My first indication that our country was not responding well to the 9/11 attacks came when Bill Maher was fired from ABC for questioning whether ‘cowards’ was an apt description for people who willingly fly jet airliners into buildings. I didn’t remember the History Channel ever describing kamikaze pilots as lacking courage. If anything, they had a disturbing (inhuman) lack of fear. In fact, the suicidal mission is more effective in demoralizing the enemy than it is in creating damage (most of the time). The jihadist fighters have a saying that they ‘love death more than we love life,” or variations on that theme. When an enemy demonstrates that level of commitment, it can be very intimidating.
What disturbed me about the firing of Bill Maher was that it was an early sign that our country did not want to know why we had been attacked. It seemed that people feared that learning the reasons might lend some kind of justification to the deaths of our citizens, our families, our coworkers. To even discuss the reasons was to besmirch the memory of the dead and call into question their innocence. Therefore, the hijackers were ‘cowards’ who ‘hated our freedoms.’ They were waging a nihilistic war to the death with us, and there was no point in trying to understand their motivations, let alone in trying to reason or negotiate with them. The president saw a replay of Flight 175 flying into the South Tower and declared, “We’re at war.”
But, with whom? How many of them were still alive? What were their capabilities and intentions? Did they have any demands? The first answer we got was an estimate of how many souls had passed through Afghani training camps over the years. It was estimated that perhaps as many as 100,000 people had been trained there, and all of them were now presumed to be potential suicide attackers. It didn’t matter that most of them had been trained to fight on one side of the Afghan Civil War, or to go to Kashmir or Chechnya or China’s Uighur Province. It didn’t matter that few of them were game for suicide missions. We were not making a sober-eyed assessment of the threat we faced.
Perhaps because the government and the media refused to entertain the idea that the hijackers were human beings with actual motives, the American people ran out in droves and bought Korans and books on Islam and the Middle East. We sought to answer for ourselves the question the establishment refused to provide. It turned out that the answer was easy to find on the internet. Usama bin-Laden had issued fatwas in 1996 and 1998 that laid out the reasons for killing American civilians in response to our nation’s foreign policies. He never mentioned hating our freedoms.
Bin Laden wanted to make a spectacular attack on American soil because attacks on our embassies and warships had failed to get American citizens to question their country’s foreign policy. In this sense, learning about our foreign policy and questioning it was in some sense reacting exactly as bin-Laden intended us to react. That only added to our reluctance to respond rationally to the attacks. Wasn’t changing our policy vis-a-vis Saudi Arabia exactly what he wanted us to do? Well, we better not do that, then.
With the lawyer for the five 9/11 plotters warning that they will plead not-guilty in order to explain to the American people how and why they carried out the attacks, a good part of the country is going to react with revulsion. Why give these assholes a platform to criticize America and try to justify what they did? Insofar as any of their arguments make a modicum of sense (even in a totally perverted way), won’t that bring dishonor upon our country and the victims of 9/11?
Ultimately, the answer is no. Whatever the faults of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East prior to 9/11, they didn’t justify murdering nearly 3,000 innocent civilians. That those policies were unpopular enough to put our civilians at risk was something we needed to confront and address. Where those policies were justified, we needed to take steps to protect ourselves from the blowback. Where those policies were unjustified, we needed to make changes. What we didn’t need to do was expend trillions of dollars making things worse. But a failure of leadership, imagination, and rationality led us to do precisely that.
It will be healthy for us to learn from the 9/11 plotters why and how they did what they did. I think we’ll learn a lot from it that we haven’t allowed ourselves to learn in any other way. And, that, is a worthy way to honor our dead.
In the end the US ended up doing precisely what Osama Bin Laden wanted it to do – going crazy and attacking the secular regime of his mortal enemy Saddam Hussein.
“Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make mad”.
I don’t UBL minded seeing us attack Iraq, but he really wanted American citizens to rise up and demand our government change its policies vis-a-via Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel. That obviously didn’t happen.
He might have reasoned that one or the other–if not, eventually over the course of an extended time, both,—would be the very foreseeable consequences of the attacks and that, from his perspective, either would be preferable to allowing the status quo to continue as it had been for so long.
As Oui points out, it’s doubtful that al-qaeda saw the invasion of Iraq as an unvarnished blessing. They did not like Saddam’s secular and brutal rule, but they hardly wanted to see the Shi’a get the upper hand in Baghdad or see Iran increase its regional influence. What they liked is that we were making a strategic error that would cost us money and credibility, and give them endless propaganda opportunities.
A U.S. invasion of Iraq—the wrong war in the wrong place and at the wrong time—should have served very well any interests which OBL had to see the U.S. government do itself immense harm.
Which was the very first government to issue a formal international warrant with Interpol for the arrest of UBL? Saddam Hussein of Iraq, is the answer. Saddam Hussein and UBL had nothing but enmity between them; zero common interests— and certainly not that of seeing the U.S. govt. shoot itself in the head by invading Iraq.
To this, “They did not like Saddam’s secular and brutal rule, but they hardly wanted to see the Shi’a get the upper hand in Baghdad or see Iran increase its regional influence,” UBL could easily reply, as Americans have so often done whenever the occasion suits them, “You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs,”—indeed, that phrase became famous in what context? That of the American Revolutionary War.
According to the The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable it’s a mid-19th century proverb that also existed in French (hardly surprising considering the foodstuff).
.
OBL wanted to get rid of all occupying forces in Muslim states, that’s why he offered Saudi Arabia the Mujadeen to attack Saddam’s forces in neighboring Kuwait. OBL was vehemently opposed to US forces in Saudi Arabia, the nation guardian of Islam’s holy places Mecca and Medina. When the Saudis joined the US forces, he went rogue and left for Sudan. Saudi Arabia and the Bin Ladens are a natural alliance based on Wahhabi Islam (pdf), a Sunni sect. Their mortal enemy is of course the Shi’ite state of Iran. See the present wars in Iraq, Palestine and Yemen:
An al-Qaida-linked group in Yemen warned the Yemeni and Saudi majority Sunnis against Shiite Iran’s dangerous plots.
In an audio recording posted on an Islamist website, Mohamed bin Abdul Rahman al-Rashid, one of the Saudi most wanted suspected terrorist, said “Shiite Iran poses an extreme danger to Sunnis of Yemen and Saudi Arabia than Jews or Christians.”
“Driven by a greed to take over Muslim countries, Shiite Iran has long been plotting to install a Hezbollah-like group to occupy areas at the joint-border of Yemen and Saudi Arabia,” al-Rashid added, inciting the Saudi-Yemeni Sunni Muslims to “fight Iran-backed Shiite rebels.”
Saudi jets bomb Yemeni Houthis
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
.
RIYADH – The father of ex-Gitmo detainee Sa’eed Al-Shihri who has seemingly surfaced in Yemen as a senior Al-Qaeda operative despite having had undergone a rehabilitation program in Saudi Arabia, says his son “is a deviant member of society who must be removed.”
The father, Jaber Aal Khath’am Al-Shihri, made the pronouncement in an interview with Saudi Gazette/Okaz during which he detailed how his son had seemed alright and was blending into society until four men started to visit him regularly.
A senior official of the Ministry of Interior, meanwhile, said a video posted on a jihadist website claiming the alleged reappearance of Al-Shihri and another Saudi, ex-Gitmo prisoner Abu Al-Hareth Muhammad Al-Oufi, as senior members of Al-Qaeda in Yemen, cannot diminish the Saudi government’s internationally acknowledged success in rehabilitating former terrorist suspects.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Two-and-a-half cheers for this essay.
You, too? :
” …Whatever the faults of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East prior to 9/11, they didn’t justify murdering nearly 3,000 innocent civilians. “
Why?
This is the conventional view repeated ad nauseum. It’s also a gold-plated example of U.S. exceptionalism: there is one moral standard we apply to ourselves and then, for everyone else, another, different standard—which just happens to put others on the hook while leaving us conveniently off the hook.
Your recent [apparent evolution in point of view] commentaries, especially those posted since your taking up once more Neil Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (1988), [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Bright_Shining_Lie ] has been like a breath of fresh air on the topic of the current U.S. wars.
But with the repetition of [the attacks of September 2001 ] “didn’t justify murdering nearly 3,000 innocent civilians” you seem to lapse back into the very strain of thinking which your questioning of the always-absurd-and-disingenuous “Why do they hate us?” so rightly shows up as having been nothing more than sheer myth-making from the start.
Why should we to suppose that the question of whether or not the attacks of September 2001 in which nearly 3,000 people were killed were “justified” or “justifiable” is either possible to decide or particularly ours to decide?
When a handful of native-born influential planters and businessmen took it upon themselves to organize and raise an armed rebellion against the rule of George the Third over the British colonies of North America, they decided for themselves and their fellow colonists that Britain’s continued rule in the colonies was unjust and unjustifiable, though that view was anything but unanimously held among the public. Certainly, the opposing view on the part of the British crown was neither welcome nor accepted by the colonial rebels. Yet, surely, if asked, many (though not all) Britons would have answered, in effect, that “Whatever the faults of
U.S.British crown foreign policy in theMiddle EastNorth American colonies prior to9/111776, they didn’t justifymurdering nearly 3,000 innocent civiliansopen and armed rebellion which aimed at independence from British crown rule.”Where are the Americans today who insist that the question of any justification of the American War of independence of 1775-1783 belonged then or belongs now exclsuively to “Britain”?
Those nearly 3,000 deaths resulting from the attacks of September 2001 are still routinely taken by what I guess is the overwhelming majority of Americans today to justify the U.S. government’s invasion of and war on and occupation of Iraq—which has taken scores of thousands of lives. So how can any American argue that “whatever the faults of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East prior to 9/11, they didn’t justify murdering nearly 3,000 innocent civilians.”
When do Americans ask the Iraqi people whether the September 2001 attacks “justify” what the U.S. government has since done to them and their nation?
When do Americans come to accept that the sane and sensible course now is to begin serious negotiations with representatives of a whole host of deadly insurgent movements whose wrath the U.S. government’s policies (administrations Democrat and Republican alike) have provoked and who are now bent on inflicting deadly injury to what are supposed to be U.S. interests wherever and whenever possible?
In a world in which nothing but greedy, selfish and arrogant use of power is practically the only thing which stops the U.S. from reaching negotiated settlements with various and sundry insurgent causes, and one in which, largely thanks to U.S. opposition, there still exits no formal and effective legal venue as an alternative to the resort to terrorist attacks on the part of the world’s insurgents, what else are people supposed to expect?
History lesson:
It’s offensive for you to compare the actions of George Washington to the 9/11 hijackers. Washington could have terrorized loyalists. He could have waged a version of the Phoenix Operation throughout the countryside. He could have sent sappers to carry out domestic terrorism in London. He did not.
Of course it’s “offensive”. It offends the standard view we’re taught to believe as children from elementary school-age. But what those who drafted and signed the Declaration of Independence intended was everything necessary–including deadly force—to end the rule of the British crown.
Is that true? [ Just because there was nothing comparable to Vietnam’s “Phoenix program” or organized sappers attacking targets in London, we’re to conclude that the American revolutionaries have nothing in common with today’s terrorists? You mean that if the same things were being done today, is there any doubt that Bush, Cheney, Tom Ridge, Alberto Gonzales just as much as Obama, Biden, Janet Napolitano and Eric Holder, would not be seeking the arrest of Adams, Jefferson, Madison, et al as terrorists? Isn’t that the real measure of the matter in addition to the following?] The homes and other property of civilian loyalists weren’t subject to the random and casual sacking and looting by partisans of independence? Those loyalists’ lives weren’t in peril from them? They didn’t find themselves in certain towns and parts of certain cities obliged to pack and leave? Loyalists weren’t viewed as traitors by the rebels, their lives and property forfeit? Acts of vandalism weren’t urged in the pamphlet press? Civilians sympathetic to the crown were held apart from the hostilities which were directed at British military personnel?
You mean that not only did an a Continental Army —undermanned and often unpaid, and composed largely of an irregular band of citizen soldiers, hastily raised and trained, defeat one of the best-organized and equipped armies of that time, but, in addition, they did this without resort to scheming, to use of organized intimidation, to acts of vandalism? You mean that it was by sheer dint of a combination of superb moral suasion through the press and the force of reasoned argument, and the brilliant military arts practiced on the part of Revolutionary officers that the British forces were defeated?
Are you sure that this isn’t just the school-child’s (and common man’s) popular patriotic version of the reality of that time?
What do Washington and Congressional Congress and Army have in common with al-Qaeda? They both opposed a government they felt was unjust and imposed on them from abroad. Beyond that, they have nothing in common. The Americans developed a philosophy of natural rights and representative government based on a careful reading of history and the best of contemporary Enlightenment thinking. They waged war with a combination of innovation (guerilla tactics) and fastidiousness about human rights not seen before in combat. Their strategy was the opposite of terror. They sought to win the sympathies of the population by setting a better example. Need I remind you of the 3rd Amendment?
Or should I quote from the Declaration:
That, of course, was the backdrop. Throwing off the shackles of oppression justified war. It did not justify war on civilians. It did not justify acts of terrorism, as opposed to sabotage.
Moreover, with patience, war itself is not always necessary. Although, as with Hitler’s Germany, sometimes it is.
Seems like a lot of that bill of particulars would apply to “king” George W. Bush, as well.
“What do Washington and Congressional Congress and Army have in common with al-Qaeda? They both opposed a government they felt was unjust and imposed on them from abroad.”
Which was my point in the first place.
Thus your, “Beyond that, they have nothing in common,” is really beside the point. But you are stubbornly expert in ignoring the point, even when it’s made, and going off on tangents which are essentially irrelevant–just as once again you’ve done above.
“In the Vietnam War, the United States extended the convention’s protection to Viet Cong prisoners even though the law did not technically require it.“
that’s from an article entitle, “America’s Anti-Torture Tradition” by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And yet you cite, in defense of General Washington, that he never resorted to anything like the “Pheonix program” —e.g., among other things, the systematic use of torture. Both views, then, the fairy-tale presented by RFK Jr in the article you cite, and the distinction between Washington’s tactics during the Revolutionary war and LBJ’s and Nixon’s during Vietnam cannot both be valid.
Am I Robert Kennedy Jr.?
“Am I Robert Kennedy Jr.?”
No, at least I didn’t think so. Did I say you were? I replied to your post citing him for support. Does that strike you as odd? If the texts you cite aren’t supportive or are based on claims and arguments which are faulty, then doesn’t impeaching those claims and arguments undermine what you are trying to claim?
see above:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2009/11/23/83035/859#4
Shorter proximity1: Since people who inflict violence on us obviously think it is justified, who are we to say it is not? Especially since at other times we have inflicted violence on others — but WE believed it was justified.
This is such a hash of fallacies, it is hard to know where to begin, but I’ll try to be brief. First of all, when you evaluate the justice/injustice of an act, you have to look first and foremost to the particular act itself — whatever it was “we” once did to the Vietnamese or the British, or afre even doing now to others.
Secondly, who are “we”? — the degree of responsibility of each of the victims, and of the very much larger number who suffered in the aftermath of 9/11 in retaliation for whatever injuries you might be postulating, is a meaningless question, since the victims were random even if the site was not. I don’t find any inaccuracy in BooMan’s describing them as “innocent victims.”
Thirdly, nations and faiths do not think monolithically. As far as I understand, the great majority of Muslims do not think murdering nearly 3,000 innocent civilians was justified. For that matter, some of the British intelligentsia thought the American Revolution was justified (e.g. Joseph Priestley & friends).
Fourthly, the mere fact that there exist “justifications” for 9/11 (as obviously there would have to be in the minds of the perpetrators), in no way obligates anyone to accept them or to refrain from arguing against them.
Finally (and this goes in psrt to BooMan as well), there is much evidence to support the hypothesis that the genesis of 9/11 was vastly more complicated and multifaceted than could be carried out entirely by a small group of Muslim extremists. Although the latter no doubt played a significant role, that role was perhaps not quite what it is widely thought to be.
“First of all, when you evaluate the justice/injustice of an act, you have to look first and foremost to the particular act itself…” [–whatever it was “we” once did to the Vietnamese or the British, or are even doing now to others.”]
Which I did. Looking at the history of U.S. aggression in the Middle East—aggression on the part of U.S. forces themselves as well as their proxies (notably Israel), then only a fool or a liar could claim that three thousand “innocent” lives were out of all proportion to the lives taken by U.S. aggression overr decades—and that concerns only the Middle/Near East.
“Secondly, who are “we”? — the degree of responsibility of each of the victims, and of the very much larger number who suffered in the aftermath of 9/11 in retaliation for whatever injuries you might be postulating, is a meaningless question, since the victims were random even if the site was not. I don’t find any inaccuracy in BooMan’s describing them as “innocent victims.”
The victims of our nation’s aggression are typically also just as random. So what, then? If anything, once again, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The World Trade Center attack’s victims were random, weren’t they? I assume we agree on that. Similarly, the victims of the U.S. invasion of Iraq were also random. Our forces bombed and bombarded targets in which civilians were killed indiscriminately. We can say how much we deplore those deaths all day long. But if we continue to do the same over and over, those claimed regrets aren’t worth spit.
“Thirdly, nations and faiths do not think monolithically. As far as I understand, the great majority of Muslims do not think murdering nearly 3,000 innocent civilians was justified. For that matter, some of the British intelligentsia thought the American Revolution was justified (e.g. Joseph Priestley & friends).”
So what? That’s all given as inevitably part of any large civil or military conflict. Where in all that do I disagree or have I disagreed? In no way that I can see do your observations there lessen the responsibility of the U.S. or their people for the deadly harms they have inflicted and they continue to inflict. Again, it’s a case in which there is rather complete mirroring. So where does that get us?
“Fourthly, the mere fact that there exist “justifications” for 9/11 (as obviously there would have to be in the minds of the perpetrators), in no way obligates anyone to accept them or to refrain from arguing against them.”
So how do you “argue against them”? Where is the basis for what amounts to a flat assertion that U.S. lives are worth more than those of others? Where is the basis for actions which explicitly imply that U.S. lives count more in a balance? You say there’s a case to be made? Then please, make it. I’m waiting for the arguments and the supporting evidence which show that when the U.S. “counter”-attacks, they are justified while when they are met with attacks, those attacking the U.S. aren’t justified. You’re welcome to make that case. But so far you haven’t even started. Of course “justifications” for 9/11 (as obviously there would have to be in the minds of the perpetrators), in no way obligates anyone to accept them or to refrain from arguing against them”. Moreover, Americans by and large won’t even entertain the idea that they ever have anything to answer for concerning their government’s foreign military adventures.
“Finally (and this goes in part to BooMan as well), there is much evidence to support the hypothesis that the genesis of 9/11 was vastly more complicated and multifaceted than could be carried out entirely by a small group of Muslim extremists. Although the latter no doubt played a significant role, that role was perhaps not quite what it is widely thought to be.”
It may have been “multifaceted”. So much in life is. There were, after all, at least nineteen people involved directly in carrying out the various hijackings of the planes. But things are not only more complicated than they often seem, they’re also often “simpler” at the same time–depending on one’s particular point of view. On the simpler side of the matter, regardless of how many facets are involved, the U.S. government is behind a large and amorphous practice of violent force around the world (fromp zero to ten on the “Richter scale” of violence ) done to promote and “defend” their interests as the government of the moment defines those. Occasionally some people respond to that violence by resorting in their turn to violent retaliation—which Americans typically denounce as “unjustified” while ignoring their own government’s part in provoking that violence. This last is simply the gist of what I thought Booman was (quite rightly) trying to point out in his essay. And then, strangely, it seemed to me, he took three steps backward after having taken two forward by falling into the “whatever our government’s faults, the attacks of ‘9/11’ weren’t justified”.
Really, the American people are very badly placed to speak to others around the world about what’s “justified” and what’s not.
You say you looked first and foremost at the act itself, and your first words are, “Looking at the history of US aggression in the Middle East…”
The fact that the U.S. government has committed countless unjustified random acts of violence against innocent civilians in various parts of the world does not justify anyone inflicting random violence against innocent US civilians. Rather it corroborates the logic of the procedure. The great majority of Muslims would agree with this statement.
By the way, “moral equivalency” may be your argument, but I’m not aware that it is the argument of the radical Muslims connected with 9/11. I thought their argument is against US support of the Saudi regime. Anyway, 9/11 is a classic model of terrorism. I don’t think we need to go over the whole theory of terrorism here. Read Bakunin. Terrorism is a tactic, a method, for accomplishing political goals. As such, we need only discuss whether it is effective, justice has nothing to do with it.
I would describe your argument as some form of idealist philosophy of history with a pseudo-ethical tinge, rather than genuine thinking about ethics.
He thinks the 9/11 hijackers were justified. Why are you bothering to argue with him?
“The fact that the U.S. government has committed countless unjustified random acts of violence against innocent civilians in various parts of the world does not justify anyone inflicting random violence against innocent US civilians. Rather it corroborates the logic of the procedure. The great majority of Muslims would agree with this statement.”
I don’t know what this is supposed to mean, nor to what “procedure” you mean to refer.
“Rather it corroborates the logic of the procedure.”
For the sake of argument, let’s accept that assertion (that’s what it is, your assertion) for a moment. If true, isn’t it also true for the same reason(s), that the attacks of Sept. 2001 on the WTC and Pentagon also “don’t justify anyone inflicting random violence against innocent Iraqi, Afghan, Pakistani, [insert nationality here] civilians” ?
That’s a question. Perhaps you could answer it with a responsive reply rather than, as you do with others posed above, simply ingore it.
“The fact that the U.S. government has committed countless unjustified random acts of violence against innocent civilians in various parts of the world does not justify anyone inflicting random violence against innocent US civilians.”
And, isn’t that what the U.S. armed forces are in fact doing in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere? Did they not accept more than three thousand people— arrested or received from the hands of “passers” who turned them over— and then systematically held these people and subjected them to torture (directly or by handing them over to sub-contractor torturers) over months? Of course, the laundry-list of violence doesn’t end there.
And, to reply in passing to both Booman and your comment:
” I would describe your argument as some form of idealist philosophy of history with a pseudo-ethical tinge, rather than genuine thinking about ethics.”
“He thinks the 9/11 hijackers were justified. Why are you bothering to argue with him?”
which both boil down to,
“Why are we discussing this?”,
it’s because, very simply and obviously, Booman himself asserts above, in a diary which is all about ” Finally Learning from 9/11″, that “ Ultimately, the answer is no. Whatever the faults of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East prior to 9/11, they didn’t justify murdering nearly 3,000 innocent civilians. That those policies were unpopular enough to put our civilians at risk was something we needed to confront and address. Where those policies were justified, we needed to take steps to protect ourselves from the blowback. Where those policies were unjustified, we needed to make changes. What we didn’t need to do was expend trillions of dollars making things worse. But a failure of leadership, imagination, and rationality led us to do precisely that. “
You write, off point,
” By the way, “moral equivalency” may be your argument, but I’m not aware that it is the argument of the radical Muslims connected with 9/11.”
Never mind “moral equivalency”, (see above). We’re discussing this, AGAIN, because Booman asserted, without support, and simply parroting a tired nostrum, that “Whatever the faults of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East prior to 9/11, they didn’t justify murdering nearly 3,000 innocent civilians.”
Whatever “the argument of the radical Muslims connected with 9/11”, they’re not necessarily germane to the assertion made by Booman, from any examination of which you seem to want to flee as fast as you can.
For the same reason, this, too, is beside the point,
“ I don’t think we need to go over the whole theory of terrorism here. Read Bakunin. Terrorism is a tactic, a method, for accomplishing political goals. As such, we need only discuss whether it is effective, justice has nothing to do with it.
“
Did you get that, Booman?
Here it is again,
As such, we need only discuss whether it is effective, justice has nothing to do with it.”
Really, in responses to a claim that is at its center all about “justice”, [ “Whatever the faults of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East prior to 9/11, they didn’t justify murdering nearly 3,000 innocent civilians.”
] you now want to dispense with that aspect?
Amazing!
But, alright, then, have it your way.
“Shorter Pricianus jr in response to Booman’s
“Whatever the faults of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East prior to 9/11, they didn’t justify murdering nearly 3,000 innocent civilians”
: “Justice has nothing to do with it.”
On effectiveness, then, how were the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon? Remember, as you’ve pointed out, “justice has nothing to do with it, ” it’s all about effectiveness.
How effective, then, are the U.S. responses in Iraq, Afghanistan and Paksistan? And, comparing those with your own assessment of the effectiveness of OBL’s initiatives, which have proven more effective?
Sheesh!
This is all about “Finally learning from 9/11” ?
Please, what have you learned?!
Can anyone here defend his views reasonably rather than ignore questions posed?
You ask, “Why are you [i.e. pricianus jr] bothering to argue with him?” [i.e. me], Booman, having just asserted, “He thinks the 9/11 hijackers were justified.”
What I think, rather, is that if the U.S. government and its people are “justified” [as they adamantly claim to be ] by virtue of the attacks of Sept. 2001 in what has been done since then in Iraq, for example, then that same ground would certainly lend something significant to the those who do consider the Sept. 2001 attacks “justified”. But pricianus jr doesn’t want to dwell on this aspect—not in an essay entitled, “Finally learning from 9/11”. Maybe that’s because as things go, it’s a losing proposition. Instead, pricianusjr is more interested in focusing on the matter of “effectiveness”. Well, that’s one, (different) way of looking at things.
So I’d ask, What’s the point of this place?
The point seems to be “it’s a place to raise issues and then avoid addressing them seriously and for genuine profit.” As an exercise in Finally learning from 9/11, this thread is a pathetic example of how we simply refuse to do that.
It will be healthy for us to learn from the 9/11 plotters why and how they did what they did. I think we’ll learn a lot from it that we haven’t allowed ourselves to learn in any other way. And, that, is a worthy way to honor our dead.
I have my doubts that we, as a nation, are anywhere near ready for a dose of the truth with regard to 9/11.
if you’re right–and I suspect you are—then that’s the problem behind the other problems.
Learning would require an aptitude for nuance, which Americans don’t seem to possess en masse. I suspect that the trials will simply ramp up the “you’re either with us or the terrorists” rhetoric. We’re seeing this already in the dumbass hysteria over bringing the accused to the mainland for trial. It can only escalate.
We’re looking at a period of even uglier public posturing than we see now, IMO. Which doesn’t mean the criminal trials are not the right and necessary action. I think over the long term the article’s optimism may be somewhat justified within the confines of policy wonks, but not the general perception. It took us centuries to finally begin to speak about the evils of our genocide of the Native Americans and of slavery, for example. Even today it’s almost impossible to honestly discuss the rightness/wrongness of the Vietnam invasion over the them/us noise.
The unswallowable reality is that we deserve the dishonor that will follow any truthtelling about Iraq and related empire-promoting strategems. It runs deep in our cultural nature to deny such truth as long as we possibly can, no matter how much damage the denial inflicts. Which makes Holder’s decision remarkably, historically, right and brave.
Booman, that’s the most intelligent thing that I have ever read about September 11, 2001.
Whatever the faults of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East prior to 9/11, they didn’t justify murdering nearly 3,000 innocent civilians
To begin with, first of all not all of these were “innocent civilians”. Last I remember, the Pentagon was attacked, the headquarters of the people who plan and direct all those military operations in the Middle East.
Secondly, the entire response to the “murder of nearly 3,000 innocent civilians” (mostly American but not all) was the killing of thousands of civilians in Afghanistan (and Iraq, but let’s not count that as a direct response).
I don’t know the official number of “innocent civilian” deaths in Afghanistan but if it’s over 3,000 can we count this as a “draw” and get the hell out of there already?
This logic makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Pax
As I said above, the question of responsibility of the victims becomes meaningless in random acts of violence. The perpetrators have little idea who or how many they will kill, and that is not what they are thinking about. The target is a symbol (i.e. the Pentagon, the World Trade CEnter), and the act is designed to create terror, i.e. a psychological reaction on the part of the general population.
Correction: they are thinking about “how many” they will kill in the sense of “the more, the better” — but ONLY as numbers, to make a greater psychological impact on the general population.
The response to 9/11 only enters into justifying the act in the sense that the hijackers are responsible for the retaliation, which they should have anticipated. If I know my neighbor is an insane gun-nut, I shouldn’t cut down his trees. If he responds by firing an RPG into my house, it’s my fault for destroying his property and ignoring my knowledge about his unstable personality and weapons cache.
This gets into another aspect of terrorist tactics — “provocation.” Certainly the perpetrators anticipated the US response, in that their intention was to provoke it. The response, in all its stupidity, is exactly what they wanted.
Just to clear up any possible misunderstandings,in using the word “terrorism” I am not tossing pejoratives around, but objectively referring to a specific set of techniques.
Actually, I do not subscribe to the view that our response was exactly what they wanted and anticipated. I believe they had delusional expectations. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t anticipate that we would retaliate. But I don’t think they thought we would leave Saudi Arabia and Egypt alone, double-down on our support for Israel, and empower Iran.
Maybe not “exactly” in that sense — I wasn’t thinking in such specific terms about what they might have anticipated. Perhaps it was beyond their anticipations. When Dubya was running for reelection in 2004, his critics would often state that there is nothing bin Laden would like better than for Bush to be reelected. I don’t know on what specific evidence, if any, this idea rested — maybe there was some hyperbole there — but it seemed convincing because the way in which Bush & Co. reacted to the terrorist threat, both before and after 9/11, turned out to be great for their side and very bad for ours. The immediate ObL crowd probably were delusional, but fortunately for them, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were no less delusional.
” Perhaps it was beyond their anticipations. When Dubya was running for reelection in 2004, his critics would often state that there is nothing bin Laden would like better than for Bush to be reelected. I don’t know on what specific evidence, if any, this idea rested — “