President George W. Bush of the United States appeared on television sets across the world on the 11th of September and declared war against the planet. Not only will those who committed the dreadful crimes of the morning be brought to justice, he declared, but so too will those who once harbored and now continue to harbor them.
Supply ships have started their way to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and toward Spain. A large part of the $40 billion designated by the US Congress will go toward the preparations that have already begun within the US military establishment, in close contact with its allies.
The Taliban, in Afghanistan, quickly pleaded that the suffering of its poor should not be increased with the wrath of the cruise missiles. So did Libya's Gaddafi.
Others, such as Pakistan, hastily declared their fealty to the US strike back, and pledged to allow planes to fly over its territory. India was not far behind, eager to allow its land for what may be the largest assault since the bombardment of Cambodia and Iraq.
One commentator on the US television networks lamented that the US lost its virginity at 845am on 9/11 when the first plane struck the World Trade Center.
But the war did not begin at that time. This was not Pearl Harbor. The war has been ongoing for quite some time now, at least for five decades.
Indeed, five decades ago the United States assumed charge of that band of nations that stretches from Libya to Afghanistan, most of whom are oil rich and therefore immensely important for global capitalism. The civilizational mandate held by France and Britain came to a close when World War II devastated Europe, and it fell to the US to adopt the white man's burden. It did so with glee, indeed on behalf, for the most part, of the Seven Sisters, the largest oil conglomerates in the world (most of them US-based transnational corporations).
Alliances forged with right-wing forces in these regions found fellowship from the US, just as the Left fashioned relations with the USSR. The United States participated in the decimation of the Left in north Africa and west Asia, from the destruction of the Egyptian Communist Party, the largest in the region, to the rise of people like Saddam Hussein to take out the vibrant Iraqi Communist Party, and of the Saudi financier Osama bin Laden to take down the Communist Afghan regime.
We hear that 9/11 was the "worst terrorist attack in history," but this ignores the vast history of bombardment, in general, tracked by Sven Lindquist in his new book (for the New Press), and it certainly ignores the many terrorist massacres conducted in the name of the United States, for instance, such as at Hallabja in Iraq or else in South America by Operation Condor. These are just a few examples. But what is that history before 845am on 9/11, and will it show us that "retaliation" misses out the fact that the US has been at war for many decades already?
I. The Afghan Concession.
In 1930, a US State Department "expert" on Afghanistan offered an assessment which forms the backbone of US social attitudes and state policy towards the region: "Afghanistan is doubtless the most fanatic hostile country in the world today. " Given this, the US saw Afghanistan simply as a tool in foreign policy terms and as a mine in economic terms. When the Taliban (lit. "religious students") entered Kabul on 27 September 1996, the US state welcomed the development with the hope that the new rulers might bring stability to the region despite the fact that they are notoriously illiberal in social terms.