It's nice to know that I called something absolutely accurate inside my own classroom at a moment at which the kids needed perspective, even if there was some speculation behind it. I did it on Sept. 11, 2001.
The first thing I told the first class I met with after the attacks began is that they were, basically, about our endless support for Israel. Nobody had said anything about that to that point and of course, the deeper analysis was yet to come.
But I told the class, and the ones that met for the rest of that day and some of the next, that what was happening was, in the final analysis, about our support for Israel and our failure to provide a decent homeland for the Palestinians. It really wasn't hard to figure out.
After all, the World Trade Center had already been attacked, in 1993, with substantial damage and some deaths. Bin Laden also attacked two of our embassies in Africa, and al-Qaeda had blown a big hole in one of our destroyers in the Persian Gulf. Bill Clinton had tried to kill bin Laden with a missile, but had failed.
Yes, we killed Osama bin Laden, and he had it coming if you believe that justice needed to be delivered by the military in a war footing, as declared by Bush-43, and not legal eagles in court, an argument which somehow got lost. But the real victory was that, once again, we got underestimated, like the Germans did in World War I and the Japanese did in World War II. The 9-11 attack was supposed to set off incredible inner protests, leading to the dissolution of our power. It didn't. At least, not right then and there.
Bin Laden thought it would. He thought our morale would collapse. The last thing he figured is that we would go looking for him.
A recent article in Foreign Affairs magazine points this out. In November 2017. the CIA declassified some 470,000 documents, tapes, videos, and written materials that Navy SEALs had captured during the raid on bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 1, 2011. Author Nelly Lahoud managed to get hold of some 96,000 of them, which included personal observations bin Laden made to members of his family in the final months until we finally ran him down.
In those remarks, bin Laden believed that (a) al-Qaeda needed to end American support of Israel, vis-a-vis the Palestinians; and (2) the American people would thrash each other to pieces over the attack and devastation. At first, we certainly didn't; instead, we went after him. That he managed to escape for ten years didn't say much for us, but neither did he have many moments of rest.
Ironically, that was the moment of inflection. Having accomplished, finally, what we originally set out to do--revenge against bin Laden and the reduction of al-Qaeda influence in the world of terrorism--we went on a futile effort of nation-building, this time in another country we didn't understand and couldn't have, in order to justify the enormous expense: two trillion bucks. Counted at a dollar a second, one trillion dollars would take thirty-two thousand years to tabulate.
At least bin Laden never saw us actually fall apart, too, which we've done in sections and pretty much since that point. The Tea Party continued its momentum and led, eventually, to ex- and his followers, who have continued their anger at something, somewhere, somehow, as irrational and misplaced as it has been. The war in Afghanistan got put onto the back burner, letting the military obfuscate and generalize and count on the media to eventually refocus itself so that nobody exactly knew how things were going until it was too late. To most of us, it wasn't really a war as much as an occupation without end and without advancement.
So our morale actually has ebbed, such that nobody really feels that the nation is moving in any kind of effective direction anymore. Some actually applaud that and, seizing the moment, are still fighting to move backwards. Some have thrown up their hands in despair. Some are still trying to advance. Of course, the pandemic hasn't hurt. Too bad for him that bin Laden never saw it.
Because the residual effect of the attacks are ever-present:
- Continued distrust and stereotyping of Arab and/or Arab-looking peoples living here, perfectly law-abiding and seeking as much comfort in their lives as anyone else;
- The continuance of our blatantly extra-legal, extra-Constitutional, hypocritical prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, from which very few actual trials of suspected terrorists have emerged;
- A decided reduction in civil rights, especially the right to speak out in support of those peoples;
- A fear that has ripened into paranoia about outside terrorism, when the fundamental and pervasive threat has always been internal--especially obvious with the aftermath of 1/6;
- The effects of all this on our immigration policies, which have withered to match our re-developed xenophobia; and
- The inevitable, tiring momentum all this has given to our politics.
What bin Laden also said he wanted--a kind of pan-Arab league that would obey the same political priorities--failed. Arab Spring replaced it, though efforts to democratize fledgling governments have had mixed results. Remnants of that movement remain. That wouldn't please him, either.
He said that he wanted U.S. troops out of Muslim lands, too. He got some of that, of course, when we just withdrew. But certainly not all of them. Israel still needs us to watch over it. Saudi Arabia needs our money and weapons, too, as a counterpoise to Iran. Those are constants.
So in some ways, the Middle East is a different place than it was before bin Laden applied his brand of unity. It just isn't the kind of 'different' Osama bin Laden would have preferred. The basic problem, that of the eventual determination of Israel and Palestine, endures. Since we backed the establishment of Israel in 1947, it has been and I believe will always be so. I said it on 9-11-01, and many times before and since: we will never abandon Israel. The Holocaust has made its permanent impression.
What permutations develop from that iron-like stance is still anybody's guess. Osama bin Laden tried to push us off that position, but if the destruction of the Twin Towers and the murder of nearly 3,000 of our people can't force us to re-examine that policy, next to nothing else will. Research now confirms it. Reality affirms it.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask indoors. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
No comments:
Post a Comment