Al Qaeda's actions on 9/11 2001 changed America's view of the world. After the terrorist attacks the Bush administration came to the conclusion that America as a whole was under attack from the Middle East and that the solution was to move that war away from home into the Muslim countries. But what if the US government, first the Bush administration and now the Obama administration, are wrong and the incredibly successful Al Qaeda attacks of 9/11 were not the beginning of a war on America or the West but a freak event?
In 2005 Safe Democracy, my foundation co- organized the largest conference ever put on the subject of terrorism. The conference was attended by many heads of state and 1300 experts from the Middle East and the rest of the world. One of the highlights of the conference was the decision of Kofi Annan to choose this event to announce the UN Principles for Nations to apply when fighting terrorism. These principles were understood by many as a warning to the US that terrorism could not be fought with more terror, a la Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Also around that time it become clear that the subsequent attacks that seemed to resembled 9/11, namely the bombings on March 11 in Madrid and July 7 in London were home grown efforts of a very different kind. These tragic post 9/11 terrorist bombings were found to be not so much a continued attack by Al Qaeda but the story of angry immigrants who were reacting to Spain and UK participating in the invasion of Iraq. In other words, these attacks were not originated in the Middle East but instead the consequence of our involvement in the Middle East. Terror in the form of brutal air bombings, torture on behalf of the US and EU occupying forces, led to more terror in Europe. Out of fighting Al Qaeda with methods perceived as unreasonably brutal by Muslim immigrants in Europe a new type of home grown terrorism was born. It was this realization that made Spain's President Zapatero pull out from Iraq and since then the threat of Islamic terrorism has diminished.
So the question here is why the USA and EU continue to believe that occupation of either Iraq and Afghanistan, or only Afghanistan, is the best regional strategy. Many commentators still believe that we are safer because we occupy Afghanistan and Iraq. But lately many have been changing their views and are beginning to agree that Osama Bin Laden was a freak terrorist with a very personal agenda, who because of his own international background and skills, had his own global war to carry. We should not manage our international agenda thinking that the globally minded Osama Bin Laden is the rule but that even the most radical elements in the Muslim world are now focused in regional objectives in countries that are mostly Muslim or have large Muslim populations, such as the tragic attacks on India. Few critical observers believe that whoever is fighting Europe and the US in Afghanistan, for example, wants to actually attack Europe or the US the way Osama Bin Laden did. Instead most conflict in Afghanistan, and the Middle East in general, now is against occupying forces or Palestinian/Israeli, Sunni/Shia and moderate vs radical Islam.
Al Qaeda type attacks outside of the Middle East, like the attack in Mumbai, are serious but not the driving force of violence in the Middle East. The only way to prevent those is not for India to invade Pakistan, where a lot of radical Islam is based, but to better protect itself. By now it is clear that most of the fighters in Afghanistan just want the US and EU out of their country and will fight us like they fought the British 100 years ago and the Russians 30 years ago. But just like they did not go on attacking Great Britain after it pulled out of Afghanistan a century ago, I don't think that even a Taliban Afghanistan will include a successor to Osama Bin Laden planning the next 9/11 out of there. I think that part of the message the Taliban got as well as Qaddafi got his when we bombed his home. And indeed, our enemies in Afghanistan want to turn the country back into the Middle Ages forcing men to wear beards, oppressing women, banning music and so on, but is it our role to turn the Middle East into Western democracies or to protect our way of life and economies in our own countries? Because if the answer is the former we could invade Saudi Arabia next, as most 9/11 attackers were Saudis and they also promote a way of life which we find that violates the rights of women, homosexuals and other groups who deserve their human dignity. But can we afford a global crusade for dignity? Would you send your child to die so the homosexuals of Iran, for example, stop getting the death penalty? Nobody seems to advocate that.
We have squandered over a trillion dollars occupying and policing Iraq and Afghanistan, trying for those countries to become something they don't want to be. In the meantime we have been responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, the devastation of Iraq and Afghanistan's fragile economies and we have given an impossible task to our military who are dying for a dubious cause in tragic ways. What we should be doing instead is focusing our precious human and financial resources in making sure that those who intend to destroy us, freaks like Osama Bin Laden, do not get hold of nuclear weapons or the infamous weapons of mass destruction and achieve their personal objectives. And I say personal because I travel the Middle East enough to conclude that most Muslims want to be like us rather than see us become like them. But to make sure that the next Osama does not show up with real weapons we need better cooperation with Russia and China who also suffer terribly from Islamic terrorism. We have to work with them not only because they are victims of the same phenomenon, their countries border the Islamic world but also if we antagonize them, they can be the reason why the next Osama Bin Laden does show up with a nuclear weapon. In short what we have to do is to make sure that 9 11 continues to be the biggest and most successful terrorist attack in history, a freak event that is never again repeated.
Follow Martin Varsavsky on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martinvars
is considered far more " important " than
the " mundane " deaths of 38,000+ people annually in auto accidents in this country alone...
http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
1. Support of Israel
2. US troops in the holy land (Saudi Arabia)
3. US intervention in Iraq
So they came over here because we are over there. (Those like George W. Bush and John McCain, who say we are fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here, have it exactly backwards.)
With their very basic misunderstanding of why the US was attacked, the Bush administration and fellow Neocons confused and conflated the Al Qaeda threat with completely unrelated actions by Hamas, other anti-Israeli militants, local Islamic militants in Kashmir, etc, etc. No wonder Bush started a generalized war against Islam that spans Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Pakistan, Iran, and elsewhere.
But Bush's miscomprehension doesn't have to be our war. If only President Obama would act as the agent of change he promised in the election, rather than as the agent of continuity and compromise he now shows us.
1. Support of Israel
2. US troops in the holy land (Saudi Arabia)
3. US intervention in Iraq
DUH.
It is infuriating that the reasons for their attack were completely ignored, black-balled, negated and all other fashions of disinformation and obfuscation.
There was NEVER any discussion of what OUR role was in the world situation that called this out. WE are never the bad guy... and still, we are such a whiny victim for such a woof woof "greatest country in the history of the world...blah blah". Waaa, we have to go kill Muslims!
Now, it wasn't as if we really didn't have the intelligence to know what this was about, we had the intelligence but chose to manipulate this event for the benefit of the MIC war-profiteers. We had tons of armaments we needed to "use up"...so we could contract for more for our beloved -barf- defense contractors that bleed our country dry without any conscience. Follow the money.
If Obama carries on with these phony wars, we must push Congress to DE-FUND these phony killing operations that make more terrorists faster than any other way .
The Project for the New American Century formulated by the neo-cons set the stage for the Iraq War. It is chilling to read that document, which should have been "required reading" before anyone voted for Bush/Cheney. 9/11 gave them their excuse to invade Iraq and attempt to establish an American foothold in the Middle East for oil, for defense contracts, and to "protect" Israel.
The invasion of Afghanistan was undertaken for revenge - Americans were in the stage of mourning that demanded to blame someone and make them pay. With suicide attacks, the actual perpetrators deny the attacked any possible of justice (read "revenge") by their own deaths. Attacking two countries was never the way to deal with terrorism. With terrorism, the "enemy" is not a country, not a state, but Americans don't know any other way to deal with violence but to strike back. The past 8 years have been tragic for this country. I don't know what we will ever do to recover.
perfect example of what's called 'asymmetric warfare'.
1983 April 18th 83 people killed at the US Embassy in Beirut.
1983 Oct 29th- 241 US Marines are killed in a truck bombing in Beirut by the Islamic Jihad
1984-Sept 20th- The US embassy in the Beirut is bombed- 15 killed
1986- Sept 5th A Pan Am aircraft is hijacked by Palestinain terrorists. 20 killed.
1988- Pan Am flight 103 is blown up over Lockerbie Scotland. 259 killed.
1993- February 26th- A bomb explodes at World Trade Center. 6 killed 1,000 are injured.
1998- August 7th – The US embassies in Kenya and Dar es Salamm Tanzania are bombed.
2000- Oct 12th - USS Cole in Yemeni port of Aden is bombed. 17 American sailors killed.
The intelligence community has thwarted dozens of Al Queda inspired attacks since 9/11. 9/11 was not a freak event, but rather another in a chain of attacks that AQ or other Islamic radicals have planned and carried out for decades.
This doesn’t mean that there are not times to invade or attack, but, Mr. Varsavsky has made a compelling argument for stepping back and re-evaluating the most effective use of our resources.
Regardless of what our intentions in the middle east are, we are going about it the wrong way. If we are to be successful and get to a place where the people see us as allies, we need to go in there with more shovels, bricks and books, and fewer guns. The last way to gain someone's trust is to kill one of their family, even if the person deserves it. We need to give them the power, through education and infrastructure building, to build whatever life they want to build for themselves, and if we do that, they will (hopefully) be grateful and cooperate with our wants and needs and GIVE us what we may be tempted to otherwise take by force
How relieved would they be when they heard a big machine coming and it wasn't a tank but a Mobile Clinic?
What if we brought mobile Libraries to the villages rather than a truck load of armed soldiers with big guns?
It doesn't take a genius to know what kindness is. It doesn't take a genius to know that bombing wedding parties from a drone operated from a computer screen in Florida ferchrissakes...is NOT going to do anything but make more enemies.
DUH DUH and DUH.
But because a Drone is faster, easier and makes a bigger impact we're using those instead of our brains
That 9/11 was a sensationalistic, essentially symbolic (though exceptionally deadly) event was evident both logically and with reference to the militant ideology of the Islamic terrorists. With regard to the former, there was not after all a fleet of aircraft carriers and battleships waiting offshore to invade America; not was there any standing army anywhere ready to invade. As for the ideology, the resources for pursuit of this are limited--hence resorting to, but also limited to events such as 9/11.
A one word response would have done it, and that word is.
DUH!
9/11 was an accident, the planes hitting the building was the only thing expected
that the buildings fell and exacerbated the incident was pure luck for the terrorists.
The idiots war against terrorism is a political ploy to keep the republi'CON's in power.
Second, the buildings were not turned to dust by hydrocarbon fires. They were WEAKENED by hydrocarbon fires, and then GRAVITY did the rest.
Third, building 7 was brought down by the same thing, fires which weakened the building, coupled with two 110 story buildings weakening its foundation, coupled with two 110 story buildings throwing a lot of debris on it when they collapsed.
Fourth, all three of the buildings that collapsed on that day took more than TWICE free fall speed to collapse, you just aren't counting the first second of collapse!