9-11 Commission Report - a Significant Failure
Jacques de la Vie | 02.08.2004 18:48 | Analysis | Anti-militarism | Social Struggles | World
The 9-11 Commission failed to ask the question"Why. Why were WE attacked? If it had, it would have had to deal with the recent history of the United States' Foreign Policy toward the Middle East. Maybe it was not mentioned because many of the commission members are ex-congresspersons who voted over and over again for this sick foreign policy. Our foreign policy, especially our unlimited support of Israel's complete takeover of Palestine and elimination of the Palestinians, is the root cause of these attacks, not Islamic fundamentalism as the commission would have us believe. At least the report did acknowledge that some of the terrorists involved in 9-11, in particular Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, were motivated by their disagreement over American support for Israel. Repeated polls of Islamic countries report that we are not hated for our technology, culture, or freedoms but because of our foreign policy. If we continue to avoid answering the root question: WHY, we will be unable to reduce further terrorist attacks. As Edward Said so succinctly said, "What the U.S. refuses to see clearly it can hardly hope to remedy." Here is something about our foreign policy in four Middle Eastern countries.
Iran - Take the 1950’s in Iran. The U.S. spent over 200 million dollars to overthrow a popular prime minister because the British were afraid he would nationalize their oil company. Then we installed the Shah who basically put Iran at the disposal of our military and intelligence organizations so we could spy on the Soviet Union. The CIA and Israel then trained the notorious Iranian secret police, SAVAK, that enforced domestic repression and spread its tentacles all over the world to punish Iranian dissidents. Wouldn’t that get you mad if that was done to our country? It got the Iranians hella mad, and down to today they have not forgotten the U.S.’s lack of support for freedom and democracy for the Iranian people.
Saudi Arabia - How about our lack of support for the freedom of the people of Saudi Arabia and our backing for democratic rights in that country? Saudi Arabia has an absolute monarchy as its form of government. The ruling family, Al Saud, has four thousand members in its royal family living in palaces around the nation. An absolute monarchy is basically a dictatorship. The citizens do not have free speech, elections – political parties are outlawed, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, or even public theaters for entertainment. Torture by the government is common. In 1994, Humans Rights Watch said, Saudi citizens have fewer civil and political rights today than they did sixty years ago. Yet we support this government. The Arab world knows that. We want stable oil prices, a large Air Force base (Dhahran – built in 1946) under our control, a safe 900 mile coast along the Red Sea to the Suez Canal for shipping from Asia to Europe. For that we provide Saudi Arabia with protection in case it is attacked, a steady supply of modern military weapons as long as American Zionists approve of them, and allow the royal family to oppress their people however they want. Of course, our presence – especially our military presence - in this country was one of the two main reasons Osama bin Laden gave for attacking the United States. Saudi Arabia contains the most holy, Islamic city, Mecca. Osama considers our presence a defilement.
Egypt – Egypt has the largest Arab/Muslim population in the Middle East. If an Arab army were to be formed to help the Palestinians, as they have in the past, Egypt would be expected to participate. From the Camp David accords in 1978 on, the U.S. has been bribing Egypt to stop helping the Palestinians militarily, accept Israel's existence and not attack them to the tune of $2 to $3 billion dollars a year. 60% of that money goes for Egypt's military and police equipment, the rest for economic assistance, and at times some additional money to forgive debt. Since 1981 President Mubarak has ruled Egypt under non-stop emergency powers, almost dictatorial rule. Elections are a sham in Egypt as political parties are limited, the National Democratic Party always wins a comfortable majority in the legislature, the government routinely arrests opposition candidates and their supporters in the run-up to elections, outlaws public meetings, and restricts unions and strikes. Torture is widespread and systematic. Citizens by the thousands are picked up and held without charges for years on the basis of "a threat to national security and public order", laws have been passed that severely restrict professional organizations and the media 's freedoms, and trials are held in special military courts. Much of this is about eliminating and/or appeasing the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic movements in the country that want a theocracy, to help the Palestinians, and distance Egypt from the United States. Does this sound like freedom and democracy? Arabs again are aware that this is the type of regime we support in the Middle East in order to appease Israel and allow its systematic ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
Israel – Israel is the main source of the poison that is destroying the Middle East and much of the world. And it is the second main reason Osama bin Laden gave for attacking the United States. Over $10 billion of our tax money goes into subsidizing or paying protection to other countries for Israel's illegal and obscene determination to take over all of Palestine and eliminate the Palestinian people. The Jewish Zionist lobby in this country has hung unconditional support for Israel like an albatross around America's neck. And America is paying dearly for it. 9-11 was one of those paybacks. We earned it the old fashion way. In an interview Osama bin Laden gave to ABC's, John Miller, in 1998 (the full interview and a significant amount of additional information is in the website named below) Osama said: "If the people (Americans and other western peoples) have elected those governments in the latest elections, it is because they have fallen prey to the Western media which portray things contrary to what they really are. And while the slogans raised by those regimes call for humanity, justice and peace, the behavior of their governments is completely the opposite. It is not enough for their people to show pain when they see our children being killed in Israeli raids launched by American planes, nor does this serve the purpose. What they ought to do is change their governments which attack our countries. The hostility that America continues to express against the Muslim people has given rise to feelings of animosity on the part of Muslims against America and against the West in general. Those feelings of animosity have produced a change in the behavior of some crushed and subdued groups who, instead of fighting the Americans inside the Muslim countries, went on to fight inside the United states of America itself ... If their people do not wish to be harmed inside their very own countries, they should seek to elect governments that are truly representative of them and that can protect their interest." (Not act in the interest of Israel.)
(excerpted from: www.zionismexplained.org )
Jacques de la Vie