Throughout history, the United States has perpetuated its imperialistic big-business minded interests through the use of forceful military intervention abroad. In Nicaragua, Vietnam, Iraq, and countless other examples within the past century, the US has presented the public and the news media with popular pretenses in order to mask their true intent. The 'War On Drugs' in Nicaragua, our scheme to 'liberate' Kuwait from Iraqi control (despite our outright disregard of other such invasions in the Middle East, in addition to our own invasions of Geneva and Panama during Bush's presidency), and, of course, our attempt to stem 'communist expansion' by laying waste to Vietnam, which cost over fifty thousand American lives.

Today we are faced with what could be the most powerful and thus the most dangerous public pretense to date-- Bush's so-called 'War on Terror'. The events of September 11th, atrocities that they were, have caused an unrivaled and uproarious fervor in the news media and in turn amongst the general public. In the past, our country has waged war in order to boost the economy under pressure from big business, to unify an unsatisfied public against an engineered 'common enemy', and to distract from unjust or unpopular policy. Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of our nation's 'war on terror' is the sheer extent of the public fervor surrounding it.

The anti-terrorism campaign of today is reminiscent of the anti-Communist dogma created by the government through McCarthy and McCarthyist politicians as well as the news media- a public fervor that was used to justify highly increased weapons production in the interest of the economy, the atrocities of the Korean war, which left over two million North and South Koreans dead, our failed invasion of Vietnam, and more. Today the facade of anti-terrorism, although it is not yet apparent that it serves the interests of the people, is serving the interests of the government quite well. The attack on America has created a feeling of unity, perhaps artificial, against a common enemy, and this feeling is being capitalized on- used to popularize and justify unfair and unconstitutional treatment of many immigrants that the government has pinned as 'suspected terrorists' (the case of Mr. Haddad, who has been held in solitary confinement w/o bail for over seven months springs to mind), to distract from the elevated persecution of the Palestinian people by the US-backed government of Israel, to sway popular opinion in favor of the imperialist extension of our interests through our war in Afghanistan and the proposed invasion of Iraq, to distract attention from the increasingly apparent failure of the capitalist system in cases surrounding the dishonest practices of many big businesses, and even to subtly increase acceptance of religions' influence on executive actions and policy.

Yes, the events of September 11th were a tragedy, but we most take also into account the irony that the very actions and policies that bred the kind of fanatical hatred of the United States that we see in these attacks are being used in response to the attacks. We must not allow the horrors of terrorism continue by extending our OWN imperialistic terrorism upon the innocent in Afghanistan and the rest of the Middle East. This war is not for the American people. It is not for the elimination of the still-prosperous Al Qaeda network. And it's certainly not for people like Mr. Haddad.

This war is being fought in order to reassert American influence in the Middle East, an area that has always provided us with many crucial resources. It is being fought to redirect fear and discontent towards an outside source, our so-called common enemy. And it is being fought because the pretense, the excuse, is all together too easy. During the Vietnam war, the powerful and far-reaching antiwar movement in America helped bring about the final withdrawal of US troops. As Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton warned in a memo in 1967: "There may be a limit beyond which many Americans and much of the world will not permit the United States to go. The picture of the world's greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1,000 noncombatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission, on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one. It could conceivably produce a costly distortion in the American national consciousness." A New York Times correspondent wrote of the war: "The US emerges as the big loser and history books must admit this... We lost the war in the Mississippi Valley, not the Mekong Valley. Successive American governments were never able to muster the necessary mass support at home." This only goes to show that the uprisings, protests, and public dissatisfaction in the 60's DID have an effect on the government's actions in Vietnam, and that there is hope for those who recognize our constant meddling in the Middle East for what it really is-- a brutal and savage method of gaining influence over foreign governments rich with resources necessary to the big business Establishment of the US.