Introduction
On 24 August 1814, things
looked very dark for freedom's land. That was the day the British
captured Washington DC and set fire to the Capitol and the White House.
President Madison took refuge in the nearby Virginia woods where he
waited patiently for the notoriously short attention span of the Brits
to kick in, which it did. They moved on and what might have been a Day
of Utter Darkness turned out to be something of a bonanza for the DC
building trades and up-market realtors.
One year after 9/11, we still
don't know by whom we were struck that infamous Tuesday, or for what
true purpose. But it is fairly plain to many civil-libertarians that
9/11 applied not only to much of our fragile Bill of Rights but also to
our once-envied system of government which had taken a mortal blow the
previous year when the Supreme Court did a little dance in 5/4 time and
replaced a popularly elected president with the oil and gas Cheney/Bush
junta.
Meanwhile, our more and more
unaccountable government is pursuing all sorts of games around the world
that we the spear carriers (formerly the people) will never learn of.
Even so, we have been getting some answers to the question: why weren't
we warned in advance of 9/11? Apparently, we were, repeatedly; for the
better part of a year, we were told there would be unfriendly visitors
to our skies some time in September 2001, but the government neither
informed nor protected us despite Mayday warnings from Presidents Putin
and Mubarak, from Mossad and even from elements of our own FBI. A joint
panel of congressional intelligence committees reported (19 September
2002, New York Times) that as early as 1996, Pakistani terrorist
Abdul Hakim Murad confessed to federal agents that he was `learning to
fly in order to crash a plane into CIA HQ'.
Only CIA director George Tenet
seemed to take the various threats seriously. In December 1998, he wrote
to his deputies that `we are at war' with Osama bin Laden. So impressed
was the FBI by his warnings that by 20 September 2001, `the FBI still
had only one analyst assigned full time to al-Qaeda'.
From a briefing prepared for
Bush at the beginning of July 2001: `We believe that OBL [Osama bin
Laden] will launch a significant terrorist attack against US and/or
Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular
and designed to inflict mass casualties against US facilities or
interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with
little or no warning.' And so it came to pass; yet Condoleezza Rice, the
National Security Advisor, says she never suspected that this meant
anything more than the kidnapping of planes.
Happily, somewhere over the
Beltway, there is Europe -- recently declared anti-Semitic by the US
media because most of Europe wants no war with Iraq and the junta does,
for reasons we may now begin to understand thanks to European and Asian
investigators with their relatively free media.
On the subject `How and Why
America was Attacked on 11 September, 2001', the best, most balanced
report, thus far, is by
Nafeez
Mossadeq Ahmed [1] . . . Yes, yes, I
know he is one of Them. But they often know things that we don't --
particularly about what we are up to. A political scientist, Ahmed is
executive director of the
Institute for Policy Research and Development [2]
`a think-tank dedicated to the promotion of human rights, justice and
peace' in Brighton. His book,
The War
on Freedom [3], has just been
published in the US by a small but reputable publisher.
Ahmed provides a background for
our ongoing war against Afghanistan, a view that in no way coincides
with what the administration has told us. He has drawn on many sources,
most tellingly on American whistleblowers who are beginning to come
forth and bear witness -- like those FBI agents who warned their
supervisors that al-Qaeda was planning a kamikaze strike against New
York and Washington only to be told that if they went public with these
warnings they would suffer under the National Security Act.
Several of these agents have engaged David P. Schippers,[4]
chief investigative counsel for the US House Judiciary Committee, to
represent them in court. The majestic Schippers managed the successful
impeachment of President Clinton in the House of Representatives. He
may, if the Iraqi war should go wrong, be obliged to perform the same
high service for Bush, who allowed the American people to go unwarned
about an imminent attack upon two of our cities as pre-emption of a
planned military strike by the US against the Taliban.
The Guardian
(26
September 2001 [5])
reported that in July 2001, a group of interested parties met in a
Berlin hotel to listen to a former State Department official, Lee
Coldren, as he passed on a message from the Bush administration that
`the United States was so disgusted with the Taliban that they might be
considering some military action . . . the chilling quality of this
private warning was that it came -- according to one of those present,
the Pakistani diplomat Niaz Naik -- accompanied by specific details of
how Bush would succeed . . .' Four days earlier, the Guardian had
reported that `Osama bin Laden and the Taliban received threats of
possible American military action against them two months before the
terrorist assaults on New York and Washington . . . [which] raises the
possibility that bin Laden was launching a pre-emptive strike in
response to what he saw as US threats.' A replay of the `day of infamy'
in the Pacific 62 years earlier?
Why the US needed a Eurasian
adventure
On 9 September 2001, Bush was
presented with a draft of a national security presidential directive
outlining a global campaign of military, diplomatic and intelligence
action targeting al-Qaeda, buttressed by the threat of war. According to
NBC News: `President Bush was expected to sign detailed plans for
a worldwide war against al-Qaeda . . . but did not have the chance
before the terrorist attacks . . . The directive, as described to NBC
News, was essentially the same war plan as the one put into action
after 11 September. The administration most likely was able to respond
so quickly . . . because it simply had to pull the plans "off the
shelf".'
Finally, BBC News, 18
September 2001: `Niak Naik, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was
told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action
against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. It was
Naik's view that Washington would not drop its war for Afghanistan even
if bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taliban.'
Was Afghanistan then turned to
rubble in order to avenge the 3,000 Americans slaughtered by Osama?
Hardly. The administration is convinced that Americans are so
simple-minded that they can deal with no scenario more complex than the
venerable lone, crazed killer (this time with zombie helpers) who does
evil just for the fun of it 'cause he hates us, 'cause we're rich 'n
free 'n he's not. Osama was chosen on aesthetic grounds to be the most
frightening logo for our long contemplated invasion and conquest of
Afghanistan, planning for which had been `contingency' some years before
9/11 and, again, from 20 December, 2000, when Clinton's out-going team
devised a plan to strike at al-Qaeda in retaliation for the assault on
the warship Cole. Clinton's National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger,
personally briefed his successor on the plan but Rice, still very much
in her role as director of Chevron-Texaco, with special duties regarding
Pakistan and Uzbekistan, now denies any such briefing. A year and a half
later (12 August, 2002), fearless Time magazine reported this odd
memory lapse.
Osama, if it was he and not a nation, simply provided the necessary
shock to put in train a war of conquest. But conquest of what? What is
there in dismal dry sandy Afghanistan worth conquering? Zbigniew
Brzezinski tells us exactly what in a 1997 Council on Foreign Relations
study called
The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic
Imperatives.[6]
The Polish-born Brzezinski was
the hawkish National Security Advisor to President Carter. In
The Grand
Chessboard, Brzezinski gives a little history lesson. `Ever
since the continents started interacting politically, some 500 years
ago, Eurasia has been the centre of world power.' Eurasia is all the
territory east of Germany. This means Russia, the Middle East, China and
parts of India. Brzezinski acknowledges that Russia and China, bordering
oil-rich central Asia, are the two main powers threatening US hegemony
in that area.
He takes it for granted that
the US must exert control over the former Soviet republics of Central
Asia, known to those who love them as `the Stans': Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan, Tajikstan and Kyrgyzstan all `of importance from the
standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of
their most immediate and most powerful neighbours -- Russia, Turkey and
Iran, with China signaling'. Brzezinski notes how the world's energy
consumption keeps increasing; hence, who controls Caspian oil/gas will
control the world economy. Brzezinski then, reflexively, goes into the
standard American rationalization for empire. We want nothing, ever, for
ourselves, only to keep bad people from getting good things with which
to hurt good people. `It follows that America's primary interest is to
help ensure that no single [other] power comes to control the
geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered
financial and economic access to it.'
Brzezinski is quite aware that
American leaders are wonderfully ignorant of history and geography so he
really lays it on, stopping just short of invoking politically incorrect
`manifest destiny'. He reminds the Council just how big Eurasia is.
Seventy-five percent of the world's population is Eurasian. If I have
done the sums right, that means that we've only got control, to date, of
a mere 25 percent of the world's folks. More! `Eurasia accounts for
60-per cent of the world's GNP and three-fourths of the world's known
energy resources.' Brzezinski's master plan for `our' globe has
obviously been accepted by the Cheney-Bush junta. Corporate America,
long over-excited by Eurasian mineral wealth, has been aboard from the
beginning.
Ahmed sums up: `Brzezinski
clearly envisaged that the establishment, consolidation and expansion of
US military hegemony over Eurasia through Central Asia would require the
unprecedented, open-ended militarisation of foreign policy, coupled with
an unprecedented manufacture of domestic support and consensus on this
militarisation campaign.'
Afghanistan is the gateway to
all these riches. Will we fight to seize them? It should never be
forgotten that the American people did not want to fight in either of
the twentieth century's world wars, but President Wilson maneuvered us
into the First while President Roosevelt maneuvered the Japanese into
striking the first blow at Pearl Harbor, causing us to enter the Second
as the result of a massive external attack. Brzezinski understands all
this and, in 1997, he is thinking ahead -- as well as backward.
`Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it
may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy
issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely
perceived direct external threat.' Thus was the symbolic gun produced
that belched black smoke over Manhattan and the Pentagon.
Since the Iran-Iraq wars, Islam
has been demonized as a Satanic terrorist cult that encourages suicide
attacks -- contrary, it should be noted, to the Islamic religion. Osama
has been portrayed, accurately, it would seem, as an Islamic zealot. In
order to bring this evil-doer to justice (`dead or alive'), Afghanistan,
the object of the exercise was made safe not only for democracy but for
Union Oil of California whose proposed pipeline from Turkmenistan to
Afghanistan to Pakistan and the Indian Ocean port of Karachi, had been
abandoned under the Taliban's chaotic regime. Currently, the pipeline is
a go-project thanks to the junta's installation of a Unocal employee
(John J Maresca) as US envoy to the newly born democracy [7]
whose president, Hamid Karzai, is also, according to Le Monde, a
former employee of a Unocal subsidiary. Conspiracy? Coincidence!
Once Afghanistan looked to be
within the fold, the junta, which had managed to pull off a complex
diplomatic-military caper, -- abruptly replaced Osama, the
personification of evil, with Saddam. This has been hard to explain
since there is nothing to connect Iraq with 9/11. Happily, `evidence' is
now being invented. But it is uphill work, not helped by stories in the
press about the vast oil wealth of Iraq which must -- for the sake of
the free world -- be reassigned to US and European consortiums.
As Brzezinski foretold, `a
truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat' made it
possible for the President to dance a war dance before Congress. `A long
war!' he shouted with glee. Then he named an incoherent Axis of Evil to
be fought. Although Congress did not give him the FDR Special -- a
declaration of war -- he did get permission to go after Osama who may
now be skulking in Iraq.
Bush and the dog that did
not bark
Post-9/11, the American media
were filled with pre-emptory denunciations of unpatriotic `conspiracy
theorists', who not only are always with us but are usually easy for the
media to discredit since it is an article of faith that there are no
conspiracies in American life. Yet, a year or so ago, who would have
thought that most of corporate America had been conspiring with
accountants to cook their books since -- well, at least the bright days
of Reagan and deregulation. Ironically, less than a year after the
massive danger from without, we were confronted with an even greater
enemy from within: Golden Calf capitalism. Transparency? One fears that
greater transparency will only reveal armies of maggots at work beneath
the skin of a culture that needs a bit of a lie-down in order to collect
itself before taking its next giant step which is to conquer Eurasia, a
potentially fatal adventure not only for our frazzled institutions but
for us the presently living.
Complicity. The behavior of
President George W. Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to all
sorts of not unnatural suspicions. I can think of no other modern chief
of state who would continue to pose for `warm' pictures of himself
listening to a young girl telling stories about her pet goat while
hijacked planes were into three buildings.
Constitutionally, Bush is not
only chief of state, he is commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
Normally, a commander in such a crisis would go straight to headquarters
and direct operations while receiving the latest intelligence.
This is what Bush actually did
-- or did not do -- according to Stan Goff, a retired US Army veteran
who has taught military science and doctrine at West Point. Goff writes,
in `The So-called Evidence
is a Farce'[8]: `I have no idea why
people aren't asking some very specific questions about the actions of
Bush and company on the day of the attacks. . . . Four planes get
hijacked and deviate from their flight plan, all the while on FAA
radar.'
Goff, incidentally, like the
other astonished military experts, cannot fathom why the government's
automatic `standard order of procedure in the event of a hijacking' was
not followed. Once a plane has deviated from its flight-plan, fighter
planes are sent up to find out why. That is law and does not require
presidential approval, which only needs to be given if there is a
decision to shoot down a plane. Goff spells it out: `The planes are all
hijacked between 7:45 and 8:10am. . . . Who is notified? This is an
event already that is unprecedented. But the President is not notified
and going to a Florida elementary school to hear children read.'
`By around 8:15am it should be very apparent that something is
terribly wrong. The President is glad-handling teachers. By 8:45am,
when American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into the [North Tower], Bush
is settling in with children for his photo ops . . . Four planes have
obviously been hijacked simultaneously . . . and one has just dived
into the . . . twin towers, and still no one notifies the nominal
Commander-in-Chief.
`No one has apparently scrambled [sent aloft] Air Force
interceptors either. At 9:03, . . . Flight 175 crashes into the [South
Tower]. At 9:05 Andrew Card, the . . . Chief of Staff whispers to . .
. Bush [who] "briefly turns somber" according to reporters. Does he
cancel the school visit and convene an emergency meeting? No. He
resumes listening to second-graders . . . and continues the banality
even as American Airlines Flight 77 conducts an unscheduled point turn
over Ohio and heads in the direction of Washington DC.
`Has he instructed Chief of Staff Card to scramble the Air Force?
No. An excruciating 25 minutes later, he finally deigns to give a
public statement telling the United States what they have already
figured out; that there's been an attack by hijacked planes on the
World Trade Center. There's a hijacked plane bee-lining to Washington,
but has the Air Force been scrambled to defend anything yet? No. . . .
`At 9:35, this plane conducts another turn, 360 degrees over the
Pentagon, all the while being tracked by radar, and the Pentagon is
not evacuated, and there are still no fast-movers from the Air Force
in the sky over Alexandria and DC. Now, the real kicker: A pilot they
want us to believe was trained at a Florida puddle-jumper school for
Piper Cubs and Cessnas, conducts a well-controlled downward spiral,
descending the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes, brings the
plane in so low and flat that it clips the electrical wires across the
street from the Pentagon, and flies it with pinpoint accuracy into the
side of the building at 460 nauts.
`When the theory about learning to fly this well at the
puddle-jumper school began to lose ground, it was added that they
received further training on a flight simulator. This is like saying
you prepared your teenager for her first drive on [the freeway] at
rush hour by buying her a video driving game . . . There is a story
being constructed about these events.'
There is indeed, and the more
it is added to the darker it becomes. The nonchalance of General Richard
B. Myers, acting Joint Chief of Staff, is as puzzling as the President's
campaigning-as-usual act. Myers was at the Capitol chatting with Senator
Max Cleland. A sergeant, writing later in the AFPS (American Forces
Press Service) describes Myers at the Capitol. `While in an outer
office, he said, he saw a television report that a plane had hit the
World Trade Centre. "They thought it was a small plane or something like
that," Myers said. So the two men went ahead with the office call.'
Whatever Myers and Cleland had
to say to each other (more funds for the military?) must have been
riveting because, during their chat, the AFPS reports, `the second tower
was hit by another jet. "Nobody informed us of that," Myers said. "But
when we came out, that was obvious. Then, right at that time, somebody
said the Pentagon had been hit."' Finally, somebody `thrust a cellphone
in Myers' hand' and, as if by magic, the commanding general of Norad --
our Airspace Command -- was on the line just as the hijackers mission
had been successfully completed except for the failed one in
Pennsylvania. In later testimony to the Senate Armed Forces Committee,
Myers said he thinks that, as of his cellphone talk with Norad, `the
decision was at that point to start launching aircraft'. It was 9:40am.
One hour and 20 minutes after air controllers knew that Flight 11 had
been hijacked; 50 minutes after the North Tower was struck.
This statement would have been
quite enough in our old serious army/air force to launch a number of
courts martial with an impeachment or two thrown in. First, Myers claims
to be uninformed until the third strike. But the Pentagon had been
overseeing the hijacked planes from at least the moment of the strike at
the first tower: yet not until the third strike, at the Pentagon, was
the decision made to get the fighter planes up. Finally, this one is the
dog that did not bark. By law, the fighters should have been up at
around 8:15. If they had, all the hijacked planes might have been
diverted or shot down. I don't think that Goff is being unduly picky
when he wonders who and what kept the Air Force from following its
normal procedure instead of waiting an hour and 20 minutes until the
damage was done and only then launching the fighters. Obviously,
somebody had ordered the Air Force to make no move to intercept those
hijackings until . . . what?
On 28 January 2002, the
Canadian media analyst Barry Zwicker
summed up on
CBC-TV [9]: `That morning no
interceptors responded in a timely fashion to the highest alert
situation. This includes the Andrews squadrons which . . . are 12 miles
from the White House . . . Whatever the explanation for the huge
failure, there have been no reports, to my knowledge, of reprimands.
This further weakens the "Incompetence Theory". Incompetence usually
earns reprimands. This causes me to ask whether there were "stand down"
orders.'?? On 29 August 2002, the BBC reports that on 9/11 there
were `only four fighters on ready status in the north-eastern US'.
Conspiracy? Coincidence? Error?
It is interesting how often in
our history, when disaster strikes, incompetence is considered a better
alibi than . . . well, yes, there are worse things. After Pearl Harbor,
Congress moved to find out why Hawaii's two military commanders, General
Short and Admiral Kimmel, had not anticipated the Japanese attack. But
President Roosevelt pre-empted that investigation with one of his own.
Short and Kimmel were broken for incompetence. The `truth' is still
obscure to this day.
The media's weapons of mass
distraction
But Pearl Harbor has been much
studied. 11 September, it is plain, is never going to be investigated if
Bush has anything to say about it. On
29 January 2002, CNN reported [10]
that `Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to limit
the Congressional investigation into the events of 11 September . . .
The request was made at a private meeting with Congressional leaders . .
. Sources said Bush initiated the conversation . . . He asked that only
the House and Senate intelligence committees look into the potential
breakdowns among federal agencies that could have allowed the terrorist
attacks to occur, rather than a broader inquiry . . . Tuesday's
discussion followed a rare call from Vice President Dick Cheney last
Friday to make the same request . . .'
The excuse given, according to
Daschle, was that `resources and personnel would be taken' away from the
war on terrorism in the event of a wider inquiry. So for reasons that we
must never know, those `breakdowns' are to be the goat. That they were
more likely to be not break -- but `stand-downs' is not for us to pry.
Certainly the one-hour 20 minute failure to put fighter planes in the
air could not have been due to a breakdown throughout the entire Air
Force along the East Coast. Mandatory standard operational procedure had
been told to cease and desist.
Meanwhile, the media were
assigned their familiar task of inciting public opinion against bin
Laden, still not the proven mastermind. These media blitzes often
resemble the magicians classic gesture of distraction: as you watch the
rippling bright colours of his silk handkerchief in one hand, he is
planting the rabbit in your pocket with the other. We were quickly
assured that Osama's enormous family with its enormous wealth had broken
with him, as had the royal family of his native Saudi Arabia. The CIA
swore, hand on heart, that Osama had not worked for them in the war
against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Finally, the rumour that
Bush family had in any way profited by its long involvement with the bin
Laden family was -- what else? -- simply partisan bad taste.
But Bush Jr's involvement goes
back at least to 1979 when his first failed attempt to become a player
in the big Texas oil league brought him together with one James Bath of
Houston, a family friend, who have Bush Jr. $50,000 for a 5 per cent
stake in Bush's firm Arbusto Energy. At this time, according to Wayne
Madsen (In
These Times -- Institute for Public Affairs No. 25 [11]),
Bath was `the sole US business representative for Salem bin Laden, head
of the family and a brother (one of 17) to Osama bin Laden . . . In a
statement issued shortly after the 11 September attacks, the White House
vehemently denied the connection, insisting that Bath invested his own
money, not Salem bin Laden's, in Arbusto. In conflicting statements,
Bush at first denied ever knowing Bath, then acknowledged his stake in
Arbusto and that he was aware Bath represented Saudi interests . . .
after several reincarnations, Arbusto emerged in 1986 as Harken Energy
Corporation.'[12]
Behind the Junior Bush is the
senior Bush, gainfully employed by the Carlyle Group [13]
which has ownership in at least 164 companies worldwide, inspiring
admiration in that staunch friend to the wealthy, the Wall Street
Journal, which noted, as early as 27 September 2001, `If the US
boosts defence spending in its quest to stop Osama bin Laden's alleged
terrorist activities, there may be one unexpected beneficiary: bin
Laden's family . . . is an investor in a fund established by Carlyle
Group, a well-connected Washington merchant bank specialising in buyouts
of defence and aerospace companies . . . Osama is one of more than 50
children of Mohammed bin Laden, who built the family's $5 billion
business.'
But Bush pere et fils,
in pursuit of wealth and office, are beyond shame or, one cannot help
but think, good sense. There is a suggestion that they are blocking
investigation of the bin Laden connection with terrorism.
Agent France
Press reported on 4 November 2001 [14]:
`FBI agents probing relatives of Saudi-born terror suspect Osama . . .
were told to back off soon after George W. Bush became president . . .'
According to
BBC
TV's Newsnight (6 Nov 2001) [15],
`. . . just days after the hijackers took off from Boston aiming for the
Twin Towers, a special charter flight out of the same airport whisked 11
members of Osama's family off to Saudi Arabia. That did not concern the
White House, whose official line is that the bin Ladens are above
suspicion.'
`Above the Law' (Green Press, 14 February 2002) [16]
sums up: `We had what looked like the biggest failure of the
intelligence community since Pearl Harbor but what we are learning now
is it wasn't a failure, it was a directive.' True? False? Bush Jr will
be under oath during the impeachment interrogation. Will we hear `What
is a directive? What is is?'
Although the US had, for some
years, fingered Osama as a mastermind terrorist, no serious attempt had
been made pre-9/11 to `bring him to justice dead or alive, innocent or
guilty', as Texan law of the jungle requires. Clinton's plan to act was
given to Condeleezza Rice by Sandy Berger, you will recall, but she says
she does not.
As far back as March 1996 when
Osama was in Sudan, Major General Elfatih Erwa, Sudanese Minister for
Defence, offered to extradite him. According to the Washington Post
(3 October 2001), `Erwa said he would happily keep close watch on bin
Laden for the United States. But if that would not suffice, the
government was prepared to place him in custody and hand him over . . .
[US officials] said, "just ask him to leave the country. Just don't let
him go to Somalia", where he had once been given credit for the
successful al-Qaeda attack on American forces that in '93 that killed 18
Rangers.' Erwa said in an interview, `We said he will go to Afghanistan,
and they [US officials] said, "Let him."'
In 1996 Sudan expelled Osama
and 3,000 of his associates. Two years later the Clinton administration,
in the great American tradition of never having to say thank you for
Sudan's offer to hand over Osama, proceeded to missile-attack Sudan's
al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory on the grounds that Sudan was harboring
bin Laden terrorists who were making chemical and biological weapons
when the factory was simply making vaccines for the UN.
Four years later, John O'Neill,
a much admired FBI agent,
complained in the Irish Times [17]
a month before the attacks, `The US State Department -- and behind it
the oil lobby who make up President Bush's entourage -- blocked attempts
to prove bin Laden's guilt. The US ambassador to Yemen forbade O'Neill
(and his FBI team) . . . from entering Yemen in August 2001. O'Neill
resigned in frustration and took on a new job as head of security at the
World Trade Centre. He died in the 11 September attack.' Obviously,
Osama has enjoyed bipartisan American support since his enlistment in
the CIA's war to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. But by 9/11 there
was no Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, indeed there was no Soviet
Union.
A world made safe for peace
and pipelines
I watched Bush and Cheney on
CNN when the Axis of Evil speech was given and the `long war'
proclaimed. Iraq, Iran and North Korea were fingered as enemies to be
clobbered because they might or might not be harbouring terrorists who
might or might not destroy us in the night. So we must strike first
whenever it pleases us. Thus, we declared `war on terrorism' -- an
abstract noun which cannot be a war at all as you need a country for
that. Of course, there was innocent Afghanistan, which was levelled from
a great height, but then what's collateral damage -- like an entire
country -- when you're targeting the personification of all evil
according to Time and the New York Times and the networks?
As it proved, the conquest of
Afghanistan had nothing to do with Osama. He was simply a pretext for
replacing the Taliban with a relatively stable government that would
allow Union Oil of California to lay its pipeline for the profit of,
among others, the Cheney-Bush junta.
Background? All right. The
headquarters of Unocal are, as might be expected, in Texas. In December
1997, Taliban representatives were invited to Sugarland, Texas.[18]
At that time, Unocal had already begun training Afghan men in pipeline
construction, with US government approval.
BBC
News, (4 December 1997) [19]:
`A spokesman for the company Unocal said the Taliban were expected to
spend several days at the company's [Texas] headquarters . . . a BBC
regional correspondent says the proposal to build a pipeline across
Afghanistan is part of an international scramble to profit from
developing the rich energy resources of the Caspian Sea.' The
Inter Press
Service (IPS) reported [20]:
`some Western businesses are warming up to the Taliban despite the
movement's institutionalisation of terror, massacres, abductions and
impoverishment.' CNN (6 October 1996): `The United States wants
good ties [with the Taliban] but can't openly seek them while women are
being oppressed.'
The Taliban, rather better
organised than rumoured, hired for PR one Leila Helms, a niece of
Richard Helms, former director of the CIA. In October 1996, the
Frankfurter Rundschau reported that Unocal `has been given the
go-ahead from the new holders of power in Kabul to build a pipeline from
Turkmenistan via Afghanistan to Pakistan . . .' This was a real coup for
Unocal as well as other candidates for pipelines, including
Condoleezza's old employer Chevron. Although the Taliban was already
notorious for its imaginative crimes against the human race, the Wall
Street Journal, scenting big bucks, fearlessly announced: `Like them
or not, the Taliban are the players most capable of achieving peace in
Afghanistan at this moment in history.' The New York Times (26
May 1997) leapt aboard the pipeline juggernaut. `The Clinton
administration has taken the view that a Taliban victory would act as
counterweight to Iran . . . and would offer the possibility of new trade
routes that could weaken Russian and Iranian influence in the region.'
But by 1999, it was clear that
the Taliban could not provide the security we would need to protect our
fragile pipelines. The arrival of Osama as warrior for Allah on the
scene refocused, as it were, the bidding. New alliances were now being
made. The Bush administration soon buys the idea of an invasion of
Afghanistan, Frederick Starr, head of the Central Asia Institute at
Johns Hopkins University, wrote in
the Washington Post (19 December 2000) [21]:
`The US has quietly begun to align itself with those in the Russian
government calling for military action against Afghanistan and has toyed
with the idea of a new raid to wipe out Osama bin Laden.'
Although with much fanfare we
went forth to wreak our vengeance on the crazed sadistic religious
zealot who slaughtered 3,000 American citizens, once that `war' was
under way,
Osama was dropped as irrelevant [22]
and so we are back to the Unocal pipeline, now a go-project. In the
light of what we know today, it is unlikely that the junta was ever
going to capture Osama alive: he has tales to tell. One of Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's best numbers now is: `Where is he?
Somewhere? Here? There? Somewhere? Who knows?' And we get his best
twinkle. He must also be delighted -- and amazed -- that the media have
bought the absurd story that Osama, if alive, would still be in
Afghanistan, underground, waiting to be flushed out instead of in a
comfortable mansion in Osama-loving Jakarta, 2,000 miles to the East and
easily accessible by Flying Carpet One.
Many commentators of a certain
age have noted how Hitlerian our junta sounds as it threatens first one
country for harbouring terrorists and then another. It is true that
Hitler liked to pretend to be the injured -- or threatened -- party
before he struck. But he had many great predecessors not least Imperial
Rome. Stephen Gowan's War in Afghanistan: A $28 Billion Racket
quotes Joseph Schumpeter who, `in 1919, described ancient Rome in a way
that sounds eerily like the United States in 2001: "There was no corner
of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger
or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those
of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be
invented . . . The fight was always invested with an aura of legality.
Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbours."' We have only
outdone the Romans in turning metaphors such as the war on terrorism, or
poverty, or Aids into actual wars on targets we appear, often, to pick
at random in order to maintain turbulence in foreign lands.
As of 1 August 2002, trial
balloons were going up all over Washington DC to get world opinion used
to the idea that `Bush of Afghanistan' had gained a title as mighty as
his father's `Bush of the Persian Gulf' and Junior was now eager to add
Iraq-Babylon to his diadem. These various balloons fell upon Europe and
the Arab world like so many lead weights. But something new has been
added since the classic Roman Hitlerian mantra, `they are threatening
us, we must attack first'. Now everything is more of less out in the
open.
The International Herald
Tribune wrote in August 2002: `The leaks began in earnest on 5 July,
when the New York Times described a tentative Pentagon plan that
it said called for an invasion by a US force of up to 250,000 that would
attack Iraq from the north, south and west.' On 10 July, the Times
said that Jordan might be used as a base for the invasion. The
Washington Post reported, 28 July, that "many senior US military
officers contend that Saddam Hussein poses no immediate threat . . ."'
And the status quo should be maintained. Incidentally, this is
the sort of debate that the founding fathers intended the Congress, not
military bureaucrats, to conduct in the name of we the people. But that
sort of debate has, for a long time, been denied us.
One refreshing note is now
being struck in a fashion unthinkable in imperial Rome: the cheerful
admission that we habitually resort to provocation. The Tribune
continues: `Donald Rumsfeld has threatened to jail any one found to have
been behind the leaks. But a retired army general, Fred Woerner, tends
to see a method behind the leaks. "We may already be executing a plan,"
he said recently. "Are we involved in a preliminary psychological
dimension of causing Iraq to do something to justify a US attack or make
concessions? Somebody knows."' That is plain.
Elsewhere in this interesting
edition of the Herald Tribune wise
William Pfaff writes [23]: `A
second Washington debate is whether to make an unprovoked attack on Iran
to destroy a nuclear power reactor being built with Russian assistance,
under inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, within the
terms of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty of which Iran is a
signatory . . . No other government would support such an action, other
than Israel's (which) would do so not because it expected to be attacked
by Iran but because it, not unjustifiably, opposes any nuclear capacity
in the hands of any Islamic government.'
Suspect states and the
tom-toms of revenge
`Of all the enemies to public
liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it compromises
and develops the germ of every other. As the parent of armies, war
encourages debts and taxes, the known instruments for bringing the many
under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of
the executive is extended . . . and all the means of seducing the minds,
are added to those of subduing the force, of the people . . .' Thus,
James Madison warned us [24]
at the dawn of our republic.
Post 9/11, thanks to the
`domination of the few', Congress and the media are silent while the
executive, through propaganda and skewed polls, seduces the public mind
as hitherto unthinkable centers of power like Homeland Defence (a new
Cabinet post to be placed on top of the Defence Department) are being
constructed and 4 per cent of the country has recently been invited to
join TIPS, a civilian spy system to report on anyone who looks
suspicious or . . . who objects to what the executive is doing at home
or abroad?
Although every nation knows how
-- if it has the means and the will -- to protect itself from thugs of
the sort that brought us 9/11, war is not an option. Wars are for
nations not root-less gangs. You put a price on their heads and hunt
them down. In recent years, Italy has been doing that with the Sicilian
Mafia; and no one has yet suggested bombing Palermo.
But the Cheney-Bush junta wants
a war in order to dominate Afghanistan, build a pipeline, gain control
of the oil of Eurasia's Stans for their business associates as well as
to do as much damage to Iraq and Iran on the grounds that one day those
evil countries may carpet our fields of amber grain with anthrax or
something.
The media, never much good at
analysis, are more and more breathless and incoherent. On CNN,
even the stolid Jim Clancy started to hyperventilate when an Indian
academic tried to explain how Iraq was once our ally and `friend' in its
war against our Satanic enemy Iran.[25]
`None of that conspiracy stuff,' snuffed Clancy. Apparently, `conspiracy
stuff' is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.
As of August, at least among
economists, a consensus was growing that, considering our vast national
debt (we borrow $2 billion a day to keep the government going) and a tax
base seriously reduced by the junta in order to benefit the 1 per cent
who own most of the national wealth, there is no way that we could ever
find the billions needed to destroy Iraq in `a long war' or even a short
one, with most of Europe lined up against us. Germany and Japan paid for
the Gulf War, reluctantly -- with Japan, at the last moment, irritably
quarrelling over the exchange rate at the time of the contract. Now
Germany's Schroder has said no. Japan is mute.
But the tom-toms keep beating
revenge; and the fact that most of the world is opposed to our war seems
only to bring hectic roses to the cheeks of the Bush administration
(Bush Snr of the Carlyle Group,[13] Bush Jnr
formerly of Harken,[12] Cheney, formerly of
Halliburton,[26] Rice, formerly of
Chevron,[27] Rumsfeld, formerly of
Occidental). If ever an administration should recuse itself in matters
dealing with energy, it is the current junta. But this is unlike any
administration in our history. Their hearts are plainly elsewhere,
making money, far from our mock Roman temples, while we, alas, are left
only with their heads, dreaming of war, preferably against weak
peripheral states.
Mohammed Heikal is a brilliant
Egyptian journalist-observer, and sometime Foreign Minister.
On 10 October
2001, he said to the Guardian [28]:
`Bin Laden does not have the capabilities for an operation of this
magnitude. When I hear Bush talking about al-Qaeda as if it were Nazi
Germany or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, I laugh because I
know what is there. Bin Laden has been under surveillance for years:
every telephone call was monitored and al-Qaeda has been penetrated by
US intelligence, Pakistani intelligence, Saudi intelligence, Egyptian
intelligence. They could not have kept secret an operation that required
such a degree of organisation and sophistication.'
The former president of
Germany's domestic intelligence service, Eckehardt Werthebach (American
Free Press, 4 December 2001 [29])
spells it out. The 9/11 attacks required `years of planning' while their
scale indicates that they were a product of `state-organised actions'.
There it is. Perhaps, after all, Bush Jnr was right to call it a war.
But which state attacked us?
Will the suspects please line
up. Saudi Arabia? `No, no. Why we are paying you $50 million a year for
training the royal bodyguard on our own holy if arid soil. True the
kingdom contains many wealthy well-educated enemies but . . .' Bush Snr
and Jnr exchange a knowing look. Egypt? No way. Dead broke despite US
baksheesh. Syria? No funds. Iran? Too proud to bother with a parvenu
state like the US. Israel? Sharon is capable of anything. But he lacks
the guts and the grace of the true Kamikaze. Anyway, Sharon was not in
charge when this operation began with the planting of `sleepers' around
the US flight schools 5 or 6 years ago.
The United States? Elements of
corporate America would undeniably prosper from a `massive external
attack' that would make it possible for us to go to war whenever the
President sees fit while suspending civil liberties. (The 342 pages of
the USA Patriot
Act [30] were plainly prepared
before 9/11.) Bush Snr and Jnr are giggling now. Why? Because Clinton
was president back then. As the former president leaves the line of
suspects, he says, more in anger than in sorrow: `When we left the White
House we had a plan for an all-out war on al-Qaeda. We turned it over to
this administration and they did nothing. Why?' Biting his lip, he goes.
The Bushes no longer giggle. Pakistan breaks down: `I did it! I confess!
I couldn't help myself. Save me. I am an evil-doer!'
Apparently, Pakistan did do it
-- or some of it. We must now go back to 1979 when `the largest covert
operation in the history of the CIA' was launched in response to the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Central Asia specialist Ahmed Rashid
wrote (Foreign
Affairs, November-December 1999 [31]):
`With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan's ISI (Inter
Services Intelligence) who wanted to turn the Afghan jihad into a global
war, waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some 35,000
Muslim radicals, from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan's fight
between 1982 and '92 . . . more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals
were directly influenced by the Afghanistan jihad.' The CIA covertly
trained and sponsored these warriors.
In March 1985, President Reagan
issued National Security Decision Directive 166, increasing military aid
while CIA specialists met with the ISI counterparts near Rawalpindi,
Pakistan.
Jane's Defence Weekly (14 September 2001) [32]
gives the best overview: `The trainers were mainly from Pakistan's ISI
agency who learnt their craft from American Green Beret commandos and
Navy Seals in various US training establishments.' This explains the
reluctance of the administration to explain why so many unqualified
persons, over so long a time, got visas to visit our hospitable shores.
While in Pakistan, `mass training of Afghan [zealots] was subsequently
conducted by the Pakistan army under the supervision of the elite
Special Services . . . In 1988, with US knowledge, bin Laden created
al-Qaeda (The Base); a conglomerate of quasi-independent Islamic
terrorist cells spread across 26 or so countries. Washington turned a
blind eye to al-Qaeda.'
When Mohamed Atta's plane
struck the World Trade Centre's North Tower, George W. Bush and the
child at the Florida elementary school were discussing her goat. By
coincidence, our word `tragedy' comes from the Greek: for `goat'
tragos plus oide for `song'. `Goat-song'. It is highly
suitable that this lament, sung in ancient satyr plays, should have been
heard again at the exact moment when we were struck by fire from heaven,
and a tragedy whose end is nowhere in sight began for us.
Copyright © Gore Vidal 2002
Reprinted for Fair Use Only.