What can we do

The recent U.S. assisted massacre of about four hundred and fifty Muslims at Quala-i-Jangi fort in Mazar-e-Jharif, and the complicity of the U.S. in the execution of one hundred and sixty Taliban prisoners of war near Kandahar are only bloody glimpses of the inhuman brutality the U.S. has inflicted on the Islamic world. We only need to be reminded of the several thousand Afghan civilian deaths, and still counting, from the U.S. aerial bombardment on war-ravaged Afghanistan, or the merciless U.S. sanctions on the Iraqi people which has resulted in at least one million Iraqi deaths, or the decades of U.S. military and political support for Israel’s terrorization of the Palestinian people.

The grotesque massacre of practically defenseless people at Quala-i-Jangi fort reminds me of operation “Storm” in sectors North and South of the Serbian Crimean region, in which the U.S. provided planning, surveillance, and logistical support for the ethnically cleansing of two hundred thousand Serbs by the Croatian military. On October 1st 1995 literally one hundred thousand Croatian troops in the darkness of the night, using tanks, planes, artillery, and U.S. radar jamming stormed Serbian villages in a blitz like fashion. (An estimated fourteen thousand Serbs were killed.)

Recently, Noam Chomsky, MIT professor of linguistics and U.S. activist, was in Pakistan giving talks on world affairs, in which he referred to the U.S. as not only a “terror state”, but a Mafia king because of its hypocritical approach to acts of terror, and mentioned among other things, the U.S. assisted slaughter of thirty thousand Nicaraguans in the 1980’s.

Added to the bloody history of U.S. aggression and plunder, the U.S. has recently legalized domestic death squads, whereby anyone who is deemed a terrorist will be tried in a secret military court.

The irony with the U.S. and its belligerence towards anyone who is in the way of U.S. interests, is that the U.S. is blindly convinced that it is on the side of “good”, and therefore, its atrocities and terror are justified because they are a means to wipe out disease or “evil”, when in reality it is the U.S., through its fixation on inventions and its inhuman use of them, and its increasingly fascist outlook, which is a threat to humanity.

I will not belabor the point on the nature of the U.S., because we have all heard it many times in different contexts. The important question that needs to be addressed is what can we do about the U.S.?

Barring becoming a freedom fighter, whether a recruiter, financier, military planner, munitions expert, or soldier, there are a number of other things we can do:

do not spend money on the U.S. (i.e. do not buy U.S. goods/services, or make investments in the U.S., or travel to the U.S.) Though this approach will potentially harm the U.S. economy, thereby the U.S. people, it will weaken the U.S. government and thus its ability to wage terror. Also, the U.S. people unlike the Iraqi people have more than enough material comforts to survive a weakened U.S. economy. Equally important, by channeling anti-Americanism into our consumer habits, we will be sending a message to the American people to change the U.S. government. Remember, it is the U.S. people and indirectly the rest of the world’s people, who have the ultimate power to change the U.S. government.

express your views on the U.S. atrocities and propaganda to friends, family, and acquaintances, and share your views with newspapers, and other news outlets, including online platforms like Media Monitors Network.

organize protests/media stunts to expose the atrocities caused by U.S. foreign policy.

stay informed by accessing diverse media sources.

create a network of like-minded people.

donate to the people directly suffering as a result of U.S. foreign policy like in Palestine, Afghanistan, or Iraq. (The Islamic Relief Worldwide, a non-governmental organization provides humanitarian relief to the people of many Islamic countries. Donations can be made on online. For anyone interested, the web address for Islamic Relief Worldwide is www.islamic-relief.org.uk )

Mr. Stephen Garvey is a philosopher and writer, and publisher for Inexpressible Publications who resides in Canada.