Monday, December 27, 2010

Reflections on 9-11, Nine Years Later: American Empire

As on December 7, 1941 or November 22, 1963 a generation earlier, everyone can tell you were they were on September 11, 2001, another "Day which will live in infamy!" The day the towers came down was the day America was changed forever. Future historians quite likely may reflect that American Democracy crumbled along with the Twin Towers that day.

There are so many lingering questions about 9-11 that haven't been answered, and we will likely never know the awful truth about them in our lifetimes. Was it just Bin Laden as the report said?

Here we are nine years later and it is outrageous to me that Osama Bin Laden was never caught, nor is that failure even being discussed anymore. The guess here is that he's not in some cave in a godforsaken province of Pakistan but lounging on a beach on the French Riviera; hiding in plain sight with a new face and a new identity. The Bush Administration always acted as though catching him was never in their plans. After all, he was much more useful at large as a bogeyman they could trot out whenever they wanted to get their way. The Obama Administration barely brings up his name at all.

And yet the world we live in now is very much darkened by Bin Laden's menacing shadow. The threat of another "terrorist attack" (if that's indeed what it was) has been used to justify two wars (three if you count the shadow war being waged by mercenaries in Pakistan) with no clear purpose and no end in sight. The pretext was, as President Bush used to say, to "Fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here."

The aftermath of 9-11 was used to justify the systemic elimination of our Constitutional rights. The Patriot Act eliminated the basic rights of the accused to face their accusers and answer to specific charges. In its broadest interpretation, you no longer have any rights to privacy. The Government can arbitrarily declare you a "terrorist;" can subject you to surveillence and monitor all your electronic communcation with no legal recourse. The Military Commissions act gave the Government the power to jail you as an "enemy combatant" and detain you indefinitely with no legal recourse.

The DOD's Total Information Awareness project is intended to use data mining to monitor every digital artifact generated in America to monitor the populace. If they don't have the bandwidth and processing power to do it they're close - they have a location in San Antonio the size of the Alamo Dome. There is no transparancy, no governance, no way to see how much money is being spent. It's all on a "Need to Know Basis," and YOU don't need to know.

The spectre of another terrorist attack, this time with the, "Smoking gun as a mushroom cloud," to paraphrase Dick Cheney, was used as an excuse to invade Iraq. What did Saddam Hussein have to do with bringing down the WTC? I'm still waiting for an explanation. Meanwhile, the Neocons were talking about war with Iraq as early as 1998 in their Project for a New American Century think tank. Almost every major Bush Administration apparatchik signed onto their manifesto. Cheney, Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, John Bolton, even Dan Quayle! One white paper even specifically discusses how the American People would not buy into war with Iraq unless there were "a Pearl Harbor-type event." Hmmm...

9-11 continues to be the justification for this bogus and heartbreaking war in Afghanistan. The Neocons are evil but they are not stupid and they know their history. They know that the British Empire and the Soviet Union both failed to conquer Afghanistan. They can't think our chances of winning are any better, especially after the debacle of Vietnam. Of course they know this war is unwinnable - it's unwinnable by design. This war is intended to be an ongoing enterprise so it can be a cash cow for Big Business.

After the bonanza of Iraq in which billions of dollars were misappropriated or simply stolen outright, they have another bonanza in Afgahanistan. Not to mention the "shadow wars" in Pakistan and Yemen that nobody seems to want to talk about. Chalmers Johnson, once a true believer in and an instrument of our foreign policy, put it much more succinctly than I.

The failure to begin to deal with our bloated Military establishment and the profligate use of it in missions for which it is hopelessly inappropriate will, sooner or later, condemn the United States to a devastating trio of consequences: imperial overstretch, perpetual war, and insolvency, leading to a likely collapse similar to that of the Soviet Union.

- from "Dismantling the Empire - America's Last Best Hope"

In other words, it's all about the money. Coming soon to a TV near you: "War with Iran!"