Their terrorists and ours

(posted to Marxmail by José Perez)

Viewed from an *ideological* angle, I think the post currently making the
usenet rounds says it all:

*  *  *

Confused ?  Having difficulty telling the good guys from the bad guys ?
Use this handy guide to discern differences between Terrorists and the U.S.
Government:

TERRORISTS:
Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful politician, from extremely
wealthy oil family

US GOVERNMENT:
Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful politician, from extremely
wealthy oil family

TERRORISTS:
Leader has declared a holy war ('Jihad') against his 'enemies'; believes any
nation not with him is against him; believes God is on his side, and that
any means are justified.

US GOVERNMENT:
Leader has declared a holy war ('Crusade') against his 'enemies'; believes
any nation not with him is against him; believes God is on his side, and
that any means are justified.

TERRORISTS:
Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious leaders who preach hatred,
intolerance, subjugation of women, and persecution of non-believers

US GOVERNMENT:
Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious leaders who preach hatred,
intolerance, subjugation of women, and persecution of non-believers

TERRORISTS:
Leadership was not elected by a majority of the people in a free and fair
democratic election

US GOVERNMENT:
Leadership was not elected by a majority of the people in a free and fair
democratic election

TERRORISTS:
Kills thousands of innocent civilians, some of them children, in cold
blooded bombings

US GOVERNMENT:
Kills (tens of) thousands of innocent civilians, some of them children, in
cold blooded bombings

TERRORISTS:
Operates through clandestine organization (al Qaeda) with agents in many
countries; uses bombing, assassination, other terrorist tactics

US GOVERNMENT:
Operates through clandestine organization (CIA) with agents in many
countries; uses bombing, assassination, other terrorist tactics

TERRORISTS:
Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and undermine civil liberties

US GOVERNMENT:
Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and undermine civil liberties

*  *  *

Very significant differences lie NOT in the ideological plane, but
elsewhere:

Bin Laden's active combatant force numbers in the hundreds if not thousands.
Many are willing to sacrifice themselves for what they believe in, and they
are armed with essentially black market equipment, homemade weapons and
whatever they can capture and use against those whom they view as the enemy.

The US Government's active combatant force numbers in the millions. By and
large --especially at the top-- they are not willing to die for what they
believe in, they are only willing to kill for what they believe in. They are
armed with every weapon of murder, mayhem and genocide ever invented in the
entire history of the human race and have a very convincing record of a
willingness to use them, not just in one spectacular action but with the
humdrum ruthless efficiency of a soulless bureaucracy that handles "tasking"
the annihilation of what turns out to be a peaceful rural hamlet as one more
piece of paperwork. They view any number of civilian casualties and any
amount of misery visited upon a nation's population as the merely
inevitable, acceptable "collateral damage" inflicted by the Fates of War.

These are, in turn, expressions of different social classes.

The U.S. Government's side is an expression of the imperialist system. I
assume everyone here agrees on that. All the folderol about Western
Civilization and Modernity and all that is either tautological -- because
current "modernity" is imperialist modernity, there is no other world
system -- or an attempt to cover up the reality and responsibility of this
single world system for what it has wrought on a world scale.

I cannot pretend to be any kind of expert on the social structure and class
dynamics of the Muslim countries, but it seems to me "Bin Ladenism" is the
ideological expression of social classes driven to despair and madness by
the ruthless, suffocating, crushing weight of that system. That there would
be a response by these (and other social classes in the Islamic world) to
imperialism was ineviatble. But that this response to imperialism has found
an extremely reactionary social and political program, and an ideology that
befits such a program, is due to the failures of the working class movement
in the 20th Century, not just in the advanced capitalist countries but also
in the Soviet Union.

Class collaborationism and and the bureaucratic degeneration of Soviet
socialism (which culminated with the restoration of capitalism by the
bureaucracy) poisoned the well from which humanity was to have drawn its
water to undertake the march to the next stage in human social evolution, at
least temporarily. Seeing no alternative, even sections of the toilers,
properly speaking, are drawn to a figure like Osama. But "Bin Ladenism" is
in not "progressive." Under current world conditions it is just an
expression of the extreme decay of the current world social system and an
obstacle to the necessary rebirth of the of world workers movement. The
"failed states" of Africa, where decades of colonialism, semicolonialism and
the despotism these engendered, together with the more or less automatic and
systematic pauperization of populations and ruination of economies through
the "invisible hand" of the world imperialist market, are another expression
of this. These are all symptoms that the current world order is, quite
simply, *unsustainable,* that imperialism, no longer moderated and held in
check by the countervailing weight of the world socialist camp, is driving
humanity to the brink of an abyss.

For quite a few years now, the most prominent Communist leader of our times,
Fidel Castro, has been making speeches that almost seem drawn from some Old
Testament prophet. He has warned that the current world order cannot
continue, and that the rich countries that think they are profiting from the
catastrophe they are causing in the Third World will not be able to isolate
themselves from it. The 9-11 attacks provide striking new confirmation of
Fidel's analysis.

José

Louis Proyect
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