THE US EXPORTATION OF FASCISM AND STATE TERRORISM

THE US EXPORTATION OF FASCISM AND STATE TERRORISM                

 By Belarmino Dabalos Saguing, Rome, Italy

The US is taking a sharp turn to the right since 9/11 and there has been in all practical terms the victim of a right-wing coup. Say goodby to the freedoms we took for granted in the pre-9/11 era. The concept of torture, indeterminate detention without charges or trial, kidnapping world-wide, assassinations, drone attacks, support for dictators and apartheid states, are normalizing and will soon spread into the normal government activities in the US, and it is also being exported to or being copied by satellite states. Soon average citizens in many countries could find themselves in Guantanamo-like prisons throughout the world, all justified under the guise of security, in the name of war on terror. 

Partly because the deadliest attack in the history of modern international terrorism was against the United States, Americans tend to see their own country as the center of the counterterrorist universe. It was a U.S. president who declared a "war on terror," led by the United States. Although U.S. officials have said a lot about international cooperation, the cooperation they have had in mind has been mostly a matter of the United States leading, pushing, or insisting, and other countries conforming or complying. The same U.S. president summarized his standard for other countries' counterterrorist performance with the phrase "either you are with us or you are with the terrorists" -- the "us" of course being the United States -- and the United States has shown a tendency to lord that standard over its foreign counterterrorist partners. The transition from George W. Bush to Barack Obama has softened these hard edges, but Americans still take a very U.S.-centric approach to the subject.

The U.S. export of terrorism calls into question the high -- perhaps sometimes impossibly high -- standard to which Washington holds other governments in controlling what emanates from their territories. U.S. officials might not say "either you are with us or you are with the terrorists" anymore, but it still is considered not enough for governments to refrain from sponsoring or supporting terrorism. They are expected to do whatever it takes to prevent their citizens from committing terrorist acts abroad, with little American patience for excuses about how difficult it is to control borders or the activities of private individuals. To the extent this is the U.S. standard, the United States itself has failed it.

America expect all its allies and satellite states to follow her anti-terrorist pretense and do moves that transgress human rights, killing men, women and children with drone attacts, murders and kinappings of government critcs tagged as reds or terrorists, displacements of people from their homes,, and inprisonments without justifications or due processes.

The best example is the Philippines, who in exchange with “aids” has murdered, kidnapped, and imprisoned hundreds of government critics and progressive activists under pretense of protecting democracy. Private armies and death squads thrived in the Philippines specifically for that purpose. The state has conditioned the populace, thru education and propaganda that this is normal. Justice is manipulated by the state and has lost its meaning.

Gross and wholesale violastions of human rights happens daily or almost. And the Philippines is now attempting to export this policy to lands where there are Filipinos, as in the violent dispersal of manifestations by its own citizens in Saudi Arabia.

There are no limits in the dcrimes committed by the state in the name of “war against terror. Friendly states are being spied on like enemies. Commercial  wars  are being waged to ensure US supremacy at the cost of causing history’s worst economic crisis.

Is there no end on this gross crime being committed in the name of a false ideology of anti-terrorism?

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