As oil streams into the Gulf, unemployment continues virtually unabated, and debate rages over Arizona’s border sovereignty, our mindfulness of the ongoing war on terror lies just within the collective subconscious; our vigilance susceptible to the occasional reminder, yet thus far failing to trump the demands of our other immediate crises. Writing in The Wall Street Journal last week, Peggy Noonan lamented a May report suggesting the Justice Department’s lack of preparedness for a terror attack involving biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. A New York resident, Ms. Noonan wrote, “No one wants to think about it. I don’t want to think about it. But you have to make plans…We’ve had enough time, nine years since our unforgettable reminder…”
For residents of New York City, one would think national security issues would provide the great animator of political discourse, the central issue of post-9/11 ideology. Throwing out the first pitch of a game in the 2001 World Series, then-President Bush received a thunderous ovation from nearly 60,000 fans at Yankee Stadium in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Few who witnessed the event had ever experienced anything like it, a stirring confluence of patriotism and politics conquering erstwhile partisan leanings. Division over party label seemed petty and anachronistic, a left behind artifact of the suddenly long ago year 2000.
That New York’s electoral votes could be put in play by a President George W. Bush would have appeared unthinkable just months before September 11th, yet the immediacy of the war on terror realigned our political priorities. Such a time truly feels so long ago, as New Yorkers emphatically ceased to debate which party offers the superior approach to these existential threats. The Iraq war allowed the liberal establishment a foothold, while Karl Rove’s base-centric, 50 percent-plus-one reelection strategy proved prohibitive among coastal moderates. The terrorism issue has receded, the successful prevention of subsequent attacks relaxing our apprehension.
The inspector general’s indictment of our lack of preparedness should resuscitate concerns over what federal bureaucracies have truly learned in the years following September 11th, and one can only hope that its warnings are heard amidst our present chorus of crises. In the novel Falling Man, Don DeLillo’s terse fictional examination of 9/11, DeLillo writes, “These are the days after. Everything now is measured by after.” As these days have continued to accumulate, the greatest of fears is that our efforts are failing to measure up.
TerryF98 // Jun 19, 2010 at 10:52 am
So FEAR,FEAR,FEAR is no longer working as an electoral platform.
I guess the Republicans will have to find a new mantra. Wait I think they have it.
“It’s all about the brown people”
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tommybones // Jun 19, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Um… we never actually learned any lessons from 9/11. You see, instead we continue to think They Hate Us For Our Freedoms (TM). This absurdly childish reasoning has been the backbone of our War On Terror (TM).
The real reasons? Much more complex, though easy enough to comprehend if one puts in the effort. What handicaps this potential to comprehend is the unfortunate ingrained idea that brown people from “over there” are nothing more than mindless, inhuman savages. The reality is, of course, much more nuanced.
Sociologists have often found that people’s attitudes are molded by experience. The Corey Chambliss’s of the world refuse to acknowledge the possibility that young brown people aren’t born hating the U.S. or our “freedoms.” That hatred comes from a lifetime of feeling Uncle Sam’s militaristic jackboot on the backs of their necks. Take Iran, as a perfect example:
In order to fully understand why our nation is beating the drums of war with Iran, we need to begin with our relationship with Iran since the end of WWII.
In 1953, the CIA backed a military coup (with help from the British Secret Service) that deposed the democratically elected Iranian parliament, which resulted in the installation of a brutal dictator (and CIA puppet) who repressed the Iranian population while catering to the United States multi-national corporations for the better part of 25 years. It need not be mentioned how we would react if another country backed a coup that overthrew our own democracy, forcing us to live under a ruthless dictator for several generations, while systematically stealing our precious resources. In any case, the years of repression led to a rise in Islamic fundamentalism. Religious extremism relies on anger and hopelessness as its greatest recruitment tool, and the decades of U.S.-supported repression took its toll on the Iranian people. The Islamic revolution in 1979 removed the United States puppet and resulted in the much talked about hostage crisis. Once again, looking in context at the egregious U.S. meddling in Iran, can we really complain about the taking of our embassy in Tehran? Especially when one considers the fact that the President Carter, in the midst of the uprising, sent a General to the embassy in Tehran to help facilitate yet another military coup, to re-install the Shah. I’m not condoning the hostage taking, but merely putting into correct context.
Anyway, the new Iranian government was deemed a United States enemy, with a stated goal of “regime change” happening almost instantaneously. We then backed Saddam Hussein with military supplies and know-how, massive financial “grants” and logistical support in his illegal invasion of Iran a few years later. Close to a half million Iranians died in the war with Iraq, in large part due to the U.S. support. It need not be mentioned how we would feel if another country supported a massive illegal invasion of our homeland, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dead Americans.
As if backing the illegal Iraq invasion wasn’t enough, the United States added insult to injury by escalating the conflict and therefore the massive death count by playing both sides of the war through the illegal selling of arms to Iran during what came to be known as the Iran/Contra scandal. The funds acquired from the illegal arms sales to Iran were used to pay for yet another illegal endeavor; the proxy war against the peasants in Nicaragua, who were guilty in the eyes of the Reagan administration of having the audacity to want to control their own natural resources, instead of merely catering to U.S. multi-national corporations, as is the correct “order of things.” This war resulted in the United States being condemned as a terrorist State by the United Nations.
In 1988, the United States shot down an Iranian commercial airliner, killing all 290 passengers. Vice President George H.W. Bush later stated at a news conference that he “will never apologize for the United States of America—I don’t care what the facts are.” Need we articulate what the reaction of the American public would be had the reverse happened to us?
After the attacks on September 11th, 2001, the Iranian government proved to be a great ally to the United States in its attempts to bring al Qaeda to justice. They volunteered intelligence information as to the wherabouts of al Qaeda operatives, as well as turned over captured al Qaeda prisoners to U.S. officials for questioning. The Iranian public took to the streets in vast numbers in solidarity with the American people.
Later, George W. Bush thanked the Iranian government after they helped the U.S. topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan by infamously labeling them part of an “axis of evil,” along with Iraq and North Korea. This absurd charge ignored the fact that those three nations had little contact with one another and what contact they did have, especially in the case of Iran and Iraq under Saddam, would not qualify as friendly and therefore could hardly be termed an “axis” of any kind. This double-cross created an enormous firestorm in Iran, as the hardliners used it as leverage against the moderate Iranian President, pointing out that they had always stated that you could not trust the United States government.
Nevertheless, in 2003, the moderate Khatami government in Iran offered to completely suspend nuclear enrichment as well as open all areas of disagreement with Washington to negotiations. This included all nuclear issues, the Israeli/Palestinian issues and support of Hezbollah. The only condition placed on such negotiations was a halt to the threats of attack by Washington and removal of Iran from the “axis of evil.” Not only does the Bush administration reject the offer, they didn’t even respond to it, and reprimanded the Swiss diplomat who brought the offer. One has to question the true motivations of an administration that rejects such a pragmatic offer with such blatant contempt.
Additionally, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the IAEA and 2005 Nobel Laureate, proposed putting all weapons-grade fissile material production under international control and supervision, while allowing any nation that wanted the materials for peaceful use to apply for it. The only nation to agree to the very practical idea was Iran. The only nation on earth. During the same IAEA meetings in Vienna, Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa, decreeing that the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons was forbidden under Islam. Furthermore, the EU made a deal with Iran (a country that hasn’t invaded another nation in over 250 years) to guarantee “security” (read: no U.S. invasion) in exchange for a halt in uranium production. Washington forced the EU to back out of the deal.
Where did this lead? Khatami, who took a huge risk in taking a diplomatic stance with Washington in the face of severe hardline opposition, was humiliated and the moderates lost the next election to Ahmadinejad. Unlike in our ally countries like the arch-repressive Saudi Arabia and the brutal despotism in Egypt, Iran actually holds elections, with limited but very real consequences. Hardline President Ahmadinejad won the election, and the nuclear power program then began in earnest.
Even with the election of a hardliner President, Iran continued its diplomatic overtures. In 2006, Iran’s supreme leader had agreed to abide by the tenets of the Arab peace initiative, also known as the “Saudi Plan,” which is a two-state solution that respects Israel’s right to exist as a free and sovereign nation within the pre-war 1967 borders. This news was, as is usually the case, largely ignored by the U.S. corporate media.
Ask Corey Chambliss when the history of U.S./Iranian tensions began and he’ll jump right to 1979. Why? Well, either he’s suffering from chronic delusion, or he allows himself to completely dismiss the prior 26 years because, well, brown people are savages, so we HAD to do those things, for their own good. The history of the world is littered with great superpowers colonizing the world based on this inherent National superiority.
It’s this ingrained racism which allows people like Chambliss to ignore Osama Bin Laden’s clearly stated reasons for targeting us. He’s brown, and Muslim, so there’s no point in even LISTENING to his words.
The U.S. helped “create” Osama Bin Laden during the latter part of the Carter administration and throughout the Reagan years, when they joined forces in fighting the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. The United States provided weapons, training and funds to Bin Laden and his Mujahideen, or “holy warriors.” The fact that Bin Laden was our friend and ally immediately dismantles the ludicrous idea that he is now merely against us because he “hates freedom.” He fought the Soviets because they were occupying and repressing Muslim lands, and the U.S. was more than happy to utilize these “holy warriors” in an effort, according President Carter’s National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, to “give the Soviet Union it’s own Vietnam.”
Bin Laden officially declared the United States an enemy during the first gulf war, when we used the Kuwait invasion as an excuse to place an enormous troop presence in Bin Laden’s homeland of Saudi Arabia, to protect the oil. Bin Laden has been remarkably consistent in his justifications for declaring a Jihad against the United States, all of which center on U.S. Middle Eastern foreign policy. He points to our continued support of the inhumane Israeli policies within the occupied territories. This support is one of the greatest beacons of terrorist recruitment, as Bin Laden himself pointed out in his October 7, 2001 videotaped statement: “… I swear to God that America will not live in peace before peace reigns in Palestine…” Interesting that Bin Laden’s quote clearly implies the possibility of a United States living in “peace,” while placing the blame on U.S. foreign policy. In addition to our support of Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian people, he points to the egregious U.S.-imposed sanctions in Iraq… “One million Iraqi children have thus far died although they did not do anything wrong,” as well as the stationing of troops and building of military bases in Saudi Arabia, “… and before all the army of infidels depart the land of Muhammad.” Notably, he has never once mentioned any objections to our “freedom,” “democracy” or “western values.” In fact, he very clearly responded to Bush’s charges of “hating freedom,” in another videotaped speech in 2003: “… unlike what Bush says – that we hate freedom – let him tell us why didn’t we attack Sweden, for example.”
What’s the real reason “they” hate us?
Former Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bowman wrote the following in the National Catholic Reporter (October 2, 1998):
“We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to people in Third World countries whose resources are coveted by our multinational corporations. That hatred we have sown has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism … Instead of sending our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs so we can have the oil under their sand, we should send them to rebuild their infrastructure, supply clean water, and feed starving children… in short, we should do good instead of evil. Who would try to stop us? Who would hate us? Who would want to bomb us? That is the truth … the American people need to hear.”
Ah yes, “whose resources are coveted by our multinational corporations.” Notice in today’s NY Times:
“World’s Mining Companies Covet Afghan Riches”
You think?
Meanwhile, we’ll continue to see the Chris Chambliss’s of the world lamenting about forgotten lessons they never learned in the first place.
drdredel // Jun 19, 2010 at 1:09 pm
@Tommybones,
I think it’s important not to conflate various reasons for why “they” hate “us”.
The world is big and the US has done a lot of fairly inexcusably bad things over the years in some of those places (your example of Iran is perfect), and then some somewhat more inexplicably bad things in others (our relationship to Afghanistan and Pakistan come to mind) and then of course there are oodles of perceived bad things that are in fact not bad at all (the export of Hollywood, for example).
There are lots of “them” and who the “us” is varies on the time of day and who you’re talking to. Sometimes “they” are all the Muslims, and sometimes “they” are just pockets of rabid fanatics and sometimes “they” are just reasonable people who feel that they’ve been shafted by our policies. For example, if I was a resident of Bhopal I’d be pretty incensed at the US and I would not need any religious impetus to be so (and I’ve 100% justified in my anger).
So, it is not entirely without merit to say “they hate us for our freedom” unless the implication is that this is the principal reason why they hate us… but it’s also very hard to make nuanced declarations espousing complex geopolitical realities in 10 syllables or less, which is how we like our facts.
The American public is (generally) incapable of dealing with ideas that require thought and discourse, so, if you’re lucky what you’re telling them either fits on a post card or doesn’t make any difference. If either of those are not true, then you have to brace yourself for frustration and failure.
drdredel // Jun 19, 2010 at 1:10 pm
correction I meant (“and then some somewhat more explicably bad things in others”)
tommybones // Jun 19, 2010 at 1:27 pm
“So, it is not entirely without merit to say “they hate us for our freedom” unless the implication is that this is the principal reason why they hate us”
But that is precisely the problem. There appears to be a large, vocal majority who chalks up our “enemies” in the “War On Terror” as simply “Hating Us For Our Freedoms.” When the President of the Nation gives that as his primary reason why they hate us, it tells you something with crystal clarity. In fact, I can not think of Bush asserting they hate us for any other reason at all. And it’s because of this ridiculous, childish analysis, that we are stuck with useless analysis like the above article.
rbottoms // Jun 19, 2010 at 2:48 pm
So basically, George Bush sat on his hands for nearly seven years and naturally it’s Obama’s fault he hasn’t made this problem disappear in 15 months.
Just where did all those billions we spent go?
Nanotek // Jun 19, 2010 at 5:45 pm
tommybones, thanks for that perspective.
tommybones // Jun 19, 2010 at 8:01 pm
You’re welcome. I more quote before I go:
“A reaction might take place as a result of the US government’s hitting Muslim civilians and executing more than 600,000 Muslim children in Iraq by preventing food and medicine from reaching them. So, the US is responsible for any reaction, because it extended its war against troops to [a war against] civilians.” Osama Bin Laden on CNN, 1997
What was this in reference to?
On May 11, 1996 Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State in the Clinton administration was asked by 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl about the reported 500,000+ Iraqi children who died in Iraq as a direct result of U.S. imposed sanctions. Her reply stunned many, “I think this is a very hard choice, but we think the price was worth it.”
The history of the sanctions (rarely, if ever discussed in mainstream media) begins with the strategic bombings of critical infrastructure within Iraq during the 1st Gulf War. The U.S. dropped over 90,000 tons of bombs, intentionally destroying civilian infrastructure, including 18 of 20 electricity-generating plants and the water-pumping and sanitation systems. The bombings themselves were a direct violation of the Geneva Convention against the specific targeting of infrastructure “indispensable to the survival of the civilian population,” thus making them a war crime.
Recently released de-classified documents from the Defense Intelligence Agency revealed that the U.S. knew full well that Iraqi water needed purification with chlorine in order to avoid “epidemics of such diseases as cholera, hepatitis and typhoid.” Later documents revealed that the U.S.-imposed sanctions SPECIFICALLY embargoed the import of chlorine needed to purify the water systems. Additionally, the U.S. sanctions forbade the import of the parts needed to repair the damaged purification and sanitation systems.
The results of these actions are well documented. Colonel John A. Warner III wrote in Airpower Journal, “…as a result (of the destruction of these facilities), epidemics of gastroenteritis, cholera, and typhoid broke out, leading to perhaps 100,000 civilian deaths and doubling the infant mortality rate.” Anupama Rao Singh, the United Nations Children’s Fund Representative in Baghdad observed that food shortages were virtually unknown in Iraq prior to what the State department admitted were the “toughest, most comprehensive sanctions in history.” Richard Garfield’s universally accepted mortality studies put the number of Iraq children killed because of the sanctions at 350,000. The Lancet study, for the British Medical Society, estimated it at 550,000. Denis Halliday, the U.N. coordinator in Iraq called the sanctions, “a deliberate policy to destroy the people of Iraq,” calling their implementation “genocide.” His resignation in 1998 in protest received little if any coverage by the U.S. corporate media.
The examples could go on for quite a while. If the Corey Chambliss’s of the world want to learn a lesson from 9/11, they need to research what caused 9/11. Changing our aggressive, imperialistic foreign policy would emasculate the fringe Islamic fundamentalists in the region, who pray on anti-American resentment and hopelessness as their biggest recruitment tool.
This would ultimately reduce anti-western terrorism to the level of a police matter, as opposed to a military matter.
Additionally, the trillions of dollars earmarked for “defense” (a euphemism for tax-subsidized corporate war profiteering) could be used to provide universal health care & free college educations to all U.S. citizens, lower the national debt, provide grants for medical and scientific research and development, provide much-needed jobs and infrastructure improvements, and so on. It’s a fiscally conservative concept. The problem is, neo-cons are only fiscally conservative when it comes to government spending on the public good, not waging war, where the sky is the limit and “deficits don’t matter.”
In any case, it’s a better plan than the usual imperialist warmongering strategy, which led directly to the 9/11 attacks and has killed thousands of American soldiers as well as hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens.
Rabiner // Jun 19, 2010 at 8:26 pm
rbottoms:
“So basically, George Bush sat on his hands for nearly seven years and naturally it’s Obama’s fault he hasn’t made this problem disappear in 15 months.”
This basically is my feeling on the subject when bringing it to politics. What was going on for 7 years and after spending billions and probably trillions on terrorism related costs that this is still not a fixed issue?
And I really don’t find Peggy Noonan’s ideas all that impressive but rather how she talks makes her appear more thoughtful than she really is.
drdredel // Jun 20, 2010 at 1:14 am
@tommybones
Nothing knocks the patriot air out of one’s lungs like the last thing you posted.
I’m curious, since this was a Clintonian policy, shouldn’t the various right wing chest pounders on this site come yelling for bringing him up on war crimes charges?
Would you be so kind as to site where you copied this information from? I’m curious what your sources are. If this is exactly as you present it, it’s hard to see how it can be justified. Albright’s statement that “it was worth it” is doubly confusing since, as the victims of a dictatorship, the civilians could not affect any change, regardless of how crippling we would make life for them (not that this is a morally defensible manner of attack, but even from a purely strategic stance, it makes absolutely no sense).
tommybones // Jun 20, 2010 at 8:11 am
The sourcing would be tough, as it was taken from numerous books I researched, not web pages, if you can believe it or not. Those books were highly sourced themselves… you get the idea.
All that I wrote came simply from my own curiosity. I wanted to know the truth behind the official government positions, so I did the research and wrote a 50+ page report, pretty much for myself, so I could understand what really happened and why. Over the years, I’ve made slight adjustments based on new information, which clarified things a bit more. I completely stand by the facts presented.
tommybones // Jun 20, 2010 at 8:16 am
Though within the text itself, I’ve mentioned several sources.
CAPryde // Jun 20, 2010 at 11:58 pm
Maybe this is a generational thing, but I get really tired of all of this safety talk. At some point, what the world needs is not one more &*^&%*& metal detector, or bomb sniffer, or scanning machine, or special police unit, or domestic surveillance, or whatever. The world is a dangerous place, people. Crawl out from under your beds.
Osama’s greatest triumph wasn’t taking down some skyscrapers. It was making the citizens of one of the proudest nations on Earth cower in fear and regard one another with suspicion for the better part, now, of a decade, and it makes me sad.
medinnus // Jun 21, 2010 at 10:34 am
“Osama’s greatest triumph wasn’t taking down some skyscrapers. It was making the citizens of one of the proudest nations on Earth cower in fear and regard one another with suspicion for the better part, now, of a decade, and it makes me sad.”
Amen.
When we pass laws to that allow the government to rape what we used to regard as inalienable rights and protections, to allow us to “legally” torture, hold people indefinitely without charge, et cetera ad nauseaum – in short, when they manage to convince us to take away what makes us fundamentally different and (IMO) superior to any other nation in the history of our planet, they have indeed won a great victory.
“Those who sacrifice liberty to obtain temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety”
– Ben Franklin
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