Nobody Slaughters Like Europeans

There’s so much in this Chomsky lecture (audio), but one salient fact I took to heart was that Chomsky had noted that reactions to 9/11 in Ireland differed significantly from reactions in Britain. Why? Although in Europe, for centuries Ireland suffered colonial depredations from its larger, stronger neighbour. Ireland’s still-present but fading post-colonial sensibility at least makes it easier for Irish people to critique the parameters of the current “terrorism” discourse.

Nobody slaughters like Europeans (or their cultural offshoots, North Americans).

For hundreds of years, Europe has been casually slaughtering people all over the world. That’s how they conquered the world, not by handing out candy to babies. During this period, Europe did suffer murderous wars, but that was European killers murdering one another. The main sport of Europe for hundreds of years was slaughtering one another.
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during this whole bloody murderous period, it was Europeans slaughtering each other, and Europeans slaughtering people elsewhere. The Congo didn’t attack Belgium, India didn’t attack England, Algeria didn’t attack France.

But 9/11 was different because it was one of the first times that a non-Western group had managed to turn the guns the other way. It was a category error. That’s why the US has decided to kill 3-4 million Afghanis through famine and disease by cutting off food shipments. It’s a silent genocide of revenge. The initial US reaction was to bomb the shit out of many Islamist countries. But the more cunning and experienced European powers explained to the US the wisdom of the stealthy approach. Start with low-intensity bombing, cut off all food aid while dropping a few Powerbars into minefields, and wait for winter to exact a toll while slowing raising the intensity of the conflict.

But nobody can in reality call this terrorism because the US controls the discourse. The last country to have suffered massive US depredations was Nicaragua, when its hospitals and schools and offices were being targetted bu US terrorists. Not having any resident US-backed psycopaths like Bin Laden on its side, it tried to go through legal channels. It took its case to the World Court, the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly. In all cases, the US either rejected or vetoed the verdict. And the US was one of the only countries to vote against a general UN Resolution condemning the use of terrorism. So although the US is by far the most successful employer of terror as opposed to warfare (low-intensity as opposed to high-intensity conflict), mainstream media does not tell it like it is, preferring to elide around definitions. Instead of terror, we have a “crusade”, a Just War.

This is dangerous because now the US is cuddling up in bed beside such notable comrades in terror as Turkey and Algeria and Russia, all countries that have slaughtered hundreds of thousands of its civilian citizens to control dissent and political aspirations. Nietszche did indeed say that if you fight with monsters, you run the risk of becoming a monster yourself. But fighting with them is also surely corrupting