Page 3 of
3 SPEAKING
FREELY September 11 was a third-rate
operation By Bohdan
Pilacinski
series of open doors. I'm not
referring to the lax security and all the
government has been faulted for. I'm referring to
the atmosphere and attitude which then pervaded
the country from top to bottom.
The plot
encountered no resistance because America was in a
frenzy of narcissistic triumphalism: every form of
self- inflation and as arrogant as possible. Let's
revisit that period.
The government's
priorities were plundering the public trust and
institutionalizing crony capitalism. The world was
our casino. Cultural leadership had passed to the
voice of the sewer. From frenzied corporate
racketeering, to "in-your-face" aggression in
sports, to the spew of
invective then called "rap", to the anger of youth
for show ... at every social stratum America
gloried in the liberation of the sociopath.
The codes which temper the power of the
strong over the weak had so collapsed that the
lionized National Football League "role models"
routinely beat up, and occasionally murdered,
their girlfriends; multiple-victim schoolyard
shootings impelled by bullying were occurring in
the white, suburban heartland every six months
down to the junior high school level. In the
fashion magazines, the models looked like they'd
been raped, and want to know what happens next.
With no enemies, and on its own terms,
this America was on a roll. Accountability to the
outside world rated zip. Nobody, let alone an
upstart like al-Qaeda, merited American attention,
unless there was money to be made. Why should
they, when the world consisted of us, and a planet
full of wannabes?
But off stage the
world's scorned realities persisted ...
The Palestinians were a nation crucified
on the politics of oil, and Oslo had been a fraud.
So? A generation of Iraqi children were stunted
for malnutrition. "That's just the price we have
to pay," said US secretary of state Madeleine
Albright. [21] Both of these were explicitly
proffered as a cause for war by bin Laden. [22].
And this may have gotten by you: the entire Muslim
delegation virtually begged the US to send
representation to a racism conference in Durban,
South Africa; top of the agenda was Israeli
apartheid. The US blew them off in a manner just
short of insulting.
America had lost its
soul and never noticed the difference; but a
champion rose up for Muslim victims in the form of
bin Laden. He has yet to be acknowledged here as
such, his enemy so base it offers only slanders.
[23].
The terrorists attacked a great
American symbol. Of what? Of multiculturalism, and
internationalism and inclusiveness, which had
hosted every kind of urban activity; "our way of
life". [24] A symbol of course, is a munificent
propaganda asset: it means what one wants it to
mean, generates no feedback loops and is
responsible for nothing. Within three months the
media successfully obfuscated that the Twin Towers
had been the thickest hive of finance capitalism
on Earth, let alone what that might mean. [25].
Everyone was strenuously "innocent" ... and so
remain.
And so it came to pass and the
above is all it took.
- To lock in a propaganda culture.
- To generate a blank check for war. -
To destroy two countries, convert them into
gangster states, and incite a civil war in the
middle of the world's energy supplies. - To
earn the fear and hatred of much of the world.
- To bring a proto-police state out of the
closet. - To institutionalize torture. -
To ruin the US Army.
And the
ramifications may take decades to play out ...
because the people were afraid, and have been
shunted around like a school of fish.
Notes 1. "Presumably"
because the flight instructor, who's supposed to
be the primary source for this assertion, denies
it happened. Moussaoui was referred for a security
check because of incongruities in his story and in
how he presented himself. He was then detained for
overstaying his visa as this was investigated.
Moreover, prior to his arrest, he was only
regarded as unstable; he deteriorated in custody.
Of course the report of his expressed disinterest
in take-offs and landings didn't fabricate itself.
See: Seymour Hersh, Chain Of Command, 106,
110-112. 2. About 120 Mossad agents and
trainees conducting a multi-tiered operation. This
is a story in itself. 3. The official story is
almost certainly a fabrication, but the likelier
options don't affect the contention of this essay.
See: Simon Denyer, "Pakistan Accused of Staging
bin Laden Aide Arrest", Reuters, November 3, 2003;
and the exhaustively annotated maze of media
reports in Paul Thompson's "Is There More to the
Capture of ..."; both via. In the latest version,
as told by senior CIA officials to Ron Suskind
(The One Percent Doctrine), Mohammed was
turned in by an al-Qaeda defector, and not even
for the money. Clearly, "healthy Islam turned him
in", plays better than "we got him with our
intrusive technology and coercive methods"; but
who knows? 4. Edward Shirley (CIA officer,
Directorate of Operations), "Can't Anybody Here
Play This Game?" The Atlantic, February 1998, pp
45-. And the earlier CIA wasn't that impressive
either. As Ward Churchill pointed out, with a
quarter of a million people on its payroll, it
couldn't predict the Tet Offensive. 5.
Guillaume Dasquie, September 11, 2001: "The French
Knew Much About It," Le Monde, April 16, 2007.
Synopsis of a leaked, classified, 328 page DGSE
(French secret services) al-Qaeda file. 6.
Terry McDermott, Perfect Soldiers, 228 and
304 n 54. 7. McDermott, 191 and 304 n 51. 8.
Quoted in Imperial Hubri Michael Scheuer
34. 9. Moussaoui's arrest was August 16. The
first and unsuccessful attempt to purchase 9/11
tickets, was just over a week earlier, August 8.
In a rushed book and on no real supporting data,
terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna asserted that
Moussaoui's arrest forced the advance of the 9/11
plot. (Inside Al Qaeda, 2002, p 109). After
four years of researching 9/11, the LA Times'
Terry McDermott concluded that "In the end, the
Moussaoui arrest caused more upset than action".
But his "disappearance would have been a powerful
argument against" delaying the plot. (226 and 304
n 50 ) 10. Theoretically, it could have been
planted by either side. The grainy video shows a
bin Laden character with his alleged lieutenants
and a religious notable discussing the attack. The
incriminating element is just several sentences on
the voice track; easily spliced and inadmissible
as evidence in an American court (and so received
in the Arab world). So, were it a CIA plant, why
not a stickier indictment than six days advance
notice? If an al-Qaeda plant, why contradict Bin
Laden's public position? And his mother said it
wasn't him. 11. Peter Bergen, The Osama bin
Laden I Know, xxx (introduction). 12.
Bergen, 255. Account of Ahmad Zaidan, al-Jazeera's
bureau chief in Pakistan; all the more credible as
Abu Haf's claim followed the attack on the USS
Cole, and predated 9/11 by nearly a year. 13.
Ramzi Yousef, the Manila airline bomb plot of
January 1995. For details, see McDermott, 144-154
and 287 n 49 and 50. 14. Transcript of above
video: Bin Laden, "As regards the towers, we
assumed [casualties] in the three or four floors
the planes would crash into. That was all we
estimated. I was the most optimistic. Due to the
nature of my profession and work [construction], I
figured that the fuel in the plane would raise the
temperature in the steel to the point that it
becomes red and loses its properties. So if the
plane hits the building here [he gestured with his
hands] the portion of the building above will
collapse. That was the most we could hope for."
This is the most convincing translation, by Ali
al-Ahmed, used in Lawrence Wright, The Looming
Tower, 370. 15. Quoting a NORAD source,
McDermott writes that flight 93's transponder went
off just before the turn; and implies that no
fighter jets ever got near it. Lots of planes were
scrambled, but only two F-16s from Langley were
ever in position in time to defend a target, and
they were chasing the ghost of Atta's flight 11,
on the mistaken belief that it had passed New York
and was headed toward Washington. It was that bad.
(240 and 241). 16. BBC online, September 7,
2000. The comparison is flawed insofar as domestic
drug distribution is American, which qualifies the
drug trade as a criminal joint venture. But the
issue here is means and extent of external
penetration of territorial security, and that
comparison holds. 17. The Economist, September
2, 2006, p 26. 18. Ted Galen Carpenter,
"Keeping the al-Qaeda threat in perspective", San
Jose Mercury News, October 9, 2006, page 1. 19.
Mary Anne Weaver, "Inventing al-Zarqawi," The
Atlantic, July, 2006, pp 87-. 20. McDermott,
174. 21. Who now runs her own emerging markets
hedge fund. Alan Abelson, Barron's, January 22,
2007, p 6. 22. "Crucified" in the literal
Christian sense of the term. In Rene Girard's
thesis, all civilizations have been and are, built
on the cornerstone of the designated victim.
Though the terms of occupation are Israel's, the
world at large assents because the Palestinians
have been sacrificed to the global politics of
oil. 23. Who bin Laden was is beyond the scope
of this article, but if Che Guevara has
legitimacy, then bin Laden has it in spades. Peter
Bergen's summary assessment: "In my view, bin
Laden is an intelligent political actor who is
fighting a deeply felt religious war against the
West." Bergen, 389. This corroborates Michael
Scheuer's representation in Imperial
Hubris, whose publication was sponsored by the
CIA. 24. A Benetton commercial of global
harmony and goodwill; this is standard. For its
latest issue, see Lawrence Wright (staff writer
for the New Yorker, Pulitzer Prize 2007), The
Looming Tower, 2006, p 368. "Al-Qaeda had
aimed ... at America, but it struck all of
humanity." 25. Multiple sources, including the
Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and CNN,
posted a listing; CNN's included square footage
(this is no longer on the website). Over 75% of
the occupied space was some kind of financial
institution; 83% including law firms and
consultants. Morgan Stanley had 21 floors. "War on
Wall Street" screamed that week's cover of
Barron's.
(For an expansion of the theme
implicit in this essay (that the "war on terror"
is both a misconception and a fraud), at the elite
levels of journalism, see William Pfaff, "A 'long
war' designed to perpetuate itself", October 2,
2006, and Olivier Roy, June 9, 2006 at
www.iht.com; the archives at www.williampfaff.com;
and John Mueller, "Why al-Qaeda Hasn't Hit the US
Again", Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2006,
p 2.)
Bohdan Pilacinski claims
no credentials whatsoever; the essay stands on its
own merits.
(Copyright 2008 Bohdan
Pilacinski.)
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