Here's an interesting perspective of what some in the "west" are making off
the terrorist attacks on the U.S. Enjoy..............

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RESISTING STATE FASCISM 1
Imperialist Tactics and Ideology from Panama to Afghanistan
____________________________________________________________________

by David Lethbridge
http://www.bethuneinstitute.org/documents/resistingstatefascism.html

Sometimes it just slips out. The carefully engineered facade, prepared by
advertising agencies, media experts, and speechwriters educated at the very
best of schools, cracks wide open. The benign and caring image presented to
the public as the face of contemporary capitalism disappears and is
replaced by the ugly reality within.

So it was with Silvio Berlusconni, Prime Minister of Italy, leader of the
G8, and ally of President George W. Bush in the new "War on Terrorism."
Berlusconni, the ultra-conservative billionaire, backed by a political
coalition that includes such neo-fascist parties as the National Alliance
and the Northern League, let his true colors show when he said, recently:
"We must be aware of the superiority of our civilization, a system that has
guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights and - in contrast with
Islamic countries - respect for religious and political rights, a system
that has as its values the understanding of diversity and tolerance."

"The West," he said, "will continue to conquer peoples, like it conquered
Communism, even if it means war with another civilization, the Islamic one,
stuck where it was 1,400 years ago." Mussolini must have been chuckling in
his grave.

Bush is more careful, although barely so. The ideology that accompanies the
endless expansion of US capital, and the endless wars of US imperialism, is
the intertwined ideology of white supremacy, of Christian supremacy, and of
anti-communism. While rarely directly expressed at the level of the state,
this poisonous and monstrous ideology finds its most open expression in the
"opinion columns" of the mainstream mass media.

New York Times columnist Ann Coulter put it that "this is no time to be
precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this
particular terrorist attack.... We should invade their countries, kill
their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

Margaret Wente, columnist for the respected Globe and Mail, echoed both
Bush and Chretien when she noted that the "common civilization" of the
Western world, a "tolerant and peaceable society" believing in "human
decency and the rule of law," was utterly in contradiction to "the killers'
world" which "advocates mass slaughter," and is soaked in "blood revenge
and sacred jihad." War with such non-people is therefore, "just and
necessary."

All of US imperialism's recent wars have - of course! - been "just and
necessary." And all of them have tended to follow a certain pattern. But
perhaps the most obvious parallel war to the new "War on Terrorism"
currently being waged against Afghanistan, is the 1989 war against Panama.

The war in Panama was billed as the opening salvo of an intensified "War on
Drugs." It's main target, however, was nothing so grand. The central point
of the war was the capture or assassination of the President of Panama,
Manuel Noriega, a long-time US state and CIA asset. Noriega was a key
player in supporting the US-led right-wing Nicaraguan contras and the
Salvadoran death squads. Indeed, as long ago as 1960 he was channeling
information to the CIA about left-wing students and other socialist
elements. But Noriega had begun to take an increasingly nationalistic view
towards Panama; he was beginning to balk at the idea of Panama as simply an
extension of US territory. And as such he had to be removed. But just as
certainly, however, Noriega was involved in wide-scale drug trafficking.
Illegal drug use was and is a serious problem in the US, and so the cover
story, the "War on Drugs" went down well with the US population, especially
with its white, middle-class segment.

The current "War on Terrorism" reveals the same pattern. Terrorism is a
serious issue; it serves its purpose as a jingoistic rallying cry, and an
excuse for extensive war. But, as in the case of Noriega, Osama bin Laden
has been a long-time asset of US foreign policy. Bin Laden and the
mujahadeen were central in the US-financed overthrow of the secular and
socialist-minded previous government of Afghanistan.

Brzezinski, a key player in the Carter presidency, is on record as saying
that the US engaged in a secret operation to ensure that the Soviet Union
would enter Afghanistan to support the socialist government, and that the
inevitable result would be the defeat of the Soviet forces, the
establishment of the repressive and feudal Taliban regime, and the spread
of extreme fundamentalist Islamic forces well beyond the Afghan borders.

Like Noriega, and like Saddam Hussein and other repressive right-wing
former allies of the US, bin Laden has long outlived his value to US
policy. And like the "War on Drugs" in Panama, the "War on Terrorism" now
being waged against Afghanistan provides a dual purpose: the elimination of
a former ally, without having to explain to the American people why the US
government would employ such allies in the first place; and the expansion
of US economic and military domination into still another corner of the
world.

Yet, as far as the US state is concerned, none of this must be revealed.
All must be hidden under the cover of "humanitarianism," "human rights,"
and the necessity of eliminating "the global terrorist threat." Revelation
of the hard truths behind the US economic and war machine is, in perfectly
fascist style, "disloyal," and all dissent must be silenced and crushed.
New laws to ensure this silence have either already been approved, or are
on their way, in the US, in Britain, and in Canada.

And so, a significant factor in the fascist direction of US state policy is
the increasing attempt, often largely successful, to lie to the people
about the facts. Despite an effort to claim that the war against Panama was
essentially a police action, the invasion of Panama was the single largest
US military operation since the Vietnam war. It was in no sense "a surgical
strike." Civilian neighborhoods, particularly poor neighborhoods, were
carpet-bombed. But three weeks after the US invasion, the State Department
claimed that there were only 200 civilian casualties. In reality there were
over 2,000 civilian deaths, thousands more wounded, 20,000 left homeless,
and several thousand "detained."

This consistent denial, by US authorities, over civilian casualties became
a hallmark of US military actions in Iraq and in Yugoslavia. It is now
being repeated in Afghanistan.

Clearly, it is only possible to hide the truth about civilian casualties if
the media is kept at arm's length from the scene of combat. Media reporting
on Vietnam and on the US-led contra invasions in Nicaragua and El Salvador,
while mixed, was at least partially responsible for the disenchantment with
US war policy on the part of large segments of the people both in the US
itself and around the world.

Since fascistic tactics require that the truth be well hidden, media
reporting on Panama was largely restricted to the uncritical parroting of
state and military press releases and press conferences. This pattern was
intensified in the Iraq and Yugoslav wars and continues to be repeated in
the mass media reportage of the Afghan war. Indeed, the deliberate
manipulation and distortion of the news is a key factor in the fascist
psychological operations of the US government just as it was, in another
key, in Nazi Germany.

The war against Panama was a turning point in the tactics and ideology of
US imperialism. The parallels between that war and the war against
Afghanistan are neither coincidence nor fuel for absurd conspiracy
theories. It is simply that the US state was learning how to make war more
palatable, more patriotic, and more useful for their own purposes, while
discouraging effective anti-war dissent.

The final, and perhaps most grotesque parallel, has to do with the US
leadership itself. President George Bush, Sr. was unpopular; his ratings in
the "opinion polls" were low. But the war in Panama changed all that. As
ABC news put it on 31 January 1990, Bush Sr. went from "a wimp to a
world-class leader." And so it has been with Bush, Jr. Never has the phrase
"like father, like son" carried more chilling resonance.

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