----- Original Message ----- From: "Jay Moore" <research at www.neravt.com> To: <Undisclosed-Recipient:@bypass.com;> Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2001 8:42 AM Subject: [R-G] Who and where will be the second target?
> Translation courtesy of Muhammad Abu Nasr.
>
> jay
> www.neravt.com/left/
>
> **********
>
> Who and where will be the second target?
>
> By Talal Salman
>
> Lead editorial from the independent Beirut newspaper
> "as-Safir" Monday, 8 October 2001
>
> The war against Afghanistan, and within the country,
> against the Taliban in the role of the rulers, and
> Usama bin Ladin in the role of the "qa`ida," leader,
> treasury, political and religious guide, is now old
> news.
>
> The question now is: who and where will the second
> target be for this open American war against a
> featureless enemy with no borders, who could,
> therefore, be anything - a country, an organization,
> or a person - in any place at any time?
>
> Who and where will be the second target, who will be
> sentenced to death without trial, and executed with no
> objection even from his own people, and buried under
> the ruins with no funeral?
>
> This is a wrongful war against a nation that has been
> wronged throughout its long history. Yet no one
> objects, not because the proof is so strong, but
> because of the strength of its American "hero."
> America decided where to have the war and whom to
> "appoint" as the enemy. America prepared an
> "international alliance" for the war, then prosecuted
> it, having blockaded the "recalcitrants" with fear so
> that they cast their eyes away to let the television
> screen and its modern technology bring them the war
> from one side - where the heroes are the lighted lines
> and sounds of explosions that illuminate the night of
> death, and the dead with no graves.
>
> America has succeeded once again in choosing a new
> victim that was almost ideal for justifying a wrongful
> war such as that which began last night - on the eve
> of the "important" Conference of the Islamic Foreign
> Ministers, and just ahead of the holy month of Ramadan
> - with the explosions of cities, villages and
> workshops, rather than with blasts from those symbolic
> cannon that proclaim the Ramadan sunsets and call the
> Faithful to break their days of fasting.
>
> The explosions in New York and Washington, which the
> whole world condemned, gave the mightiest power on
> earth some of the features of a victim. America
> exploited this situation well, laying its hands on
> whole states and peoples through the "world
> government" as represented by the Security Council,
> whose rubber stamps it has come to control, giving it
> the authority to decree who will be convicted and
> executed, and who will be acquitted to live in the
> thralldom of his deep obligation to the generosity of
> US morals and noble tolerance (like the American
> eagles that are now filling the skies with flame).
>
> On the other hand, international sentiment denied the
> "accused" Afghanistan - which was not interested in
> asserting its innocence of the blasts in the two
> American cities - the role and features of the
> "victim," and so its people lived in expectation of
> war as if it were their unavoidable fate, regardless
> of its relationship to "unlimited justice."
>
> Thus the people of Afghanistan on whom now rain down
> the missiles of mass killing and the remote-controlled
> smart bombs, enjoy no real sympathy. They are killed,
> or marked for death but almost without a cause (at
> least not one that is recognized). It is as if the
> Afghani "citizen" had no existence, as if he were a
> being that had fallen to earth suddenly from somewhere
> else. For he has no family, no homeland, no past, no
> present, no future, and no cause. As if the twenty
> million Afghanis had come together and congealed into
> one single person - Usama bin Ladin! As if these
> people were a surplus, unneeded by the world. As if
> this man were the only terrorist, the sole saboteur of
> world security and the peace of humanity in all times
> and places.
>
> Who and where will the second target be?
>
> The attack is on Afghanistan, but we think of
> Palestine, and worry about Iraq and other Arab or
> Islamic places where the people are pursued by the
> charge of terrorism as by a curse, while the American
> "teacher" is ready to meet out punishment - and he
> makes no allowance for repentance!
>
> Between the two targets, the announced one whose
> destruction is under way in Afghanistan, and the
> second, undisclosed one, words of obscure meaning and
> intention go back and forth suggesting that the war
> will not end where it began on the night of the eighth
> of October, nor with the attainment of its announced
> goals - such as bringing down Taliban rule or killing
> Usama bin Ladin, or digging up the roots of the
> terrorists who have entrenched themselves in those
> unknown lands at the depths of the earth, strangers
> there, fugitives, isolated, rejected, cut off from
> those whom they preach to, their "Muslim brothers,"
> people whose very family ties are now denied them.
>
> This is the first shot in an open war that could last
> many long years, as the Americans, who want to
> reassert their absolute sovereignty over the world of
> the twenty-first century assure us. Good fortune led
> them to a model "enemy" in form and content. The
> manner of its rule is rejected, its political language
> is backward and from another age, its sloganeering in
> absolutes convinces no one, its public officials look
> repulsive, while their leader, the Commander of the
> Faithful, is veiled and no picture of him is known.
> Everything surrounding him or related to him shows him
> to be a remnant of the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages -
> someone who does not deserve to live in the age of the
> communication and transportation revolution, when
> space is being penetrated - the age of the rights of
> man, may God rest his soul.
>
> Who and where will the second target be?
>
> The attack is on Afghanistan but the mind thinks of
> Palestine.
>
> The assaults are on Kabul, Qandahar, and Jalalabad but
> memory churns up images of Baghdad and Basra. Indeed
> why do we even need memory when Israeli helicopters
> and tanks batter Hebron, Gaza, Rafah, Tul Karem,
> Jenin, and Beit Jala right now. Pictures of the
> martyrs, men, children, and houses, are broadcast by
> Arab satellite TV networks in an open competition over
> who will be the first to bring them out narrated by an
> objective voice that dosen't betray any partisanship.
> For if partisanship were necessary, then there would
> be another side in the war from one side. For this
> the Israeli is bought in to justify and exonerate
> himself and accuse the Palestinian for having caused
> him trouble.
>
> Who and where will the second target be?
>
> Broadcasters vie with one another in describing the
> war from outside. Some with intense zeal, and some
> others of them with the stupidity of one who speaks
> about an obvious matter that has been decided, the
> time of execution of which has come in accordance with
> a written plan with vague rules. There is nothing
> that deserves surprise or amazement in all of this:
> not the numbers of the victims nor the numbers of the
> destroyed cities, nor the number of displaced persons,
> nor the volume of material losses in a country with
> nothing left to destroy!
>
> Those who do the raiding are bedazzled, those killers
> from afar, without being seen or knowing the face of
> their victims (just like those who blew themselves up
> bringing down thousands of victims in the two American
> cities). There one must sympathize with the one
> killed or marked for death: those were terrorist
> operations but this is a just war waged by America and
> with it those allies whom America has chosen in the
> name of international law against the outlaws!
>
> Are they equal? The backward Afghans with their long
> beards and dirty robes who imprison their women behind
> walls of clothing that cover the body and face,
> leaving only a little grill for them to look through
> so they can almost see where they step?
>
> And the American hero (supported and strengthened by
> his British sidekick and his hesitant French ally, and
> then by voluntary allies led by the Russian
> Federation) advancing to war with all his splendor,
> with all his wealth, with all his military arsenal
> with unlimited firepower? Against a phantom enemy who
> has no allies, nor friends, nor supporters, whom no
> one would miss if he were to disappear?
>
> Between the last of the wars of the last century and
> the first of the (open?) wars of the new, there is a
> tie of relationship with numerous faces. There are
> some Arab "features" in the new victim in addition to
> the fact that the new American hero is the son of the
> first one - he took after him and learned from his
> experience and set aside some of his mistakes.
>
> One of the basic differences is that this time the
> Arabs are outside the international alliance, though
> they are inside the "war" having sought it or
> consented to it as they wander about in their fear.
>
> Who and where will the second target be? Among the
> Arabs who for so long have not had the honor of being
> allies and could not distinguish themselves or impose
> their conditions for entering into an alliance or
> getting out of it. That is the issue.
>
>
>
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