PHILADELPHIA 1985--PRISTINA 1999
In searching for explanations for the hideous bombing methodically carried out by NATO military planners against the small country of Yugoslavia, the US media keep trying to find answers in the history of Balkan ethnic conflicts. But they are looking in the wrong direction.
One place to look for a clue as to why this war is happening is in Philadelphia, dubbed the "City of Brotherly Love" by its boosters. In that city on May 13, 1985, a firestorm was ignited by a bomb dropped on a house in a residential section. The fire burned down the whole block-close to 60 houses. Eleven people, including four small children, died in the bombed residence.
It wasn't an accident. The bomb didn't just fall from a plane by mistake. It was deliberately dropped by a police helicopter. Just as in the bombing of a passenger train and columns of refugees in Kosovo, the pilots knew what they were doing.
The police of Philadelphia, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the mayor's office--all were involved in this unbelievable act. As they explained it, they wanted to evict a Black organization called MOVE from the house this collective lived in, and they just couldn't figure out any other way to do it.
They claimed the group was annoying its neighbors, had strange habits, and--most importantly--was resisting their authority. The same night that the authorities burned down that neighborhood, they also forced a Black woman and her five children out of another MOVE house in nearby Chester by lobbing tear gas into the upper stories in the wee hours of the night.
The media softened up public opinion after these atrocious events. They ran stories about people who left MOVE because they were "tired of the rats." The group's ideas about life and the environment were called "irrational rantings," although they make more sense than many religious dogmas.
In other words, the MOVE members were demonized in the press, just as Serbs have been demonized by the Western imperialist media for a number of years now. The press saw its role as rallying approval for the deadly course of action set by the capitalist state.
A few years later, a murder occurred on a luxurious estate a few miles outside Philadelphia. It was committed by a member of the fabulously wealthy du Pont family. John du Pont shot and killed an athlete he had hired to be his personal wrestling trainer. It turned out du Pont had done a lot of strange things before that. He had his own private tank, which he drove around his estate. He had threatened people in the nearby town. Finally, he committed murder.
That's when the police came and oh so gently took du Pont into custody. He was declared insane and is living out his days in a comfortable asylum.
They didn't fly helicopters over his mansion. They didn't bomb it or burn it to the ground. They didn't put the people with him behind bars--like the MOVE 9, survivors of the Philadelphia bombing who are still in jail.
Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Philadelphia journalist on death row, tried to win public sympathy for the members of MOVE from his prison cell. He explained how they were persecuted because they were Black, they had their own ideas and way of life, and they refused to follow the dictates of the oppressing state.
The authorities gave MOVE an ultimatum: surrender or we'll force you out of your house with whatever it takes. These same authorities have now given Yugoslavia an ultimatum: surrender Kosovo or we'll force you out of your own country with whatever it takes.
In both cases, terror is the weapon of choice. When the Philadelphia authorities and the FBI bombed the MOVE house, they were telling all the oppressed in that city and in this country that they wouldn't tolerate insubordination. In the old days, they would have called it being "uppity." Today, these racists have to watch their language a little more carefully.
The Pentagon and NATO are telling the whole world that they have the means to pulverize any country that refuses to knuckle under--and the will to use those means. They are exulting in finally having overcome the "Vietnam Syndrome" that forced them to withdraw from that heroic country even though their military advantage was overwhelming.
THIS BOMBAST WILL BE SHORT LIVED
No matter how sophisticated the technology, wars must be fought with people and that's why the Pentagon brass eventually had to leave Vietnam with their tail between their legs. Because the US soldiers, many of them Black, Latino, and Native, couldn't see any reason to fight and die over there when racism, injustice, and class oppression were riding roughshod over here. Better to be a soldier in a real army of liberation than a tool of imperialist expansion. Ona move!
--International Action Center <www.iacenter.org>