Violence was assumed. An NBC poll found that 83% of Americans wanted military action.

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Violence was assumed. An NBC poll found that 83% of Americans wanted military action.

The destruction of the World Trade Center occurred on September 11, 2001. By September 13, announcers on three of the largest U.S. TV networks, NBC, CBS, and ABC, had made comments that assumed without debate that the U.S. would engage in military action in retaliation.

One U.S. senator said on U.S. television that the U.S. response should be comparable to the U.S. response to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. One of the U.S. responses at the time of Pearl Harbor was to be the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons. Was the senator suggesting that?

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld refused to deny that the U.S. would use nuclear weapons in an interview on the ABC TV News program "This Week" [defenselink.mil] with Sam Donaldson on Sunday, September 16, 2001. Note that this transcript is from an official U.S. military source. To find the quote, search on the word "nuclear".

An NBC TV poll on September 16, 2001 found that 83% of Americans wanted military action. Most Americans, however, clearly have no idea of the social conditions or terrain in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden is said to be operating. Even fewer Americans know that secret agencies of the U.S. government has been heavily involved in Afghan politics since 1980. See the ABC News list of events in Afghanistan [abcnews.go.com].

The quality of international news is often very poor in the United States. Often it is necessary to get international news from British sources such as BBC News or The Economist. My guess about why the quality is poor is that there is not a lot of demand for international news from people in the U.S. The reason for the lack of demand seems to be that there is so much opportunity in the U.S. that people concentrate more on their own internal affairs. So, for example, Europeans will often know a lot about other countries. People in the U.S. will often not know about other countries, but will know more than Europeans about business. There is also a feeling among many people in the U.S. that the U.S. is superior to other countries. This feeling is supported by statements from politicians and news announcers.

For some reason, there is little that is negative about having a war on United States TV. Here is a guess: Apparently, the large U.S. TV news agencies feel compelled not to tell Americans facts that might be unpopular. The news agencies sell commercials, and people buy fewer things if they don't like what they see. Also, a fact that may be relevant is that some of the large U.S. weapons manufacturers own U.S. TV stations and other media companies. One reader of this statement assumed that the word "own" meant that the U.S. weapons manufacturers influence the media. No, the weapons manufacturers legally own media companies, creating a huge conflict of interest. If the media companies owned by the weapons manufacturers reported U.S. violence accurately, the weapons companies would make less money.

One example of a U.S. weapons manufacturer owning a U.S. TV network is GE (General Electric). GE owns [ge.com] the very large U.S. TV network NBC. (The list of businesses owned in that link is in alphabetical order.)

Note that there does not seem to be any mention that GE is a weapons manufacturer on the GE web site. However, an official U.S. government document, from a government web site, Improper Overseas Activities by U.S. Defense Contractors [house.gov], indicates that GE is definitely a weapons maker. Here is a quote: "On July 23, 1992, GE pled guilty to a number of criminal violations and agreed to pay $69 million to resolve the criminal and civil penalties." GE was involved in a scheme to divert U.S. military aid to Israel to other purposes. It is interesting to note in that document that Israel is allowed to manage its own spending, from New York, with "with only minimal oversight by American authorities".

A 1992 article published in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, The Dotan Affair. Through Soundproof Glass: Israel Refuses Direct Questioning [washington-report.org] gives more detail about this particular episode of corruption.

By September 22, 2001, the U.S. was sending weapons toward Afghanistan, but there had been no fighting by the U.S. military. However, just the declaration of war had already killed Afghans. Millions of people are on the edge of starvation in Afghanistan. There was already a war in Afghanistan between Afghans, and there had been war for many years. A September 28, 2001 BBC story Aid begins to reach Afghan refugees mentions, "The UN says it is the world's worst humanitarian crisis."

The U.S. has a strong infrastructure that feeds the people and supplies everything needed. The Afghans don't have that. Several news sources besides the BBC have suggested that, even if the U.S. kills a large number of people in Afghanistan, a far higher number will be killed by starvation because of further damage to the already weak methods of supplying basic needs. The BBC story linked above discusses all the positive things that were being done, but doesn't mention that U.S. the government policy of fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan helped destroy the infrastructure, and thus helped cause the present starvation.

According to the September 21, 2001 BBC story, Aid agencies prepare for Afghan tragedy [bbc.co.uk], Workers in the WFP, World Food Program, had pulled out of Afghanistan because of fear for their safety. If you look at the story, be sure to see the face of the woman in the photo at the top. Her face tells everything.

The story says, ‘According to latest estimates, as many as six million Afghans are now affected by drought, war or displacement. Aid agencies are issuing urgent pleas that the U.S.-led "war against terrorism" does not become a war against innocent civilians. Correspondents say the WFP withdrawal alone has left two and a half million Afghans without any visible means of support.'

It is also clear that most Americans have no understanding of the depth of hatred that is aimed at the U.S. whenever the U.S. government bombs another country. Americans have been educated by misleading stories from the U.S. government to view bombing another country as though it is like an adult video game. Certainly U.S. citizens would be extremely unhappy if Afghan citizens had been influencing U.S. politics for 20 years.

A September 19, 2001 Los Angeles Times article, by Maura Reynolds, gives an excellent idea of the conditions in Afghanistan: Soviet Vets Warn U.S. of Perils in Afghanistan [latimes.com]. Here are some quotes from the story:

First, there are no real "bases" for terrorists, they say. Fighters live in ordinary villages. Air or artillery strikes against them will invariably kill civilians.

Moreover, there are few targets other than villages, the veterans warn. There are few bridges, no factories. Most of the country's infrastructure has been destroyed in decades of civil war.

"Even in Iraq you had something to bomb," Lisinenko said. "But there are no targets in Afghanistan. There's nothing there to bomb."

It would be interesting to take another poll and ask what percentage of Americans, who are able to find Afghanistan on a map of the world, want military action. My guess is that the percentage would be far less.

Most Americans also have no idea of the huge cost of the adversarial behavior of the U.S. government. The U.S. spent over $300 billion in the year 2000 on "defense". The intention before the terrorism was to increase the amount dramatically to $362 billion yearly by 2006. Now, after the terrorism in New York, the amount will be increased even more dramatically. These amounts are only for the Defense Department. The secret agencies of the U.S. government also have huge, but secret, budgets. For the planned spending, see the table called Federal Resources by Function [whitehouse.gov, The White House (office of the U.S. president)] about halfway down the page. This is an official U.S. government document that may change at any time. The figure quoted for 2006 was accurate on September 23, 2001.

As was mentioned earlier, sales by U.S. weapons manufacturers make the U.S. the world's largest weapons dealer.

For one particular example of the U.S. government arming both sides of a conflict with weapons made by U.S. manufacturers, see the October 3, 2001 article by Ken Silverstein Stingers, Stingers, Who's Got the Stingers? [slate.msn.com, Microsoft Network's Slate Magazine]. "Stingers" are very expensive missiles [fas.org, Federation of American Scientists] made in the United States ("Average unit cost: $6 million" per complete system). The Taliban has them because they were given to forces in the region to fight against the Soviets.

For more detail about the approximately 2,000 Stingers given to Afghans, see the March 7, 1999 transcript of a CNN story, Legacy of Afghanistan Haunts Both Cold War Superpowers [clw.org, Council for a Livable World].

Be careful about considering the cost of weapons. The real cost of each weapon is the cost of the entire program to make the weapons divided by the number of weapons made. For Stinger missiles, this cost is about $6,000,000 for each complete system. The "replacement cost" is the cost to make more missiles if the program to make them, and the manufacturing production line, is still in place. Since weapons programs change rapidly, the "replacement cost" rarely represents anything more important than an accounting detail. The actual cost must include the other equipment needed to use the missiles.

Would it be too much to ask to spend 1% of that amount on an initiative to try to discover how the U.S. could live in the world without killing?

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