As we take pause Friday to reflect on the horrors of terrorism and to commemorate the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, our outrage and grief are morally obliged to cross national boundaries. The tragedies of Sept. 11 provide an opportunity for us to reflect on human cruelty, as well as the role the U.S. plays on a geopolitical scale.
In America, Sept. 11, 2001, brought terror and terrorism to the forefront of our national dialogues and even our personal fears. But many citizens of the Global South were already acquainted with terrorism, and the mention of Sept. 11 for them recalls a different tragedy that occurred 28 years prior.
On Sept. 11, 1973, with the backing of the U.S. under President Richard Nixon, then Commander in Chief of the Chilean Army Augusto Pinochet staged a coup d’état, resulting in the firebombing of the presidential palace and eventual death of Chile’s democratically elected President Salvador Allende.
Pinochet quickly consolidated power and ruled Chile with an iron fist for 17 years.
His regime is infamous for widespread intimidation, torture, “disappearing” and frequent assassinations of both political opponents and civilians. Though the horror of Pinochet’s dictatorship was acknowledged throughout the world, he enjoyed the moral and political support of important allies like the U.S. and Great Britain.
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a classic icon of conservatism, told Pinochet even after he had been deposed, “it is you who brought democracy to Chile,” and former U.S. President Ronald Reagan did not sever relations with his brutal dictatorship until 1986.
The historical memory of 9/11 in Chile, and by extension the Global South, indicates the extent to which Americans remain ignorant of regional history or perhaps just morally unconcerned by atrocities conducted with the blessing of their country.
For as atrocious as Pinochet’s terror was, the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, proved even grimmer, though this has been covered up in plain sight. Neither Pinochet nor those who attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11 could ever have aspired to wage slaughter on the scale perpetrated by former U.S. President George W. Bush and his cronies in Iraq.
When we look at the numbers and the casualties, it is clear that the so-called ‘War on Terror’ unleashed terror and destroyed innocent lives by measures that even the most sadistic terrorist organizations are incapable of.
When we stop to critically consider these two historical episodes, we see how diplomatically unfit the U.S. is in the modern era.
We also see how inappropriate and lacking our concept of terrorism is.
It’s one thing to make a dramatic pronouncement and try to incite terror with words as groups of deranged radicals are wont to do, but it is something more wholly monstrous to proclaim peace while destroying entire sectors of humanity, as our country did in Iraq and Vietnam. Additionally, to provide military and political support to countless autocrats while they torture innocent populations, as the U.S. has done before, is as insidious a form of terrorism as I can conceive.
Furthermore, in our climate where multinational corporations clamp down on poor economies and literally starve people to death, the control these faceless entities have over the poor of the world no doubt constitutes a form of terrorism.
As Leon Trotsky wrote, “Their [the bourgeois class] entire state apparatus with its laws, police, and army is nothing but an apparatus for capitalist terror!”
The Reagans, Nixons, Thatchers and Pinochets of the world are responsible for quantities of human misery that al-Qaida could never have achieved. Despite the terror generated by these individuals, we never seem to acknowledge the barbarity and human suffering that came about as a direct result of their machinations. Sept. 11 is a very sobering episode for Americans, though most are wholly ignorant of 1973 and morally nonplussed by our military’s misadventures in Iraq.
With the commemoration of any tragedy, we remember and honor the memory of those who fell victim to terrorism, but in light of America’s history, we should not be duped by propaganda and think that, as a diplomatic entity, the U.S. has solely played the role of the victim.
Rather, per an honest analysis of our history, we can grasp that the traditional portrayal of terrorism as a function of crazed rebel groups is fragmented, in that some of the most horrific acts of terror have emanated from politicians and generals who operated within the structure of the law. History will not absolve them.
May all victims of terrorism rest in peace.
Jordan MacKenzie is a second-year UF linguistics master’s student. His column appears on Wednesdays.
