Dissident Voice

July 22, 2003

Theory number 3: to confuse the debate on 9/11

In the prevailing atmosphere of intimidation, debating 9/11 is problematic. However, the study of the causes, implications, and historical significance of the heinous crime against humanity of 9/11 should be a fundamental prerequisite to debate it. This is especially true, at a time when US hyper-imperialists are using 9/11 as a universal alibi to reconstruct the colonialist regime. The most salient aspects of 9/11 are the following: 1) size of casualties, 2) size of destruction in urban setting, 3) nationalities of the perpetrators, 4) motives of the attack, 5) response to the attack.

Despite the deliberate methodological absurdities and distorted analytical tools that characterized the way with which the US ideologues tried to explain 9/11, the cogent and valid method to dissect all preceding aspects remains a dialectical method employing hypotheses, contradictions, similarities, thus drawing plausible conclusions. If this happens, and the serious analyst confronts it as a surgeon who must operate to save life regardless of the condition of the patient, the objections of his family, and the prospects of operation success, then the resulting outcome could establish a basis for understanding 9/11 without all the ideological fog that surrounds it. Because, this goes beyond the scope of this article, I shall limit myself to an outline only.

One such method of dissection is using simple mathematical equations that explore input vs. output in science. In chemistry, for example, if you mix two atoms of hydrogen with one atom of oxygen, you obtain water. In physics, speed equals distance divided by time. A question: how did we manage to discover and understand such complex chemical and natural phenomena, but are incapable to address complex social events that require just analysis? The answer could not be simpler: a structured ideology with an agenda is a modulator of responses and perceptions, and in the US, it rules supreme. As an example, would anyone accept that a scholar of American history responds to an enquiry about the reason of the American Revolution by saying that American colonists were tired of British colonialist rule? The answer is no. Such an inconsequential reply cannot explain the American Revolution. Consequently, why do large sectors of the American people supinely accept the Bush Administration’s argument postulating that 9/11 happened because the attackers hated our freedom?

Since, the attack against the United States was premeditated; the unavoidable question would be for what reason? Unless we are dealing with deranged killers, which is not the case here, no group would have gone to such an extent of planning and simultaneity of execution just because they intended to kill so many innocent people simply because they hate their freedom! In addition, any impartial student of the history of the Middle East would be able to state that since European powers and the US created Israel amidst Arab lands (1948), there has been a continuous upheaval in the region. To understand the turmoil in the Middle East, think of the causality factor in science. For example, science never recorded that water can boil without applying heat at a certain temperature. In historical context, a causality factor would be as follows: before Israel existed, Palestinians never lived in refugee camps!

The US gave active backing to Israel against all Arab issues. It armed Israel who attacked Arab states and occupied their lands. It blocked all attempts to resolve the Palestinian issue. It took part in the Iran-Iraq war by supporting and arming Saddam. It stood aside while Israel ripped Lebanon asunder and killing over 30,000 civilians. It bombed Libya. It went to war with Iraq after it invaded Kuwait, killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Its forces are occupying almost the entire Arabic peninsula. It kept economic sanctions on Iraq that killed more Iraqis than the war did. It stood aside again, while Israel was butchering the Palestinians in their second uprising against Israeli occupation.

If the US input in the US-Arab world equation is all the above, then 9/11 is the output. There is no other explanation to 9/11. Accordingly, the debate must stand on this ground and on nothing else that is not pertinent or of no consequence to the fundamental issue. Regardless of all the above, and by supreme human values, even if the US input in the equation is catastrophic and lacks the simplest notions of justice, the output of the same equation, i.e., the attack against the United States is unjustified and criminal. In unequivocal terms, 9/11 is an act of genocide, no matter how the perpetrators or their apologists want to describe it.

Nine Eleven provided hyper-imperialists and American Zionism with the ideal settings to move their project forward. The path they designed was effective: keep talking about 9/11, scare the American people, make a tie between 9/11 and the next targeted regimes. In a controlled democracy such as that of the US, reality of things is an ethereal phenomenon that lacks confirmation by reasoned argument. How is all this related to the war on Iraq? Incontrovertible facts proved that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and its inclusion in the 9/11 atmosphere was constructed on the hyper-imperialistic assumption that the American people would not object to war if it is connected to 9/11.

To prove this point, consider the following scenarios. 1) Since 15 of the attackers are Saudis, then why did the US attack and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, and not Saudi Arabia? Answer: The US already occupies Saudi Arabia. 2) Suppose the attackers were Iranians. There was a strong possibility that the US might have responded with nuclear retaliation. 3) Now, suppose the attackers were Turks. The US would have not launched any attack at all; Turkey is an ally of Israel. 4) Suppose the attackers were Chechens, would the US attack Russia or Chechnya? 5) Now, consider this: the perpetrators were Palestinians and Israelis from Israel. The certain thing about this scenario is that the US will never attack Israel, but Israel may expel all Arabs from Israel. As you can see from all these suppositions, it is possible that America’s response to 9/11 could have been different according to each hypothetical occurrence. The fact that Iraq was not involved in 9/11 did not change the decision to attack it. Ideological and imperialistic calculations underpinned by 9/11 made that decision easy to implement.

Conclusion: motive number 3 is not a valid.

Theory number 4: to intimidate world nations:

Through out history, military power has been a means to impress, deter, or conquer. If impressing and deterring others are objectives of states seeking preventive measure against potential aggression, conquering is another issue. Conquering requires wealth, standing armies, weapons development, efficient procurement, and celebratory announcements on weapons performance. However, intimidation by means of using military power against a designated adversary is an issue of a different nature. Although intimidation is a violent mode of communication, impressing or conquering, is not its objective; implied retribution or reactive deterrence is, and it is the active ingredient.

Intimidation is not an exclusive device pertaining to any state, group, individual, or animal. However, in the hyper-imperialistic model, intimidation, especially military, is an inverted deterrence with malleable semantic meaning. For example, in the post-aggression period, the US warns Iran against interfering in Iraq; what the US is doing is deterring, i.e., intimidating Iran from challenging the building of an American hegemonic role in Iraq consequent to its conquest. What would happen, if Iran or any other state, wanted to interfere in Iraq, anyway? Would the US then launch demonstrative strikes to cease the alleged interference? What if there were no interference, but the US claims the contrary, and threatens a military strike? In this case, implied deterrence loses its temporary semantic meaning and becomes real intimidation, meaning, physical retribution may follow.

Hyper-imperialists are threat dispensers. Tony Blair thundered to the Taliban “surrender Bin Laden or loose power”; a year later, he plagiarized himself and thundered to Saddam Hussein “surrender your weapons of mass destruction or loose power”. As Blair was involved in his childish theatrics, Bush was unleashing his own theatrics against the UN “disarm Iraq or face irrelevance”, and as he was eradicating an already stultified “international law”, he did not forget to remind the world “if it [the world] is not with the US, it is with the terrorists”. In such manner, psychological intimidation has evolved to verbal terrorism, and thereafter it assumed its final hyper-imperialistic shape, i.e., terrorism by war

Along this reasoning, the endless threats to take military action against Iraq, the public relations campaigns describing new weapons, computerized simulation of urban warfare, movement of men and weapons, and the talk about new generations of bombs had to end. A practical demonstration of the US military might, became imperative. Since intimidation is a powerful tool of psychological warfare, its use is normal in political standoffs. Indeed, consequent to their latest expeditions, hyper-imperialists did not waste time to warn the world to skip the fine print, and directly read the large one, where it says that a another world order is supplanting all previous orders and it is trying to establish roots; and if nations would oppose it, let them see Iraq. Nevertheless, military intimidation to world states does not require war to be effective. Mali, Bolivia, China, and others, are well aware of US military capabilities; nor is intimidation a prelude to subjugation; Saddam had challenged the US until the end!

Conclusion: motive number 4 is not valid.

Theory number 5: To display American military technology for sale

Demonstration of new military technology could be necessary for its purchase. Question: what is the best way to demonstrate the efficacy of weapons? Answer, real warfare. Thousands of weapons systems find their way to world markets after military interventions. An example of this was Raytheon’s Patriot missile after the Gulf War.

In 1992 alone, weapons world sales totaled over 142 billion dollars, of which the US was responsible for almost half of it. In 1993, the US supplied weapons and technology to 92 per cent of conflicts around the world. In the period 1998 – 2001, over 68 percent of all arms deliveries were sold to developing countries. In 2001, total world expenditure topped 839 billion dollars, while US peacekeeping operations budget is only 0.6% of 1% dedicated to International Affairs. In the same year, The US military sales accounted for 45.8% of all international conventional weapons sales. [2]

As you can see, the US is the largest weapons exporter in the world; and in this specific example, it is normal that demands for weapons increases consequent to any US war where the military-industrial complex has an opportunity to promote new products. However, as a precondition for this increase to materialize, war must happen to magnify international insecurity thus the perceived need for more weapons. In separate analysis, the fact that the US government buys its military requirements from the private sector, which invests astronomic capital on research and development, has a critical consequence. 1) The sector needs to recover the spent capital and to generate profit, and 2) there is an interlocking connection between the government and the military industry as when former government figures sit on the boards of, or have connection with weapons manufactures and current government officials.

Immediate consequence of this arrangement is that political, ideological, and financial lobbyists have confluent interests on and unfettered reins over the decision making of US wars. Nevertheless, practical demonstration of weapons in a real war is not necessarily a fundamental requirement for their sale (for example, although Israel owns a huge nuclear arsenal, it has never tested its weapons.) Remember, a knife can kill even if it is blunt! Potential sales of new weapons systems used in the US aggressions are, however, a desirable byproduct but it is not fundamental to wage war. To prove this point, the military industry cannot force the US government to go to war so they can sell weapons!

Conclusion: motive number 5 is not valid.

Theory number 6: To implement an ambitious hyper-colonialist project

In a chase, when a rapacious animal focuses on a prey, the chase will soon end with the prey lying lifeless. Evolving imperialism never lost sight of the oil rich Middle East. The only way for the Arabs to deter marauding pirates was a military, political, and economic union. Neither the Arab regimes wanted to do that, nor the West and Israel. As 9/11 lifted the lid from the pot of objectives that had been cooking for several decades, the principle chefs, Israel and her US supporters, began preparing a gourmet presentation made of oil, natural gas, and potential markets for Israeli products in particular and non-essential American technological products in general.

Prior to 9/11, the problems that were vexing the Middle East were aplenty. Most of these were either legacy from colonialist rule, or generated by despotic regimes, lack of political freedom and Arab discord on how to confront Israel’s expansionistic policies. In general, the creation of Israel, the Palestinian issue, Israel’s continuing occupation of the Golan heights, the war against Iraq in 1991, American military presence in Arab lands, are all Israeli-American actions imposed on the Arabs by force, and accepted by US controlled Arab regimes always in the business of saving their rules. The fundamental result of this unequal relation between the US and the Arabs is while the US installed, reared, and protected all Arab regimes without exception; it could not include the Arab people in this arrangement because of incompatible political objectives.

When Arab extremists responded to US violence and interventions with violence of their own that culminated in 9/11, Israel, fundamentalist biblical zealots, American Zionists, economic interest groups coalesced in a powerful omnium gatherum, and formulated an ideological model for the Middle East that included a hypothesis, a solution, and a vision.

The Hypothesis: Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Benjamin Netanyahu, Douglass Feith, William Safire, Thomas Friedman, Colin Powel, Dick Cheney, Elliott Cohen, William Kristol, George Will, William Bennett, A.M. Rosenthal, Mort Zuckerman, Henry Kissinger, Fox News, CNN, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, a myriad of think-tanks, and opinion makers put forward a project. This has a central theme: the Middle Eastern violence stems from a lack of democracy, from poverty, and from the teachings of Islam.

The Solution: the US must change the socio-economic, politico-religious, and geopolitical configuration of the Middle East, even by military force. If this change happens, violence will ebb and vanish.

The Vision: a democratic Middle East will prosper under American military tutelage, will abandon violence, and will join the modern age.

The problem with this trilogy lies in its insidious Zionist formulation. It implies the identification of an equation where on one side, you find the problems of the Middle East, and on the other the solutions. For example, the hypothesis intentionally ignores the true problems of the Middle East, thus, the Israeli occupation of Arab lands, the Palestinian issue, the Iraqi issue, and the massive US military presence in the Gulf have become only a minor traffic violation on the hyper-imperialist highway! As for the solution, democracy is an evolutionary internal process and not an imposed importation; it took Britain’s democracy eleven centuries to be where it is now! Moreover, democracy in any form, or its absence is not the problem of the Middle East. Israel’s policies, US interference, its imperialistic hegemony, and its occupation of Arab lands are the problem. Finally, let us address the vision. Even if the US were to evangelize the Middle East (sign of peacefulness and beatitude according to Christian fundamentalists!), democratize it, and forge it in her image, the Palestinians will still want their land back, the Iraqis will want the Americans to end their occupation of Iraq, and all people of the Arabic Peninsula will want American forces to leave.

Regardless of the utter banality of this Zionist model as a motive for US military intervention, it, nevertheless, hides under its thin epidermis the grandiose hyper-imperialist project of re-conquering the Middle East, but this time, Americans and Israelis are replacing European powers. It is self-evident that the US conquest of Iraq is a revolution by itself. Any power that controls the Iraqi oil reserves will surely have a tight grip and total control over world economies. Seen under this light, the US conquest of Iraq will allow it to strangle, at will, the European Union and the Euro, China, Russia, and Japan.

Conclusion: Among all the motives I discussed, motive number 6 has all the ingredients to be the one and only irrefutable motive of the attack against Iraq. Nine Eleven, the charade of WMD, Israel’s agenda, and US world hegemony are all multiple faces of one mega-project aimed at the control of the Middle East territorial resources by direct military interventions. All other motives of the war against Iraq are only imperialistic condiments meant to justify the war project. At this point, what is hyper-imperialism?

Next in part 3: The hyper-imperialist paradigm/discussion

B. J. Sabri is an Iraqi-American peace-activist. Email: bjsabri@yahoo.com

Read Part One

Note

[2] Source, www.fas.org/asmp/fast_facts.htm]