Legal lies and imperialism’s ‘war on terror’

Executive orders have been used by U.S. presidents since 1789 to accomplish domestic and foreign policy goals by legal means, without any meaningful check or balance.

This is how the bourgeois democracy is organized in the United States. Governmental power, especially in the modern

Bush’s Executive Orders during the “war on terror” have been an assault on workers’ rights in the United States.

era, is centralized in the executive branch—Congress is largely reduced to talk shop.

Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps by Franklin Roosevelt’s executive order. The government has used executive orders to sanction Iran, the former Yugoslavia, Sudan and other U.S. targets.

After 9/11, numerous executive orders have focused on Arabs and Muslims and opponents of U.S. imperialism. A 2001 executive order permitted warantless spying on people in the United States and abroad.

In December 2001, Bush signed Executive Order 13224, freezing the assets of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), a Muslim charity that helped Palestinian refugees. He said the charity did “business with terror”—an attempt to link the HLF to the Palestinian political organization Hamas, a U.S.-designated “terrorist” organization.

What made the HLF a “terrorist” front in Washington’s eyes?

In short: the mere act of sending money to occupied Palestine to build schools and hospitals that had been destroyed by over five decades of Israeli colonialism and war.

Three years later, the HLF and its officers were indicted on 42 federal criminal charges, including conspiracy to provide material support to Hamas. Over 300 groups and individuals were listed as unindicted co-conspirators, including the North American Islamic Trust, a U.S. company that holds the deeds to 300 mosques, Islamic centers and schools.

Five former HLF officials are now on trial in Dallas. The prosecution has slandered the defendants as “terrorist supporters,” relying heavily on evidence gathered by warantless wiretaps and on discredited Israeli intelligence reports.

The U.S. government is not contending that the charity sent money directly to Hamas. Instead, it claims that the HLF’s social aid freed up resources for Hamas to spend on military attacks against Israel.

So, the HLF’s alleged “crime” was helping Palestinian children get medicine and go to school. Alleviating the suffering of people in the West Bank and Gaza, to the imperialists, is tantamount to aiding and abetting terrorism.

The group had nothing to do with launching military attacks against the Israeli occupiers. It was just helping the wrong people survive.

The HLF’s prosecution is an outrageous violation of civil rights and a racist attack on Palestinians and Muslims in the United States and in Palestine.

The capitalists are criminalizing Arabs and Muslims to justify their genocidal war on Iraq and their endless attacks against the Palestinian people—all of which is part of a larger strategy to dominate completely the Middle East.

Stamping out resistance

In recent weeks, Bush signed two more executive orders designed to aid the “war on terror.” They were heralded with little fanfare and, of course, no debate.

The first, “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq,” is directed, first and

foremost, at the government of Iran. It is meant to help Washington move one step closer to “regime change” in that country.

The second, signed on Aug. 2, allows the U.S. Treasury Department to block the financial assets of anyone “undermining” the pro-imperialist Lebanese government. It targets anyone Washington deems supportive of the struggle against Fouad Siniora’s reactionary regime, including Syrian and Iranian officials.

Both executive orders label any resistance to the U.S. imperialist drive as “terrorist.” That is no surprise.

But both are so broad that they allow the government to target Arab and Muslim individuals and organizations in the United States whenever it wants to. Lawyers representing someone trying to get off the list might be in violation of the orders. U.S. anti-war activists potentially could be criminalized, although they are not the immediate target of the repressive order.

The executive orders provide a legal pretext to continue the repression against Arabs and Muslims. In late July, the FBI raided the offices of two charities in Detroit’s Arab American community.

The Goodwill Charitable Organization was charged with being an arm of Hezbollah, the Lebanese resistance group that played a central role in defeating the 2006 U.S.-Israeli invasion. Hezbollah, like Hamas, is considered a “terrorist” organization by the U.S. government. The charity Al-Mabarrat was raided but has not been charged.

In recent days, FBI has visited mosques and questioned Arab American progressive leaders in Washington, D.C., sometimes arresting them as part of “terror investigations.” If arrested, the FBI always offers a simple deal: “Become an informant or languish in jail.”

The example of the Holy Land Foundation hangs over all those harassed. This is how the government wants it to be. Sowing fear and intimidation is key to Washington’s overall strategy.

But the criminal actions of the feds should not go unchecked.

The only way to beat back the repressive state is to build mass resistance to U.S. imperialism and its hegemonic objectives. Solidarity with all those resisting imperialism in the Middle East and elsewhere is vital.

The upcoming Sept. 15 March on Washington presents an important opportunity to reject war, racist profiling and state terror tactics. Ending the war on Iraq will loosen the grip of imperialism on the Middle East and reverberate strongly at home.