by M. Shahid Alam
If the attacks of September 11, 2001 are indeed 'unique,'
without precedent in the long history of Western contacts
with the 'lesser breeds', it is important that we make an
effort to understand why they happened, why now, and what
they say about our world?
There are several claims to 'uniqueness' that a historian
might advance when discussing the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001. If we accept the officially sanctioned
definition of terrorism, which restricts the term to
violence directed against civilians by non-state actors, the
attacks of September 11 gain a unique place in history by
their deadly human toll, some three thousand lives. We do
not know of another 'terrorist' act which even begins to
approach the human toll of September 11, 2001. On the other
hand, these attacks pales into insignificance when compared
to the worst terrorist acts perpetrated by states, not
excluding United States, over the past five hundred years.
A second claim to 'uniqueness' might rest on the methods
employed by the perpetrators of these attacks. The
terrorists of September 11 had not employed guns,
explosives, bombs or missiles. Instead, they had flown four
civilian jets into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The
only weapons they wielded were box-cutters: this and their
determination to die with their victims. One German
composer, carried away by the power of the moment, described
the self-immolation of these terrorists as "the greatest
work of art ever." Later, retracting, he described the
destruction as "Lucifer's greatest work of art." [1]
The third claim of 'uniqueness' came from President Bush. In
his first address after September 11 to the members of
Congress, he pointed out that "Americans have known
wars--but for the past 136 years, they have been wars on
foreign soil, except for one Sunday in 1941. Americans have
known the casualties of war--but not at the center of a
great city on a peaceful morning." [2] The President was
defining the horror of September 11 to Americans in terms of
their history.
It was Noam Chomsky who dared to analyze September 11
dialectically. The attacks of September 11 were a "terrible
terrorist atrocity," but it is not their "scale" which made
them unique. September 11 was "not unique in scale, by any
means." "What's unique about it, is the victims. This is the
first time in hundreds of years that what we call the
West--Europe and its offshoots--have been subjected to the
kinds of atrocities that they carry out all the time in
other countries and that is unique. The guns are pointed in
the other direction for the first time." [3] Arundhati Roy,
the Indian writer and activist, captured this dialectic in a
striking metaphor. The attacks of September 11 "were a
monstrous calling card from a world gone horribly wrong."
[4]
Starting in 1492, the guns of the West have been pointed
incessantly outward. For more than five hundred years, the
steel of the Western sword, lance, gun and bomb have been
planted in the bones and flesh of Africans, Australians,
Asians and native Americans. For more than five hundred
years, Western power has divided the world into two unequal
moieties, one planted on top of the other, one rising as the
other sinks, one battening as the other sickens. Over five
hundred years, entire continents were devastated, societies
overthrown, their civilizations denigrated, their peoples
decimated, herded into slavery and stranded without dignity.
All this was the product of a new dynamic that welded power
and capital, states and markets, in a cumulative dynamic
that eventually brought the whole world within its grasp,
giving birth to unequal development, the inequalities
growing cumulatively. It was a process that could not be
overthrown once it had been set in motion.
And so for five hundred years, European arms and capital
advanced while the rest of the world retreated, vacating
their political, economic and cultural space before the
surge of Western power. It must be acknowledged, however,
that they never retreated without a fight; they fought
against constantly increasing odds; they hid in ambush after
every defeat; they stole the weapons of their enemies; they
plotted and mobilized for the next battle. Occasionally,
they stalled the advance of Western arms; occasionally, they
even won a few stunning victories. And, starting in the
1940s, they won back some breathing space.
But never in all these years did the victims succeed in
attacking the aggressors on their home turf, in their
fortified playgrounds, inside the lavish retreats where they
enjoyed the spoils of their victories. Not once in all these
years could the victims carry their resistance inside the
citadel of the invaders. Though many peoples were crushed
over these dim centuries, though many were driven into
extinction, though many more were sold into slavery, though
proud empires were laid waste, though ancient cultures were
cast aside, not once could the victims breach the bastions,
scale the citadels of Western power. Not once could the
millions of Americans, Africans and Asians, whose lives were
trapped in fear for centuries, bring fear to the homes of
their tormentors. Inside their homes, the captains of
plunder were safe, beyond the reach of the wrath and the
retribution of their countless victims.
Never, that is, till September 11, 2001. On this fateful
day, the 'victims' had scaled the citadel of Western power,
they had breached the impenetrable defense shield of the
world's greatest power, they had cut through its security
perimeter, and visited destruction inside its inner
sanctum--they had desecrated the holy of holies. The
terrorists had attacked two American icons--of financial and
military power.
Do these attacks mark a turning of the tide? Do they mark
the beginning of a new form of guerilla warfare, one that
will be fought on the home turf of United States? Did these
attacks result from some new vulnerability created by
changing technologies, the new connectivity between
continents, or the new globalization? Were these attacks
allowed to happen? Are they a new 'Operation Northwoods'
executed surreptitiously by some cabal in the centers of
power? Or are they merely flukes, a one-time disaster, the
result of a lapse in the defenses of the world's greatest
power?
There are questions too about the attackers, their identity
and their motives. Did they, in some sense, represent
America's victims in the Congo, Vietnam, Cambodia,
Nicaragua, El-Salvador, Algeria, Afghanistan and Iraq? Had
they acted out of sympathy for the victims of United States
and Israel in Palestine? Are they announcing their revulsion
against the immorality of a world grown so unequal it
supports a rising trade in body parts? Are they Jehadists
acting out of an atavistic faith which seeks to revive its
glory by the force of arms? Or are they nihilists, rebels,
madmen, deranged by the frenetic progress of modernity, by
genetic modification, terminator seeds, surrogate
motherhood, designer children, stem-cell research, and human
cloning?
The answers to these questions-and many more like
these-could have filled the pages of the America's storied
newspapers and magazines for many months. But the writers on
these pages serve corporate masters; they find thrill and
see glory in America's overseas conquests; they think no
sacrifice of foreign lives too high for the preservation of
America's most paltry interests; they sanctify the crimes of
an apartheid, expansionist, colonial-settler state; they can
discover few virtues, little worth preserving outside the
borders of their own great country. America's mass media
ensure that no thought ever enters the minds of Americans
which can compromise the interests of corporate America.
This great enterprise-the manufacturing of lies-is led by
the likes of Thomas Friedman, William Saffire, Marvin Kalb,
Charles Krauthammer, Daniel Pipes and Billy Kristol.
America's mass media are strictly off limits for independent
spirits like Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Alexander Cockburn,
Jeff St. Clair, Cornel West, Norman Solomon and Salim
Muwakkil.
Is September 11 then a fluke, a contrived event, a shard
from the past, history catching up with the amorality of
power, the result of a new dynamic created by globalization
and a new connectivity? Or should we accept the official
answer, and see the hijackers of September 11 only as evil
men, cold-blooded murderers, acting out of malicious spite,
products of a failing civilization? Do we have the right to
think, to evaluate, to empathize, to imagine, to choose? Do
we dare to escape from the machinery that manufactures
consent?
In the world of social dynamics, few events are so simple
that they can be traced back definitively to a single cause,
as if we were examining not a social phenomenon but a
disease that is carried by a single vector, a single
malevolent life form that could then be destroyed with
antibiotics. Should we ignore the complexity of the real
world, the layers of causation, the interconnections amongst
humans--even between tormentors and their victims--and reach
for convenient answers, answers that exonerate us, answers
that invert reality, even transforming villains into heroes,
tormentors into victims? Sadly, that is what our media and
academia do, because they are beholden to money and power.
We might assert, quite accurately, that September 11
happened because of skyscrapers: the attacks would never
have occurred if the 'monstrous' Twin Towers did not exist.
If our media were dominated by interests inimical to tall
buildings--for reasons of aesthetics, economics, or
politics--this is the explanation that would have prevailed.
The solution too would have been simple: level America's
skyline. We would have created a wrecker's paradise, a boom
for demolition companies.
Alternatively, we might claim that the culprits were the
passenger jets. Who could deny that these objects were the
implements of war chosen by the hijackers? The hijackers had
used no cluster bombs, no cruise missiles, no daisy-cutters;
they had simply turned these behemoths into massive weapons.
"Ban commercial air travel," the cry could have gone up. In
fact, this solution did make sense in the immediate
aftermath of the attacks, when we grounded all commercial
flights for a few days. It was a sensible thing to do. But
if the anti-airline lobbies had been powerful we would have
grounded them permanently, and gone back to traveling the
old-fashioned way--by ships and trains.
It is appropriate, however, that the search into the causes
of September 11 began with the perpetrators of these
attacks. Very quickly the nineteen dead hijackers were
identified: we learned they were young, male, Arab and
Islamic. Once this identification had been made, a great
deal of the surmise, analysis, investigation and response
turned on the Arab-Islamic ethnicity of the hijackers. For
many commentators, especially those with Zionist
proclivities or evangelical vocations, this singular fact
contained all the answers. They trotted out their ready-made
answers. The hijackers were messengers of death from the
Arab-Islamic hell. For years, these fiends had brought death
to innocent Israelis. And now they have directed their
terror against the free, democratic and Christian West
itself. Their hatred of the West has no political causes, no
political grievances, no history: it springs from their
race, their ethos, and their devilish, war-mongering creed.
This line of thinking led to some quick solutions. Ann
Coulter, contributing editor of National Review Online,
proposed that "We should invade their countries, kill their
leaders and convert them to Christianity." [5] The solution
appeared eminently logical. Since Islam is the source of
terrorism, exorcise Islam-exterminate the Muslims or convert
them to Christianity. That done, we can have peace and
goodwill on earth. As outlandish as this sounds, it would
appear that the United States has been moving in this
general direction since September 11. We did invade
Afghanistan though, despite our best efforts, failed to kill
their leaders. We are getting ready to repeat this in Iraq
and, depending on how things go there, we are planning to
send our conquering armies into Iran, Saudi Arabia and
Egypt. After that, the sky is the limit.
There was another solution that we began implementing right
after September 11. It is a solution in which we have long
experience: racial profiling. Once again, the solution
appeared logical. All nineteen hijackers were young Arab
men. If we could get tough on them, keep tabs on them, track
them, screen them at the border, arrest them on suspicion,
abridge their civil rights, we could sleep in peace. This
might just work if the terrorists are only capable of
repeating September 11. What if the team Al-Qaida is
recruiting even now includes Italian, Greek, Hispanic or
Chinese Muslims? Should we extend racial profiling to these
new groups? How will this affect our project of
globalization?
Why did corporate and official America-the America projected
by our mass media-respond to September 11 by reverting to
old stereotypes? We are the Christian knights in shining
armor, once again slaying the dragons that had dared to
breathe fire over our cities. Once again, we are battling
the slovenly Arabs, the violent Muslims, the fanatic
Orientals. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the
world's most advanced country is mobilizing for the modern
world's first civilizational war. If this war unfolds
according to plans--and when the plans begin to unravel--the
memory of the Crusades might pale in comparison. That was a
local war fought in a tiny corner of the Islamic world.
Already this new war is being fought on a broader front that
includes Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq and Philippines. And
it threatens to be a great deal more deadly.
In the 1990s, following the collapse of Soviet Union, two
visions competed to shape America's dominance in the world.
The first was the project of globalization. It strove to
open up world markets to American capital, every corner of
the world, including the Third World and the former
communist countries. In the past, Britain had achieved this
through force of arms, but even so it was incomplete. Now
United States could do a great deal more, without waging too
many wars, without creating a formal empire. The power it
wielded over its allies, over financial markets - exercised,
in part, through the IMF and World Bank - its control over
military hardware, its leadership in cutting-edge
technologies, its power to set the rules ensured that it
could open up virtually every corner of the world, as never
before, to free entry and exit of American capital. This was
the vision that dominated throughout the 1990s. The
alternative vision, a hawkish vision, of an imperial America
that would pursue American interests more aggressively,
through the expansion of America's military might, and
through more frequent wars, had for the time been pushed
aside.
But the hawks would not have to wait for long. They were
aided by globalization itself, or rather its contradictions.
As the new globalization deepened poverty in the Core and
Periphery, as it threatened the environment, as it
transferred jobs out of the Core countries, as it augmented
the power of Corporations, it produced a new countervailing
force: an anti-globalization movement. Driven by the same
connectivity that was driving globalization,
anti-globalization became global. By the late 1990s, it
posed a serious challenge to the corporate elites and their
globalization project. At its edges the movement contained
radical tendencies. Anti-globalization had to be contained.
Another expansionist movement was running into trouble, at
about the same time. In May 2000, the Israelis beat a hasty
retreat from South Lebanon, changing the mood of the
Palestinian resistance, and forcing Arafat to reject the
Bantustans offered by Israelis in July 2000. Three months
later, the second Intifada was born. Almost instantly, the
Zionists switched to their second option that entailed
massive ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and perhaps Israel
itself. This called for a clash of civilizations. It would
be safe to drive out the Palestinians only under the fog of
a major war between United States and Islam.
A third force was also brewing in the United States. It was
the force of the religious right, the Christian Coalition:
they harked back to the letter of the Bible, they read the
old prophecies into modern history, their world view was
Manichean--all who opposed them were evil--they were mostly
Southerners and racists, they wanted America to become a
Crusading force, they were viciously opposed to Islam. Most
significantly, they were plotting to take over the
Republican Party. And in 2000, they were already a major
force in the Presidential election.
In the meanwhile, the neoconservative hawks plotted. In a
"Statement of Principles," announced in June 1997, they laid
out plans for an American Century, an imperial century that
would "increase defense spending significantly," "shape
circumstances before crises emerge," "meet threats before
they become dire," and "challenge regimes hostile to our
interests and values." [6] In another document, published in
September 2000, these neoconservatives worry that the
"process of transformation" they wanted to effect "is likely
to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing
event--like a new Pearl Harbor." [7]
Could September 11 have been that "catastrophic and
catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor" that the
neoconservative hawks had almost wished for? Was it
serendipity, conspiracy, kismet, the inevitable escalation
in a clash of civilizations, the symptom of a crisis in the
relations between the Core and Periphery - perhaps, all of
the above--that threw this spanner in the wheels of the
world?
Whatever the forces that engineered September 11, this much
is clear. It was seized precipitately by the quartet of
forces just described - the neoconservative hawks, Corporate
America, the Zionists, and the Christian Coalition - to
launch their project of a new American Century, to proclaim
endless wars, to seize the profits from the Arab oil fields,
to shrink and downsize Islam, to make the world safe for
American interests, and to create a hegemony that would last
forever. Do we indeed stand at the dawn of a new American
Century, whose birth threatens the world with wars, blood,
grime, but also promises to deliver profits never dreamed of
before?
A hundred years from now, standing in front of the grand
monuments raised to commemorate this grand American century,
what will Americans think of Osama bin Laden? Will they
remember this malevolent genius as the midwife, facilitating
the birth of the new American Century? On the other hand, if
this project runs into trouble, if it produces blood and
grime but no profits, who shall we blame for the human toll
of this terrible catastrophe? We can of course blame Osama.
Or we can blame the cold hearts, minds cowed by fear,
grasping cupidity and a terrible tribalism that delivered
mankind, gagged and bound, into the power of the
neoconservative Juggernaut.
References:
[1] www.loper.org/~george/trends/2001/Sep/29.html and
www. stockhausen.org/message_from_karlheinz.html.
[2] www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4261868,00.html.
[3] www.vcn.bc.ca/redeye/interviews/chomsky.html.
[4] www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4266289,00.html.
[5] www.nationalreview.com/coulter/coulter091301.shtml
[6] The words in quotes are from the "The Statement of Principles" singed by the major neoconservatives, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Elliot Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, Norman Podhoretz, I. Lewis Libby and Eliot Cohen. See www. newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm
[7] http://www.fpif.org/papers/02men/box1_body.html
Copyright © 2003 M. Shahid Alam -
M. Shahid Alam is Professor of Economics at Northeastern University, Boston. Born in
Dhaka, he attended schools in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Canada. He is the author of Poverty from the
Wealth of Nations (Macmillan: 2000). His translations of Ghalib have appeared in
several US literary magazines.
Enver Masud, "A Clash Between
Justice and Greed Not Islam and the West," The Wisdom Fund, September 2,
2002
[. . . it could also spur an intense clash of civilizations--Robin Wright,
"
Turning Points: Will the Modern Era Come Undone in Iraq," Washington
Post, May 16, 2004]
[. . . conservative Americans have more in common with devout Muslims than
with liberal Democrats.--Patrick J. Buchanan, "What Does America Offer
the World?", Antiwar.com, May 19, 2004]
[Tens of thousands of people from Muslim, Arab, and South Asian backgrounds
have been targeted by the government in a slew of sweeps since 9-11. Teenage
boys and men from 25 predominantly Muslim countries, none accused of any
crime, at one point were ordered to report to immigration offices for
questioning and fingerprinting, or risk arrest and deportation. By the end
of the "special registration," over 82,000 individuals had complied and over
13,000 were slated for deportation as a result.
. . . exactly zero terrorism-related charges have emerged from these
initiatives--Chisun Lee, "The spread of racial
profiling since 9-11: Civil Rights Rollback", village Voice, August 3,
2004]
[To "free up" the Negev for Jewish settlement, 140,000 Negev Bedouin face
ethnic cleansing--Jonathan Cook, "Making the land without a
people," Al-Ahram, August 26, 2004]
