Old Guy: "The death toll, he argued, was minor compared to the list of Third World victims of the “far more extreme terrorism� of United States foreign policy"

This comment on Noam Chomsky is supposed to show him to be heartless and completely out-of-touch with the 'American' psyche. First: if we only ever said what was popular with everyone, we might as well give up and ever hoping to say anything that was true. It might not be popular with American people to start comparing their 9-11 dead with the Third World poor who've died as a result of deeply unjust trade rules that are pushed in tandem with US foreign policy. Noam Chmosky is taking a big risk in even daring to talk about them in such terms. But I think what he's being trying to do is to bring a sense of perspective to the issue that has been lacking because of the emotions raised. 3,000 plus dead is a lot of people, but even though the relatives of those dead might not like to hear it in the same breath, hundreds of millions have died in the Third World thanks to the globalising forces of US foriegn policy. The real emotive problem that they have with it is a deep down and unconscious racism: along the lines of 'one American is worth a hundred slant eyed foreigners'. Therefore one American death is a catastrophe while thousands of foreigners barely rasies an eyelid. (By the way for teh record, I think one American death is as big a disaster as one death anywhere).
Now probably some of you will imediately jump to the attack and demand I produce a raft of facts and figures ("Unless I can put my hands in the wounds in His side, I will not believe") and fair enough, we'd all like facts and figures all the time to back things up. But the facts and figures you'd demand would fill a book and I just have time to write it right now. It's unlikely any of the Doubting Thomases would be happy with the numbers anyway, and would just say 'this or that report was flawed, innaccurate etc.,'
So I'll limit myself to just a few words on it: Someone further back this thread posted a list of countries the US has either directly attacked or whose democracies it has interefered with since WW2, all with disastrous consequences for the people in those countries. But it didn't even start there with the Munroe doctrine - it goes back further. Think of the Phillipines during the Spanish-American war, just over a hundred years ago, etc., etc., It is beyond a shadow of doubt that the US HAS invaded these countries, propped up tin-pot dictators (Saddam was only the latest in a long line around the world) who tortured and terrorised their people into cowed obedience. Now this obedience wasn't just to their tin-pot dictator, but through him, to his American overlords and their economic ideologies. The whoe, point of invading these countries was to bring 'development'. This translates as forcing those countries to open up their markets to corporations that already had a vast headstart, destroying local industry and markets in the process. Enforced monoculture etc., etc., The irnoy is that model hasn't even worked in the US - yes, the country is fabulously wealthy, but the wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few. Alongside them are the thousands of trailer trash, minority groups etc., struggling to get by on $7 an hour shit jobs and gratuities if they're extra nice to the customer (so their bosses don't have to pay them decent wages). Then these corporations show their loyalty to their slaves by downsizing and throwing thousands of them on the breadline just at the very moment they're making record profits. The corporation then relocates to a 'third world country' where they suck the blood dry of the next round of vict- I mean, employees. It was called 'development theory' back in the 1940s when words like 'colonialism' and imperialism were no longer popular. Nowadays, it's cunningly and simply called 'democracy'. Now, who can argue against 'democracy'? Power to the people and all that. Except when you realise that what Bush et al are exporting as 'democracy' is the failed exploitational ideology of the greedy corporations (the ones who really drive White House foreign policy). Finally South America has woken up to the disaster that neo-liberal economics has brought to the region, and are finding a voice of resistance in people like Hugo Chavez, one of the first S.American leaders to actually be doing something to improve the lot of his people. He gets elected democratically, and what does the US do? Does the White House nod approvingly that the people of Venezuela used their vote to choose their leader, as the Arabs of Iraq are called on to do? Not at all! Deeply annoyed that the people didn't vote correctly, and horror of horrors, elected someone with a sense of social responsibility, the White House actually tried to get rid of him in a Coup d'Etat! That alone, if nothing else, makes a mockery of their claims to champions of democracy. If they'd succeeded, there'd be another Pinochet on the puppet throne torturing and 'disappearing' his serfs as big US companies plundered the country and its oil. The US has used terror, torture, threats, bullied you name it, to accomplish its own personal aims. Currently, depsite all Bush's rhetoric about any country harbouring terrorists being terrorists themselves, he continues to give shelter to Luis Posada Carillos, the Cuban terrorist who blew up an airliner because Luis is anti-Castro. So it in fact if the terrorist is on the side of the White House, then it seems he is re-defined as not being a terrorist. That, in essence, is the very definition of terrorism. There's no other way to see it. The US administration (and most republican administrations - eg Regan) are terrorist in nature. Someone back along (Old Guy, I think said "The only people that admire a terrorist organization are terrorists.May a Kaytusha fly up your ass. Or are you launching them?" That makes Old Guy a terrorist. The Bush administration are in fact, basically nothing better than a terror organisation. The only difference between them and say, the Taliban, is that they have the gloss of respectability (based on a highly compromised and suspect election) tons of money and 'wearing suits'. But make no mistake, their aims (reshaping the Middle East, and later, the world to suit their ideology and agenda) and methods (we'll talk to you if you agree to do what we want, but if you refuse we'll bomb you to smithereens) are no different. This places all of us in a quandry! What are we supposed to do when Bush urges us to help in the fight against terrorism, when he himself and his pirate crew are some of the world's top terrorists? Is he telling us to try and stop him?
They remind me sometimes of the Martians in those old B-movies who used to invade Earth. They'd arrive here in their shiny spaceships with their vastly superior technology, talking a gobbledigook no-one could understand, then lay waste to everything round them while saying they come in peace (remember Mars Attacks? 'Don't run away! We come in peace!' ZZap! Psssh! Pow! Don't run away! We come in Peace!') No one and nothing could stop them until they ran out of steam, and by the time they were finished the world had usually been made into a cross betwen a vast rubbish dump and graveyard. There's something deeply Freudian about those movies really - they're not about aliens, they're about history. It made you wonder what was the point of ut all, since by the time they'd won the battle and conquered the earth, there was nothing left to rule over. A bit of a pyrrhic victory really, but unfortunately we all have to suffer for it.

And all for control of a dirty black liquid that drives the wheels of the US economy and keeps it on the move! If some of the billions and bilions of dollars gobbled up in destroying so many lives had been invested instead in finding alternatives to oil and improving lives (how much - or little - did the Katrina victims get, I wonder)...!

By the way, just one more disclaimer: since I have criticised the US, some may accuse me simplistically of being anti-American. To that, I say b******t. I know there are many Americans deeply opposed to the disaster course the White House and its various appendages are determined to drag them. To them, may hat goes off, moreover as they are voicing their opposition at a time when to do so is to draw potential harrasment (you think those wiretap and surveillance laws are all about terrorists, do ya? A 'terrorist' is anyone who disagrees with the Presidnet or people like him!) on themselves. These are the real heroes of our age. It's much easier just to roll over and give in to the bullying of the White House and say all the PC stuff, but it's also the cowards' road.