Perspectives from abroad

October, 31

Keisaku Takahashi

Almost three thousand people were killed, and the world mourned. The event saddened people all over the world, and made people in America angry. Its been two years since September 11^th 2001. This event, unfortunately, has been used as rhetoric and as a reason to kill much more people than the number of victims in the event.

War against terrorism, rogue states, or defense against future attack these words have made people blind and turned them into patriotic. Because of this, groups of people who seem to be a potential danger to our kind of guy, especially to the U.S., have suffered, and will suffer.

I am worried, and not only me but many people in the world I believe are worried that in the country that has super power, private owned media such as the New York Times*1 try to lead peoples mind to a narrowly focused way.

Seven in ten Americans continue to believe that Iraqs Saddam Hussein played a role in the 11 September 2001 attacks, even though the Bush administration and congressional investigators say they have no evidence of this.*2 Actually, the UN chief inspector, Hans Blix, believes that Iraq destroyed most of its weapons of mass destruction ten years ago. *3 Then why do people still believe? Why do they blame Hussein, Osama bin Laden or whoever shown as the bad ones on TV, and neglect the fact that most of the weapons of mass destruction were given or sold by the U.S. when Saddam was an friend of America about two decades ago? The U.S. administration let them kill Kurds by using biological/chemical weapons. They bombed and killed many Iraqi civilians for whatever reasons, such as that Hussein tried to assassinate Bush Senior, so that the Clinton administration bombed Iraq. A million of people, most of them children, died because of economic sanctions, which Madeline Albright proudly declared worthwhile. Iraq has been devastated by sanction put from US-led decision, too. This strengthened Hussein regime and weakened the citizens who lost the benefits they used to enjoy, such as free education all the way to university and medical school, free medical care, regular food packages for those in need, womens rights superior to anything in the Arab world, and religious toleration for Christians and other non-Muslims, desperately needed homes for Palestinian refugees. However Clintons National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger called it the most pervasive sanctions ever imposed on a nation in the history of mankind. After Bush claimed that the war in Iraq is over, they admitted that the sanctions are actually harmful and that they would have been removed in order to provide humanitarian aid and rebuild the country. *4

If you consider these facts, why do people in American hate them so much? Will they ever like them? Is the hatred towards them enough reason to spend more than half of the tax for military budget? After 9/11, the military budged has been increased dramatically, the US administration has spent a great amount of money for Afghanistan for its security (however it has not been successful since Al-Queda and Taliban attacks are still going on*5). Now the administration will spend 87billion dollars for Iraq rebuilding however it is far from enough. Despite of the money that has been spent, the U.S. is now desperate to get financial and military help from other nations. How can people in the U.S. stand for its government that ask its citizens for spend so much money for military to kill more people abroad and give them the lowest quality of education ever? Do people really want the greatest military power rather than health insurance for everyone? How can the government send its citizens to war and tell them it is for their country, but actually for its government, especially for its foreign policy, which is hated from all over the world? *6

Now that Iraq is liberated, 21 people on average are killed every day (20 Iraqis, 1 American), about half day of electricity access, water is polluted, and even worse Iraq was put up for sale that the US-backed administration gave foreign companies unprecedented access to Iraq firms except for oil industries. There will be no restrictions on the amount of profits that can be repatriated or on using local products, this can lead that foreign companies take all the jobs from Iraqis under the name of free trade, and the worst thing is that the most valuable contracts on offer have already gone to US corporate giants without any debate: Kellogg, Brown and Root - a subsidiary of Halliburton which was once run by the American vice-president, Dick Cheney won a contract worth up to $7bn to repair Iraqs oil infrastructure. This fact was not found in any major media in U.S., such as the New York Times, Los Angels Times or Washington Post.

If you keep reading only major mass media in the U.S., you cannot grasp what America does abroad. After the event of 9/11, there was no major mass media in the U.S. wrote a situation in Afghanistan, such as history of the country, refugees, or how the Taliban was organized by the U.S.(namely the CIA), etc. Unfortunately, by seeing the reaction of people in America, this horrible system has worked quite successfully. Unless this is stopped, more and more people will suffer, including Americans who has a crucial power to change this. America is the only super power that can rule the world, and its people are the ones that can control its government. Thus, as one of ways, I really hope and beg for them to read or obtain information from non-U.S. sources. Most of counties have online newspaper in English, and have different perspectives, therefore it should be easy to access. There is tremendous amount of information that they can access in all over the world and actually in the U.S., too. However people do not know, which is a failure of democracy. *7

I do not think anybody wants either low quality of education, nor no health insurance instead of having the strongest military in the world. It is just a world that is shown to them. During the World War 2, people in Japan was manipulated by the government because all the newspaper lied, instead of telling that they were losing, they kept telling people that they were winning. At the time, there was no way of knowing what was going on, however nowadays, through the Internet, you can obtain much information to know what is going on.

I think if everyone gets information from national and international presses, people might be able to have a unique perspective. America is not the only bad one, it just what the government has done is much more awful and it is still continuing, and maybe your country, too has done something very awful against other nations. If your country is one of the developed counties, I believe it has done something awful. Thus, it would be better to know what your country has done before criticizing America. As for my country, Japan, it has done countless crimes, harming the third world, and it is a little brother of the Bush administration that supports whatever Bush wishes.

*1 Edward Herman, Propaganda in the Free Press

Available at: http://zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=3563&sectionID=4

*2 The Observer, US public thinks Saddam had role in 9/11 (2003, Sep, 7)

Available at: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1036959,00.html

*3 The Guardian, Iraq dumped WMDs years ago, says Blix, (2003, Sep, 18)

Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1044510,00.html

*4 Bill Blum, The Anti-Empire Report (2003, Jul, 7)

Available at: http://members.aol.com/bblum6/aer1.htm

*5 The Guardian, Seven guards of governor killed in attack by Taliban (2003, Sep, 29)

Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,1051848,00.html

*6 Howard Zinn, My Country: The World (2003, May, 7)

Available at: http://zmag.org/contentprint_article.cfm?itemID=3584&sectionID=11

*7 Chomsky