Stop the insanity here 8/30/10 1:09 AM

U.S. just as guilty of committing

own violent acts

Robert Jensen
School of Journalism
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712
work: (512) 471-1990
fax: (512) 471-7979
rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu

copyright Robert Jensen 2001

Houston Chronicle, September 14, 2001, p. A-33.

Also posted on Common Dreams web site and
ZNet, Sept.12, 2001.

by Robert Jensen

September 11 was a day of sadness, anger and

fear.

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Like everyone in the United States and around the

world, I shared the deep sadness at the deaths of
thousands.

But as I listened to people around me talk, I

realized the anger and fear I felt were very
different, for my primary anger is directed at the
leaders of this country and my fear is not only for
the safety of Americans but for innocents civilians
in other countries.

It should need not be said, but I will say it: The

acts of terrorism that killed civilians in New York
and Washington were reprehensible and
indefensible; to try to defend them would be to
abandon one’s humanity. No matter what the
motivation of the attackers, the method is beyond
discussion.

But this act was no more despicable as the

massive acts of terrorism -- the deliberate killing of
civilians for political purposes -- that the U.S.
government has committed during my lifetime. For
more than five decades throughout the Third
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World, the United States has deliberately targeted

civilians or engaged in violence so indiscriminate
that there is no other way to understand it except
as terrorism. And it has supported similar acts of
terrorism by client states.

If that statement seems outrageous, ask the people

of Vietnam. Or Cambodia and Laos. Or Indonesia
and East Timor. Or Chile. Or Central America. Or
Iraq, or Palestine. The list of countries and peoples
who have felt the violence of this country is long.
Vietnamese civilians bombed by the United States.
Timorese civilians killed by a U.S. ally with U.S.-
supplied weapons. Nicaraguan civilians killed by
a U.S. proxy army of terrorists. Iraqi civilians killed
by the deliberate bombing of an entire country’s
infrastructure.

So, my anger on this day is directed not only at

individuals who engineered the Sept. 11 tragedy
but at those who have held power in the United
States and have engineered attacks on civilians
every bit as tragic. That angeris compounded by
hypocritical U.S. officials’ talk of their
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commitment to higher ideals, as President Bush

proclaimed “our resolve for justice and peace.”

To the president, I can only say: The stilled voices

of the millions killed in Southeast Asia, in Central
America, in the Middle East as a direct result of
U.S. policy are the evidence of our resolve for
justice and peace.

Though that anger stayed with me off and on all

day, it quickly gave wayto fear, but not the fear of
“where will the terrorists strike next,” which I
heard voiced all around me. Instead, I almost
immediately had toface the question: “When will
the United States, without regard forcivilian
casualties, retaliate?” I wish the question were,
“Willthe United States retaliate?” But if history is a
guide, it is a questiononlyof when and where.

So, the question is which civilians will be unlucky

enough to be in the way of the U.S. bombs and
missiles that might be unleashed. The last time the
U.S. responded to terrorism, the attack on its
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, it was
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innocents in the Sudan and Afghanistan who were

in the way. We were told that time around they hit
only military targets, though thetarget in the Sudan
turned out to be a pharmaceutical factory.

As I monitored television during the day, the talk

of retaliation was inthe air; in the voices of some
of the national-security “experts” there was a
hunger for retaliation. Even the journalists couldn’t
resist; speculating on a military strike that might
come, Peter Jennings of ABC News said that “the
response is going to have to be massive” if it is to
be effective.

Let us not forget that a “massive response” will kill

people, and if the pattern of past U.S. actions
holds, it will kill innocents. Innocent people, just
like the ones in the towers in New York and the
ones on theairplanes that were hijacked. To
borrow from President Bush, “motherand fathers,
friends and neighbors” will surely die in a massive
response.

If we are truly going to claim to be decent people,

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our tears must flow not only for those of our own
country. People are people, and grief that is
limited to those within a specific political
boundary denies the humanity of others.

And if we are to be decent people, we all must

demand of our government -- the government that
a great man of peace, Martin Luther King Jr., once
described as “the greatest purveyor of violence in
the world” -- that the insanity stop here.

Robert Jensen is a professor in the Department of

Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. He
can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
Other writings are available online at
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freelance/freelance.htm.

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