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CounterPunch
December
17, 2002
A Day That Changed America
by M. SHAHID ALAM
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the fear,
foreboding and outrage of many Americans was crystallized in
a single phrase: this was a "a day that changed America
forever."
These words conveyed a tragic sense of
loss, a sudden passage from in-nocence to sorrow, a descent from
strength to vulnerability, an exit from exhilaration to angst.
Suddenly, Americans, used to cruising at ethereal altitudes,
had crash landed on the real world; they faced terror in the
heart of America. It appeared that America had collided momentarily
with the reality of a world mired in wars, poverty and disease;
it had been struck by the shards of economies devastated, polities
derailed, environments degraded by a rapacious globalization.
In short, for one brief hour, Americans had been dragged through
the agony endured by more than four-fifths of mankind, or what
still goes by that name. It was as if, like Adam and Eve, Americans
had been expelled from Eden, banished from the land of perpetual
bliss.
These wounds carried revolutionary potential.
Now that September 11 had rudely shattered Americans out of their
unearthly bliss, ended their disconnection from the outside world,
they would avidly seek to expand their knowledge about this alien
world, its geography, history, politics, and, most importantly,
its peoples. They would ask not only about who had perpetrated
the horrors of September 11 but why? They would not rest
till they had answers to two troubling questions that delve into
the origins, the source, and the genesis of September 11.
The first question concerns good and
evil. Why has the goodness of America been repaid by the evil
of September 11? Many if not most Americans believe that they
are a nation of do-gooders; that their country stands at the
pinnacle of human evolution; it embodies better than any other
nation ever the values of freedom and justice; it is a beacon
of light to all mankind, fighting foreign tyrannies, propagating
democracy, and sharing its own prosperity, ideas, and technology
with the world's less fortunate nations. If all this is
indeed true, why did September 11 happen to us? Or could it be
that we have been duped, that the image of American munificence
was just that, an image that concealed the reality of an ugly,
imperialistic power like all others before?
The second question concerns the efficacy
of America's vaunted military power. Americans know that their
country is the only superpower, a distinction solidly built upon
unrivalled economic strength, leadership in cutting-edge technologies,
inestimably superior manpower, strengths which allow their government
to gather intelligence worldwide, to deploy troops worldwide,
to hit targets worldwide, and to destroy incoming missiles before
they cross their borders. In short, we are convinced that we
have the capacity to annihilate any country that dares to challenge
us. But none of this helped us on September 11 when a handful
of men, armed with nothing more lethal than box-cutters, attacked
two venerable icons of American power, and within an hour killed
some three thousand Americans, caused damage to property worth
tens of billions of dollars, and still greater damage to the
economy. Why was our government spending 350 billion dollars
annually on military hardware, surveillance, intelligence, training
and troops if it could not stop nineteen men from changing America
forever?
These are the questions-and there are
many more like these-that America's mass media might have asked
after September 11 if they were free from corporate control.
If these questions could be raised in the mass media, they would
also be debated on college campuses, in churches, town halls,
and in the halls of the Congress. If such a discourse had occurred,
it would slowly but surely effect a sea-change in our perceptions
about how America projects itself overseas; about the ideals
abandoned in our dealings with weaker nations; about our readiness
to trample freedoms abroad, sacrifice non-American lives, devastate
entire economies, in order to advance the corporate interests
of a few Americans. If these changes had indeed occurred, Americans
would finally wake up to the ugly reality of America abroad,
and mobilize-as they had mobilized against slavery and racial
discrimination before-to force their government to pursue the
same ideals abroad that it honors at home. If all this had indeed
come to pass, then truly we could say that America had decisively
defeated the perpetrators of September 11-by changing America,
by changing America and the world for the better.
But this is not how America changed after
September 11. Americans could not be allowed to ask the right
questions because these would only generate the wrong
answers-that is, wrong for corporate America, for America's powerful
oil interests, for the military establishment, for the Zionist
lobby, for racists, and for religious bigots. America's outrage
would not be answered with debate, discussions and dull inquiry.
It would be placated by righteous indignation, by talk of evil
antagonists, by promises of vengeance, and wars without end.
America's grief would be hijacked by groups whose interests,
security, power and profits batten on paranoia, bigotry, racism,
wars and conflicts. Almost instantly, these forces responded
to September 11 by orchestrating the deafening beat of war drums.
On September 11, Osama bin Laden had dared America. America obliged-with
wars against Afghans and Palestinians, to be followed by wars
against Iraqis, Iranians, Syrians, Saudis, and many more besides.
George Bush and his neoconservative war-mongers
took the lead in all this. They had found in the tragedy of September
11 the trigger for the war plans they had been hatching since
the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. Within days, George
Bush at al had laid out their plans for global war before
the American public. Even before the hijackers had been identified,
they were linked to al-Qaida, a "collection of loosely affiliated
terrorist organizations." Yet their attacks were declared
to be "an act of war against our country." This was
no ordinary war, however. The al-Qaida had launched a civilizational
war: "they hate us," they were "enemies of freedom,"
they "hate our freedoms," they want to "disrupt
and end a way of life." Al-Qaida's goal "is remaking
the world-and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere."
In other words, al-Qaida wanted to impose a fundamentalist Islam
on the United States and Europe. (All the quotes in this and
the next paragraph are from President George Bush's speech of
September 21, 2001, given
to a joint ses-sion of Congress.)
Wars spawn wars. So if the al-Qaida had
started a war, United States would have to respond in kind. The
President declared that "the only way to defeat terrorism
as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it, and
destroy it where it grows." This global war "on terror
begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not
end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found,
stopped and defeated." In time, this war will be extended
to "nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism.".
In addition, this would not be a short war: it will be a "lengthy
campaign, unlike any we have ever seen." It will
also be a total war, including "dramatic strikes, visible
on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success." The
Bush strategy was clear. Magnify the terrorist threat, fuel it,
and prepare the nation for a war that would be global, total
and unending.
Roma locuta, causa finite. President Bush had spoken, and the case was
closed. All the organs of mainstream media concurred with Bush.
The country was in the midst of a war, and nothing would be tolerated
which carried the hint of dissent. Dissent was unpatriotic; some
said, it was treasonous. The Bush doctrine-you are against us
if you are not with us-applied to individuals as well as states.
United States was now a country with one party, the party of
Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Ashcroft. Only the survivors of the victims
of September 11 stuck to their demand for an independent investigation
into September 11. When they persisted, the President reluctantly
agreed, more than a year after September 11, to appoint an Independent
Commission. Yet, in choosing Henry Kissinger to chair this Commission,
the President ensured that it would be ineffectual. As one commentator
quipped, he had put Dracula in charge of the blood bank.
Even without Kissinger to chair it, the
Independent Commission on September 11 is unlikely to deliver
any surprises. Its mandate only de-mands that it identify the
factors that allowed the attacks on WTC and Pentagon to
occur. The Commission will not hold any hearings in Groznyy or
Gaza; in Baghdad or Basra; in Kashmir or Kabul; in Cairo or Karachi;
in Jakarta or Jeddah; in Caracas or Kolkata; in Nairobi or Nouakchott.
It will not enter into the world the hijackers came from; it
will not probe into the lives of the hijackers; it will not investigate
why they committed such carnage; it will not ponder over why
did they took their own lives to attack Americans; it will not
ask why they could not deliver their message to Americans by
less violent means?
Presumably, all these questions had been
answered definitively by Bush et al. The perpetrators
of September 11 were evil, they acted from in-eradicable spite,
from a nihilistic rage against modernity, against all that America
represents, her freedom, democracy, progress and prosperity.
After these incontestable answers, there was only one thing that
remained to be done. Send the stealth bombers, cruise missiles,
daisy-cutters and bunker-busting nukes to exorcise these demons.
Now, more than a year after that tragic
morning on September 11 when nearly three thousand Americans
were consumed in an inferno that descended from the skies, after
all the rubble from the Ground Zero and the Pentagon has been
cleared, can we say that America has changed forever? Did America
embrace the potential for change contained in that terrible moment,
the potential to connect with the inverse of our own world, a
world whose sufferings, whose tyrannies, whose pathologies are
deeply connected to ours in ways unknown to us? Were we overwhelmed
by the slow dawning of the burden we bear, as the vanguard of
the human enterprise, as the champions of Christian charity,
to do something-even a little bit-to enrich, empower, enlighten
and embrace those left behind? If Americans had taken up this
challenge, if we could take up this challenge, that
would be a change.
Instead, the captains of capital, the
marshals of mass media, the priests of bigotry, the zealots of
Zion, have laid out plans for wars, total, global and unending
to stop Americans from demanding change and to stop the rest
of the world from getting the change they demand. As the wounds
of global capitalism deepen, as the dark satanic mills of capitalist
greed grind three-fourths of mankind deeper into poverty, as
entire continents are devastated, as agro-corporations seek to
chain millions of farmers to their genetic fabrications, as the
middle classes in the rich countries slowly sink into poverty,
as the consciousness of these depredations finally threatens
to become global, the concentrated power of capital seized upon
September 11 to divert Americans with gladiatorial combats on
a global scale.
Let the drums of the news networks roll,
let the combats begin, let blood be spilled liberally, let entire
countries be depopulated, let us make mass exterminations a spectator
sport. Only death brings life. Only thus will America be diverted.
After devastation there comes peace.
M. Shahid Alam
is Professor of Economics at Northeastern University. His recent
book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations, was published
by Palgrave (2000). He may be reached at m.alam@neu.edu.
Copyright: M. Shahid Alam.
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