Mirror Crack'd

It is widely argued that the September 11 terrorist attacks have changed the worlddramatically, that nothing will be the same as the world enters into an "age ofterror"—the title of a collection of academic essays by Yale University scholarsand others, which regards the anthrax attack as even more ominous.

There is no doubt that the 9/11 atrocities were an event of historic importance,not—regrettably—because of their scale, but because of the choice of innocentvictims. It had been recognised for some time that with new technology, the industrialpowers would probably lose their virtual monopoly of violence, retaining only an enormouspreponderance. No one could have anticipated the specific way in which the expectationswere fulfilled, but they were. For the first time in modern history, Europe and itsoffshoots were subjected, on home soil, to the kind of atrocity that they routinely havecarried out elsewhere. The history should be too familiar to review, and though the Westmay choose to disregard it, the victims do not. The sharp break in the traditional patternsurely qualifies 9/11 as a historic event, and the repercussions are sure to besignificant.

Several crucial questions arose at once: who is responsible? What are the reasons? Whatis the proper reaction? What are the longer-term consequences?

To begin with, it was assumed, plausibly, that the guilty parties were Osama bin Ladenand his Al Qaeda network. No one knows more about them than the cia, which, together withits counterparts among US allies, recruited radical Islamists from many countries andorganised them into a military and terrorist force, not to help Afghans resist Russianaggression, which would have been a legitimate objective, but for normal reasons of state,with grim consequences for Afghans after the mujahideen took control. US intelligence hassurely been following the other exploits of these networks closely ever since theyassassinated President Anwar Sadat of Egypt 20 years ago, and more intensively since theattempt to blow up the World Trade Center and many other targets in a highly ambitiousterrorist operation in 1993.

Nevertheless, despite what must be the most intensive international intelligenceinvestigation in history, evidence about the perpetrators of 9/11 has been hard to find.Eight months after the bombing, fbi director Robert Mueller, testifying to Congress, couldsay only that US intelligence now "believes" the plot was hatched inAfghanistan, though planned and implemented elsewhere. And long after the source of theanthrax attack was localised to US government weapons laboratories, it has still not beenidentified. These are indications of how hard it may be to counter acts of terrortargeting the rich and powerful in the future. Nevertheless, despite the thin evidence,the initial conclusion about 9/11 is presumably correct.

Next, the question: what are the reasons? On this, scholarship is virtually unanimous intaking the terrorists at their word, which matches their deeds for the past 20 years:their goal, in their terms, is to drive the infidels from Muslim lands, to overthrow thecorrupt governments they impose and sustain, and to institute an extremist version ofIslam.

More significant, at least for those who hope to reduce the likelihood of furthercrimes of a similar nature, are the background conditions from which the terroristorganisations arose, and that provide a mass reservoir of sympathetic understanding for atleast parts of their message, even among those who despise and fear them. In GeorgeBush’s plaintive words, "Why do they hate us?" The question is not new, andanswers are not hard to find. Forty-five years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and hisstaff discussed what he called the "campaign of hatred against us" in the Arabworld, "not by the governments but by the people". The basic reason, the National Security Council advised, is the recognition that the US supports corrupt and brutal governments that block democracy and development, and does so because of itsconcern "to protect its interest in Near East oil". The Wall Street Journalfound much the same when it investigated attitudes of wealthy westernised Muslims after9/11, feelings now exacerbated by specific US policies with regard to Israel-Palestine andIraq.

Commentators generally prefer a more comforting answer: their anger is rooted inresentment of our freedom and love of democracy, their cultural failings tracing back manycenturies, their inability to take part in the form of "globalisation" (in whichthey happily participate), and other such deficiencies. More comforting, perhaps, but notwise.

What about proper reaction? The answers are doubtless contentious, but at least thereaction should meet the most elementary moral standards: specifically, if an action isright for us, it is right for others; and if wrong for others, it is wrong for us. Thosewho reject that standard simply declare that acts are justified by power. One might askwhat remains of the flood of commentary on this question (debates about "justwar", etc) if this simple criterion is adopted.

To illustrate with a few uncontroversial cases, 40 years have passed since PresidentJohn F. Kennedy ordered that "the terrors of the earth" must be visited uponCuba until their leadership is eliminated, having violated good form by successfulresistance to US-run invasion. The terrors were extremely serious, continuing into the1990s. Twenty years have passed since President Reagan launched a terrorist war againstNicaragua, conducted with barbaric atrocities and vast destruction, leaving tens ofthousands dead and the country ruined perhaps beyond recovery—and also leading tocondemnation of the US for international terrorism by the World Court and the UN SecurityCouncil (in a resolution the US vetoed). But no one believes that Cuba or Nicaragua hadthe right to set off bombs in Washington or New York or to assassinate US politicalleaders. And it is all too easy to add many far more severe cases, up to the present.

Accordingly, those who accept elementary moral standards have some work to do to showthat the US and Britain were justified in bombing Afghans in order to compel them to turnover people who the US suspected of criminal atrocities, the official war aim, announcedby the president as the bombing began; or to overthrow their rulers, the war aim announcedseveral weeks later.

The same moral standard holds of more nuanced proposals about an appropriate responseto terrorist atrocities. The respected Anglo-American military historian Michael Howardproposed "a police operation conducted under the auspices of the United Nations...against a criminal conspiracy whose members should be hunted down and brought before aninternational court, where they would receive a fair trial and, if found guilty, beawarded an appropriate sentence" (Guardian, Foreign Affairs). That seemsreasonable, though we may ask what the reaction would be to the suggestion that theproposal should be applied universally. That is unthinkable, and if the suggestion were tobe made, it would arouse outrage and horror.

Similar questions arise with regard to the "Bush doctrine" of"pre-emptive strike" against suspected threats. It should be noted that thedoctrine is not new. High-level planners are mostly holdovers from the Reaganadministration, which argued that the bombing of Libya was justified under the UN Charteras "self-defence against future attack". Clinton planners advised"pre-emptive response" (including nuclear first strike). And the doctrine hasearlier precedents. Nevertheless, the bold assertion of such a right is novel, and thereis no secret as to whom the threat is addressed. The government and commentators arestressing loud and clear that they intend to apply the doctrine to Iraq. The elementarystandard of universality, therefore, would appear to justify Iraqi pre-emptive terroragainst the US. Of course, no one accepts this conclusion.

Again, if we are willing to adopt elementary moral principles, obvious questions arise,and must be faced by those who advocate or tolerate the selective version of the doctrineof "pre-emptive response" that grants the right to those powerful enough toexercise it with little concern for what the world may think. And the burden of proof isnot light, as is always true when the threat or use of violence is advocated or tolerated.

There is, of course, an easy counter to such simple arguments: WE are good, and THEYare evil. That useful principle trumps virtually any argument. Analysis of commentary andmuch of scholarship reveals that its roots commonly lie in that crucial principle, whichis not argued but asserted. Occasionally, but rarely, some irritating creatures attempt toconfront the core principle with the record of recent and contemporary history. We learnmore about prevailing cultural norms by observing the reaction, and the interesting arrayof barriers erected to deter any lapse into this heresy. None of this, of course, is aninvention of contemporary power centres and the dominant intellectual culture.Nonetheless, it merits attention, at least among those who have some interest inunderstanding where we stand and what may lie ahead.

Let us turn briefly to the question: what are the long-term consequences? In the longerterm, I suspect that the crimes of 9/11 will accelerate tendencies that were already underway: the Bush doctrine is an illustration. As was predicted at once, governmentsthroughout the world seized upon 9/11 as a window of opportunity to institute or escalateharsh and repressive programmes. Russia eagerly joined the "coalition againstterror" expecting to receive authorisation for its terrible atrocities in Chechnya,and was not disappointed. China happily joined for similar reasons. Turkey was the firstcountry to offer troops for the new phase of the US "war on terror", ingratitude, as the prime minister explained, for the US contribution to Turkey’scampaign against its miserably-repressed Kurdish population, waged with extreme savageryand relying crucially on a huge flow of US arms. Turkey is highly praised for itsachievements in these campaigns of state terror, including some of the worst atrocities ofthe grisly 1990s, and was rewarded by grant of authority to protect Kabul from terror,funded by the same superpower that provided the military means, and the diplomatic andideological support, for its recent atrocities. Israel recognised that it would be able tocrush Palestinians even more brutally, with even firmer US support. And so on throughoutmuch of the world.

More democratic societies, including the US, instituted measures to impose disciplineon the domestic population and to institute unpopular measures under the guise of"combating terror", exploiting the atmosphere of fear and the demand for"patriotism"—which in practice means: "You shut up and I’llpursue my own agenda relentlessly." The Bush administration used the opportunity toadvance its assault against most of the population, and future generations, in service tothe narrow corporate interests that dominate the administration to an extent even beyondthe norm.

In brief, initial predictions were amply confirmed.

One major outcome is that the US, for the first time, has major military bases inCentral Asia. These are important to position US multinationals favourably in the current"great game" to control the considerable resources of the region, but also tocomplete the encirclement of the world’s major energy resources, in the Gulf region.The US base system targeting the Gulf extends from the Pacific to the Azores, but theclosest reliable base before the Afghan war was Diego Garcia. Now that situation is muchimproved, and forceful intervention, if deemed appropriate, will be greatly facilitated.

The Bush administration perceives the new phase of the "war on terror" (whichin many ways replicates the "war on terror" declared by the Reaganadministration 20 years earlier) as an opportunity to expand its already overwhelmingmilitary advantages over the rest of the world, and to move on to other methods to ensureglobal dominance. Government thinking was articulated clearly by high officials whenPrince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia visited the US in April to urge the administration to paymore attention to the reaction in the Arab world to its strong support for Israeli terrorand repression. He was told, in effect, that the US did not care what he or other Arabsthink. As the New York Times reported, a high official explained that "if hethought we were strong in Desert Storm, we’re 10 times as strong today. This was togive him some idea what Afghanistan demonstrated about our capabilities". A seniordefence analyst gave a simple gloss: others will "respect us for our toughness andwon’t mess with us". That stand too has many historical precedents, but in thepost-9/11 world it gains new force.

We do not have internal documents, but it is reasonable to speculate that suchconsequences were one primary goal of the bombing of Afghanistan: to warn the world ofwhat the US can do if someone steps out of line. The bombing of Serbia was undertaken forsimilar reasons. Its primary goal was to "ensure nato’s credibility", asBlair and Clinton explained—not referring to the credibility of Norway or Italy, butof the US and its prime military client. That is a common theme of statecraft and theliterature of international relations; and with some reason, as history amply reveals.

The basic issues of international society seem to me to remain much as they were, but9/11 surely has induced changes, in some cases, with significant and not very attractiveimplications.

Reflections on 9-11 (copyright © 2002 by Noam Chomsky) is forthcoming in Noam Chomsky, 9-11, second edition (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002). It was first published by Aftonbladet in Sweden, August 2002, and in 11 September–ett å#r efterå#t (September 11–One Year After) (Stockholm: Aftonbladet, 2002).