U.S. moves to exploit bombings in Jordan

Bomb blasts ripped open the Radisson SAS, Grand Hyatt and Days Inn hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing 57 people and injuring hundreds on Nov. 9.

Although nearly all the victims of the attack were Jordanians, Palestinians or foreigners of Arab origin, U.S. officials and media immediately reported that al-Qaeda in Iraq, which is said to be headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the shadowy leader of the even more shadowy group, had taken responsibility for the attacks.

Adding to uncertainty was the report in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz (Nov. 9), retracted within the day, that Israelis were evacuated from the Radisson Hotel by Jor danian security forces before the bombing.

Whoever carried out the bombing, it is instructive to see how the U.S. immediately reacted to it and how the media here responded. U.S. strategy to destabilize and take over control of an area with the majority of the world’s oil supply is not something that started with the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The capitalist media has been quick to play up so-called mass demonstrations in Jordan, which have been of a few hundred or at most a few thousand people, much smaller than demonstrations in Jordan opposing the war on Iraq. The participants are mostly people allied with King Abdullah of Jordan, and are supposed to be against Iraqis and pro-U.S.

King Abdullah, the son of the late King Hussein of Jordan, is a U.S. ally. Since the bombings Abdullah has held meetings with U.S. officials, including Bill Clinton, which indicates he is moving even closer to Washington. Most of Jordan’s people are from Palestine, and have been more sympathetic to the Iraqi resistance than to the U.S. occupation. King Hussein and King Abdullah have both been closely tied to U.S. interests in the area, as could be seen in their relations with the Palestinians.

Terror aimed at Palestinians

A constant campaign of terror against the Palestinian people has been going on since the U.S.-backed and armed Zionist occupation in 1948. This war against the Palestinian people has destabilized the entire Middle East region, as the Israeli state expanded the area under its control, built up a nuclear stockpile, and as a U.S. junior partner threatens Middle Eastern countries, while denying the Palestinian people their right to self-determination.

Pushed out a second time by the Israeli occupation of the West Bank during the June 1967 war, Palestinians sought refuge in Jordan and began to build up their resistance forces. King Hussein waged a campaign against the PLO and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine when these organizations began to inspire non-Palestinian Jordanian people.

King Hussein’s army then opened a U.S.-aided attack against the Palestinian Liberation Organization in September 1970 —known as “Black September—and in the subsequent civil war between then and June 1971, killed between 5,000 and 10,000 Palestinians.

It is convenient for the U.S. occupation force in Iraq to assign al-Qaeda in Iraq responsibility for the recent devastating attacks. This strategy identifies “foreign terrorists” with the Iraqi resistance, whose main strength in reality comes from the support of the Iraqi population. The Jordan events highlight the danger of the U.S. expanding the war to Syria, which is blamed for having a “porous border” allowing “foreign fighters” into Iraq.

U.S. attempts to exploit the Jordan bomb ing to gain support from reactionary Arab regimes shows how desperate U.S. officials are when confronted by an ever more sophisticated and popular resistance inside Iraq.

While the U.S. may gain a temporary alliance with a local king or dictator, the people of the Middle East are unlikely to be so outraged at the Nov. 9 bombings that they forget their outrage over U.S. support for the occupation of Palestine, or their current anger over the war being waged against the Iraqi people, or Western imperialism’s colonial control of the region that goes back so much further.