by Linn Washington Jr.
[Black World Today - 10/16/01] Is the face of terrorism in the world today solely that of an Islamic fundamentalist fanatic? It is hard not to draw that conclusion given the American-flag-wrapped fulmination's flowing from politicians, pastors and the press following the truly tragic 9/11 attacks in New York City and Washington, DC.
Eclipsed by the rhetoric arising from America's need for righteous retaliation is the simple fact that terrorism is an act and not an ideology or theology. Americans quickly forget that the persons who committed the last act of horrific terrorism to strike America came from this nation's midsection and not the Middle East.
Native born terrorists like federal office building bomber Tim McVeigh are dismissed as anomalies while terrorists born in the Middle East like Osama bin Laden are not considered exceptions but are merely examples of their anti-America culture. Curiously, fanatical Islamic terrorists receive different treatment from American politicians, pastors and the press than terrorists driven by fanatical Christianity.
Some anti-abortion activists - fueled by their own brand of fundamentalist Christianity - are responsible for numerous bombings and other violent terrorist acts across America that have taken scores of 'innocent' lives. Yet, even in the wake of terrorism by anti-abortionists, politicians, pastors or press pundits do not rant about the urgent need to root out these terrorists and their supporters comparable to the calls for action against terrorists from the Middle East.
Following the 9/11 WTC/Pentagon attacks the prominent anti-abortion group Operation Rescue issued an "Open Letter" proclaiming that "the Lord has smitten" America because the innocent blood from over 44,000,000 aborted children shows that "we value human life no more than the terrorists flying the jetliners."
Interestingly, mainstream politicians, pastors and press pundits have not loudly pilloried Operation Rescue's "Open Letter" despite their sanctioning (mainly by their silence) the firings of journalists for making statements critical of U.S. government officials relating to the 9/11 attacks.
A few days after the fiery collapse of the WTC towers, right-wing minister Rev. Jerry Falwell went so far as to blast the ACLU, feminists, gays, pagans and pro-choice advocates for causing the 9/11 attacks. "I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped make this happen,'" Falwell stated on the 700 Club television program three days after the attacks. Falwell did castigate Islamic terrorist for actually committing the attacks. Rev. Pat Robertson, host of the 700 Club program, declared that he "totally" concurred with Falwell's assessment.
Neither of these leading conservative clerics faced sustained public criticism for their inaccurate and intemperate comments about those causing the 9/11 attacks or their consistent soft-peddling of anti-abortion movement terrorism.Perhaps a reason why many Americans see foreign-born terrorists differently than native born terrorists relates to media coverage.
Early last year the media watchdog group FAIR issued an analysis of coverage of law enforcement actions involving four suspected terrorists- three white Americans and one Arab - during December 1999. According to FAIR's analysis, authorities arrested white Americans Kevin Ray Patterson and Charles Dennis Kiles on December 3, 1999 for allegedly planning a series of terrorist acts in California to spark a Y2K-related militia uprising. The arrests of Patterson and Kiles prompted articles in 96 newspapers.
Only 45 newspaper articles mentioned the December 28, 1999 police charging a Texas white supremacist named Jere Wayne Haney (an airline mechanic) with possessing 50-pounds of explosives and bomb-making instructions. In stark contrast to the white bombers' coverage in the media, the December 14, 1999 arrest of an Algerian named Ahmed Ressam for reportedly carrying bomb-making ingredients from Canada into the U.S. unleashed 906 newspaper articles, the FAIR analysis stated.
The FAIR analysis noted that Ressam's arrest "ran on the front page" while the actions against the white American terrorist suspects received 'news brief' coverage. Additionally, this analysis noted that 44 TV network news stories mentioned Ressam, compared to only two (both on CBS) mentioning Patterson and Kiles and no networks reporting on the arrest of white supremacist/airline mechanic Haney.
Why did the potential terrorism of white American bomb suspects generate only "one-tenth to one-twentieth" of the media interest of the arrest of an Arab considered a potential terrorist bomber the FAIR analysis wondered? "It's hard to escape the conclusion that it's Ressam's ethnicity that made him so much more newsworthy," FAIR's February 2000 analysis asserted.
Another interesting aspect about media coverage is the fact that of the thousands of newspaper articles and commentaries published about Tim McVeigh in the past few years only five have referred to McVeigh as a "monster." A recent check of the authoritative Lexis database found only 5 articles that mentioned McVeigh's name within twenty-five words of 'monster' and all five of those articles were published during the six months prior to McVeigh's execution.
A lengthy June 2001 Reader's Digest magazine article on McVeigh carried the headline "Into The Mind of Terror" stating in the subheadline that "Two Reporters Unmask The Man Whose Face Became Synonymous With Evil." Yet no where in this article is McVeigh referenced as a monster, a characterization frequently used in media accounts of Blacks charged with and/or convicted of crimes causing far less devastating loss of life as the federal building bombing.
Just like America does not want to be reminded that its flawed foreign policy forays once funneled millions to bin Laden and his Taliban protectors, this nation never wants to be reminded of its sordid history of domestic racist terrorism...especially state supported terrorism. A dictionary definition of terrorism is the use of force or threats to demoralize, intimidate and subjugate, especially such use as a political weapon or policy. This definition sounds a lot like the history of onslaughts against African-Americans from antebellum slave patrols to contemporary police brutality.
A recently published review of the book "Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas" described these armed nightriders who stopped, searched and whipped Blacks as "the immediate agents of a white supremacist state." Slave patrols, operating under the sanction of law, used force to prevent escapes, stop rebellions and generally disrupt Black social life.
The slave patrol duties of subjugation and demoralization fits the dictionary definition of terrorism. Civil rights leaders and legal expert have long declared that policing in contemporary America often employs indiscriminate force against Blacks for the purpose of intimidation. This widespread police practice fits the definition of terrorism.
"Aggressive (police) patrol practices create tension and hostility," stated the 1968 Kerner Commission report on racism in America. "The resulting grievances have been further aggravated by the lack of effective mechanisms for handling complaints against police." That review of the "Slave Patrols" book begins with this sentence: "The immediate causes of the civil unrest in Cincinnati this past spring are clear enough: White cops had been abusing and killing black civilians."
Is this abuse a part of state supported terrorism? Consider this fact. Since the Kerner Report, Cincinnati authorities have repeatedly refused to implement their own recommendations to prevent police abuse. The seminal 1968 Kerner Commission Report discussed police abuse in Cincinnati, finding that discriminatory law enforcement sparked the ugly 1967 riot that rocked the southern Ohio city.
Yet more than a decade after the Kerner Commission Report, Cincinnati authorities continued ducking the deadly problem of discriminatory abuse by their city police. "City Council, the City Administration, or the Police Administration neither really care nor are willing to do anything about reported incidents of [police] misconduct," stated the 1979 Mayor's Community Relations Panel report.
These statements from that 1979 report mirror remarks from the Executive Director of the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission contained in his report attached to a federal class action lawsuit filed against the Cincinnati Police Department in mid-March 2001. "The City has acquiesced and ratified (abusive practices) by failing to adequately supervise and discipline those officers responsible for these civil rights violations," stated this report prepared by CHRC head Cecil Thomas, a 27-year veteran of the Cincinnati Police Department.
"This deliberate indifference to the rights of African American citizens.has caused injury and will continue to cause injury if the practices are not corrected," Thomas noted in his report accompanying the federal lawsuit filed by the Cincinnati Black United Front and the Ohio ACLU. During the last week of September 2001 a judge in Cincinnati dismissed the negligent homicide charge against policeman Stephen Roach, whose fatal shooting of an unarmed Black teen ignited that riot in Cincinnati earlier this year.
When Judge Ralph Winkler dismissed that homicide and another misdemeanor charge filed against Roach he proclaimed, "If an officer mistakenly believed that a suspect was likely to fight back, the officer might be justified in using more force than was actually necessary." If Roach's action was reasonable as Winkler claimed, why did Roach give three contradictory accounts to investigators after the shooting?
Those contradictory accounts - one exposed as a lie by a videotape from a police car camera - should have lead Winkler to at least convict Roach on the obstructing official business charge if Winkler wasn't playing his role in protecting police abuse...protecting state supported domestic terrorism. A Cincinnati homicide detective even testified that Roach lied to investigators, telling Winkler that Roach's accounts were carefully scripted to hide his culpability.
Judge Winkler dismissed the detective's testimony proclaiming that "any different statements attributed to Officer Roach were not substantial and the statements did not hamper or impede the police investigation of the incident in any way."
The Rev. Damon Lynch, a Black leader in Cincinnati, called Winkler's ruling acquitting Roach of all charges "an atrocity." After Winkler's acquittal, an apologetic Roach called the fatal shooting and subsequent events a "nightmare." However, Timothy Thomas' mother called Roach a liar. "Justice means 'just us.' If you are a police officer, you have true justice. If you're not, you don't," said Thomas' mother Angela Leisure. "This situation will happen again unless something changes."
Many feel that America's war against so-called Global Terrorism lacks real moral authority because of America's historic legacy of failing to attack its own state supported domestic terrorism.
Copyright © 2001 The Black World Today.
All Rights Reserved.
[posted 11/2/01]
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