War on Terror Mainstream Media and Propaganda

International Crime or Act of War?

Immediately after the ghastly attacks, the act of terrorism was declared by George Bush and others as “war” as opposed to a mass crime against humanity. While emotionally one can describe it as being under attack and use the analogy of an act of war, politically, this has significant ramifications because this allows one to change the possible means of retaliation. It also allows claims to be made that because this is war then Article 51 of the United Nations Charter of the right to self-defence can be invoked. From there an entire military build up and action has resulted. The media in general didn't really question the semantics or the point that Article 51 doesn't allow for indeterminate amount of time to ellapse to carry out “self defence”. For more on this, also see the following:

• International Crime, Not War, by Tom Barry and Martha Honey, Foreign Policy In Focus, Progressive Response, Volume 5, Number 30, September 12, 2001
• The Empire wants war, not justice by Sean Healy, ZNet, October 28, 2001
• A UN mandate does not make war on Iraq right! by Jorgen Johansen and Jan Oberg, Press Info #168, Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research (TFF), December 28, 2002. While mostly commenting on the build up to possible war against Iraq at the end of 2002, they comment on the use of international law, and not criminal law as the basis for the reaction to the terrorist attacks:

  When the UN accepted to use International Law and not Criminal Law for the reaction to September 11, it opened doors that will be (mis)used by many actors in the future. Up until then, political and violent crimes had been handled by the police and not by the military. This shift is very dangerous. Then the U.S. decided, and the UN accepted, to use the principle of “self defence”, but with a delay of almost a month (September 11 to October 7). In the field of Criminal Law, this would resemble that the attacked escapes from the attacker, locate him a month later and (with a bunch of friends) exercise his “self-defence” out of proportion to the first crime committed.

In addition, it should not necessarily be thought that the Bush Administration had to react so quickly and at the time it felt like an act of war, and so it was ok.

• This might be reasonable for many citizen's to individually react this way to some extent, but for a massive state apparatus such as the American state, with the most advanced military and intelligence services, it is unlikely that the Bush Administration would not have thought this out thoroughly and carefully.
• And the Administration of course took time mobilizing a force to attack Afghanistan as a result.
• Indeed, an October 9, 2002 interview by the BBC's Hard Talk programme, with Professor Eliot Cohen, a former policy advisor to the US Defence department, who has also served as an intelligence officer in the US Army Reserves, points out that, “Whatever you think about the [Bush] Administration, this is an administration that is politically quite calculating.” For more on this, you can see the BBC interview on-line.

The implication then is that the subsequent attacks on Afghanistan cannot really be considered as self-defence as much as it was basic revenge or retaliation.