3 years on

[Cheeta]

I have been thinking about 9/11 and the aftermath. I have come to the
conclusion that OBL is the real winner, and the scaremonger politicians. My
Judith is somewhat upset; she says any death is bad. 3000 New-Yorkers dieing
in one disaster is bad. 3000 Congolese being slaughtered a day for several
months seem less important in our media. Or the people of Darfour and so
many other places. She is of course right. The US is founded on the
principle that every man is equal. So every African, every Arab, every
Indian, every Chinese is equal to every American or every European. In
reality 3000 New-Yorkers have a higher value, or 2 French journalists.

The Muslims are now the major world-wide scapegoat.

We have our own new anti-terrorist legislation like most Western countries
these days. Are we any safer? I doubt it. Clever terrorists take their time
to carefully prepare looking for maximum impact at the smallest (monetary)
cost. Unless we pay for a very big police force and put one uniform next to
every suit and completely do away with personal freedom nobody can guarantee
it. And unless we put a halt on any from of uncontrolled travel and ask our
population to immediately report any unknown person in their neighbourhood.
TIPS anyone? So John Doe lost too.

Afghanistan looked like it won some after the Taliban were removed from
power. That was until Iraq came into focus and the leftovers from UN and
NATO were send to Kabul. So they lost too.

The Iraqi? Some lost like Saddam's cronies. Some won, like Chalabi and
Haliburton, but nowhere near enough. The country lost over 10.000 people -
probably more than if Saddam would have been left in power -, its precarious
infrastructure was even more obliterated, it risks civil war, it is still an
occupied country for years to come, but it is now sort of free to speak
their minds (not about everything of course, but the Iraqi can criticize the
government and the occupation - which is a start). On average, I think Iraq
lost too.

The Arab world? In general they lost. Big time. They all look suspicious
now.

World peace? Well, politically we have one small problem less in the
Middle-East, but have created an important problem between the tightest
Western allies. Transatlantic friendship is by and large gone. Ever since
the US started to behave like the imperium it intrinsically abhors,
anti-Americanism took root. Korea, Vietnam, Iran and the continuous stream
of conflicts and wars around the globe showed an America that often behaved
rude and inefficient in its rapports with foreign countries. They have had
some successes here and there. Ending the cold war is often quoted. I am
still not convinced Reagan did this single-handedly. Probably the implosion
of an impractical economic system had at least as much to do with it. But
let us say it was a major success for the US. Are there any other? None of
the conflicts after 1945 that turned into a war seem to have a happy ending.
More anti-Americanism all over the world and a massive increase of Euro-hate
across the pond (if this list and US media is anything to go by).

So who wins? Some of the consumers of the ever increasing security budgets.
Some politicians now use fear as their trademark. And people will vote for
them out of the fear the same politicians instigated in these people. US,
Australia, etc. Spain's former PM tried it but was caught with his pants
down.

OBL wins: he has achieved all of his goals. We spend money on security and
the military. Our societies are less secure. We are scared in masses and on
airplanes. He gets worldwide airtime if he just farts - GWB is no match. And
OBL is the big hero with the poor idiots, we ensured to call us now Satan.

So I disagree with my Judith. The WTC dead ARE more important than other
recent mass murders. Not because of who they were, but because their deaths
marked many changes and none for the better.

 

[Drunken Master]

9/11 was the equivalent of the "bomb-o-grams" sent to the Northern Vietnamese. War in the modern era is no longer carried out for territory or even strictly for ideological aims - it has become a rather crude form of communication. "Fuck you - I'm bigger."

On the topic of tragedy, it always astounds me the degree to which our understanding of what constitutes a tragedy and what doesn't is controled by, for lack of a better word, popularisation. It took years for the scale of the Stalinist terror - 10 million or so dead - to take hold in the public consciousness (mostly due to fervent and hypocritical anti-anti-communism on the left) compared with, say, the Holocaust. Of course, to take a balder example, everybody knows about the illegal sneak attack on Pearl Harbour, but nobody knows about Kissinger's bombing war in Cambodia, which killed thousands and paved the way for the Khmer Rouge.

We pay lip service to the idea of the equal value of every human life, but most of our political actions - and our consciousness of the value of those actions - belie this idea at every turn.

 

[xarir]

In the weeks immediately following Sept 11, 2001 there was a mountain of international goodwill not only towards the US, but against terrorism as a whole. This was the moment for the US President to step forward and truly change the world for the better. Instead, Mr. Bush and his administration let OBL win by doing everything he wanted them to do.

How sad.

It's up to the next President now to set things right. It won't be an easy task, but if the next President doesn't do it, then I fear OBL will have truly won for all time.

 

[jwmorrice]

I found this to be an interesting article on the subject of 9/11 and its aftermath.

jwm

Sun, September 12, 2004
Why West is losing
By Eric Margolis -- Contributing Foreign Editor

Three years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, America's politicians and media continue to gravely deceive the public about the so-called war on terrorism.

Now the definitive book on terrorism has appeared that should be mandatory reading for every thinking person. It's called Imperial Hubris: Why The West is Losing the War on Terror.

The cover simply identifies the author as "Anonymous," but he's already been widely identified in the American media as Michael Scheuer, a senior terrorism analyst for the CIA.

It is unprecedented that a serving CIA officer was allowed to publish a book, one that is clearly a dramatic rebuke to the neoconservatives who drove the U.S. into two wars.

Scheuer's work is a goldmine of information and brilliant analysis. It breaks taboos and sweeps away the clouds of lies about al-Qaida, Iraq and Afghanistan. He says U.S. leaders refuse to accept the obvious -- "we are fighting a worldwide Islamic insurgency -- not criminality or terrorism."

The U.S. has made only "a modest dent in enemy forces."

None of bin Laden's reasons for waging war on the U.S., writes Scheuer, "have anything to do with our freedom, liberty, and democracy (as President George Bush claims), but everything to do with U.S. policies and actions in the Muslim world," notably unlimited support for Israel's repression of the Palestinians and the destruction of Iraq.

"For cheap, easily accessible oil, Washington and the West have supported Muslim tyrannies (Osama) bin Laden and other Islamists seek to destroy," Scheuer writes. "The war has the potential to last beyond our children's lifetimes and be fought mostly on U.S. soil."

A coup for bin Laden

Bin Laden, argues Scheuer, is widely viewed by much of the Muslim world, infuriated by American actions in the Mideast, as neither a terrorist or madman but as a skilled warrior, the sole Muslim leader standing up to predatory western powers.

Ironically U.S. and British military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq "are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world," a prime bin Laden goal.

Bush's misbegotten invasion of Iraq was "icing on bin Laden's cake."

The threat today facing America "is the defensive jihad (holy struggle), an Islamic military reaction triggered by an attack by non-Muslims on the Islamic faith, on Muslims, on Muslim territory." Muslims are increasingly fighting back.

The Muslim world believes it is under total attack led by Bush -- a massive effort to crush all who oppose U.S. domination, destroy Islam's inherent political role, eliminate Muslim charities, impose western values on the Islamic world and maintain puppet rulers -- "spreading democracy" in Bush's lexicon. Terrorism is merely the tactics of the poor fighting the rich.

The ultimate taboo

"U.S. military operations in the Muslim world," he adds, "validate bin Laden's contention the U.S. is attacking Islam and supports any country willing to kill or persecute Muslims."

Scheuer, breaking the ultimate taboo, observes of Washington's "one-way alliance" with Israel that "Israelis have succeeded in lacing tight the ropes binding the American Gulliver to the ... Jewish state and its policies."

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are lost causes, Scheuer concludes. The U.S. is totally unable to create legitimate governments in either chaotic nation, only puppet regimes, supported by American bayonets.

If the U.S. stays, it will bleed endlessly; if it retreats, it faces political disaster.

Washington, he charges, has no strategy and is merely "winging it."

In one of his most acute insights, Scheuer explains the U.S. cannot, for all of its riches, buy its way to victory in Afghanistan or Iraq.

"Honour is still the currency of value in the Middle East, more so than goods and services."

Blood-links trump all other affiliations or loyalties.

Honour is why the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden to the U.S., a man they regarded as their guest and a war hero, and why he has still not been betrayed in spite of a $25-million US reward in a nation where the annual income is $147.

At least there is one person in Washington who understands the violence surrounding us -- and has the courage and patriotism to tell Americans the truth: Their own arrogance and ignorance are driving them into a no-win war against 1.3 billion Muslims.