Scaring America half to death

By William Pfaff

The distorted account of terrorism has had extraordinary psychological 
effect on many in the United States, causing them to think they are 
exposed to a degree of personal risk that has virtually no foundation in 
statistics, or indeed in common sense  

Foreign ministers of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations met in 
Paris on Monday to affirm that terrorism remains a "pervasive and global 
threat." Just three days earlier, the State Department had announced 
that terrorism is at its lowest level in 33 years.  

One wonders if anything would have changed had that news reached the 
G-8 foreign ministers. The war against terrorism, like the war against 
Iraq, functions in all but total indifference to facts. An unnamed "senior 
Bush administration official" told the press last weekend that he would 
be amazed if weapons-grade plutonium or uranium were found in Iraq. It 
was also unlikely, he said, that biological or chemical weapons material 
would be found. He said that the United States never expected to find 
such a smoking gun.  

What was the Iraq war all about then? The official said that what 
Washington really wanted was to seize the thousand nuclear scientists 
in Iraq who might in the future have developed nuclear weapons for 
Saddam Hussein. He described them as "nuclear mujahidin."

The preventive war, according to this redefinition, was not directed 
against an actual problem, but one that might have appeared in the 
future. One might have thought the officialAEs statement merely an 
excuse for the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been 
found, but this time it is President George W Bush who seems not to 
have been told. He is still assuring Americans that the illicit weapons 
will turn up.  

In its annual report to Congress on terrorism, the State Department said 
that the 199 recorded terrorist incidents last year represented a 44 
percent drop from the previous year, and was the lowest total since 
1969.  

There were no terrorist attacks at all in the United States, five in Africa 
and nine in Western Europe. Nearly all the rest were in Asia (99), Latin 
America (50) and the Middle East (29). (Forty-one of the total 50 
incidents reported as terrorism in all of Latin America last year were 
bombings of a US-owned oil pipeline in Colombia.)  

What the report actually indicates is that virtually all the incidents 
identified by the US government as acts of "global terrorism" in 2002 
occurred in four places: in Colombia; in Chechnya, with its separatist 
war; in Afghanistan, with the continuing low-scale war; and with the 
Palestinian intifada. Elsewhere, the Bali tourist bombing caused some 
200 deaths.  

Before Sept 11, 2001, virtually none of this would have been called 
terrorism. It would have been called civil insurrection, or nationalist 
or separatist violence.  

Since September 2001, vast global significance has been attributed to 
such episodes. They have been made the rationale for state 
mobilization and the restrictions of civil liberties in the United States 
(and at the American penal colony at Guantanamo Bay). Elsewhere, we 
have heard rationalizations of methods of state repression that in the 
past might have won the concerned governments a place in another 
annual report the State Department makes to Congress: on international 
human rights violations.  

The distorted account of terrorism has had extraordinary psychological 
effect on many in the United States, causing them to think they are 
exposed to a degree of personal risk that has virtually no foundation 
in statistics, or indeed in common sense.  

The New York writer who recently said that since the fall of Baghdad he 
has, for the first time since 2001, felt himself secure from being blown 
to bits by a terrorist bomb while crossing Times Square, is one such case. 
Thousands of New Yorkers, acting on federal government warnings, this 
year built themselves tape- sealed rooms stocked with provisions, water 
and gas masks for a prolonged siege by terrorists. Polls indicate that 
American voters no longer really care whether weapons of mass 
destruction are found in Iraq. The victory was not over a threat they 
really identified with Saddam Hussein. It was a victory over "terrorism."  

Now, in an official report few will read, or are expected to read, their 
government admits that terrorism is at its lowest level in three decades, 
and that the actual risk it poses is statistically negligible. At the same 
time, the same government tells them they must live in fear of "appalling 
crimes" and mass destruction. Where is this leading Americans? 

-Courtesy IHT

                           -==-

Source: Daily Times - Pakistan
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_10-5-2003_pg4_12

Cheers, Steve..

---