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September 11,
2001
"Flying
Bombs"
Who Saw It Coming?
By Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St Clair
Tuesday's onslaughts on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon are being likened to Pearl Harbor and
the comparison is just. From the point of view of the assailants
the attacks were near miracles of logistical calculation, timing,
courage in execution and devastation inflicted upon the targets.
The Pearl Harbor base containing
America's naval might was thought to be invulnerable, yet in
half an hour 2000 were dead, and the cream of the fleet destroyed.
This week, within an hour on the morning of September 11, security
at three different airports was successfully breached, the crews
of four large passenger jets efficiently overpowered, the cockpits
commandeered, navigation coordinates reset.
In three of the four missions the assailants attained successes
probably far beyond the expectations of the planners. As a feat
of suicidal aviation the Pentagon kamikaze assault was particularly
audacious, with eyewitness accounts describing the Boeing 767
skimming the Potomac before driving right through the low lying
Pentagon perimeter, in a sector housing Planning and Logistics.
The two Trade Center Buildings
were struck at what structural engineers say were the points
of maximum vulnerability. The strength of the buildings derived
entirely from the steel perimeter frame, designed so its
lead architect said only last week - to withstand the impact
of a Boeing 707. These buildings were struck full force Tuesday
morning by Boeing 767s, with fuel tanks fully loaded for the
long flights to the West Coast. Within an hour of the impacts
both buildings collapsed. By evening, a third 46-story Trade
Center building had also crumbled.
Not in terms of destructive
extent, but in terms of symbolic obliteration the attack is virtually
without historic parallel, a trauma at least as great as the
San Francisco earthquake or the Chicago fire.
There may be another similarity
to Pearl Harbor. The possibility of a Japanese attack in early
December of 1941 was known to US Naval Intelligence and to President
Roosevelt. Last Tuesday, derision at the failure of US intelligence
was widespread. The Washington Post quoted an unnamed top official
at the National Security Council as saying, "We don't know
anything here. We're watching CNN too." Are we to believe
that the $30 billion annual intelligence budget, immense electronic
eavesdropping capacity, thousands of agents around the world,
produced nothing in the way of a warning? In fact Osama bin Laden,
now prime suspect, said in an interview three weeks ago with
Abdel-Bari Atwan, the editor of the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi
newspaper, that he planned "very, very big attacks against
American interests."
Here is bin-Laden, probably
the most notorious Islamic foe of America on the planet, originally
trained by the CIA, planner of other successful attacks on US
installations such as the embassies in East Africa, carrying
a $5 million FBI bounty on his head proclaiming the imminence
of another assault, and US intelligence was impotent, even though
the attacks must have taken months, if not years to plan, and
even though CNN has reported that bin-Laden and his coordinating
group al-Qa'ida had been using an airstrip in Afghanistan to
train pilots to fly 767s.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s,
when hijacking was a preoccupation, the possibility of air assaults
on buildings such as the Trade Center were a major concern of
US security and intelligence agencies. But since the 1980s and
particularly during the Clinton-Gore years the focus shifted
to more modish fears, such as bio-chemical assault and nuclear
weapons launched by so-called rogue states. This latter threat
had the allure of justifying the $60 billion investment in Missile
Defense aka Star Wars. One of the biggest proponents of that
approach was Al Gore's security advisor, Leon Fuerth, who wailed
plaintively amid Tuesday's rubble that "In effect the country's
at war but we don't have the coordinates of the enemy."
But the lust for retaliation
traditionally outstrips precision in identifying the actual assailant.
By early evening on
Tuesday America's national
security establishment were calling for a removal of all impediments
on the assassination of foreign leaders. Led by President Bush,
hey were endorsing the prospect of attacks not just on the perpetrators
but on those who might have harbored them. From the nuclear priesthood
is coming the demand that mini-nukes be deployed on a preemptive
basis against the enemies of America.
The targets abroad will be
all the usual suspects: rogue states, (most of which, like the
Taleban or Saddam Hussein, started off as creatures of US intelligence).
The target at home will of course be the Bill of Rights. Less
than a week ago the FBI raided Infocom, the Texas-based web host
for Muslim groups such as the Council on Islamic Relations, the
Islamic Society of North America, the Islamic Association for
Palestine, and the Holy Land Foundation. Palestinians have been
denied visas, and those in this country can, under the terms
of the CounterTerrorism Act of the Clinton years, be held and
expelled without due process. The explosions of Tuesday were
not an hour old before terror pundits like Anthony Cordesman,
Wesley Clark, Robert Gates and Lawrence Eagleburger were saying
that these attacks had been possible "because America is
a democracy" adding that now some democratic perquisites
might have to be abandoned? What might this mean? Increased domestic
snooping by US law enforcement and intelligence agencies; ethnic
profiling; another drive for a national ID card system.
Tuesday did not offer a flattering
exhibition of America's leaders. For most of the day the only
Bush who looked composed and control in Washington was Laura,
who happened to waiting to testify on Capitol Hill. Her husband
gave a timid and stilted initial reaction in Sarasota, Florida,
then disappeared for an hour before resurfacing at Barksdale
airbase in Shreveport, Louisiana, where he gave another flaccid
address with every appearance of bring on tranquilizers. He was
then flown to a bunker in Nebraska, before someone finally had
the wit to suggest that the best place for an American president
at time of national emergency is the Oval Office.
Other members of the cabinet
were equally elusive. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has
managed to avoid almost every site of crisis or debate was once
again absent from the scene, in Latin America. Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld remained invisible most of the day, even though
it would have taken him only a few short steps to get to the
Pentagon pressroom and make some encouraging remarks. When he
did finally appear the substance of his remarks and his demeanor
were even more banal and unprepossessing than those of his commander
in chief. At no point did Vice President Cheney appear in public.
The presidential contenders did expose themsleves. John McCain
curdled the air with threats against America's foes, as did John
Kerry, who immediately blamed bin-Laden and who stuck the knife
firmly into CIA director George Tenet, citing Tenet as having
told him not long ago that the CIA had neutralized an impending
attack by bin-Laden.
Absent national political leadership,
the burden of rallying the nation fell as usual upon the TV anchors,
all of whom seem to have resolved early on to lower the emotional
temper, though Tom Brokaw did lisp a declaration of War against
Terror. Tuesday's eyewitness reports of the collapse of the two
Trade Center buildings were not inspired, at least for those
who have heard the famous eyewitness radio reportage of the crash
of the Hindenberg zeppelin in Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1937 with
the anguished cry of the reporter, "Oh the humanity, the
humanity". Radio and TV reporters these days seem incapable
of narrating an ongoing event with any sense of vivid language
or dramatic emotive power.
The commentators were similarly
incapable of explaining with any depth the likely context of
the attacks; that these attacks might be the consequence of the
recent Israeli rampages in the Occupied Territories that have
included assassinations of Palestinian leaders and the slaughter
of Palestinian civilians with the use of American aircraft; that
these attacks might also stem from the sanctions against Iraq
that have seen upward of a million children die; that these attacks
might in part be a response to US cruise missile attacks on the
Sudanese factories that had been loosely fingered by US intelligence
as connected to bin-Laden.
In fact September 11 was the
anniversary of George W. Bush's speech to Congress in 1990, heralding
war against Iraq. It was also the anniversary of the Camp David
accords, which signaled the US buy-out of Egypt as any countervailing
force for Palestinian rights in the Middle East. One certain
beneficiary of the attacks is Israel. Polls had been showing
popular dislike here for Israel's recent tactics, which may have
been the motivation for Colin Powell's few bleats of reproof
to Israel. We will be hearing no such bleats in the weeks to
come, as Israel's leaders advise America on how exactly to deal
with Muslims. The attackers probably bet on that too, as a way
of making the US's support for Israeli intransigence even more
explicit, finishing off Arafat in the process.
"Freedom," said George
Bush in Sarasota in the first sentence of his first reaction,
"was attacked this morning by a faceless coward." That
properly represents the stupidity and blindness of almost all
Tuesday's mainstream political commentary. By contrast, the commentary
on economic consequences was informative and sophisticated. Worst
hit: the insurance industry. Likely outfall in the short-term:
hiked energy prices, a further drop in global stock markets.
George Bush will have no trouble in raiding the famous lock-box,
using Social Security Trust Funds to give more money to the Defense
Department. That about sums it up. Three planes are successfully
steered into three of America's most conspicuous buildings and
America's response will be to put more money in missile defense
as a way of bolstering the economy. CP
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