SPEAKING FREELY 9-11: The big question remains
unasked By Jack A Smith
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The 9-11 Commission hearings in Washington these last
weeks, for all the sound, fury, and front-page
headlines, seem to have been constructed to produce a
foreordained and narrow conclusion about only one aspect
of the events of September 11 - the government's lack of
preparedness to detect the attack plan before it was
executed.
Entirely omitted from the probe, and
from the presidential elections as well, is the other
big question about September 11 - what was the real
reason the attacks took place?
The omission is
hardly unintentional. The commission members, evenly
balanced between highly powerful Democrats and
Republicans, may take partisan shots at each other
during the hearings, but they are entirely agreed on
leaving this crucial question unasked and unanswered.
The hearings have produced some fruitful
movements, such as testimony from retired anti-terrorism
chief Richard Clarke, based on his new book, Against
All Enemies that the Bush administration was
monomaniacal about invading Iraq from the day it took
office. This wasn't new, but it provided important
inside substantiation. Another interesting disclosure
was the text of a memo to President George W Bush a
month before September 11 informing him that Osama bin
Laden's al-Qaeda organization was planning an attack in
the US with hijacked airplanes, but this actually proves
nothing.
In all probability, the hearings will
conclude that the reason for the September 11 hijacking
attacks in Washington and New York City by 19 members of
the fundamentalist fringe of Islam was "intelligence
failure" by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Reforms will
ensue, civil liberties will be further abridged in the
name of homeland security, and hundreds of billions of
dollars more will be invested in a long "war on
terrorism" ostensibly against a few underground
organizations that may have a total of 1,000 committed
members.
Why is the question about the reasons
for the attack not asked or answered? So far, the
conventional political wisdom from Washington seems to
be that the cause of September 11 is that, to
paraphrase, "the terrorists are uncivilized and are
motivated by a hatred for democracy and an envy of the
American way of life". Such nonsense conveys the
inescapable suggestion that the bipartisan
Democratic-Republican political power structure ruling
America would prefer not to probe too deeply into this
question lest it be found complicit in creating a
profound and not illogical antipathy to the United
States on the part of most people in the Middle East and
the world.
In our view, there are four reasons
in combination why a small group of fanatics were
willing to commit suicide to destroy the three symbols
of US power in the world - the World Trade Center
(financial power), the Pentagon (military power), and
the White House, which evidently was spared because the
final hijacked aircraft crashed before reaching its
target (political power).
The primary reason for
September 11 is the product of US policy and actions in
the Middle East since the end of World War II - a policy
based on exercising control over the world's greatest
known reserves of petroleum. This has led Washington to
continuously intervene in the region to support backward
feudal monarchies and repressive, undemocratic regimes
at the expense of social and political progress. The
three secondary reasons involve the Afghan civil war
(1978-1995), the first US-Iraq war (1990-2003), and
one-sided US support for Israel (mainly 1967-2004).
Until the implosion of the USSR in 1990, the US
was in a frenzy to prevent the Soviets from gaining
influence in the region. Since 1990, Washington has
sought to secure total hegemony throughout the entire
Middle East, culminating in the Bush administration's
plan to "re-make" the principal countries of the region
into "democracies" subordinate to White House
domination, by force if necessary, beginning with Iraq.
In some cases throughout these years the White
House made deals with conservative religious regimes,
such as with the royal family in Saudi Arabia soon after
World War II. At the time Washington extended its
military and political protection to the House of Saud
in Riyadh in return for guaranteed access to oil and for
support in keeping the USSR out of the region. The deal,
which insures the suppression of democratic elements in
Saudi Arabia, remains in place to this day.
In
other instances, the White House ordered the CIA to
overthrow democratically elected progressive
governments, such as happened in Iran in 1953 when
left-leaning president Muhammad Mossadegh was
dispatched. The result was a quarter-century of
repressive rule by the Shah of Iran, a US puppet finally
overthrown by Shi'ite fundamentalists, who established
another backward religious regime. The reason that only
the religious faction was in a position to seize power
was that Iran's sizable secular left and democratic
forces had been killed, imprisoned or exiled by the
Shah, with US approval.
The CIA repeatedly
intervened in Iraq from 1958, when progressive General
Abdul Karim Kassem overthrew the British-installed
monarchy, until 1963 when he was overthrown with US
help. Many thousands of leftists and communists were
killed along with Kassem. This ultimately led to rule by
the secular and at the time pan-Arab Ba'ath regime. In
1979, General Saddam Hussein gained control of the
Ba'athist government, purged and killed any remaining
leftists, and within a year launched an unjust war
against Iran that was supported by the US until ending
in a stalemate in 1988.
Over 50 years of
constant American intervention - whether in Iran or
Iraq, Egypt or Jordan, Lebanon or Syria, Saudi Arabia or
Yemen, Oman or Kuwait, or across the Red Sea in Sudan,
Eritrea and Ethiopia - have led to a plethora of ill
fortune in the region. This includes the existence of
weak, reactionary regimes dependent on the US;
governments in thrall to religious factions; poverty
amid great wealth; the violent destruction of left and
progressive forces; the stultification of social
progress; the rise of extreme religious fundamentalism
as a means of establishing social and political power
(particularly since the secular left has been repressed
in so many of these countries); Arab disunity; and a
deep sense of frustration and anger against the outside
forces who have created most of these conditions,
whether it be old style British and French colonialism
or, since 1945, US imperialism.
Three more
ingredients must be added to this witch's brew to
concoct September 11:
1. The Afghan civil war
(1978-1995): It was during this period that extremist
Islamic fundamentalism became a serious military force,
in large part because the US invested billions of
dollars in training and equipping such a force, as well
as providing bases and financing for fundamentalist
religious schools in Afghanistan and neighboring
Pakistan. Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden played an
important role in the CIA's schemes for several years.
Washington was responding to a military coup in
April 1978, principally led by left forces including
progressive military officers determined to enact major
social and political reforms to bring Afghanistan into
the 20th century. The ruling People's Democratic Party
began to introduce extensive reforms and to establish
close relations with the neighboring Soviet Union. This
was unacceptable to Washington.
Afghanistan's
warlords and fundamentalist religious forces had
immediately opposed the reforms for fear they would
upset traditional power relations, and also because they
guaranteed the equality of women. The reformers were in
Kabul only a few months before president Jimmy Carter
ordered the CIA to support the opposition forces,
largely based in the vast countryside. When it was
apparent a few months later that US-backed right-wing
forces might overthrow the left government, the USSR
sent thousands of troops to defend the progressive
forces, withdrawing them in 1988.
The left
government continued in power until it was crushed in
1992, followed by a horrendous three-year civil war
between rival reactionary factions that was finally won
by the Taliban in 1996, which was deeply indebted to bin
Laden and the mujahideen "freedom fighters" responsive
to his extreme fundamentalist leadership.
In
1998, Carter's national security adviser during the war,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, finally acknowledged Washington's
role and bragged that the US virtually induced the USSR
to send soldiers to Afghanistan in order that it stumble
into its own "Vietnam". He brushed aside any concern
about the Taliban or their powerful mujahideen allies.
2. The first US-Iraq war (1990-2003): Iraq
invaded the tiny, oil-rich principality in neighboring
Kuwait in August 1990, presumably under the naive
impression the US would not intervene, perhaps as a
reward for exhausting Iran in a long war. Rejecting
repeated Iraqi offers of a negotiated withdrawal, the
regime of George Bush the First gradually built up a
huge invasion force and massively retaliated in January
1990. Iraq's entire civilian infrastructure was
destroyed - electricity, water supplies, factories,
transportation, communications, bridges and so forth,
along with its retreating army and many thousands of
civilians. Extensive sanctions, which killed over a
million people, along with frequent air attacks,
continued until 2003, when George Bush the Second
launched a new invasion.
In the eyes of Arabs
and Muslims around the world, including those critical
of Saddam, the first US war had turned into a nightmare
of genocide, poverty and humiliation for the Iraqi
people, further eroding Washington's credibility and
enlarging on strong anti-American sentiments that had
been building during previous decades of intervention in
Middle Eastern affairs.
In addition, bin Laden,
the leader of the mujahideen movement that emerged from
Afghanistan, was outraged by the government of his
native Saudi Arabia, which had allowed the "infidel"
Americans to establish a military base on Arab/Muslim
soil to attack another Arab/Muslim country. At around
this time he dedicated himself to two goals: pushing the
US out of the region and getting rid of the House of
Saud.
3. One-sided US support for Israel
(1967-2004): The US has been devoted to Israel as a
surrogate for American military power in the region
since the June 1967 war, though it has supported the
Zionist state since its inception in 1948.
As
far as the Arab world is concerned, these last 37 years
that Israel has occupied much of the territory mandated
to the Palestinians have been a period of great tragedy.
Arabs view the Palestinians as refugees in their own
country, oppressed by a violent colonial state supported
by the US. Many Arabs have also expressed the
conviction, shared by a number of progressives in the
US, that the Bush administration's attack on Iraq -
based on a plan emanating from the neo-conservative
branch of right-wing reaction - was in part motivated by
a desire to destroy Israel's principal opponents in the
region, with Syria and Iran as potential targets as
well.
Every time Washington vetoes a UN Security
Council resolution seeking justice for the Palestinians,
Arab anger mounts against the US. Every time Israeli
tanks and soldiers fire at stone-throwing boys, the
anger mounts further. Middle Eastern public opinion does
not expect Washington to turn on Israel and embrace the
Palestinian cause, but it cannot countenance America's
total support for Israel at the expense of simple
justice for millions of Arabs.
The latest
example of Washington's indifference to the dreadful
plight of the Palestinians is Bush's April 14
declaration of support for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's
devious scheme to dismantle some unwanted Jewish
settlements in Gaza for the right to permanently keep
large settlements in the West Bank. In addition, Bush
agreed that Palestinian refugees did not possess a
"right to return" to their homes in what is now Israel.
Both issues had been important Palestinian bargaining
points with Israel, now swept off the negotiating table
by the long arm of the White House.
These four
examples of Washington's imperial deportment in the
Middle East for a period of more than half a century
have created great antagonism toward America on the part
of the Arab masses. In the process, White House policies
have unintentionally generated a small, extreme fringe
of Islamic fundamentalism dedicated to visiting violent
retribution on the US, which it accomplished on
September 11, 2001.
The Bush administration's
subsequent "war on terrorism" is wrong on two main
counts: 1. It is much more intended to extend US
hegemony than to track down the relatively few people
involved in September 11 and al-Qaeda. Elsewise, why
attack Iraq - which was innocent of complicity in the
incident and with the target organization - or threaten
similarly uninvolved Cuba, Iran and Syria, among others?
2. It is focused on symptoms, not causes, and thus
cannot succeed in its stated objectives regardless of
how many more billions of dollars are spent on homeland
security and foreign wars.
What then will make
mighty America - the most powerful military state in
world history - more secure from the threat of another
terrorist attack from a small fringe group? Treat the
cause, not the symptoms. Change the outrageous imperial
policies and actions that have created this situation.
Here's how, for starters:
Deal with the people
of the Middle East and the basis of equality and
respect. Stop interfering in the politics and economy of
the region. Discontinue the practice of supporting
reactionary regimes and destroying progressive and
leftist movements and governments. Instead of spending
hundreds of billions of dollars on the "war on
terrorism", invest that money in repairing the damage
caused by over 50 years of intervention, oppression and
exploitation in the region. Get out of Iraq now and
permit these beleaguered people to resolve their own
problems. Stop military interventions and close down the
Pentagon's many military bases in the region. Adopt a
balanced stance vis-a-vis the Palestine-Israel question,
starting with the demand - backed by the threat of
withdrawing Washington's annual subsidy, if necessary -
that Sharon withdraw all troops and settlements from the
occupied territories.
Of course, those who rule
America have no intention of doing anything of the kind.
Both the Republican and Democratic parties are dedicated
to continuing the policies that have allowed the US to
exercise economic, political and military hegemony over
the region and in the world. Yes, a derivative of these
policies has resulted in September 11, but despite the
official hand-wringing about terrorism, it is apparently
well worth the inconvenience in order to extend US
domination over the Middle East and the liquid gold
beneath its burning sands.
Anyway, isn't it just
a matter of getting better "intelligence" from the FBI
and the CIA?
Jack A Smith was the
former chief editor of the now defunct US progressive
newsweekly The Guardian, and presently the editor of a
newsletter devoted to political activism. He resides in
the Hudson Valley region of New York in the US.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click hereif you
are interested in contributing.
