               
SALAT TIMES
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(for Mar 15 2010)
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ICNM SPECIAL NOTICES AND COMMENTS |
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9-11: The Big Question Remains Unasked
By Jack A Smith
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 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.
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Hadith Qudsi 17
On the authority of Abu Dharr al-Ghifari (may Allah be pleased with him) from the Prophet (PBUH) is that among the sayings he relates from his Lord (may He be glorified) is that He said:
O My servants, I have forbidden oppression for Myself and have made it forbidden amongst you, so do not oppress one another. O My servants, all of you are astray except for those I have guided, so seek guidance of Me and I shall guide you, O My servants, all of you are hungry except for those I have fed, so seek food of Me and I shall feed you. O My servants, all of you are naked except for those I have clothed, so seek clothing of Me and I shall clothe you. O My servants, you sin by night and by day, and I forgive all sins, so seek forgiveness of Me and I shall forgive you. O My servants, you will not attain harming Me so as to harm Me, and will not attain benefitting Me so as to benefit Me. O My servants, were the first of you and the last of you, the human of you and the jinn of you to be as pious as the most pious heart of any one man of you, that would not increase My kingdom in anything. O My servants, were the first of you and the last of you, the human of you and the jinn of you to be as wicked as the most wicked heart of any one man of you, that would not decrease My kingdom in anything. O My servants, were the first of you and the last of you, the human of you and the jinn of you to rise up in one place and make a request of Me, and were I to give everyone what he requested, that would not decrease what I have, any more that a needle decreases the sea if put into it. O My servants, it is but your deeds that I reckon up for you and then recompense you for, so let him finds good praise Allah and let him who finds other that blame no one but himself.
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