September 11, 2001 was a traumatizing day for the United States. The photographs of the airplanes crashing into the World Trade Towers are still haunting, and the senseless loss of life is still painful. Images of the burning trade towers and people jumping to their deaths are indelibly etched into the minds of those who saw them.
U.S. policy decisions after 9/11 have turned what began as a traumatizing day into a traumatizing decade for the United States and the world. It is not clear what our political leaders have learned over the span of these ten years, but here are some lessons that seem clear to me:
1. The United States, despite its vast military power, was and remains vulnerable. Our borders are not inviolate. Our citizens may be attacked on our own territory.
2. The U.S. is not hated for its freedom, as President George W. Bush opined, but for its policies in supporting dictatorial and repressive regimes, particularly in the Middle East. Whatever freedoms the American people had on 9/11 have been greatly restricted over the past decade by the Patriot Act and other measures to increase governmental powers.
3. Wars are costly and they undermine economic prosperity at home. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have overdrawn the U.S. budget and helped to create the current economic malaise in the country.
4. American leaders are willing to lie the country into war, specifically the war in Iraq. We should have learned this lesson from the Vietnam War. There has been no accountability for the initiation of an aggressive war, as there was for the German leaders who were tried and convicted at Nuremburg following World War II for their crimes against peace.
5. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have injured and killed large numbers of civilians. For each terrorist who has been killed, more terrorists have been recruited to expand their numbers. What the Bush administration called the “Global War on Terror,” and the Obama administration prefers to call the “Overseas Contingency Operation,” is unwinnable by military means and likely to be endless.
6. A volunteer military can be used and abused with little response from the American people. Large numbers of volunteer soldiers have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
7. Despite the illegality and moral repugnance of torture, American officials have been willing to engage in it and, as in the case of Dick Cheney, many remain unrepentant for its use.
8. President Obama’s expansion of the war in Afghanistan has shown that there is bipartisan political support for keeping the flames of war burning.
After the U.S. was attacked on 9/11, it had the sympathy of the world. By its policies of endless war, the U.S. long ago lost those sympathies. If the U.S. wants to find a more decent foundation on which to rest its policies, I would hope that it would be based upon these two larger lessons:
9. War is not the answer to dealing with the threat of terrorism.
10. The way forward is with policies that are legal (under U.S. and international law), moral (demonstrating appropriate care for the innocent) and thoughtful (not based in hubris, alienating to the rest of the world and conducive to creating more terrorists).
Sadly, at the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, the U.S. seems lacking in sufficient self-reflection to grapple with these lessons.
Tag: 9/11
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Ten Years, Ten Lessons
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The Middle East and the World Five Years After 9/11
This is an excellent moment to evaluate what has happened since September 11, 2001. Five years have passed since the dramatic attacks on the highly symbolic American targets, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The US Government has launched wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. A third war, with likely graver consequences, is threatened in the months ahead against Iran. In a speech given in Atlanta, Georgia in early September, President Bush declared that “America is safer” than it was five years ago, “and America is winning the war on terror.” Bush also insisted that this is not only a war against Islamic extremism, but is also “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century,” a struggle that “threatens all civilized nations.” The American president claimed that “today the civilized world stands together to defend our freedom..to defeat the terrorists” and thereby “secure the peace for generations to come.” A sober appraisal of the facts do not support the American president on any of these contentions.
Much of the world, including the peoples of the Middle East and countries long allied do not share such a self-congratulatory interpretation of the American role in the post-9/11 world. According to independent polls taken in a variety of countries the Bush approach to world order is not popular elsewhere. When asked if they approved of the American ‘global war on terror,’84% in Egypt, 77% in Turkey, and 74% in Jordan responded ‘No.’ Similar results were found among America’s traditional allies. 76% of those polled in Spain and 57% in France expressed their overall disapproval of the American response to September 11th. A reliable survey of world opinion also found that in recent years that far more people fear the role of the United States in the world than that of al Qaeda.
What has troubled thoughtful observers more than anything else has been the stubborn American insistence that the only viable response to the 9/11 attacks was to declare ‘war’ on a violent adversary such as al Qaeda, a shadowy transnational network without either a distinct territorial base or allegiance to any specific state. This mistake was further compounded by extending the orbit of the war far beyond al Qaeda to encompass all forms of non-state violence within the operative definition of the ‘terrorist’ threat. Such an extension of the conflict by the US Government encouraged such countries as Israel, Russia, and China to treat self-determination movements within and near their borders as belonging to the war against terror. Both the futility and injustice of treating the Palestinians, the Chechens, and the people of Xingiang as part of the same struggle as that unleashed by the 9/11 attacks was to distort and deflect a more genuine and focused pursuit of security for the United States, as well as give governments around the world an unconditional mandate to engage in uncontrolled violence and oppression against non-state movements seeking human rights and self-determination.
Additionally, two closely linked counter-terrorist policies were enunciated by President Bush that further escalated and spread the war zone: states that ‘harbored’ terrorists within their borders would be held as responsible as the terrorists, and would be regarded as legitimate targets for attack; and if a state does not join the US in the counter-terrorist war, then it will be viewed as an enemy (“You are either with us or you are with the terrorists). This logic was initially applied, with some plausibility, to justify attacking Afghanistan, and overthrowing its Taliban government. This seemed reasonable to many moderate oberservers at the time, although stretching the limits of international law, because Afghanistan did seem to provide a safe haven for the leadership of al Qaeda, as well as providing the site for extensive terrorist training facilities that led more or less directly to the 9/11 attacks. It did seem necessary at the time to destroy this al Qaeda base of operations to lessen the prospect of future attacks. Waging war against Afghanistan as a whole was always more problematic, especially if considered a precedent for future wars. It is true that the Kabul government had few friends among governments, and the Taliban regime had surely committed some severe Crimes Against Humanity that shocked the world. The American claim that it was rescuing the people of the country from oppression and famine seems much shakier after five years than it did at first. The latest reports indicate the highest ever production rates of narcotic drugs, a revival of the Taliban and armed struggle, and much evidence of corruption and warlordism arising from the American-led occupation. Beyond this, the main rationale for the war was the opportunity to capture the al Qaeda leadership so that it could not plan and carry out further terrorist attacks, a mission pursued so incompetently as to ensure failure. Five years later al Qaeda is still a potent force, although its operational base has mutated in some respects, relying on likeminded extremist groups around the world, and Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri are still at large.
But worse than Afghanistan, in many respects, was Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was undertaken despite the absence of a connection with the perpetrators of 9/11, a conclusion now even acknowledged by US governmental investigations. The argument that Iraq under Saddam Hussein posed an intolerable threat because of its alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction never convinced either the UN Security Council, world public opinion, or most of America’s most trusted allies, and yet the invasion of this country went ahead. The attack on Iraq was widely regarded as illegal, immoral, and imprudent in the extreme. This impression was reinforced by the subsequent failure of the invaders to find any weapons of mass destruction, despite pre-invasions claims of hard evidence that such arsenals existed. Criticism of the Iraq undertaking also mounted as the brutality and incompetence of the occupation became unmistakably clear. Instead of liberation, what ensued under the American-led occupation seemed crudely abusive of the Iraqi people and their culture. Rather than diminish 9/11 kinds of activities, the Iraq experience has significantly strengthened anti-American violent extremism in the region. Three years after the invasion, Iraq remains ravaged and war torn, caught in an escalating spiral of violence that threatens to spill over its borders, dangerously agitating relations throughout the region between Sunnis and Shi’ias. In going forward with its Iraq policy, and refusing to acknowledge the failure of the occupation, the United States has damaged its credibility as a global leader, as well as weakened the authority of the United Nations and of international law generally. The precedent of recourse to war in a situation other than self-defense fundamentally rewrites the Charter restrictions on aggressive war that were such a central aspect of the laudable effort to construct a world order after 1945 that was less prone to war. This resolve to prevent future wars was led by American diplomacy after World War II, which also featured the punishment of surviving German leaders at Nuremberg for their role in planning and waging aggressive war.
Most regrettable is the missed opportunity to react in a constructive fashion to the 9/11 attacks. Immediately after these attacks there was a world display of solidarity with the United States, including even demonstrations of support in Tehran and the Palestinian Territories. Had the United States taken advantage of this climate of opinion it could have pursued those charged with violent acts, including those of 9/11 by reliance on greatly enhanced law enforcement, sustained by much improved transnational framework of police and paramilitary cooperation. Looking back on the five years, most of the success in weakening al Qaeda, and preventing further terrorist attacks, has resulted from police and intelligence efforts. In contrast, the war paradigm has proved dysfunctional, wasting enormous resources and lives, undermining the legitimacy of the struggle, and inducing many young persons to opt for political extremism.
The recently concluded Lebanon War gives added weight to this set of conclusions. Israel launched an aggressive war against Lebanon, implicitly relying on the American doctrine that a territorial state will henceforth be held fully responsible and punished for the acts of non-state actors that operate within its borders. The real adversary of Israel was supposedly Hezbollah, which was historically a resistance movement dedicated to the removal of the Israeli presence from Lebanese territory. It should be recalled that Hezbollah was formed in response to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and its refusal to withdraw from the southern part of the country. As the 2006 war demonstrated anew, military superiority often cannot be translated into political outcomes when the adversary, as was the case with Hezbollah, was a well-entrenched, indigenous political movement, with a strong base of popular support. Israel managed to cause much destruction and suffering, but in the end Hezbollah was not defeated. It emerged stronger, and Israel’s military credibility was weakened. American support for Israel’s war, and its role in neutralizing efforts to obtain an early ceasefire in the UNSC added a vivid new justification to those forces opposing the post-9/11 tactics adopted by the United States, and now imitated by Israel with American backing.
The tactics relied upon in Lebanon represent more than practical failures. They represent a long step backward with respect to international law and morality. What Israel claimed it was entitled to do was to launch a full-scale war against a relatively defenseless state on the basis of a routine border incident. Because of the difficulty of using war as an instrument against armed resistance forces, the Israel/American policy relies on disproportionate and indiscriminate force to intimidate an adversary, inflicting massive doses of collective punishment on civilian societies. This is essentially a terrorist logic: inflicting so much suffering on the government and people of Lebanon that it will be compelled to decide on the basis of its self-interest that it must surrender to Israeli demands with respect to Hezbollah. But the logic backfired, and the political leverage of Hezbollah within Lebanon is probably greater than it was before the war began.
My main argument is that war and excessive force have been ineffective in achieving their goals and dangerously destructive of world order. The United States and Israel have persisted with such an approach in the Middle East since 9/11 despite this record of unsuccess. There are three main explanations. The first explanation has to do with the outlook of political leaders. Major states are governed by individuals with a military mentality who are not sensitive to the limits of power when dealing with the sorts of conflicts that exist in the contemporary world. Because of this constricted imagination, the more military efforts prove unable to reach their anticipated goals, the more ardent will be their pursuit. Instead of adjusting to the failure, and switching to more effective political means and police efforts, the tendency as in Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza is to intensify the military approach, and expand the war zone.
The second explanation is the unwillingness of the leadership in Washington to address the legitimate grievances that give rise to political extremism. Far more expedient than attacking countries, would be exerting pressure on Israel to reach a fair outcome of the conflict with the Palestinian people. Ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, as agreed unanimously in the Security Council almost forty years ago, would diminish the appeal of extremism in the region, and greatly reduce the resentment of the American role that is so widely felt by the people of the Islamic world.
The third explanation is the most important, yet difficult to document. The response to 9/11 established a political climate that allowed the neoconservative foreign policy advisors of President Bush to implement their long advocated grand strategy in the Middle East in conjunction with the conduct of the global war on terror. This grand strategy pre-existed 9/11, and focused on the shift from Europe to the Middle East as the main strategic battleground to shape the future of the world. This outlook led to giving the highest foreign policy priority to gaining hegemonic authority in the region to safeguard control over its energy resources, to guide its ideological evolution, and to prevent anti-Western political behavior by its leading governments. Neoconservatives, in collaboration with right-wing Israelis, had believed for many years that their long-term interests in the region could only be protected by achieving ‘regime change’ through military intervention in a series of countries they regarded as problematic including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and most of all, Iran. 9/11 created the political mandate that had been previously lacking. Among the problems with this approach was an over-estimation on the role of military superiority, and the tension between a successful counter-terrorist policy and the grand strategy objective of controlling the region. But despite the setbacks in Iraq and Lebanon, this policy has not been abandoned by the Bush administration, and underlies the intensifying confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program.
From these perspectives, there never should have been a global war on terror, and there certainly should not have been an American/Israeli partnership to reconfigure by force of arms the internal political governing arrangements in a series of countries perceived as hostile. Unfortunately, the region and the world are more dangerous than five years ago, and future prospects are not encouraging. Whether internal political change in the United States can generate a more constructive approach will determine whether the decline in global security of the past five years can be reversed in the next five.
Richard Falk is the Board Chair of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
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Rethink Missile Defense Plan
Most Americans would agree that the country faces multiple threats.
Osama bin Laden remains at large. North Korea is pressing ahead with its nuclear program, and Iran is likely to become the newest member of the nuclear club. In Iraq, the stubborn insurgency takes a daily toll on American forces and has stretched the Army thin.
Refusing to set priorities in this dangerous world would qualify as the “failure of imagination” the 9/11 Commission warned about. And yet that’s what the White House and Congress are showing as they rush to deploy a faulty missile defense system against a threat that, for now, is relatively low.
That’s not to say that missile defense is without future value or that the threat is nonexistent. Intelligence sources say North Korea may have an untested missile that could reach the United States, and in time, other countries will acquire that capability. But deploying a missile defense program before it’s proven won’t deter enemies, and it drains funds from more urgent priorities.
Even if last week’s $85 million test of an interceptor missile had worked – which it didn’t – the White House would still fall short in its rationale for spending $11 billion a year on the system. That’s double what the Clinton administration spent on its policy of “robust research and development” of missile defense, and it comes at a time when the federal deficit is out of control.
The system being developed would rely on interceptor missiles in California and Alaska and aboard ships to attack enemy missiles at liftoff. Airborne lasers would fire at warheads re-entering the atmosphere.
As Ronald Reagan learned from his “Star Wars” proposal, a missile defense system wouldn’t stop a massive attack from a super power. It’s intended, instead, to stop a very small number of missiles from rogue nations such as North Korea or Iran.
But weigh the program against other threats that compete with it for funding:
. Loose warheads . A terrorist group obtaining nuclear warheads or chemical and biological weapons from the former Soviet Union’s tattered arsenal could strike the United States by smuggling a bomb across our porous borders. A rogue state might also prefer that method of attack since, unlike a missile, a suitcase bomb leaves no “return address.”
. New threats . The military has a term for the new threats it faces: asymmetric warfare. Building a military with the size, speed and flexibility to defeat new enemies means restraining spending on old threats such as Cold War-era ballistic missiles.
. Short-range missiles . The threat from short-range missiles fired by Iran or North Korea is very real, as the Israelis and Japanese well know. But the missile defense program does little to protect U.S. allies or troops stationed abroad.
As for the ballistic missile threat from rogue nations, the potential danger is real enough to warrant continued research but not premature deployment.
Deploying a system that repeatedly fails sends a message that missile defense is more about politics than protection. This is not the time for a lapse in imagination.
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The American Disaster in Iraq
After the bloodiest week in the American occupation of Iraq, the same tired slogans about “seeing it through” and “staying the course” are about all that our leaders seem able to say. Such a paucity of moral and political imagination does not serve well the citizens of this country or of the world, and seems a recipe for a surefire descent further into the political inferno that Iraq is daily becoming. It is fine to wonder aloud whether 9/11 could have prevented by due diligence at the White House, but it is no excuse for not focusing on the least disastrous endgame for Iraq. Let us recall, as the Pentagon Papers demonstrated, that it took American leaders a decade of bloodshed to acknowledge in public the failure that they privately had come to recognize the Vietnam War to have been. It may be up to the American citizenry to shorten the learning cycle this time around, with so much more at stake.
The steady descent into an American-led foreign policy whirlpool allows us to consider the worst features of the Bush approach to the challenges of world order.
First of all, unilateralism with respect to waging war in flagrant violation of the UN Charter and international law, underscored by the American president’s arrogant assertion in the 2004 State of the Union Address: “America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country.”
Secondly, the mission impossible associated with imposing democracy on a sovereign state by force of arms in defiance of national aspirations. This undertaking is being daily exposed as a recipe for policy failure in Iraq, a country beset by internal religious, ethnic, regional conflicts and a political tradition with zero receptivity to American-style democracy.
Thirdly, the imperial claim that America embodies the only model for political and economic success. As expressed in the important White House document of September 2002, National Security Strategy of the USA: “The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom– a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise.” All other political arrangements are illegitimate in the eyes of Washington, and it is some pathological version of this model that remains the blueprint for Iraq despite the overwhelming evidence that the Iraqis want to decide their future by themselves, and do not accept either prescriptions for their future whether issued as decrees by the occupiers or by their designated Iraqi representatives on the Iraqi Interim Governing Council.
And finally, the obsessive preoccupation with the Middle East as the pivot of the American grand design for world domination. The neocons shaping the Bush presidency view strategic control of the region as vital for their conception of global security, which includes oil, safe havens for American private investment, and a lethal partnership with Israel. This was all made clear in their definitive planning document prepared in the months before George W. Bush came to Washington under the auspices of the Project for a New American Century. It is notable in this latter regard, that Israel’s approach to the Palestinians has inspired the tactics and structure of the American occupation of Iraq, with similar results of deepening indigenous resentments and gradually imposing on an oppressed people the stark choice between abject surrender and violent resistance. Also nightly more in evidence is the American use of tanks, missiles, and bombers against unarmed or lightly armed Iraqi resisters.
As matters stand, there is no favorable endgame for this war. There is not yet in the American political or media mainstream, including the Kerry presidential bid, even a hint of withdrawal. The consensus in Washington is that the stakes are too large to admit failure, and that any hasty departure from Iraq would trigger a vicious civil war with adverse regional effects. At the same time, the much heralded transfer of sovereignty on June 30 seems like a fig leaf designed to disguise the realities of continuing military occupation, and is unlikely either to mean anything substantive about the exercise of authority in Iraq or to fool a single person in Baghdad. To begin with, how can the US Government transfer what it does not possess? Or put another way, if Iraqi sovereignty is a reality, what are American occupying forces doing in the country against the expressed will of the Iraqi people and their authentic representatives? And how are we to explain the current construction of 14 large military bases for US forces designed to accommodate a permanent military presence in the country? This is a terrain of American dreams, Iraqi nightmares!
So far, the American political leadership has not faced up to the failure of its Iraq policy, and so is paralyzed, caught in a cycle of escalating violence that recalls Vietnam. Because of the strategic importance of Iraq, many think the better analogy is the French prolonged inability to acknowledge defeat in Algeria. It took all the prestige and patriotic credibility of Charles DeGaulle to extricate France, and even then France came perilously close to self-destructing in the aftermath. We here in the United States need to be asking ourselves and others, with a sense of urgency, what will it take to bring the Iraqi disaster to closure.
On the broader front, the warnings and opportunities associated with the Madrid train bombings of March 11th are instructive. The Spanish citizenry immediately opted in its general elections three days later for an anti-war opposition party, and responded to their 9/11 with the slogan “No to terrorism! No to war!” If only America had displayed such political wisdom. Although it is late, it is not too late. A change in presidential leadership in November, although unlikely to offer much immediate prospect of change, will create some needed political space for moving in new, more constructive directions, and will at least rid the United States and the world of the current extremist worldviews that have given rise to the tragic ordeal of Iraq.
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September 11th
Each rising of the sun begins a day of awe, destined
To bring shock to those who can be shocked.This day began in sunlit beauty and, like other days,
Soon fell beneath death’s demon shadow.The darkness crossed Manhattan and the globe,
The crashing planes, tall towers bursting into flame.The hurtling steel into solid steel endlessly played
On the nightly news until imprinted on our brainsPeople lurching from the burning towers, plunging Like shot geese to the startled earth beneath.
The shock was painted on faces on the news,
That such sudden death could be visited on us.But such death is not extraordinary in our world of grief,
Born anew each brief and scarlet sunlit day.White flowers grow from blood stained streets
And rain falls gently, gently in defiance, not defeat.*David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the editor of Hope in a Dark Time (Capra Press, 2003).
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Approaching the Second Anniversary of 9/11
As we approach the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, it is important to take a hard look at the direction our country has taken since these tragic events occurred.
The United States has attacked Afghanistan and driven the Taliban regime from power. In the process, we killed some 3,000 to 5,000 civilians, more than died at the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The US has not been able to locate and capture Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Reports from Afghanistan are that the US-backed regime there controls little more than the city of Kabul, and warlords are in control of the rest of the country.
The United States has also attacked Iraq, but with neither evidence of a link between Iraq and the 9/1l terrorists, nor with the sanction of the United Nations. The US preventive war against Iraq killed some 6,000 to 8,000 civilians, about twice as many as died at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Since this war, it has come to light that in making its case for war, the Bush administration used false intelligence to inflate its claim that Iraq posed an imminent threat of using weapons of mass destruction against the United States.
The US has not been able to locate and capture Saddam Hussein or the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar. Nor have any of the purported weapons of mass destruction, which supposedly made the Iraqi threat so imminent, been found. There is a strong sense that the Iraqi people are opposed to US occupation of their country, and American soldiers are being killed on an almost daily basis. Most recently, saboteurs have also been attacking the Iraqi oil pipelines.
In addition to the price in American and Iraqi lives, the occupation of Iraq is costing US taxpayers nearly $4 billion each month, adding to the over $450 billion projected deficit in the US budget this year. There is no clear plan for US withdrawal from Iraq, and the administration will not predict how long American troops are likely to remain or how much the occupation is likely to cost in total. US corporations, with links to the Bush administration, are being given lucrative contracts to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure and manage its oil production.
We still have no authoritative public report on the intelligence failures that led to 9/11. No one has been dismissed and no blame has been laid at the feet of the intelligence community. The impression from the Bush administration is that the lead up to 9/11 was just too difficult for the intelligence community to handle, due to the paucity of communication within and between agencies and the need to actually connect some dots. The families of the 9/11 victims, along with the rest of the American people, are still waiting for clearer and more complete answers to why our intelligence failed so dramatically.
In a Congressional study related to intelligence failures, much of the important information has been kept from the American people by the Bush administration, including 28 pages on the role of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi leadership and members of Congress have pleaded that this information be released to the American people, but to no avail. Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, stated, “My judgment is 95 percent of that information could be declassified, become uncensored so the American people would know.”
Since the war in Afghanistan, the United States has held prisoners, including US citizens, in a manner that defies the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners. The administration, aided by the Congress, has instituted the USA Patriot Act, which restricts the civil liberties of all Americans. The administration has put forward further legislation that provides even more drastic restrictions on our liberties.
The trends do not bode well for America. In two years, the country has engaged in two wars, at least one of which was clearly illegal under international law. The administration has engaged in a clear pattern of deception. Our wars have killed at least three times the number of innocent civilians as died in the 9/11 attacks. The individual thought to be principally responsible for 9/11 remains at liberty, while the liberties of Americans have been restricted. The goodwill with which America was held throughout the world in the aftermath of 9/11 has been squandered. We are viewed by much of the international community as bullies who use military force in defiance of international law and make our own rules when it suits us.
Our soldiers continue to pay the ultimate price for the arrogance of this administration. Mr. Bush, in the safety of the White House, challenged the militants attacking American troops in Iraq with the rash and taunting remark, “Bring ‘em on.” This remark drew many negative responses from the troops stationed in Iraq and their families.
Two years after 9/11 Americans do not appear to be safer from terrorist attacks than they were before 9/11. We have a new bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security, and a system of color-coded warnings, but these do not seem to be effective barriers to terrorist threats. There is no reason to believe that terrorists hate America because they envy our way of life, as Mr. Bush says, and every reason to believe that terrorists oppose our political and economic policies, particularly in the Middle East.
To end the threat of terrorism, the United States needs a return to decency and the values that make this country strong. We need to reconsider the morality, legality and consequences of our policies. This would require a major reversal of the Bush administration policies that have cynically used 9/11 in seeking to achieve its ideological goals of global military dominance, control of oil, and financial gain for an elite few. On the positive side of the ledger, there are increasing signs that Congress, the media and the American people are awakening to the dangers of these policies and vocally and actively opposing them. It is none too soon to reassess and reverse the path we have taken since 9/11.
–David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the editor of Hope in a Dark Time, Reflections on Humanity’s Future.
Readers’ Comments
If you’d like to send us your comments please e-mail us at: letters@napf.org
(Please include the name of the article in the subject line)> David, What a clear and courageous message. What I keep reading is an immense encouragement to carry on. Greetings,
–Hans von Sponeck
> Bravo on the 9/11 article. Your synopsis was articulate and succinct. You covered a great deal of territory very well. It seems that this tragedy has reached epic proportions with no end in sight. People in the street were screaming for Arab blood even before the dust settled, but one of my first instincts as I stood there and watched the gaping holes burn was a sense of mystification as to how two commercial airliners could strike such an obvious target almost 20 minutes apart without being intercepted. When I saw the NY Times timeline graphic of the hijackings the next day, I became further intrigued. These planes were off course almost from the beginning and it had to be clear to the professionals doing their jobs that emergency procedures were required. In taking the ensuing events into account, it adds up but I doubt that many people will open their minds up to the obvious. It doesn’t’t take total participation to gum up the works – only a few strategic delays. You steered clear of conspiracy theories yet the implication of what you write very much mirrors my thoughts and doubts…Regardless, I appreciate reading incisive commentary such as yours.
–Monte, USA
> Your write-up is apt as it clearly touches on a lot of issues which have been brought to the fore ever since the Bush administration came into being. It is rather worrisome to note that if the administration carries on its foreign policies with so much prevalent arrogance and deception,it will unwittingly attract more international criticism and hatred,particularly from the Arab world. The Bush administration must realize that “might is not right” and embark on a total and immediate review, if not reversal of its foreign policies. Gross violation of international law by any state must not be permissible with impunity.The US must allow the United Nations perform its responsibilities,as it is the only authority vested with maintaining world peace and security.The US must cease to be the “police of the world”,as the Bush administration has very demanding domestic problems begging for attention. All states must recognize the need and desirability for the existence, maintenance and sustainability of a true world order where the rule of law,justice,moderation and cooperation are the cardinal principles regulating state actions.Acts of aggression, abuse and usurpation power must be avoided if we are serious about addressing the problem of terrorism and sustainability of global peace and security.
–Kadiri, Nigeria
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Security in the Post 9/11 World
The Bush administration’s approach to security in the post 9/11 world is built on military strength, and is composed of the following elements: increased military expenditures, the pursuit of global military dominance, indefinite reliance on nuclear weapons, the development and deployment of missile defenses and the threat to initiate preemptive wars in the name of security. There was a time, when nations fought nations and armies battled against armies, when this strategy might arguably have been relevant, but in the post 9/11 world it is a dysfunctional strategy that is certain to fail.
Military force is too blunt an instrument for providing security against terrorists. One need only look at the results of the US-led war against Afghanistan. Military force could topple the Taliban regime, but it could not capture or kill the leading terrorists purported to have initiated the 9/11 attacks. In the process of prevailing over the Taliban, which hardly required the world’s most advanced military force, many innocent civilians were killed, undoubtedly resulting in new sympathies and new recruits for the terrorist forces aligned in their hatred toward the policies of the United States.
Mr. Bush has named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an Axis of Evil, certainly a provocative statement which, combined with Bush’s stated willingness to engage in preemptive war, is likely to elicit steps by these nations to protect themselves against possible attacks by US forces. The Bush administration is already well advanced in its plans to wage war against Iraq. It is worth contemplating that such a war against Iraq would be the first war ever fought for nuclear disarmament, ironically pursued by a country with 10,000 nuclear weapons against a country with no demonstrated nuclear weapons.
Would a war against Iraq make US citizens more secure? There is every reason to believe that it would make US citizens far less secure. Such a war, rightly or wrongly, would be perceived in the Arab world as reflecting the double standards that allow the US to turn a blind eye to Israel’s arsenal of some 200 nuclear weapons while being willing to attack an Arab country for pursuing the same path. A US-led war against Iraq would require a bloody battle to topple Saddam Hussein, and would undoubtedly result in more hatred and determination by terrorists, old and new, to attack US citizens where they are most vulnerable.
A war against terrorism is not a war that can be won on the battlefield because there is no battlefield. It is not a war that can be won by throwing more money at the military or by building the most dominant military force in the world (we already have that). Nuclear weapons certainly will not be able to deter terrorists, particularly since they are virtually unlocatable. Nor will missile defenses be of any value against terrorists, who will use low-tech stealth approaches to go under the high-tech missile defenses. And the threat of preemptive war by the US will only provoke other countries to seek clandestinely to develop their own deterrent forces.
In sum, the Bush administration’s approach to providing security in the post 9/11 world is a strategy not only destined to fail, but to make matters far worse than they already are. Achieving security in a world of suicidal and determined terrorists requires a new approach, something other than the Rumsfeld doctrine of “find and destroy the enemy before they strike us.”
This new approach to security must be built on the power of diplomacy and aid rather than on military power. It must be built on policies that reverse inequities in the world and seek to provide basic human rights and human dignity for all. These policies must adhere to international law, and end the double standards that have helped to produce extreme misery in much of the Arab world. In the 21st century there must be dignity for all, or there will be security for none.
*David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He is the editor of The Poetry of Peace (Capra Press). -
Bush Calls on Henry Kissinger
In 1973 the Nobel Peace Prize was tarnished when it was awarded to Henry Kissinger for his role in negotiating the end of the Vietnam War. The duplicitous and secretive Kissinger had also been involved in sabotaging peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese five years earlier. He eventually helped conclude the war, after some one million more Vietnamese and 20,000 more Americans had died, on substantially the same terms that he sabotaged in 1968. Kissinger was also deeply involved in conducting the secret and illegal US bombing of Cambodia and Laos, and of withholding information from the US Congress on this broadening of the war.
Add to Kissinger’s work in Southeast Asia his role in undermining East Timor and the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile, and there is a strong case to be made that Kissinger is one of the 20th century’s most egregious criminals. This is the case that has been made by Christopher Hitchens in his book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger. The book also forms the basis of a new documentary called The Trials of Henry Kissinger. Both the book and documentary are important for anyone wanting to understand why Henry Kissinger is wanted for questioning in so many countries. He is a walking, talking advertisement for why an International Criminal Court is so critical to upholding human rights in the future from national leaders like Kissinger who place their view of national interests above human rights.
Mr. Bush has recently attempted to resuscitate Kissinger by appointing him to chair a “Blue Ribbon” Commission to investigate the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001. This is a bit like appointing Al Capone to investigate the Mafia, or Ken Lay, former CEO of Enron, to investigate corporate wrongdoing.
Mr. Kissinger, always a ruthless power seeker and broker, even keeps secret the client list at his power brokerage firm, Kissinger Associates. One wonders how Kissinger could possibly be even-handed in this important investigation when he may be called upon to investigate his secret clients. He and Mr. Bush seem to be operating on the assumption that what the public doesn’t know won’t hurt them. While this is one way to shove conflicts of interest under the rug, it is an exceedingly dangerous assumption in an already dangerous world.
With Kissinger leading the investigation, we can be sure that the public will hear only what Mr. Kissinger and Mr. Bush want them to know. In an editorial on 29 November 2002, the New York Times wrote: “It seems improbable to expect Mr. Kissinger to report unflinchingly on the conduct of the government, including that of Mr. Bush. He would have to challenge the established order and risk sundering old friendships and business relationships.” It is likely that Mr. Kissinger will flinch only when one of the countries wanting to investigate him for murder and other high crimes actually gets him into the defendant’s docket.