Critics Speak Out Against War

A sampling of national and international opinions

by Even Woodward, contributor

Numerous critics are speaking against the call forwar in retaliation for the September 11 attacks on the World TradeCenter.

“In Bush’s speech we got no doctrine, no strategy, no evidence,” saidPhyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. “What wedid get was a lot of Wild West rhetoric: dead or alive material.”

Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine, wrote, “Bush said that America was targeted ‘because we embrace freedom’....Not knowing with any certainty who the attackers were, it’s hard tospeculate on their motives. But many groups in the Third World havegrievances that are more specific than the ones Bush mentioned.”

After declaring war on al-Qaida, the terrorist syndicate headed byOsama bin Laden, and “every terrorist group of global reach,” Bushturned to an examination of the reasoning behind anti-Westernsentiment: “Americans are asking, ‘Why do they hate us?’”

G. Simon Harak, a Jesuit priest from New York City who has visited theMideast numerous times, issued a rejoinder to President Bush’s query.“When I’ve spoken to families in Iraq who have suffered from theeconomic sanctions and bombings, or with Palestinian fathers and sonstortured by an Israeli government which we back, they asked me thesame question: ‘Why does America hate us?’”

“Many have opined that a distaste for Western civilization andcultural values fuels terrorism, but large numbers outside thiscountry believe that Western civilization has hurt them badly,” saidEdward Herman, professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School atthe University of Pennsylvania.

According to Herman, the blame for this sentiment rests largely withthe US and for corporate globalization, which “has unleashed animpoverishment process on the Third World, through the ruthlessimposition of a neoliberal regime that serves Western transnationalinterests and is buttressed by a willingness to use unlimited force toachieve Western corporate and political ends.”

Bob Jensen, author of Writing Dissent said, “The last time theUS responded to a terrorist attack, on its embassies in Kenya andTanzania in 1998, it was innocents in Sudan and Afghanistan who werein the way. We were told that the US missiles hit only militarytargets but the Sudan target turned out to be a pharmaceuticalfactory. There are calls for a ‘massive response’ but let us notforget that, if the pattern of past US actions holds, such a responsewill kill innocent people like the ones in New York and the hijackedairplanes.”

Stephen Zunes, chair of Peace and Justice Studies Program, Universityof San Francisco: “Military responses usually result only in a spiralof violent retaliation. Similarly, bombing other countries after thefact will not protect lives. Indeed, it will likely result in whatPentagon planners euphemistically call ‘collateral damage,’ i.e., thedeaths of civilians just as innocent as those killed in New York City.And survivors bent on revenge.”

Jay Truman, director of Downwinders organization, says, “Rumsfelddeclined to answer whether the US would rule out the use of nuclearweapons. Rumsfeld’s assistant, Paul Wolfowitz, has stated that thePentagon is poised to unleash ‘a very big hammer.’ The administrationcould be angling to use earth-penetrating nuclear weapons, which theywere already planning to test.”

Beau Grosscup, author of The Newest Explosions of Terrorism:“The Israeli model is not only ineffective in dealing with terrorism,as the track record of anti-Israeli violence shows, but is alsobankrupt both politically and morally.”

William Hartung, senior research fellow, World Policy Institute: “Itcertainly seems as if these attacks are being used as an excuse by themilitary and the political right to basically take all their petprojects ... and label them ‘anti-terrorist.’ In the name of ‘nationalunity,’ the Democrats have for the most part agreed to roll over andgive the president anything he asks for in the military andintelligence spheres—hardly a sterling example of democracy atwork.”

Michel Chossudovsky, professor of economics, University of Ottawa:“The imminent shift from civilian into military production would pourwealth into the hands of contractors at the expense of civilian needs.Behind the Bush administration is the power of the ‘big five’ militarycontractors increasingly in partnership with the energy giants, whichare behind many of the regional wars and along strategic oilpipelines.”

Other critics called for bringing the perpetrators to the World Court.“The US should deal with the events of September 11 as criminal acts,investigate and prosecute those guilty and do so with the backing ofthe United Nations Security Council,” said Michael Ratner, vicepresident of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

“The US is under an absolute obligation to resolve this dispute withAfghanistan in a peaceful manner as required by UN Charter Article2(3) and Article 33,” stated Francis Boyle, professor of internationallaw at the University of Illinois College of Law. “The US should offerto submit this entire dispute with Afghanistan to the InternationalCourt of Justice in The Hague.”

Boyle further criticized the US government’s eagerness to resort toretaliation over extradition: “According to the facts in the publicrecord so far, this was not an act of war and NATO Article 5 does notapply. President Bush has automatically escalated this nationaltragedy into something it is not in order to justify a massivemilitary attack abroad.”

Evan Woodward is a writer with IPA Media, a project of theInstitute for Public Accuracy(www.accuracy.org).