Privilege Of Empire 
By Mumia Abu-Jamal  
August 25, 1998 

"We cannot be nationalists, when our country is not a  
nation, but an empire." - Dr. Huey P. Newton, Ph.D., "We are  
Nationalists and Internationalists", fr. The Coming of the  
New Int'l (1971).  
  
     The bombing of a reputed nerve gas factory in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, and 'terrorist camp' in the mountainous reaches of Afghanistan marked what Clinton Administration officials putatively called a "preemptive strike" to stop planned bombings of US Government facilities abroad.  
  
     By so doing, the US Government spit in the face of international law, by its violation of the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of the Sudan and Afghanistan.  
  
     The principles of international law (commonly known as 'the law of nations') hold that all nations have a right to their territorial integrity, and for one nation to violate the borders of another is a violation of that nation's national sovereignty. It was this principle that provided the legal fig leaf to justify the 1991 mega-bombing of Iraq to punish them for violating Kuwait's sovereignty and borders.  
  
     But nations are bound by international law, not empires.  
  
     With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in Dec. 1991, there is only one real superpower left in the world, and superpowers make their own rules. Who's to stop them?  
  
     In an age of the American Empire the world entire is open to US exploitation and usage, for her, not their interests.  
  
     As in 1986 Libya, or 1983 Grenada (when US forces bombed and invaded, respectively) nothing quite cures the political ailments of an embattled presidential administration like "the rocket's red glare," or "the bombs bursting in air," of limited warfare, preferably against a brown of black nation.  
  
     In the nauseous throes of L'affaire Lewinsky, the prospect of bombing African and Afghan sites must've seemed attractive indeed. (Arab wags have dubbed the cruise missiles "Monica bombs").  
  
     A prominent American Dr./TY correspondent, as well as the prestigious London Times, have disputed US claims that the Sudanese pharmaceutical bombsite was in fact manufacturing a nerve gas precursor chemical.  
  
     The initial justification for the bombings of Sudan and Afghanistan, that this was a "preemptive strike," also raises questions. One doesn't have to venture into the dusty mountains of Afghanistan to find "terrorists."  
  
     The most deadly attack on Americans in recent history occurred neither in Kenya, nor in Dar El Salaam, Tanzania. The bloodiest terrorist attack occurred on April 19, 1995, in Oklahoma, where a federal building was virtually vaporized by US terrorists, and 169 American men, women, and babies were killed.  
  
     Needless to say, the terrorists who struck Oklahoma didn't merit a "preemptive strike" (nor much of a post-bombing strike, it seems).  
  
     There are terrorist camps in the US, right now, that have no fear of an air strike.  
  
     They train in small arms, and explosions where only Americans are potential targets (primarily Americans of color).  
  
     They are white-supremacist-oriented groups and militias, to which the US government responds, not with a bomb, but with a wink.  
  
     Copyright 1998 Mumia Abu-Jamal. All Rights Reserved.