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World Horror - A Dissenting American View

By Gretchen Dutschke

With the horrifying events of the last week replaying themselves over and over in our media and in our minds, there are plenty of questions that weigh on us, whoever we may be and whereever we come from. I am a citizen of the USA. I don't know if that makes a difference, but it's a fact. It was my land that was hit and it's my land that is going to carry out the acts of revenge.

Who did it? Why? How come the secret service knew nothing? Who did know? What is the USA planning to do? How will that affect us: the people of the USA, the people of the NATO countries, the third world, the Islamic world? How will it affect the economy? What will it mean for democracy?

There is no one who thinks things will be as they were before the 11th of September. We now know the names of the men who hijacked the planes. It is assumed, though without much direct evidence and plenty of indirect evidence the Osama bin Laden is behind it. We know that the near and middle East has been the seat of unrest since the creation of the Israeli state and the expulsion of the Palestinians from their lands and homes starting over sixty years ago. The fact that that situation has never been resolved and that conditions for the Palestinians have consistently worsened is probably the starting point. Much has been added since: the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, over twenty years of war in Afghanistan and above all the question of who controls the oil.

We will never know how much any of the secret services of any of the countries involved in this ragnarok knew before September 11. But they certainly knew what all of us knew, what appeared in the media. Remember that the World Trade Center was bombed once before, in 1993. Six people died. At that time we were informed by bin Laden and other militant Islamic fundamentalists that it was going to happen again and that next time it would not be six people dying. Within the last few months rumors were thickening that something was going to happen. It was pretty clear that when it happened it would be the World Trade Center. They told us that. Rumors also were pointing to Boston.

What could the advisors who stand behind the Bush government and make its policies have been thinking through all of this? I think we should try to put ourselves in their place and figure out how they think in order to get a glimpse of what might await us in the next years. They are a group of Texas oilmen, military and industrial complex leaders and Christian fundamentalists who are guided by an ideology as bizarre as any Islamic fundamentalist. The goal is complete world dominance for US-global corporations, control of space (just as the English empire once controlled the seas), control of world resources, especially oil and increasingly water. The Bush government has broken most of the previously made treaties because they do not wish to share control with anyone. Europeans who think otherwise are foolishly blinding themselves to reality. Bush advisors believe that all European countries are socialist and thus potentially enemies of US capitalism. Furthermore they are also competitors for the resources that the US wishes to secure for itself.

Christian fundamentalists do not believe in democracy. Their mythology predicts that Jesus will reign as king over a world-wide Christian kingdom. This millennial kingdom will finally end all wars, poverty and dissention. But to get there we must go through a tribulation of wars and rumors of wars, mass death and destruction. And that's where we are right now.

George Bush does not talk about democracy. He cannot talk about democracy because the majority of US voters did not vote for him. He was made president by an extra-legal decision of the Supreme Court. He does talk about preserving our freedom and our American way of life. Freedom means the freedom of capital to create profits at any cost. There is no interest or desire among these people to even preserve the level of democracy that we have. The American way of life means continuation of wasteful consumption, especially of energy. And for this we need oil. The Bush advisors have rejected alternative sources of energy. The creation of internal security forces in the US to protect us from terrorism will also create the means of preventing any kind of opposition which will be simply branded as terrorism.

The oil of the middle East will last for about 30 years. It will become scarce long before that. Who will get it when there's not enough to go around? That's obviously a silly question. We know the answer. The US must therefore have a large military presence in the middle East. The invasion of Afghanistan is thus really just a collateral annoyance. If it results in the removal of bin Laden, well, there are various suggestions of what that will mean in the development of global terrorism. If it results in the removal of Taliban without the further destruction of civilian homes, workplaces and lives, then it may even be a positive thing for Afghanistan. But who believes that it will happen that way?

We have been informed by the US government that this will be a long war. They are selling war bonds for the first time since WW II. It will cost lives and huge sums of money. It will last until the oil is gone. Then, there will be no more reasons for the US to have any interest whatsoever in the middle east. There's no water there. In the process, Israel will be able, behind the scenes so to speak, to resolve it's Palestinian problem by the removal of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

The USA will bankrupt itself if it follows this course. Within six months George Bush has already turned a 240 billion dollar surplus into a minus. The war bonds won't prevent the financial mess. The US taxpayers, most of whom have experienced a constantly falling standard of living in the last thirty years (the economic growth of the nineties affected only about 40% of the population) will pay. They will pay for the war in the middle east and they will likely also pay for the missile defense system which the government now may get the desired congressional backing for. None of this is going to make life any better for the taxpayers. Not to mention the rest of the world.

There is a way to stop the terrorism. There is a way to prevent these senseless wars. First of all, the problem that started it all - the Israeli Palestinian conflict - must be resolved immediately. Not with tanks and bombs of course, but by giving the Palestinians a homeland, providing a place to live and work for the people driven from their homes in the last 60 years. The rest of the solution requires an effort as large and as costly as the wars would be. The infrastructure for an oil-less economy and society must be created. It must be created now. On the day that the US does not need the oil from the middle east the whole picture will change. It will end any desire or fantasy about US control of the middle east. The people there will be able to return to normality.