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United States Violence on
Terrorism
Tan Nguyen
As the United States
continues what it calls its
�war against terrorism,� one can�t help but
wonder if such a war is misguided. After all, if the United States
is truly looking to eradicate terrorism, perhaps it should direct its
attention to within its borders, or more specifically, within the
confines of its government. |
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In 1986, the
United States was found guilty by the World Court of
�unlawful use of violence� (international terrorism) for its actions in
Nicaragua. The United States then promptly vetoed a Security Council
resolution calling on all states to adhere to international law.
Exactly how bad were the United State's
actions in Nicaragua? According to political scientist
Noam Chomsky, �Nicaragua in the 1980�s was subjected to violent assault
by the U.S. Tens of thousands of people died. The country
was substantially destroyed; it may never recover. The
international terrorist attack was accompanied by a devastating economic
war, which a small country isolated by a vengeful and cruel superpower
could scarcely sustain.� In the case of Nicaragua, we have the
United States using violence to reach its goal of overthrowing the
popular Sandinista movement, a coalition of Marxists, left-wing priests,
and nationalists. Was the United States� use of violence any
different from Bin Laden�s?
The United States was using violence in an
attempt to influence the policy
of the government of Nicaragua by intimidation and coercion. The
U.S. code defines terrorism in a variety of ways. One way
terrorism is described is as �any activity that appears to be intended
to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy
of a government by intimidation or coercion.� Therefore, the
United States, according to its own definition of terrorism, was guilty
of this heinous act.
Some will argue that 1986 is now distant
history. The government has
learned from its egregious mistakes and surely has not
repeated them since. If only this were true. One need to
only look at the Clinton administration�s 1998 bombing of the Al-Shifa
plant in Sudan to find U.S. terrorism. The bombing of Sudan, a
response to the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, was responsible for an
large amount of deaths. To measure the death toll, it is necessary
to examine not only the amount of deaths produced by the bombings, but
also those deaths directly related to the bombings, that is the deaths
caused by the eradication of the Al-Shifa plant.
In his investigation of the bombing, Jonathan
Belke of the Boston Globe, regional program manager for the
Near East Foundation, a respected development institution providing
technical assistance to poor countries in the Middle East and Africa,
found that a year after the attack, �without the lifesaving medicine
[the destroyed facilities] produced, Sudan�s death toll from the bombing
has continued, quietly, to rise... Thus, tens of thousands of
people-many of them children-have suffered and died from malaria,
tuberculosis, and other treatable diseases... [Al-Shifa] provided
affordable medicine for humans and all the locally available veterinary
medicine in Sudan. It produced 90 percent of Sudan�s major
pharmaceutical products... Sanctions against Sudan make it
impossible to import adequate amounts of medicines required to cover the
serious gap left by the plant�s destruction.�
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Germany�s Ambassador
to
Sudan writes
that �It is difficult to assess how many people in this poor African
country died as a consequence of the destruction of the Al-Shifa
factory, but several tens of thousands seems a reasonable guess� (Werner
Daum, �Universalism and the West,� Harvard International
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Review, Summer 2001). After all,
Al-Shifa �provided 50 percent of Sudan�s medicines, and its destruction
has left the country with no supplies of chloroquine, the standard
treatment for malaria� (Patrick Wintour, Observer, December 20, 2023).
Additionally, Al-Shifa was �the only one
producing TB drugs-for more than 100,000 patients, at
about 1 British pound a month. Costlier imported versions are not
an option for most of them-or for their husbands, wives and children,
who will have been infected since. Al-Shifa was also the only
factory making veterinary drugs in this vast, mostly pastoralist,
country. Its specialty was drugs to kill the parasites which pass
from herds to herders, one of Sudan's principal causes of infant
mortality� (James Astill, Guardian, October 2, 2023).
The bombing of the Al-Shifa plant
also resulted in the mass exodus of
Sudan�s international organizations.
Human Rights Watch observed that because of the bombing, �all UN
agencies based in Khartoum have evacuated their American staff, as have
many other relief organizations.� Because of this �many relief
efforts have been postponed indefinitely, including a crucial one run by
the U.S.- based International Rescue Committee are dying daily.�
Additionally, �the UN estimates that 2.4 million people are at risk of
starvation,� and the �disruption in assistance� for the �devastated
population� may produce a �terrible crisis.�
Therefore, it is not so surprising that Osama
Bin Laden�s popularity rose
after the Al-Shifa bombing. This horrible incident, along with
U.S. policy in Iraq in the past ten years, has devastated Iraq�s
civilian population while strengthening Saddam Hussein. The U.S.
egregiously supported Hussein during his gassing of the Kurds in 1988
which provided Bin Laden with a way to defend his irrational hatred of
the United States. Perhaps the only way to counter the United
States� terrorism, is with terrorism of one�s own.
If the United States is to continue its
war on terrorism, it should perhaps aim its war not at Osama
Bin Laden or Iraq (what many predict is next on the U.S.�s list), but
rather at itself. It is only by eradicating its status as the
world�s leading terrorist state, that the U.S. can eradicate terrorism.
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