hearts and minds

Nir Rosen in The Guardian:

An American journal once asked me to contribute an essay to a discussion on whether terrorism or attacks against civilians could ever be justified. My answer was that an American journal should not be asking whether attacks on civilians can ever be justified. This is a question for the weak, for the Native Americans in the past, for the Jews in Nazi Germany, for the Palestinians today, to ask themselves.

Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims’ struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose.

If you think this is just rhetoric, remember what Tom Friedman had to say about the war on Iraq: that someone had to pay for 9/11, an example had to be made, and Iraq was the easiest and most “target rich” enemy of choice to get the American people lathered up against.

I have often wondered why Israel didn’t take the Hamas route with the Palestinians: schools, healthcare and jobs can go a long way toward co-opting “insurgents” (read: the civilian occupied, unhappy with their occupiers), and they’re a helluva lot cheaper than planes and bombs.

But then I wake up and remember that Israel is the #1 recipient of U.S. aid, and most of that aid is in the form of quid pro quo to defense contractors.

Hooray, American Capitalism! Killing innocents under the Stars and Stripes since – forever!