"BLOWBACK" PART TWO
Arabs see more attacks

As after the September 11 attacks, most Arabs said they were appalled by the bloodshed, but urged Washington to rethink the policies they felt were creating the anger and despair which spawned the bombings.

Palestinian columnist Adli Sadek wrote in the al-Hayat al-Jadida daily that the United States could not uproot terror unless it "adopted clean and just policies, quit its greedy ambitions in Iraq, ended its bias towards the killers in the occupied Palestinian land and stopped threatening others".

Others said the United States failed to understand and address the genuine roots of radicalism, such as widespread political and economic malaise.

"As long as the real causes of terrorism are not understood, the Americans will be fighting what they brand as terrorism for a long time to come," the English-language daily Iran News wrote.

Most Americans, taking the President's lead, think that terrorism is the work of "evil doers." Of course, that's a rather cartoonish outlook that reduces al-Qaeda to the level of the the "hordes of Hydra," the single-minded supervillian organization found in Marvel comics, or SPECTRE of the James Bond movies. The reality is that al-Qaeda and their supporters are real live human beings with complicated motivations and sophisticated understandings of the world and the people in it. They certainly do evil things; indeed, they are ruthless killers, a threat to countless lives. That is why we must understand them, rather than simply attacking them. Violence, by itself, will not end terrorism.

The United States (or, more accurately, the US government and US corporations) have screwed over millions of people for decades now. Until the American people realize that terrorism is in response to our government's many misdeeds, we will be doomed to suffer these attacks. US support of Israel's repressive policies toward the Palestinians must end. US support of the corporate raping of the third world and its peoples must end. US support of repressive regimes such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia must end. The US must shift its billions of defense dollars to the business of saving lives and helping people--we must hammer our swords into plowshares and feed the Earth.

Like that's gonna happen anytime soon.

Click here.

Thanks to J. Orlin Grabbe.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$