9/11 and After
By S.P.SETH
There has been much soul-searching in the US and elsewhere over the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York, costing 3000 lives. The loss of lives was a great tragedy, but its overall impact on the United States and the rest of the world went beyond that. And it is continuing. For the United States, it is a defining moment in that country’s collective psyche--- a dividing line between before and after 9/11. And why so? First: because the United States had never been hit in its heartland before that. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which brought the US formally into WW11, was traumatic; but being attacked in New York and in Washington is altogether different. And that too by a bunch of terrorists taking on the super power of the day by attacking its economic and political/military nerve centers. The sheer brazenness of it sent shock waves through the political and economic establishments of the country.
Second: as a result, the US response by way of invading Afghanistan wasn’t clearly thought through. If it were, Afghanistan’s history would have suggested caution. The US probably thought that its overwhelming military power would obliterate the Taliban government, enabling Washington to install their own substitute and get rid of both the Taliban and the al Qaeda. Pakistan was co-opted in this process both by aid and coercion’, though it was always hedging its bets. The results for Pakistan have been disastrous, the most telling being the rise of the Pakistani version of the Taliban that is de-stabilizing the country. And in Afghanistan, things have simply got from bad to worse. In other words, the US response by way of invading Afghanistan was grossly disproportionate; particularly by hanging on too long to re-invent Afghanistan as a Western democracy.
This is not to suggest that the terrorist attack by the Taliban’s al-Qaeda guests was not serious. But there is need to put things in some perspective. For instance, to characterize it all as “war on terror” gave the al-Qaeda, a small militant outfit operating from the wilderness of Afghanistan, a recognition and dimension beyond what it deserved by making it a kind of global power center pitted against the world’s most powerful nation. At the same time, President Bush’s clarion call to the world declaring that any country that was not with the United States in this holy war of sorts was against it, was ridiculous and greatly dangerous..
The al Qaeda became even more of a global phenomenon after the US attacked Afghanistan where it is mired to this day. And when this was followed up with the invasion of Iraq, alleging that the Sadaa Hussein regime had links with the terrorists and was developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD)—neither of which was true; it increasingly looked like that the US was determined to alter the political and strategic situation in the Middle East to its own and Israel’s advantage. Indeed, several theories started to circulate that the World Trade Centre bombing was an inside US and/or Israeli job blamed on the Islamic terrorists to provide US an excuse to attack Iraq and to put the Middle East under its formal tutelage as well secure Israel’s regional primacy. Obviously, the conspiracy theory, still believed by many people in the Islamic world, is simply that.
That the World Trade Centre terrorist attack provided the Bush administration a handy excuse to attack Iraq is quite valid. The then defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s immediate response to the attack on Trade Centre reportedly was that, “You know, we’ve got to do Iraq.” When questioned why, Rumsfeld reportedly said, “There just aren’t enough targets in Afghanistan. We need to bomb something else to prove that we’re, you know, big and strong and not going to be pushed around by these kind of attacks.” Well, Rumsfeld is now history but the al Qaeda and the Taliban are still going strong.
It is difficult to imagine the scale of US’s strategic blunder in elevating the elusive al Qaeda into a global phenomenon, and being bled into seemingly endless warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq; not to speak of chasing other militant outfits elsewhere in the world drawing their inspiration from al Qaeda. There is no denying that the al Qaeda and its ideological kins of different descriptions are a dangerous lot. What is questioned is if it was necessary to treat them as if they were a global power of sorts demanding the kind of attention and resources the US is expending on them. For instance, the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US cost the terrorists only a few thousand dollars. The US invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and the related (and accumulated) costs are said to be veering toward $5 trillion mark. And this doesn’t take into account the loss of lives of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq. Even for a super power, with its debt approaching 100 per cent of its GDP, this is not sustainable, and will only further weaken the United States.
And in all this, the terrorists appear to have made the most gains in terms of spreading their message and ideology. That an elusive al Qaeda has managed to engage the United States in two unwinnable wars has made them heroes among many Muslims. True, the Arab Spring has sidelined the al Qaeda message, having achieved the toppling of some nasty tyrants through popular protests. But even the most secular and moderate Muslims are not happy with the US’ perceived anti-Muslim policies. The most recent proof is the Israeli political collision with both Turkey and Egypt, two of its closest former friends. In both cases Israel has refused to apologize for the death of their citizens by Israeli security, first when it raided the peace flotilla headed toward Gaza and killed 9 Turkish peace activists and, second, with the death of 5 Egyptian police men while chasing Palestinians across the Egyptian border.
It is true that most Muslims do not support terrorism. But what rankles and enrages many is the US’ foreign policy perceived hostile to the Muslim countries. Such resentment and anger, among other things, derives from the Palestinian issue in which Israel remains the US’ prime concern and ally. The US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq compounded that deep sense of pervasive frustration and anger.
Susan Sontag, a perceptive American writer, expressed it cogently in an essay she wrote after the 9/11 attacks. She said: “The disconnect between last Tuesday’s monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by [American] public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public.” And she added, “Where is the acknowledgement that this was not a ‘cowardly attack’ on ‘civilization’ or ‘liberty’ or ‘humanity’ or ‘the free world’ but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed super-power, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?” Unsurprisingly, she was pilloried for expressing her views.
Sadly, the US still continues to mouth the same platitudes even after ten years of fighting two wars where it finds itself bogged down. The hopes raised after Barack Obama’s election as President have been dashed. His administration is basically following the same foreign policy agenda as his predecessor, former President George Bush. On the Palestine issue, for instance, the US has undertaken to veto a Palestinian initiative to seek statehood through the UN Security Council. The argument is that the statehood can only be achieved through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Authority, though the US knows quite well that this has not worked in the past. And this is because; assured of US support all through, Israel has never felt the necessity to negotiate seriously. The anticipated US veto in the UN Security Council will further erode its position in the new Middle East, more sensitive to the people’s support for the Palestinian cause.
There has been a lot of self-congratulation in the United States over the Arab Spring that has eschewed Islamic militancy and has sworn by democracy and freedom. It is true that the people’s upsurge among Arab countries has been spontaneous without religious overtones. Which, however, doesn’t mean that people are not swayed when they see US foreign policy favoring Israel against the Palestinians, as well as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Regarding the first, the recent attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo, with people enraged over the death of Egyptian security personnel in the Israeli chase of Palestinians on the Egyptian border, is an example. At another level, Turkey has expelled the Israeli ambassador and suspended military ties with Israel for failing to apologize for the killings of nine of its people on the last year’s peace flotilla heading toward Gaza carrying aid for the besieged city.
Israel used the 9/11 tragedy to give its war on the Palestinian people a moral and global dimension by characterizing many of them as terrorists. Which meant that Israel was actually doing the world a service by doing its share of fighting against terrorism. The coziness between the US and Israel reached a new high under President Bush who pronounced that Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory were a new reality, thus conferring legitimacy of sorts on Israeli occupation. The Obama administration hasn’t succeeding in undoing any of the previous policies, and this will become a point of greater friction between the United States and the region if Washington exercises its veto in the UN Security Council. It might not be able to easily manipulate the new Arab regimes increasingly sensitive to public opinion.
A former Saudi ambassador in the US, Turki al-Faisal, has written in the New York Times that a US veto on Palestinian membership of the United Nations would end the “special relationship” between the two countries, and make the US “toxic” in the Arab world. In the circumstances, says Al-Faisal, “…Saudi leaders would be forced by domestic and regional pressures to adopt a far more independent and assertive foreign policy.” It is a pity because the US really has an opportunity to start afresh in the Middle East.
There have been claims that the US played a positive role in the Arab Spring by supporting its people. Which doesn’t stand to scrutiny, though. Let us give the people of the region credit for their own revolution. The US waited till the tide had turned against the deposed rulers in Tunisia and Egypt. There are two things going in US favor. First, the Arab Spring is largely secular and it is not pushing any Islamic agenda. Two: even the Muslim Brotherhood (and its Tunisian version) were taken by surprise when the people were able to overthrow long-entrenched dictators in Tunisia and Egypt. Despite past US support for the deposed Tunisian and Egyptian dictators, there is no evident hostility against the US in these countries or elsewhere in the Middle East. And if the United States plays its cards right, starting with the Palestinian membership of the United Nations, it might find itself in a politically privileged position in the region.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks started a chain reaction that is still playing itself out with inconclusive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It has undermined the US’ global primacy. Indeed, the US is increasingly seen as a declining power. The al Qaeda and other Islamic militant outfits certainly feel heartened by what they see as their success in inflicting considerable damage on the US position in the world. Certainly, the Bush era celebratory oration of “mission accomplished” in Iraq is dead and buried. There was a sense in the early period of Afghan and Iraq wars that the US sorely needed to re-arrange the politico-strategic map of the Middle East because it was its destiny to do so. In any case, what was good for the United States was good for the world. The Bush administration wanted to write its own history with its own facts. And even though 9/11 was a great tragedy, it was felt that it might as well be used to establish US supremacy in words and deeds. How much difference 10 years has made!
While it is right to grieve for 3000 civilians so cruelly killed on that horrible day of 11 September, 2001, with the world sharing the US grief on its 10th anniversary; let us not forget the deaths of hundreds and thousands (no one has been keeping an exact tally) of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq who became the collateral damage of these insane wars.
Note: This article was first published in 2-parts in Daily Times.
