Approaching
the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
By
David
Krieger
President, Nuclear Age Peace
Foundation
TFF
associate
August 26, 2003
As we approach the second anniversary of the terrorist
attacks of 9/11, it is important to take a hard look at
the direction our country has taken since these tragic
events occurred.
The United States has attacked Afghanistan and driven
the Taliban regime from power. In the process, we killed
some 3,000 to 5,000 civilians, more than died at the
World Trade Center and Pentagon. The US has not been able
to locate and capture Osama bin Laden, the suspected
mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Reports from Afghanistan
are that the US-backed regime there controls little more
than the city of Kabul, and warlords are in control of
the rest of the country.
The United States has also attacked Iraq, but with
neither evidence of a link between Iraq and the 9/1l
terrorists, nor with the sanction of the United Nations.
The US preventive war against Iraq killed some 6,000 to
8,000 civilians, about twice as many as died at the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon. Since this war, it has
come to light that in making its case for war, the Bush
administration used false intelligence to inflate its
claim that Iraq posed an imminent threat of using weapons
of mass destruction against the United States.
The US has not been able to locate and capture Saddam
Hussein or the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar. Nor have any
of the purported weapons of mass destruction, which
supposedly made the Iraqi threat so imminent, been found.
There is a strong sense that the Iraqi people are opposed
to US occupation of their country, and American soldiers
are being killed on an almost daily basis. Most recently,
saboteurs have also been attacking the Iraqi oil
pipelines.
In addition to the price in American and Iraqi lives,
the occupation of Iraq is costing US taxpayers nearly $4
billion each month, adding to the over $450 billion
projected deficit in the US budget this year. There is no
clear plan for US withdrawal from Iraq, and the
administration will not predict how long American troops
are likely to remain or how much the occupation is likely
to cost in total. US corporations, with links to the Bush
administration, are being given lucrative contracts to
rebuild Iraqís infrastructure and manage its oil
production.
We still have no authoritative public report on the
intelligence failures that led to 9/11. No one has been
dismissed and no blame has been laid at the feet of the
intelligence community. The impression from the Bush
administration is that the lead up to 9/11 was just too
difficult for the intelligence community to handle, due
to the paucity of communication within and between
agencies and the need to actually connect some dots. The
families of the 9/11 victims, along with the rest of the
American people, are still waiting for clearer and more
complete answers to why our intelligence failed so
dramatically.
In a Congressional study related to intelligence
failures, much of the important information has been kept
from the American people by the Bush administration,
including 28 pages on the role of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi
leadership and members of Congress have pleaded that this
information be released to the American people, but to no
avail. Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), former chair of the
Senate Intelligence Committee, stated, ìMy
judgment is 95 percent of that information could be
declassified, become uncensored so the American people
would know.î
Since the war in Afghanistan, the United States has
held prisoners, including US citizens, in a manner that
defies the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of
prisoners. The administration, aided by the Congress, has
instituted the USA Patriot Act, which restricts the civil
liberties of all Americans. The administration has put
forward further legislation that provides even more
drastic restrictions on our liberties.
The trends do not bode well for America. In two years,
the country has engaged in two wars, at least one of
which was clearly illegal under international law. The
administration has engaged in a clear pattern of
deception. Our wars have killed at least three times the
number of innocent civilians as died in the 9/11 attacks.
The individual thought to be principally responsible for
9/11 remains at liberty, while the liberties of Americans
have been restricted. The goodwill with which America was
held throughout the world in the aftermath of 9/11 has
been squandered. We are viewed by much of the
international community as bullies who use military force
in defiance of international law and make our own rules
when it suits us.
Our soldiers continue to pay the ultimate price for
the arrogance of this administration. Mr. Bush, in the
safety of the White House, challenged the militants
attacking American troops in Iraq with the rash and
taunting remark, ìBring ëem on.î This
remark drew many negative responses from the troops
stationed in Iraq and their families.
Two years after 9/11 Americans do not appear to be
safer from terrorist attacks than they were before 9/11.
We have a new bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland
Security, and a system of color-coded warnings, but these
do not seem to be effective barriers to terrorist
threats. There is no reason to believe that terrorists
hate America because they envy our way of life, as Mr.
Bush says, and every reason to believe that terrorists
oppose our political and economic policies, particularly
in the Middle East.
To end the threat of terrorism, the United States
needs a return to decency and the values that make this
country strong. We need to reconsider the morality,
legality and consequences of our policies. This would
require a major reversal of the Bush administration
policies that have cynically used 9/11 in seeking to
achieve its ideological goals of global military
dominance, control of oil, and financial gain for an
elite few. On the positive side of the ledger, there are
increasing signs that Congress, the media and the
American people are awakening to the dangers of these
policies and vocally and actively opposing them. It is
none too soon to reassess and reverse the path we have
taken since 9/11.
David Krieger is the editor of Hope
in a Dark Time, Reflections on Humanity's
Future.
©
TFF & the author 2003
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