I received a rather innocuous e-mail last week from a good friend.  But for me, the e-mail was not innocuous.

The e-mail told the story of John Holmgren, a trucker from Shafer, Minnesota, who has painted his semi as a rolling memorial to the victims of the World Trade Center bombings on September 11, 2001.  Apparently, Mr. Holmgren is frequently pulled over by local law enforcement officials, so that they might be photographed with the portable monument to our suffering.

The subject line of the e-mail reads, “Have you forgotten?”
I have not forgotten, as I explained to my good friend in a lengthy reply.  I flew a flag for one year exactly.  The first time I ever flew a flag.  Installing the flag mount was an act of supreme patriotism for me.  I don’t use tools much.

And I urged my country onward.  I couldn’t wait for retribution.  I counted myself among those proud Americans who were cheering the war in Afghanistan.

But when the bombing was over.  When the testosterone-fueled need for revenge was sated.  And the flag came down.  I was forced to start reading and listening, in an effort to understand why it was my children were about to grow up in a world quite different than the one of my own youth.

Sadly, I reported to my friend, my own education on these issues has taken me to a lonely place.  A place where I have to shake my head at the John Holmgrens of our world, and those that spread his story by chain e-mail.  Because I think I’ve glimpsed the fundamental folly that has been embraced by our nation.  That is still being embraced.

My responding e-mail might have cost me a dear friendship.  Feelings on these issues run deep.  But I believe in my case.  So I will try to outline it here.

Why did al Qaeda strike at us on 9/11?

Assuming we can accept that the U.S. was struck by al Qaeda on 9/11 (a debate that I understand is unresolved for many of us here), my early inquiries around the event related to why.  Why did they hate us?

Prior to 9/11, I was not so unlike a typical citizen.  I was educated in U.S. schools.  I was informed by U.S. media.  And I was somewhat shocked at what might inspire people to want to throw down their own lives to blow up a high rise building.  I started to get a handle on this question with the book Hegemony or Survival,” by Noam Chomsky.  The book did a good job setting out the context that was lacking for people like myself.  It served as the basis for an expanded world view.  A world view that ultimately allowed me to write a list like this, and to question the almost universal acceptance by Americans of the idea that the U.S. generally acts for the good of the world.

While the book lays out a strong case for U.S. empire, and makes it relatively easy to understand why citizens outside the U.S. would quite naturally dislike us enough to take up arms and strike at us with any means possible, it is not necessary reading to understand al Qaeda’s specific motive for striking the U.S. on 9/11.

Osama bin Laden has been clear about what motivated the attack on 9/11:

The overarching motivation for the present al-Qaeda campaign was set out in a 1998 fatwa issued by Osama bin Laden, [et al]. . . .  The fatwa lists three crimes and sins committed by the Americans:

    * U.S. support of Israel.
    * U.S. occupation of the Arabian Peninsula.
    * U.S. aggression against the Iraqi people.

The fatwa states that the United States:

    * Plunders the resources of the Arabian Peninsula.
    * Dictates policy to the rulers of those countries.
    * Supports abusive regimes and monarchies in the Middle East, thereby oppressing their people.
    * Has military bases and installations upon the Arabian Peninsula, which violates the Muslim holy land, in order to threaten neighboring Muslim countries.
    * Intends thereby to create disunion between Muslim states, thus weakening them as a political force.
    * Supports Israel, and wishes to divert international attention from (and tacitly maintain) the occupation of Palestine.

If we take our enemy at their word, the reasons for the attack are based in our foreign policy.  We have occupied Saudi Arabia with bases.  We have supported Israel both militarily and diplomatically in their efforts in Palestine.  We have meddled in the affairs of the Middle East to control its precious resources.

Should we expect more suicide attacks?

If we accept the above list, we must expect that al Qaeda is still motivated to strike at us.  From an al Qaeda perspective, things have only gotten worse in terms of U.S. involvement in the Middle East.  Given today’s headlines suggesting the likelihood that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories is about to spill over into a regional war, it is probably safe to say that things have gotten much worse.

So we must continue in our battle with al Qaeda, no?  Eliminate them.  Or control enough territory so they cannot act.  Join Israel as an ally and put an end to this terror once and for all.

It is certainly a rational argument to consider.  Are we not militarily strong enough to get them all.  To wipe al Qaeda from the face of the earth.  To install friendly governments in Lebanon, Syria and Iran.  It seems to be the policy favored by our current neo-con administration.  And we can all see how swimmingly this is working in Iraq.

But beyond the obvious failing of this idea in practical terms in Iraq, the idea is wrong in a more general way.  Because it fails to understand the nature of suicide bombings.  In a book chronicling the study of suicide bombings between 1980 and 2003, we can begin to understand the futility of winning the war on terror by militarism:

In scholarly and low-key prose, Pape delivers the results of his own extensive research and that done by the University of Chicago’s Project on Suicide Terrorism. In so doing, Pape demolishes the relentlessly repeated assertion of the neoconservatives and Israeli politicians that Islamist suicide attacks against America and other counties are launched by undereducated, unemployed, alienated, apocalyptic fanatics who are eager to kill themselves because Americans vote, have civil liberties, and allow women to drive cars. This assertion always has been transparently false. . . .

The basis of Dying to Win is Pape’s study of the 315 known suicide terrorist attacks that occurred in the world between 1980 and 2003, attacks carried out by Muslims, Tamils, Sikhs, and Kurds. Pape concludes that “the data show there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any of the world’s religions.”

“Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective.”

From a review, “Throwing America a Life Preserver” by Michael Scheuer, June 10, 2005

Pape’s research concludes that suicide bombings are caused by 1) invasions by democratic governments, 2) against countries with less military capability, 3) where the occupying army has distinct cultural differences with the occupied people.  Putting these factors in place tends to cause occupied people to line-up to defend their homeland by carrying out the most destructive suicide attacks that are available to them.

Generally, these ideas lead to some very frightening conclusions.  After 9/11, our response has not been to address the root causes of the terror against us.  It has been to occupy two countries.  And in both occupations, the conditions outlined by Pape are ripe for the creation of even more suicide bombers.  So far the reach of these suicide bombers has been confined to targets withing Afghanistan and Iraq.

But in a world full of nuclear weapons, should the U.S. not worry that its imperialist chickens are going to come home to roost:

Among high-level planners who attended the Havana retrospective was Kennedy’s defense secretary, Robert McNamara, who recalled in 2005 that the world had come “within a hair’s breadth of nuclear disaster” during the missile crisis.  He accompanied this reminder with a renewed warning of “apocalypse soon,” describing “current US nuclear weapons policy as immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous.”  This policy creates “unacceptable risks to other nations and to our own” (both the risk of “accidental or inadvertent nuclear launch,” which is “unacceptably high,” and of nuclear attack by terrorists).  McNamara endorsed the judgment of Clinton’s defense secretary William Perry that “there is a greater than 50 percent probability of a nuclear strike on US targets within a decade.

Graham Allison reports that the “consensus in the national security community” is that a “dirty bomb” attack is “inevitable,” while an attack with a nuclear weapon is highly likely if fissionable materials – the essential ingredient – are not retrieved and secured.

From “Failed States,” by Noam Chomsky, 2006.

So what should we do?

It seems to me that we have two paths.  Of course, when faced with any situation, the number of potential actions are limited only by imagination.  But as I reflect on it almost five years after the fact, it seems to me that we were faced with two basic paths in responding to 9/11.

There was the path we have taken.  Militarism.  Continuation of empire.  Invasions that flaunt international law.  Continued basing of soldiers around the globe to
secure our “economic interests.”  Use of covert operations to subvert democratically elected governments with whom we disagree.  Essentially more of the same of the laundry list that can be found in Hegemony or Survival, or in my own list on this blog earlier this week.

And there was a path that relied on the rule of international law to start dealing with these problems.  We could have treated 9/11 like the crime that it was.  We could have respected the laws of our nation, as well as the law of the collected nations of the world.  And marched onward together in pursuing the individuals responsible for the crime.  (An interesting note that Chomsky makes in Hegemony, is to reflect on the magnitude of our loss on 9/11 versus the death toll that has been inflicted by our state sponsored terror – and honestly, we are not the most afflicted nation on the planet by a long shot, despite the obvious tragedy of this attack on our soil).  We could have started to look at the causes underlying this event with open reflection.  Started to turn away from empire.  And excess.  Toward sustainability.  Toward the universality of human rights.

It may not be too late to change courses.  But in my view, a change of course in necessary.  I suspect in the weeks and months to come, that there will be concern of new wars in Lebanon, Israel, Syria and Iran.  That the military forces of Russia and China and India and Pakistan might well be mobilized.  That we may soon again be within a “hair’s breadth of nuclear disaster,” to use McNamara’s phrase.

But to begin to fight our way back to that path of peace and justice, I think we individually may have to do exceptional things.  We may have to risk friendships in order to tell the truth as we see it.  To beat back what is a nationalistic furor.  There are reasons why we lost people on 9/11.  And from my own observation of the attitudes of my fellow Americans, I do not believe that most have even begun to examine those reasons in any depth.

Herman Goring is oft quoted from his defense at the Nuremberg trials:

Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.

We are being easily led.  In an ongoing war.  And perhaps into new wars.  And to continuing occupations.  And to covert actions to secure our rights to BigMacs and SUVs.  I submit to you that it is our own nationalism and militarism that is leading us to a day when our children may well see the mushroom clouds of this administration’s imagination.

No.  I have not forgotten.