Another 9-11 post

Folks, the US Government was in bed with Osama bin Laden for 20 years. A cockamamie scheme by Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew Brzeziński to hire Saudi extremists to give the Russians a bad time in Afghanistan was lunacy. I’m told that when Arabists in the British diplomatic service heard of the plan, they went straight to the Foreign Secretary and urged that he warn the Americans that it was an incredibly bad idea and would certainly produce unforeseeable if not unmanagable problems of the worst nature down the road. Indeed, they were right.

Brzeziński’s immoral impulse to deploy Wahhabi Islam in the belief that it was a one-edged sword exclusively turned against communism was uncurbed. A decision was taken that would lead to the recruitment of an Apocalyptic criminal on our dime. The US State Department, the CIA, the Joint Chiefs, the Senate, the DIA and a series of presidents bear responsibility for turning a blind eye a disaster-laden (no pun intended) miscalculation. And they never gave a damn about the Afghani people, who suffered the reign of terror, and they never bothered to keep an eye on the danger they unleashed. After all, Bin Laden was just a righteous man of faith. Not even when the Taliban rhetoric turned violently anti-American in 1996 did the US bother to infiltrate the organization. After the embassy bombings in Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi in 1998, they resorted to high-tech surveillance of some of Bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan, but they couldn’t be arsed to hire a rug seller in the bazaar to keep his ears open.

And then, Osama Bin Laden didn’t fit the intelligence profile of a homicidal criminal or a dangerous revolutionary. Why, he was a privileged millionaire. He’d gone to university in Britain. He was of noble stock. And the 9-11 highjackers? Why, they were western-educated men of ease. Beyond suspicion. They weren’t long-suffering Palestinians. They weren’t Iraqis oppressed by the embargo, or starving Sudanese, or miserable Tchadiens –someone with a reason to espouse terrorism, at least of a revolutionary sort.

And what was 9-11 supposed to be? An attack on our liberties, as George Bush says? Not at all. It was a plot straight out of the imagination of Ian Fleming. Bin Laden was an attentive student of economics. He intended to bring about worldwide economic collapse. The destruction of the Trade Towers would set off a global recession. There’d be hundreds of millions of unemployed around the world. There’d been even more misery in Africa. The West would curtail its purchases of raw materials. Misery redoubled in the “South”. It was a cruel, dastardly plot for global chaos hatched by a megalomaniac who never spent a moment pondering what he could do for some Arab cause. He spent all his time running his investment portfolio and preparing for the end of times.

So once the smoke settled, Bush and Cheney realized that they had in fact received a big gift from Bin Laden. A chance to spy on the opposition. A chance to take out an Arab state. An occasion to insult Old Europe. An opportunity for international industrial espionnage like never before. An excuse to batter multilaterialsm. A chance to stampede the US towards totalitarianism. An occasion to worship fireballs. An occasion to stick a thumb in Castro’s eye by reopening a Devil’s Island at Guantanamo. And a chance to talk the same Manichean language of Bin Laden. They would call it the Global War on Terror.

I don't know where we go from here. There needs to be a sea change in Washington. The Democrat hawks must be plucked. Bush must pay for his mistakes. Our democracy needs work. Our elite have to wise up. And yet, it looks grim. Ideologues of the nasty sort control the media. National debate is strangled. The insanity and immoral conduct seem likely continue. What gets me is that when chastisement comes, it likely won't be delivered by the American people.