Terrorism Over Tripoli
By Howard Zinn, 1993
From "the Zinn Reader", Seven Stories Press
Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
Thomas Jefferson wrote that in Notes from Virginia.
Those words came to mind as I listened to the announcement from
our government that it had bombed the city of Tripoli.
We live in a world in which we are asked to make a moral choice
between one kind of terrorism and another. The government, the press,
the politicians, are trying to convince us that Ronald Reagan's
terrorism is morally superior to Muammar Khadafi's terrorism.
Of course, we don't call our actions that, but if terrorism is the
deliberate killing of innocent people to make a political point, then
our bombing a crowded city in Libya fits the definition as well as
the bombing-by whoever did it-of a crowded discotheque in Berlin.
Perhaps the word deliberate shows the difference: when you plant a
bomb in a discotheque, the death of bystanders is deliberate; when
you drop bombs on a city, it is accidental. We can ease our
conscience that way, but only by Iying to ourselves. Because, when
you bomb a city from the air, you know, absolutely know, that
innocent people will die.
That's why Defense Secretary Weinberger, reaching for morality
(his reach will never be long enough, given where he stands) talked
of the air raid being organized in such a way as to "minimize"
civilian casualties. That meant there would inevitably be civilian
casualties, and Weinberger, Schultz and Reagan were willing to have
that happen, to make their point, as the discotheque terrorists were
willing to have that happen, to make theirs.
In this case, the word "minimize" meant only about a hundred dead
(the estimate of foreign diplomats in Tripoli), including infants and
children, an eighteen-year old college girl home for a visit, an
unknown number of elderly people. None of these were terrorists, just
as none of the people in the discotheque were responsible for
whatever grievances are felt by Libyans or Palestinians.
Even if we assume that Khadafi was behind the discotheque bombing
(and there is no evidence for this), and Reagan behind the Tripoli
bombing (the evidence for this is absolute), then both are
terrorists, but Reagan is capable of killing far more people than
Khadafi. And he has.
Reagan, and Weinberger, and Secretary of State Schultz, and their
admirers in the press and in Congress are congratulating themselves
that the world's most heavily-armed nation can bomb with impunity
(only two U.S. fliers dead, a small price to pay for psychic
satisfaction) a fourth rate nation like Libya.
Modern technology has outdistanced the Bible. "An eye for an eye"
has become a hundred eyes for an eye, a hundred babies for a baby.
The tough-guy columnists and anonymous editorial writers (there were
a few courageous exceptions) who defended this, tried to wrap their
moral nakedness in the American flag. But it dishonors the flag to
wave it proudly over the killing of a college student, or a child
sleeping in a crib.
There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing
innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable. If the purpose
is to stop terrorism, even the supporters of the bombing say it won't
work; if the purpose is to gain respect for the United States, the
result is the opposite: all over the world there is anger and
indignation at Reagan's mindless, pointless, soulless violence. We
have had presidents just as violent. We have rarely had one so full
of hypocritical pieties about "the right to life."
In this endless exchange of terrorist acts, each side claims it is
"retaliating." We bombed Tripoli to retaliate for the discotheque.
The discotheque may have been bombed to retaliate for our killing 35
Libyan seamen who were on a patrol boat in the Gulf of Sidra-in
international waters, just as we were.
We were in the Gulf of Sidra supposedly to show Libya it must not
engage in terrorism. And Libya says-indeed it is telling the truth in
this instance-that the United States is an old hand at terrorism,
having subsidized terrorist governments in Chile, Guatemala, and El
Salvador, and right now subsidizing the terrorism of the contras
against farmers, their wives and children, in Nicaragua.
Does a Western democracy have a better right to kill innocent
people than a Middle Eastern dictatorship? Even if we were a perfect
democracy that would not give us such a license. But the most
cherished element of our democracy-the pluralism of dissenting
voices, the marketplace of contending ideas-seems to disappear at a
time like this, when the bombs fall, the flag waves, and everyone
scurries, as Ted Kennedy did, to fall meekly behind "our
commander-in-chief." We waited for moral leadership. But Gary Hart,
John Kerry, Michael Dukakis and Tip O'Neill all muttered their
support. No wonder the Democratic Party is in such pathetic
shape.
Where in national politics are the emulators of those two
courageous voices at the time of the Gulf of Tonkin incident in
Vietnam- Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening-who alone in the Senate
refused to go along with "our commander-in-chief" in that first big
military strike that launched the ten-year shame of Vietnam?
And where was our vaunted "free press"? After the bombing, a
beaming Schultz held a press conference for a group of obsequious
reporters in Washington who buttered him up, who licked at his
flanks, who didn't ask a single question about the morality of our
action, about the civilians killed by our bombs in Tripoli. Where are
the likes of I.F Stone, who did in his little newsletter for so many
years what no big American daily would do-raise hard questions? Why
did Anthony Lewis and Tom Wicker, who sometimes raise such
questions-melt away?
Terrorism now has two names, world-wide. One is Khadafi. One is
Reagan. In fact, that is a gross simplification. If Khadafi were
gone, if Reagan were gone, terrorism would continue-it is a very old
weapon of fanatics, whether they operate from secret underground
headquarters, or from ornate offices in the capitols of the
superpowers.
Too bad Khadafi's infant daughter died, one columnist wrote. Too bad,
he said, but that's the game of war. Well, if that's the game, then
let's get the hell out of it, because it is poisoning us morally, and
not solving any problem. It is only continuing and escalating the
endless cycle of retaliation which will one day, if we don't kick our
habits, kill us all.
Let us hope that, even if this generation, its politicians, its
reporters, its flag-wavers and fanatics, cannot change its ways, the
children of the next generation will know better, having observed our
stupidity. Perhaps they will understand that the violence running
wild in the world cannot be stopped by more violence, that someone
must say: we refuse to retaliate, the cycle of terrorism stops
here.
