| Number 480 | May 20, 2011 |
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This Week: Terror and the Death of bin Laden |
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Greetings, This past few weeks have been very interesting, indeed, and particularly so for me. First of all, this past month of April marked the 10th anniversary of my soulmate and life partner Marjorie's diagnosis of breast cancer. She is doing fine, ten years later. Then, of course, the news came out that Osama bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan by U.S. forces. Naturally, my mind connected the two events, and this issue of Nygaard Notes is the result. Much of the issue is a reprint of the first essay I published after Marjorie started chemotherapy. The final essay contains some thoughts on the best ways to deal with cancer and with terrorism. And, to give you a hint as to what I came up with: war is not the answer. Since a large part of this issue of the Notes is a reprint from an earlier issue, I extended the length to what I call a Double Issue, which is actually about 75 percent longer than the typical 2,000 words. For those of you who are counting. Finally, I broke my thumb last week, making it very difficult to type. So, this issue is a little later than I had hoped, and there may be more than the usual number of typos this week. Opposable thumbs are not to be taken for granted, that's what I say. One-handedly yours, Nygaard |
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"Quote" of the Week #1: "The Current War on Terror Is Not Serving U.S. Interests" Here's Robert Pape, director of the Project on Security and Terrorism at the U of Chicago, writing in Foreign Policy magazine last October 18th: "The research suggests that U.S. interests would be better served through a policy of offshore balancing. Some scholars have taken issue with this approach, arguing that keeping boots on the ground in South Asia is essential for U.S. national security. Proponents of this strategy fail to realize how U.S. ground forces often inadvertently produce more anti-American terrorists than they kill. In 2000, before the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, there were 20 suicide attacks around the world, and only one (against the USS Cole) was directed against Americans. In the last 12 months, by comparison, 300 suicide attacks have occurred, and over 270 were anti-American. We simply must face the reality that, no matter how well-intentioned, the current war on terror is not serving U.S. interests." I'm not sure it is all that well-intentioned, but the entire article—"It's the Occupation, Stupid"—is still well worth reading. ** "Quote" of the Week #2: "The 'moral victory' that many Americans are claiming is illusory." From an editorial entitled "The Fateful Choice" by the editors of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) , published May 6, 2011: "Ironically, and not terribly surprisingly, the Navy SEAL operation that eventually snared bin Laden on May 1, 2011, not quite ten years into the war, was not dissimilar from what might have happened had the international justice approach been chosen. The raid came about through years of examination of data and surveillance of suspects, not exploitation of a battlefield breakthrough; it carefully targeted bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan; it was aimed only at bin Laden's capture or, more likely, killing. And yet the 'moral victory' that many Americans are claiming is illusory, in the sense that few but Americans feel it. President Barack Obama's administration will neither reap political advantage in the Islamic world nor renew Americans' claim on global sympathies." ** "Quote" of the Week #3: "Have you ever heard of the Congressional Progressive Caucus budget plan?" From the April 22nd edition of Economist newspaper of London comes the following comment, found in an article headlined "Debt proposals: The Courageous Progressive Caucus Budget." Although it is a British paper, the Economist was here reporting on federal budget proposals in the United States. Referring to a column in the Washington Post on the subject by Matt Miller, the "Democracy In America" blog author (identified only as M.S.) said: "Mr Miller's column notes that 'the Congressional Progressive Caucus plan wins the fiscal responsibility derby thus far; it reaches balance by 2021 largely through assorted tax hikes and defense cuts.' Which is pretty interesting. Have you ever heard of the Congressional Progressive Caucus budget plan? Neither had I. The caucus's co-chairs, Raul Grijalva of Arizona and Keith Ellison of Minnesota, released it on April 6th. The budget savings come from defence cuts, including immediately withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq, which saves $1.6 trillion over the CBO baseline from 2012-2021. The tax hikes include restoring the estate tax, ending the Bush tax cuts, and adding new tax brackets for the extremely rich, running from 45% on income over a million a year to 49% on income over a billion a year." M.S. points out that the Republican budget proposal "adds $6 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, but promises to balance the budget by sometime in the 2030s by cutting programmes for the poor and the elderly." He then tells us that "The Progressive Caucus's plan would balance the budget by 2021 by cutting defence spending and raising taxes, mainly on rich people. Mr Ryan has been fulsomely praised for his courage. The Progressive Caucus has not." "My sense," concludes the British columnist, "is that the disparate treatment here is a structural bias rooted in class." (More on the Progressive Caucus budget – also known as "The People's Budget"—in a future Nygaard Notes.) |
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The following essay is a reprint of the first essay I wrote for the Notes after learning that my soulmate and life partner Marjorie had been diagnosed with breast cancer on April 18th, 2001. (She is well and cancer-free as of this writing!) This was, of course, several months before September 11th, 2001, when the U.S. became consumed with the phenomenon that we call "terrorism." The essay that follows this one discusses how the War on Cancer and the War on Terror are connected and, unfortunately, how both reflect how we are "off on the wrong track."
From Nygaard Notes # 117, July 20, 2001: One of my favorite questions in public opinion polls goes like this: "Do you think things in this country are generally going in the right direction or do you feel things have gotten pretty seriously off on the wrong track?" (This is the wording in the ABC News/Washington Post poll; the other major polls are similar.) It's an important question, yet I can't imagine what the average American could possibly be thinking when they answer it. I can easily imagine what the news organizations are thinking when they ask it: "Do you like Brand X (Democrats) or Brand Y (Republicans) better?" Possibly that is what goes through the mind of respondents, as well; there's no way to tell, which is partly why it is one of my favorite questions. Whatever people are thinking about, it is interesting to note that these "respectable" polls show that somewhere around half of all Americans think the country is "seriously off on the wrong track." In the Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll of this past May, the alienated outnumber the satisfied by 50% to 46%. How about that? According to the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, in their poll of just last month, it's 52% to 43%. The Harris Poll actually has something called the "Harris Alienation Index." (Also the less-interesting "Harris Feel Good Index," if you like a positive spin.) [2011 update: The level of alienation remains above 50 percent, with some polls showing that as many as 70 percent now say the country is on the "wrong track."] In the following essay, I ponder what might possibly be meant by "being off on the wrong track." In the meantime, if details are of interest to you, you could go to this polling website for more details than you would ever care to know. [Still current in 2011. Nygaard] |
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This essay followed the previous essay in Nygaard Notes # 117, July 20, 2001: One of the things I have learned in the past two months is that the conception of cancer is very different when seen through different philosophical lenses. Most Nygaard Notes readers are likely familiar with the standard biomedical—let's call it the "Western"—conception. This model says that there is a specific bunch of cells that go crazy and grow out of control and which, if left unchecked, will eventually spread throughout the organism and kill it. Does this sound familiar? It's what most U.S. doctors believe at their very core. If you have had any experience with cancer, you have likely either heard it stated explicitly, or else it has been simply assumed in your contacts with the medical system. I was surprised to learn that, in Traditional Chinese Medicine, or TCM, the conception of cancer is completely different. One might even say it is the opposite. In TCM theory, the problem is an imbalance or disruption in a human being's total system which, if left unchecked, may manifest itself in a specific disease or location. It could manifest as the flu, or as a bi-polar disorder, or as psoriasis. Or it could be a cancerous tumor. These are two very different ideas. In the Western conception, a "bad" part infects the whole. In the Eastern conception, a weakened whole presents itself as a disease in one or more parts. The implications of this are quite profound, and not just in some ivory-tower, intellectual way. This health lesson can be extended, as a metaphor, to help us understand how a philosophical bias (or preference, if you like that better) shapes our approach to everyday living. Cancer As Metaphor Think of cancer cells as criminals. In the Western conception, cancer cells are "bad guys" who can infect the whole neighborhood/city/country if you don't banish them or kill them. If there are a lot of "bad guys," then you have to do a lot of banishing and killing. And, in fact, that's what we do in the United States. We lock up more people in proportion to our population than any other country in the world, at a rate 6 times that in Canada and China, and 17 times that of Japan. [2011 update: Now it's only 12 times Japan; still 6 times larger than Canada and China. Nygaard] Similarly, the approach of conventional Western medicine to disease is to remove it or kill it. The three pillars of Western cancer treatment, for example, are surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. These three approaches banish the cancer cells, in the first case, and kill the cancer cells, in the second and third cases. Exactly like the Western approach to crime and criminals. Banish and kill. This may not seem too controversial, until one considers the approach of Traditional Chinese Medicine. TCM says that cancer can only grow in an organism that is out of balance, or whose healing system has been compromised in some way. The approach of TCM is not to "kill" the cancer, but rather to make the organism an inhospitable place for cancer to grow and thrive. Based on this theory, TCM believes that one can have cancer for the rest of one's life, but one does not have to die from it. In modern China, surgery is not rejected outright, but it is understood that, if the body remains out of balance, and the root causes of the cancer are not addressed, surgery and chemotherapy will only be a temporary "fix," and the cancer will return, perhaps stronger and more aggressive than the first time. And this is exactly what has been seen in clinical settings in the West. Off on the Wrong Track These two tracks—the "banish and kill" vs. the "come to terms with and coexist"—are analogous to the "tracks" that people may be referring to when they say in public opinion polls that the country is "seriously off on the wrong track." I think most people intuitively understand that there is a larger system that shapes, and is shaped by, our individual lives. Although largely unconscious, I believe that this intuitive understanding of The Great Context causes a profound unease in the hearts of many people—the kind of unease that would move people to say that we are seriously off on the wrong track. There is a theological or spiritual aspect to this understanding, expressed in a variety of ways, from the Christian "God's plan" to the TCM idea of "universal energy." There are economic and social conceptions, as well. Our dominant economic and social system is so weighted toward an individualistic and fragmented ideology (as I have said, the core of capitalism is individualism and competitiveness) that it becomes very difficult to act on, or even to imagine, the interconnectedness that is a part of everyone's lived experience. In my partner's battle against breast cancer, we have come to see the need for banishing and killing, in the form of surgery and chemotherapy. But we also are learning, by looking at ideas from different cultures, that a person fighting cancer needs to take steps to re-balance and strengthen their system. The American "War on Cancer" is based on an attempt to treat each individual case of cancer—to "cure" each one—which is the logical approach of an individualistic culture to a social problem. We see the same approach in all of our "wars:" the War on Crime, the War on Drugs, the War on Terrorism, the War on Anything Seen As "Bad." But cancer is not just something outside of ourselves that can be controlled by killing, any more than drug addiction in Minneapolis can be reduced by sending guns and soldiers to Colombia. Although we are getting better at treating cancer in America, American women are twice as likely to develop breast cancer now as they were 60 years ago. If we were to take a social approach to the problem of cancer, we would emphasize prevention. This would mean that we would begin to question the larger system—including its environmental, economic, spiritual, and political aspects—that shapes our lives and gives rise to cancer (and drug addiction and crime and other social problems) in the first place. (2011 Addendum: There are two groups that act on the principles in the preceding paragraph and which I recommend to anyone interested in dealing proactively with cancer on a personal or on the social level. One is a California-based group called Breast Cancer Action. The other is the Minneapolis-based Women's Cancer Action. If my partner does nothing but attempt to banish and kill her cancerous cells, I have no doubt that her cancer will return, in a more dangerous form than before. And if we, as a society, don't take steps to re-balance and strengthen our social and political systems, everything and everyone we banish today will be replaced by two or three who are more of a danger than those we have banished. The only hopeful response to cancer is to begin to help one's body be stronger and more in balance with the Universal, so it can ward off the deadly energy of cancer. And the only hopeful response to the very real problems facing our communities—from crime to drugs to hunger and poverty—is to work toward the same balance. To get back on "the right track" we will need to move away from our individualistic and competitive system toward a social and cooperative one. |
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The Terror That Breeds Terrorism: On The Killing of bin Laden |
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In the previous essay, written in 2001, I said that "The American 'War on Cancer' is based on an attempt to treat each individual case of cancer—to 'cure' each one—which is the logical approach of an individualistic culture to a social problem. We see the same approach in all of our 'wars:' the War on Crime, the War on Drugs, the War on Terrorism, the War on Anything Seen As 'Bad.' But cancer is not just something outside of ourselves that can be controlled by killing, any more than drug addiction in Minneapolis can be reduced by sending guns and soldiers to Colombia." And now, 10 years later, in the wake of the United States killing of the alleged mastermind of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden, it's worth thinking about what that killing means. Not much, as it turns out. At least, not much in the way of reducing terrorism. Just as drug addiction in Minneapolis cannot be reduced by sending guns and soldiers to Colombia, neither can terrorism in the U.S. be reduced by conducting a "war" against it. Quite the opposite, in fact, as we can see when we consider where terrorism comes from. Where Terrorism Comes From While specific acts of terrorism can be traced to specific people, the phenomenon of terrorism has to do with larger social forces. The scholar Robert Pape has studied the phenomenon over the years—especially its most deadly and terrifying form, suicide terror—and pointed out in an opinion piece in the New York Times in 2003 that "what nearly all suicide terrorist campaigns have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel liberal democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland." Pape has continued to study terrorism (he's now the director of the Project on Security and Terrorism at the U of Chicago), and said in an October 2010 essay in Foreign Policy magazine that terror against the U.S. has come to be explained in this country by using "a simple narrative." After the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, says Pape, "Americans immediately wondered, 'Why do they hate us?' and almost as immediately came to the conclusion that it was because of 'who we are, not what we do.' As President George W. Bush said in his first address to Congress after the 9/11 attacks: 'They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.' It's worth reading the entire essay, but I think the teaser paragraph for the article makes the key point well: "Extensive research into the causes of suicide terrorism proves Islam isn't to blame—the root of the problem is foreign military occupations." Pape points out that "a wealth of new data presents a powerful picture:" "More than 95 percent of all suicide attacks are in response to foreign occupation, according to extensive research that we conducted at the University of Chicago's Project on Security and Terrorism, where we examined every one of the over 2,200 suicide attacks across the world from 1980 to the present day. As the United States has occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, which have a combined population of about 60 million, total suicide attacks worldwide have risen dramatically—from about 300 from 1980 to 2003, to 1,800 from 2004 to 2009. Further, over 90 percent of suicide attacks worldwide are now anti-American. The vast majority of suicide terrorists hail from the local region threatened by foreign troops, which is why 90 percent of suicide attackers in Afghanistan are Afghans." Which Brings Us to Bin Laden. It's almost 10 years ago now, so it may be hard to remember, but after the events of September 11, 2001 there was a huge global outpouring of support and sympathy for the United States. With all that support, I commented back in Nygaard Notes Number 127 (October 5, 2001) that the U.S. could have decided "to consider the September 11th attacks as a crime against humanity rather than as an act of war." Virtually alone in the U.S. media, Nygaard Notes reported back in 2001 on an international Gallup poll conducted before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. The poll showed that "an overwhelming majority of the world's citizens rejected the idea of a military response to the crimes of September 11th, preferring instead a judicial response." (NN Number 132, November 16, 2001: "Act of War? Or Crime Against Humanity? The World Weighs In") Despite the support for an international justice approach, the Bush administration chose global war. The editors of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) have called this "the fateful choice" that has made the U.S.—and the world—less safe, not more. In a May 6 editorial, the MERIP editors point out that the U.S.-declared " war on terror", especially as it has played out in Afghanistan, actually hindered the search for bin Laden. Opposition to the U.S. war became so strong in the region that "The al-Qaeda chieftain vanished in the mountainous Afghan-Pakistani borderlands, a lanky six-footer with history's most circulated mug shot, an Arabic speaker in an ocean of Pashtu, Dari and Baluchi, a walking $25 million bounty in one of the poorest regions on earth." The editors add "bin Laden's demise [will not] reduce the likelihood or perceived legitimacy of future terrorist attacks, not because of the questions swirling around the official accounts of the raid and disposal of remains, but because of the havoc wrought by the US-led war on terrorism." A May 14th report on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition would have us believe that: "The war on al Qaeda is in part a propaganda struggle, fought with the aim of changing attitudes in the Muslim world." Whatever the propaganda may be, it remains true that actions speak louder than words. So the U.S. invasion of three Muslim countries and the occupation of two of them, more or less guarantees high levels of terror attacks into the foreseeable future. Back to the Cancer Metaphor Some people with cancer end up dying not from the cancer itself but as a result of the toxic treatments employed to fight the cancer. And many of the "treatments" the U.S. has employed in the wake of the September 11th terror attacks are proving to be highly toxic as well. By using the "homeland security" mentality to go after anything that anybody perceives as "terror" or related to "terror," we are doing grave harm to the democratic structures in the U.S. that we supposedly value so much. The "War on Terror" is, in this sense, toxic to our society. (For more on this, and to support some victims of this approach, check out the website of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression. I said in the last essay, speaking of my partner's chemotherapy: "If my partner does nothing but attempt to banish and kill her cancerous cells, I have no doubt that her cancer will return, in a more dangerous form than before. And if we, as a society, don't take steps to re-balance and strengthen our social and political systems, everything and everyone we banish today will be replaced by two or three who are more of a danger than those we have banished." And so it is with terrorism. Without transforming the conditions that give rise to terrorism, new terrorists will be created faster than we can kill them. Real anti-terror work cannot be reduced—as it has been—to a campaign to "defeat" the "bad guys." Those "bad guys"—as Professor Pape's research indicates—are human beings who are trying to address real grievances, such as foreign military occupations of their lands. And in a system where some are terribly weak and some are stupendously strong—as is the case in an Imperial system—the weak will resort to whatever tactics available to them. Terror included. It is for these reasons that the recent killing of bin Laden is of little consequence. The real anti-terror work has yet to be done. That work involves re-balancing the global system, including breaking down the imperial system and the economic, political, and military imbalances that make empires possible. Finally, the work of breaking down the imperial system is necessary not only in order to reduce terrorism. It's the right thing to do. As horrible as terrorism is, the human suffering that is caused by the workings of Empire itself is far greater. Empire, after all, is The Terror That Breeds Terrorism. And bin Laden's death doesn't change that. Anti-imperialist organizing is thus the best approach not only to protect ourselves against the terror of others, but to protect billions of others from the terror perpetrated in our names. A reduction in our military spending would free up money to spend on human needs, even as it would reduce the threat posed to the world by the military-industrial complex. It would be a true Win/Win, except for those who are a part of the military industrial complex. While it may seem hopelessly idealistic to speak of a world order based on morality and justice, this is the only vision that will, in the end, guide us on a course leading to true security, and not just for those of us in the United States, but for the whole world. |
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11 AUGUST 1988: Al-Qaeda is formed at a meeting attended by Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif ("Dr. Fadl") in Peshawar, Pakistan. 1990: The U.S. stations combat troops in the Arabian peninsula for the first time since WWII. 29 DECEMBER 1992: Al-Qaeda's first bomb attack kills two people at the Gold Mihor hotel in Aden, Yemen. SHORTLY AFTER DECEMBER 29, 1992: US Announces Withdrawal from Yemen following Bombings. Bin Laden Later Claims Victory (Here's bin Laden in 1998: "The Arab mujaheddin related to the Afghan jihad carried out two bomb explosions in Yemen [in December 1992] to warn the United States, causing damage to some Americans staying in those hotels. The United States received our warning and gave up the idea of setting up its military bases in Yemen. This was the first al-Qaeda victory scored against the Crusaders." 11 SEPTEMBER 2001: 2,974 people are killed as hijacked planes are flown into buildings in the U.S. OCTOBER 2001: US troops invade Afghanistan, the population of which is 99.7 percent Muslim 20 MARCH 2003: The United States invades Iraq, the population of which is 99 percent Muslim BETWEEN 1980 AND 2003: There were 343 suicide attacks around the world, and at most 10 percent were anti-American inspired. SINCE 2004, there have been more than 2,000 suicide terror attacks, over 91 percent against U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries. 19 MARCH 2011 The U.S. [technically, NATO, which is dominated by the U.S.] attacks Libya, the population of which is 96.6 percent Muslim. The attack is ongoing. May 2 2011: Osama bin Laden is killed in Pakistan. May 13, 2011: Twin bomb blasts kill at least 76 people, mostly paramilitary personnel, and wound at least 106 others, in Northwest Pakistan. A Pakistani Taliban spokesman says "This was the first revenge for Osama's martyrdom. Wait for bigger attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan." |
