taught to count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles and land mines," according to U.S. officials. "At the time," the Post pointed out, "it...suited U.S. interests to stoke hatred of foreign invaders."

Now, of course, the U.S. government is the "foreign invader," so it shouldn't surprise anyone that our government in February "launched a ‘scrubbing' operation in neighboring Pakistan to purge from the books all references to rifles and killing." Book-burning for freedom! Orwell is smiling.

Beyond giving the lie to our government's claims of being interested in teaching "tolerance and respect for human dignity," the Cold War-era book project raises the little matter of U.S. tax money being used to support a particular religion, something our Constitution forbids. The illegality of having the federal government officially promoting Islam is of little concern, apparently, as long as the part about hating foreign invaders is taken out. Is there anything in the U.S. Constitution prohibiting the U.S. from teaching children to be violent xenophobes? I would like to believe that it never occurred to the framers that our government might stoop so low.

Who Needs Proof?

The Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) of April 21 carried a New York Times story with the headline, "U.S. Weighs New Legal Doctrine Covering Afghan Captives." The story pointed out that the Bush administration, "uncertain about how they will be able to prosecute many of the nearly 300 prisoners detained at the naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba" are now "considering a new legal doctrine that would allow prisoners to be brought before military tribunals without specific evidence that they engaged in war crimes." As of this writing, the detainees now number 564, and hail from 36 different countries, but they still are in a U.S.-imposed legal limbo. In a March 16th report in the New York Times, Lt. Colonel Bill Cline, deputy camp commander at Guantanamo, admitted that some of the detainees "were ‘victims of circumstance' and probably innocent."

While prosecution under a made-up, retroactive "legal doctrine" would certainly be a gross violation of international law, that isn't necessarily what the U.S. government plans to do. They're just "considering" that. The Associated Press reported on June 25th that Secretary of Defense (i.e. "War") Donald Rumsfeld "has said detainees could stand before tribunals or other courts, be sent home for prosecution, or be kept indefinitely at Guantanamo." As independent human rights group Human Rights Watch asserted in a May 30th statement, "The Bush administration cannot hold people indefinitely without charge or send them to countries where they might be tortured." That is, they "cannot" do these things and comply with international norms on the treatment of detainees. Such legal niceties are of little concern to the Rogue Superpower, especially in a Time of War.

Self-Defense for Good Guys and for Evil Guys

To illustrate how arbitrarily the authorities determine guilt in the current War Against Terrorism (the WAT!?) climate, consider two events that occurred last winter, separated by one month and several thousand miles.

Self-Defense? No Charges Brought

On February 23rd of this year a sheriff's deputy in Carthage, North Carolina happened upon a pickup truck on a country road "with someone crouching in the back." As he approached the truck, "one of the three men in the truck came at him, [and] the deputy used pepper spray, then opened fire, killing one man and wounding another." There was no way for the deputy to know that the two men were Green Berets on training maneuvers, since the Army had not notified the local sheriff's office of the operation. Since the deputy "reasonably believed that he was confronted with a threat justifying his use of deadly force," the local prosecutor said that no criminal charges will be filed. Fair enough. Honest mistake.

Self-Defense? Death Sentence

One month earlier, on January 23rd, there occurred a nighttime assault by U.S. troops on two compounds north of Kandahar in Afghanistan. The people in the compounds were "neither al-Qaeda nor Taliban fighters," and in fact were allies of the U.S. When these Afghans started shooting at their attackers—apparently believing that, like the sheriff's deputy, they were "confronted with a threat justifying their use of deadly force"—the U.S. soldiers opened fire and killed 16 of them. (Or, at least, that's what the official U.S. version says.) U.S. commander Tommy Franks denied that his troops made any mistake in killing innocent people who were trying to defend themselves from a surprise attack. In fact, he "praised the ‘discipline' and ‘professionalism'" of his troops, saying "The one mistake that I know was made was when people shot at American forces doing their job on the ground in Afghanistan." Franks went on to say, speaking of the military operation that killed 16 innocent people, "I will not characterize it as a failure of any type."

Turkey, The Mercenary Terrorist "Role Model"

Many countries throughout history have hired soldiers, often from other countries, to carry out military operations that they wish to keep secret from their own populations, or because, for whatever reason, it is not desirable to commit their own armed forces to battle. Such soldiers are called "mercenaries."

The U.S. announced on April 29th that it had hired the nation of Turkey to "assume command of the international security force in Kabul." In other words, our government hired an entire nation to act as a mercenary. Of course, our government wasn't so crude as to actually use the word "hired," nor could one find the word "mercenary" in any of the mainstream reports. Here's what we did see. You be the judge.

A "Victory" For The U.S.

The lead paragraph in an April 29th story in the New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print"), headlined "Turkey Will Take Command of the Security Force in Kabul," reads like this: "In a victory for the United States, Turkey agreed today to assume command of the international security force in Kabul sometime this summer." (Turkey did, indeed, take over the command, on June 21.)

The Turkish military, which the Times says is "highly influential inside Turkey," was eager to take over in Afghanistan. The reason is that the Turkish generals "see the mission as an opportunity to increase the country's influence in Central Asia and its prestige among its European allies." Still, Turkey is "reluctant to assume any financial responsibilities" for the job, so that's where the United States comes in. The U.S. has plenty of money but is "reluctant" to commit its own troops to the international security force, so Vice President Dick Cheney, in a March visit to Ankara, "promised Turkey $228 million to pay the costs of sending another 1,000 or so troops to Afghanistan." The U.S. will also support Turkey's bid to be admitted to the European Union, which has been problematic for reasons I'll explain in a moment.

The hiring of this particular nation was a "victory" for the United States due to the fact that Turkey is the only member of NATO that has a large Muslim population. That supposedly shows to the world, according to a "political science professor" quoted by the Times, that the war in Afghanistan "is not an attack against a Muslim nation by the United States." That is wishful thinking since, unlike the good professor, much of the rest of the world is likely to see Turkey as little more than a U.S. surrogate in Afghanistan, especially given that Turkey has for years been one of the largest recipients of U.S. economic and military aid in the world.

The expert added that "Turkey can also have a moderating effect on radicalism in Afghanistan," making it "an ideal candidate to lead the force." As the London Guardian put it, "The US is keen to promote Turkey as a secular, democratic role model for Afghanistan."

Turkey as Role Model

So, what kind of moderate "role model" is our government "promoting" here? Is this the same Turkey in which "Torture remains widespread and the perpetrators are rarely brought to justice," as Amnesty International put it in a 2001 report? Is this the same Turkey where "politicians and writers are prosecuted and imprisoned for expressing their nonviolent opinions, and detainees in police custody remain at risk of ill-treatment, torture, or death in custody?" I think it is the very same country. But wait! There's more.

Amnesty International further reports that the Turkish security forces—presumably the same forces who are to head up the force in Kabul—routinely rape and sexually assault prisoners in their custody. Turkish human rights workers continually face "harassment and intimidation" by Turkish authorities, and children as young as nine years old have been prosecuted by Turkish authorities for such heinous crimes as shouting anti-government slogans, according to a recent report in the London Guardian newspaper.

Turkey's repression of its Kurdish population of 12 million (one-fifth of the national total) is well-documented, and includes a partial ban on use of the Kurdish language within the country, as well as the suppression of other expressions of Kurdish culture, dating back some 80 years. The Turkish government is acknowledged by many to be guilty of, as the Guardian puts it, "a pattern of disrespect, bordering on contempt, for basic human rights."

Looking at the record of the Turkish government, one might surmise that it has been their intention to bring about a retreat on the part of the population of the country from support for the Kurdish resistance, due to a high level of fear of brutal government reprisal. According to my Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, "The use of...violence to intimidate...especially as a political weapon" is the definition of terrorism. Now consider a June 21st U.S. government press release entitled, "State Department Hails Turkey Command of Afghanistan Security Force," which included the following words: "In assuming command of [the Afghan force], Turkey has demonstrated yet again the solidarity of the U.S.-Turkey strategic partnership and Turkey's resolve to combat terrorism."

Not coincidental to its horrendous Human Rights record, Turkey is also a member—along with the U.S.—of the ever-shrinking group of nations who have refused to sign the treaty that created the new International Criminal Court. This is the anti-terrorist "role model" that, in accord with the wishes of the United States, will be in charge of "security" in Kabul for the foreseeable future.