SFO RADIO INTERVIEW:
<<<
This aired Tuesday night, September 11 on KGO radio in San Francisco radio
>> with Bernie Ward. He is interviewing Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for
>> Policy Studies. A cool head in hysterical times . . .
>>
>> Bennis: . . . crisis when we escalate the patterns of more and more and
>> more violence.
>>
>> Ward: At this point in time most Americans would say how could they
>> escalate it, I mean, if you didn't respond militarily, wouldn't that be
>> worse than in fact responding?
>>
>> Bennis: Well, I think the very worst thing would be responding militarily
>> to the wrong country, as the U.S. has been known to do, not too long ago,
>> in fact, when it knocked out a vaccine company in the Sudan claiming that
>> it was tied to Bin Laden and only six months later saying, whoops, I guess
>> we got the wrong place. And in fact, settled with the owner of that
>> factory for having destroyed it, not to mention destroyed the one factory
>> in central Africa that was producing crucial vaccines for children in that
>> impoverished part of the world. So we have to be very careful. And yes,
>I
>> think it would be worse to respond militarily than to be cautious and to
>> say let's use this to do what is so difficult at a moment like this, when
>> we're horrified by the human toll, the human tragedy, to say let's stop
>for
>> a moment and think about why is it that people around the world, so many
>> people, are starting to hate symbols of the U.S. as symbols of oppression.
>>
>> Ward: Well, now you know that you are in a huge minority tonight when you
>> suggest that one of the things we ought to take from this is to ask the
>> question of why committed terrorism against the United States to begin
>> with, and most Americans are simply going to say, "Who cares?" most
>> Americans are going to say, "It was whoever it was and we're going to go
>> get them," and most Americans at least in the polls already that have been
>> released, say that our support for Israel is very crucial and that, you
>> know, this is just going to solidify . . . you, you are in a huge
>minority
>> when you suggest that part of what happened today might be connected to
>> foreign policy decisions that we have made in other parts of the world.
>>
>> Bennis: But, you know what Bernie, you may be right that I am in a
>> minority, but I think these words have to be said. We've had too many
>> years of experience of answering these kinds of attacks with more
>violence.
>> And you know what? It hasn't worked. If we're serious about ending
>> attacks like this, we have to go to the root causes.
>>
>> Ward: And what are the root causes?
>>
>> Bennis: To me it's a question of the arrogance of the U.S., the policies
>> around the world, not only in the Middle East, although that's obviously a
>> big component, but our policies of abandoning international law, dissing
>> the United Nations, refusing to sign conventions and international
>treaties
>> that we demand everybody else in the world sign on to, whether it's the
>> prohibition against anti-personnel land mines, support for the
>> international criminal court, the convention on the rights of the child,
>> for God sakes that should be a no-brainer, only the U.S. and Somalia have
>> refused that one, you know, when countries around the world and people
>> around the world look at this, not to mention the most recent stuff about
>> abandoning the Kyoto treaty, threatening to throw out the ABM Treaty,
>> that's been the cornerstone of arms control for, you know, twenty-five
>> years, they say, "Who is this country? Why do they think they're so much
>> better than everybody else in the world just because they have a bigger
>> army?"
>>
>> Ward: So do we deserve what happened to us today?
>>
>> Bennis: No, no one deserves what happened. There's no justification. . .
>>
>> Ward: Did we ask for it?
>>
>> Bennis: The question is: How do we stop it? The question is how do we
>> stop it. And military strikes are not going to stop it.
>>
>> Ward: All right. So the example of terrorism certainly is if we look at
>> Israel, the example is that when you respond with violence for violence it
>> does not stop the terrorism.
>>
>> Bennis: Absolutely right.
>>
>> Ward: And in fact we saw for the first time yesterday or the day before
>an
>> Arab Israeli citizen who committed a suicide bombing, meaning obviously
>> that even buffers between them and the West Bank aren't going to make any
>> difference one way or the other.
>>
>> Bennis: Right. Ending occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and East
>> Jerusalem might make some difference. But certainly what isn't working
>is
>> responding with more violence.
>>
>> Ward: But aren't the extremists, Osama Bin Laden has declared war on this
>> country, , there's an interesting article in Salon.com about how this is
>a
>> very different kind of terrorism than the terrorism of the P.L.O. and
>Black
>> September and others in the sixties and the seventies and the eighties,
>> that they see this as a war of attrition, that if they can wear down the
>> American people, if they can get them so worried about this that they'll
>be
>> willing to make compromises. Is it a war? Is that an accurate term
>today?
>>
>> Bennis: I don't know if it's a very useful term. Again, we don't know
>> that this was Osama Bin Laden having anything to do with the events of
>> today. I think that we have to be a little bit cautious when we hear U.S.
>> officials and former U.S. officials, as we've been hearing all day
>tonight,
>> talking as if, number one, they knew it was Osama Bin Laden, number two,
>> that this is what Henry Kissinger and so many others today have said is
>> just like Pearl Harbor and the U.S. should respond . . .
>>
>> Ward: Yeah. I don't like that analogy and I can't tell you why I don't
>> like it, but I don't like it.
>>
>> Bennis: I'll tell you one reason why maybe you don't like it, and it's
>one
>> of the reasons I don't like it either. It's that one of the first things
>> the U.S. did after Pearl Harbor was to round up all the Japanese-American
>> citizens and put them in concentration camps - in this country. Now I hope
>> that that's not what anyone in the U.S. is thinking about when they talk
>> about responding the way we did to Pearl Harbor. But it's a very
>dangerous
>> precedent. We've already heard about death threats against Arab Americans
>> and Muslim organizations in the U.S. That kind of hysteria is already on
>> the rise. And we have to be very cautious and conscious about the dangers
>> of that. We have to be very cautious when we hear someone like James
>> Baker, the former Secretary of State, claiming that he thinks there would
>> be ninety-nine to one hundred percent support across the U.S., that's what
>> he said today, for "taking out" a person who heads an organization like
>Bin
>> Laden's and getting rid of the legal prohibitions against that.
>>
>> Ward: Well, I think that's going to go, to be quite honest with you, I
>> think there's going to be legislation maybe even as early as tomorrow to
>> eliminate that or get rid of that prohibition against assassinations.
>>
>> Bennis: You may be right. But I think that we can guarantee it's not
>> going to work. It's not going to stop events like this.
>>
>> Ward: Let me put you into a bigger minority.
>>
>> Bennis: O.K.
>>
>> Ward: Make the case for why the U.S. would be so hated in the Middle
>East.
>>
>> Bennis: I think it's hated in the Middle East because, number one, it's
>> uncritical support to the tune of between three and five billion dollars a
>> year in unconditional support to Israeli occupation, including providing
>> the helicopter gunships, the F-16s, the missiles that are fired from the
>> gunships, that are used to enforce that occupation. It's hated, number
>> two, because it has armed these, these, repressive Arab regimes throughout
>> the region, in Saudi Arabia, In Egypt, in Jordan, throughout the region,
>> that have suppressed their own people, that have taken either oil money or
>> arms to build absolute monarchies in which citizens have no rights and
>> where the U.S. claims to support democratization of every government in
>the
>> world, don't seem to apply when the U.S. seems to think it's fine when one
>> absolute monarch dies and passes on the baton to his son, you see every
>> U.S. official and all of their European and other Western allies flocking
>> to the funeral to say "The King is dead, long live the new King." We see
>> it in Saudi Arabia, we see it in Morocco, in Jordan, throughout the
>region.
>> And there's enormous resentment of that kind of support. So those two
>> sectors alone, support for the Israeli occupation and the arming of these
>> repressive Arab regimes is enough. Now that doesn't even get to the
>> question of the impact of U.S. imposed sanctions on the civilian
>population
>> of Iraq, the bombing of Iraq, that's been going on for ten years now, all
>> of these are things that have dropped off the radar screen of the media
>> coverage in the U.S. but are very much front and center in Arab
>> consciousness in the region.
>>
>> Ward: Would you be surprised if I told you a poll has come out in which a
>> very large majority of Americans say they're willing to give up civil
>> liberties in order to "fight terrorism," and that there may be legislation
>> introduced in Congress tomorrow to in some cases suspend habeas corpus and
>> other things in the cause of fighting terrorism?
>>
>> Bennis: Would I be surprised? No. Because I think too many people in
>> this country have been misled by politicians and by the media to think
>that
>> somehow that's going to work. That if you have more profiling based on
>> race and ethnicity, if you identify Arabs and don't let them on planes, if
>> you do what the multi-agency task force in 1987 and 1988 tried to do,
>which
>> was to actually round up citizens of seven Arab countries plus Iran on a
>> preventive basis and put them in a concentration camp in Oakdale,
>> Louisiana. It would not be surprising that that's something very much on
>> the minds of policy-makers. It would be, I hope you're wrong to say that
>> it would be supported by most people in this country, but unfortunately I
>> could understand why it might be because of that misleading, what I would
>> call propaganda, that has led people to think that somehow that would
>work,
>> that that would make people safer, that if you didn't allow Arabs on the
>> airplanes, somehow it would be safe to fly. You know, this is the kind of
>> illusion that is bred by racism. And it's a very dangerous tendency in
>> this country. And I do hope that we don't have our political leadership
>in
>> Washington tomorrow or next week moving towards this kind of an approach
>> ostensibly as a way of providing safety for American citizens.
>>
>> Ward: Phyllis Bennis, I really appreciate this. I hope we can keep in
>> touch and maybe invite you back on again.
>>
>> Bennis: I look forward to it.
>>>
Namaste!
Jim |
