Those who used civilian airliners to crash into tall buildings without any thought for the pain they would cause to people who had done them no harm hardly deserve to be called human beings. They had warped minds and stones where their hearts should have been. To serve their agenda they were prepared to murder women and children. That said, if their aim was to change our world forever, then they have succeeded.
Sept. 11, 2001 marked the beginning of an age of death and destruction, torture, bigotry, racism, control and surveillance. While empathizing with the trauma experienced by most Americans when their soil was attacked, it’s time to say it like it is. The US government played right into the terrorists’ hands. We are still feeling the effects of their ill-thought-out response today and will continue to do so for many years, if not decades, to come.
America’s post-9/11 strategies have not only achieved nothing of substance, they have triggered conflicts, exacerbated existing problems, divided nations, curtailed civil liberties and instilled fear into the lives of ordinary people. Worse, as a direct result of the death of 3,000 on Sept. 11, over a million now lie in their graves or have been incinerated; people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the attack and probably had never even heard of the World Trade Center.
As horrified as I was to witness the twin-towers implode on my screen, I was sickened to hear George W. Bush’s cowboy rhetoric that smacked of revenge more than common sense. Despite his promise, he never did succeed in smoking Osama Bin Laden out of his cave but he did unleash his bombs on an impoverished country that had no means of defending itself.
Today, the war in Afghanistan still rages and according to a new report by the International Council on Security and Development some 80 percent of Afghanistan has a permanent Taleban presence, while there is “substantial Taleban activity” throughout 97 percent of the country. Moreover, the opium poppies are blooming as never before to fund the Taleban insurgency whereas when they were in power they eradicated most of the crop. What kind of a success story is this?
Not content with wreaking havoc in Afghanistan, the Bush administration then worked hard to link Saddam Hussein with Al-Qaeda, even though every expert on earth knew that the secularist Iraqi government detested Bin Laden and his ilk.
Unable to make that nonsense stick, together with Britain’s Tony Blair, they concocted a fairy story about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction that was not supported by the UN nuclear watchdog the IAEA, which unsuccessfully asked for more time to give Baghdad a clean bill of health. Today’s Iraq may be free of dictatorship but it is certainly not free of terrorism, violence and foreign occupation.
Yes, foreign occupation. As the Washington Post recently exposed, the US may be withdrawing soldiers but these are being speedily replaced by so-called “contractors.” Believe it or not, a Senate committee has just approved $128 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at a time when the economy is still in the red.
US attitudes toward 9/11 were so crude that they tarred all Muslims with the same brush. In the aftermath, thousands of Muslims within America were rounded up, incarcerated and interrogated without recourse to a lawyer. Many more were discriminated against, insulted, attacked and thrown off planes merely because they wore a T-shirt embellished with Arabic or were seen praying before takeoff. All of a sudden, the world’s 1.3 billion law-abiding Muslims were being asked to apologize for or dissociate themselves from deeds for which they were not responsible.
Indeed, few Muslims even knew of the name Osama Bin Laden before Bush thrust Al-Qaeda into the international spotlight. Were all Christians blamed for Hitler’s massacre of millions? Of course not!
It’s ironic but the US government brought this motley crew of rogue “Afghan Arabs” who formerly fought the Soviets, out of the shadows, when it unwittingly became its recruiters, as well as spawning tens — if not more — of copycat groups.
As I’ve been stressing in my columns on this topic since day one — and received a lot of flack for so doing in the early days — it could have and should have been done differently. As inherently evil as the 19 hijackers certainly were, they were not representing a particular nation and, thus, should have been treated as criminals in the same way the 2005 London bombers were. In any case, none of the 9/11 hijackers were Afghans or Iraqis. In retrospect, it seems incredible just how easily people were duped into supporting those “New American Century” neoconservative wars waged under the banner of 9/11.
If getting the tall man with the beard “Dead or Alive”, was the Bush administration’s true aim, then the most effective way to have done that would have been, firstly, to cooperate with other countries on intelligence instead of alienating them and squandering so much good will.
Secondly, the US could have infiltrated operatives into the organization or worked behind the scenes with neighboring countries toward nabbing him should he attempt to cross borders. Yes, it’s true that this approach wouldn’t have been so spectacular and it would, no doubt, have taken time. However, there is a sporting chance that it might have paid off and, most importantly, avoided squandering innocent lives and treasure.
Using such covert methods was how the UK recently managed to convict three men for plotting to use liquid explosives on trans-Atlantic airliners. If the UK had done a song and dance in the way that Bush did, those men would have long fled.
Alternatively, even if 9/11 was used as a pretext to launch wars that were billed as “preemptive” to further a long-held neoconservative agenda to ensure Washington’s global dominance, the strategy has failed.
The New American Century is officially dead and buried. As things have turned out, America hasn’t benefited from its reckless adventurism. On the contrary, billions are missing from its coffers, thousands of its finest young men are gone forever, anti-Americanism has increased and its reputation for human rights and civil liberties has been trashed. Bush is maintaining a very low profile nowadays. I wonder why!
