We have all seen the headlines. “Terror plot uncovered!” “Qaeda bomber behind plot to hit train tunnel.”
 Child victims of U.S. massacre in Ishaqi, Iraq Photo: Reuters/Reuters TV |
After the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, New Yorkers have a right to feel nervous. The U.S. government is waging a worldwide war, and that war came home.
But the screaming headlines of plots to blow up tunnels and trains are not written to make us feel safer. They are a cover to justify continued war and repression in the Middle East and right here in New York.
The most recent case—the alleged attempt to blow up PATH train stations linking New Jersey and New York City— was full of holes from the day it was announced. The supposed ringleader, Assem Hammoud, has been in jail since April 27 in Beirut, Lebanon. The “principal players” had no money and no weapons, and had never even been to the United States, much less New York City.
The government claims it broke up the attack before it started. But can we trust them?
The last “terrorist threat” was the June 22 arrest of seven Black men, including two Haitians, in Miami. They were supposedly trying to bomb the Chicago Sears Tower.
The seven were poor and had no means to carry out any attack. It was entrapment. They were set up and knocked down by an undercover FBI agent who whipped up the religious group, with no history of violence, into a fantastic plot—then had them all arrested. Puerto Ricans will be reminded of the 1978 case of Cerro Maravilla, where an FBI agent planned an attack on an electrical tower and provided two youths with explosives—then had the two independence supporters shot and executed.
Behind the hype: U.S. massacres
Why is the government putting out wild press statements every few weeks talking about supposed terror plots? To keep the public’s eyes off the real news—the murders and massacres carried out by U.S. troops in Iraq.
First there was the November 2005 Haditha massacre, when U.S. troops gunned down 24 Iraqi civilians—the youngest was a 2-year-old girl. In March, U.S. soldiers killed 11 civilians in Ishaqi, north of Baghdad. The victims ranged in age from 6 months to 75 years.
Then came the July 3 revelation that U.S. soldiers raped a 14-year-old girl, and then killed her and three other members of her family.
The government claims that these are “isolated incidents.” The reality is different. George Bush, Congress and the generals are waging a terror war against the people of Iraq.
Every one of these politicians and generals—from Bush on down—need to be on trial for war crimes, for crimes of terror against humanity.
Working people in New York have more in common with the people of Iraq than we do with the billionaires who are profiting from the criminal wars in the Middle East—the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and the U.S.-backed Israeli repression against Palestine.
We can fight back. If working people join together against the corporate elite who rule this country for their own profit, we can end the war—and enjoy real peace and solidarity with the peoples of the world instead of living from one supposed terrorist threat to the next.
