War and peace in The United States: The aftermath of September 11


Dear friends:

The piece below, will no doubt, be of interest to you all. Vandy, from
Sierra-Leone is a highly committed peace activist whose contribution to
making the Hague Appeal for Peace Conference in May 1999 at the West African
level  a huge success and also a member of the Appeal's International
Committee in New York just like myself. He is, no doubt a worthy African
youth ambassador whose shining behavioral comportment is worthy of emulation
by his peers and elders in this region too.  We encourage more youths to
share their views with the rest of the world through this unique electronic
medium. Ride on Vandy and more grease to your elbow.

Ade. Adenekan

Executive Director.

<*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*>
Pan-African Reconciliation Council &
African Centre for Peace Education


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Dear Ade,

I hereby send you an article I wrote based on my observation of the war and
peace situation in the wake of the terrorists attacks in New York. I
witnessed the NY attacks as I was then doing a two month internship at the
UN secretariat and returned to Europe a couple of weeks ago.

Keep up the good work.

Regards and best wishes,
Vandy Kanyako
Amsterdam

War and peace in The United States: The aftermath of September 11

The United States has been in the grip of a war mentality ever since the
daredevil September 11 attacks which vaporized the World Trade Center and
disfigured the Pentagon. Countless armchair warriors, who sprang up from
God-knows-where, have been beating their pens into swords and calling for
the head of the faceless enemy on a platter of gold draped with the
Star-Spangled Banner. For this category of people, the bearded head of Osama
Bin Laden is the only booty that can make up for the humiliation.

Led by a large section of the press and the political establishment, the
warmongers have brought out the war drums and have been beating them
non-stop. For them, the 'bombs and bread' campaign now underway in far flung
Afghanistan marks a huge victory worth celebrating. They are now rubbing
their hands in glee and patting themselves on the back as the bombs rain
down on the war-racked Central Asian country. They reckon this to be pay
back time.

Advocating for revenge has become mainstream thinking in the United States.
Anything short of supporting the war cause is deemed unpatriotic and
dangerous. A Congresswoman, who became the lone dissenter questioning the
gun-at-hip cowboy posture of the Bush administration, was inundated with
hate mails and threatening telephone calls. A popular radio talk show host
had his program yanked from the airwaves when he described the terrorists as
brave, and US soldiers as cowards for their habit of dropping missiles and
then fleeing home in a hurry. Sponsors terminated their contracts with
immediate effect. The electronic media has suddenly realized that broadcasts
by the al-Qaeda organization are not news items anymore. Just a few days
before, they were falling over one another in a bid to be the first to lay
hands on, and then disseminate the entire contents. The list of individuals
or groups, that have been forced to retract statements or apologize for
expressing contrary views, is endless. You either toe the line or you are
toed into line.

Fortunately, some people have refused to flow with the tide. From New York
to California to South Carolina, peace activists and justice advocates have
been making their voices heard. They have come out in their hundreds and
even thousands, to campaign against the 'kill and feed' adventures in
Afghanistan. Not surprisingly the press has attempted to muffle these
opinions by variously labeling the agitators as 'reckless', 'misguided' and
'unpatriotic'. Some advocates have been bold enough to blame the attacks on
the sometimes reckless US Foreign Policy. But in modern day America, steeped
in the you-are-either-with-us-or-against-us mentality, not placing the blame
squarely at the feet of Osama Bin Laden is considered sacrilegious. Saudi
Prince Bin Talal tried that option and he was asked to keep his $10 million
donation. Any hint at apportioning some blame to the inconsiderate foreign
adventures of present and past administrations will solicit the full wrath
of the 'holier than thou' Americans. Surely these are the times when some
Americans are more American than others as the dilemma of the Arab-Americans
clearly  illustrates.

Looking Back

Prior to the attacks, the United States behaved as if she was not part of an
international community. The country became a naysayer in international
affairs. The Bush administration scuttled the Kyoto agreement on the
environment; practically abandoned the 1972 ABM Treaty; pulled the plug on
negotiations to ban biological weapons; and few days before the World Trade
Center was pancaked, walked out of the Durban world Conference on racism,
using semantics as an excuse.

In a bid to have things the American way and on American terms, the world's
lone superpower stepped on every available toe and kicked everyone's butt.
She played chicken in China's airspace, lectured the Europeans on the ethics
of consumerism, applied the brakes on the Middle East Peace process, and
advised the reclusive North Korean leader to stay put even though the latter
appeared keen on reaching out to the other Korea. Together with her "special
relationship" partner Britain, the two continually dropped bombs on Baghdad
even when the whole world said the punitive measures were hurting mainly
innocent women and children. America was behaving like a giant gone mad.

Under Bush II, Africa completely vanished from the U.S. radar screen. On
assuming office, he publicly announced that the Continent would be relegated
to the back burner. Such a declaration did not come as a surprise as he was
merely taking a cue from his predecessor who, in 1993 became infected with
the Somalia syndrome when eighteen body bags arrived home from Mogadishu.
Using this as an excuse, the United States, under Clinton, stood hands
akimbo as murderous gangs ran amok in countries like Rwanda and Sierra
Leone, leaving behind a trail of wanton destruction. Bush took the lesson to
heart and joined, more enthusiastically, in holding Africa's feet to the
fire.

Then came September 11. On this day, with the whole world watching and
listening, America suffered a very public humiliation at the hands of
nineteen penknife-wielding and cardboard-cutter-shaking men. It is a story
of ingenuity and daredevil antics that the best minds in Hollywood, even in
their wildest imaginations, could not have conjured. It is also a story of
the woeful failure of the world's most expensive anti-terror system,
annually swallowing up a whooping $10 billion.

The attacks also nonsensed the 60-billion-dollar-a-year National Missile
Defense project. Competent sources quoted by Newsweek magazine states that
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, was at a meeting on National Missile
Defense with some congressional leaders in his office in the Pentagon when
American Airlines Flight 77, bearing some 58 passengers, came screaming into
the building at 9:40 am that fateful Tuesday. The event illustrates how the
missile-holic administration had been looking in all the wrong places for
the so-called national defense and security.

Most of the world (certainly not all) sympathized with the United States
after the attacks because (and only because) of the huge loss of innocent
lives involved. Beyond this basic fact however, it's a different kettle of
fish altogether. Terrorism did not begin on September 11. Europe has been
battling the scourge for more than 50 years. In some other parts of the
world it is both endemic and pandemic.

This is not to say however that the United States is the sole factory for
the world's myriad problems. Far from it. With or without America the world
has seen and will continue to see its fair share of ill-intentioned men
(almost always men) capable of holding the entire world to ransom. The issue
however is that in America's constant exchange of blows with her adversaries
(real and imagined), thousands of innocent bystanders have got caught in the
middle. When for example the two US embassies were bombed in East Africa in
1998, only 12 of the 224 people who died were Americans, the rest were
Africans. Even the World Trade Center came down with the lives of hundreds
of non-American citizens.

The world through American lenses

On a very personal level, the average American is warm and friendly, which
is why as a nation, they now find it hard to understand why someone would
want to them out in such a fashion. This positive trait notwithstanding, it
is 'very American' not to care to know much about what goes on beyond the
country's borders. A few minutes into a conversation reveals this
deficiency. He or she is shocked to find out that you prefer your French
fries with mayonnaise instead of with tomato ketchup, as is the standard way
in 'God's Own Country'. Whilst the average American knows little about what
others in other parts of the world do for leisure, he/she  considers you
ill-informed if you did not know that the New York Yankees, who won the 2000
Baseball World Series, actually first won the competition in 1923!. When the
Japanese struck Pearl Harbor in 1941, many Americans were reportedly heard
asking "What is Pearl Harbor?", "Where is Pearl Harbor"? Sixty years on, not
much has changed. Bush Junior, while gunning for the White House, thought
the Taleban was the name of a music band!. The list of such glaring naivety
cannot all fit into Noah's Ark.

As the bombs go off in Afghanistan, the whole world is watching-nervously. 
There are very good reasons for the unease. Terrorism has gone global. There
is no guarantee that the 'smoke them out' exercise declared by George Bush
is not a short-cut to long risks carrying unpredictable consequences for the
entire world. There is also no guarantee that the exercise is not merely
another attempt at human cloning capable of churning out hundreds of Osama
Bin Ladens. More worryingly, the vast majority of the leadership of the
Muslim world has, by and large remained mum, making it difficult to tell
which side of the fence they are eyeing.

Terrorism is a global threat, and must be weeded out or at worst curtailed.
For leaving the menace to fester will no doubt spell doom for the
international system. The perpetrators of September 11 need to be found out
and punished. But in the process of doing so, America must find itself too.
[Vandy Kanyako, October 2001]