THE REAL TRAGEDY OF 9/11

From the Houston Chronicle, an essay by my favorite University of Texas radical journalism professor:

Sept. 11 offered a dramatic moment in which the most powerful country on the planet could have led the world on a new course. U.S. leaders had a choice to either (1) manipulate people's legitimate fears and understandable desire for vengeance to justify wars of control and domination, or (2) help create a world in desperate need of more justice, not more war.

To choose the latter would have taken visionary leadership; a role for which, sadly, virtually no one in the Republican or Democratic parties appeared qualified, then or now. But there were such voices — not leaders but ordinary people, speaking out clearly and early. For example, those who lost family but resisted the call for war formed "September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows" and campaigned for alternatives to war.

Antiwar activists immediately began developing the argument that war would exacerbate the terrorist threat and that a two-track solution — radically changing the unjust U.S. policies in the Middle East that provide fertile ground for terrorists to recruit, while pursuing vigorous law-enforcement efforts to track and capture terrorists — would be not only moral and legal, but also effective. War, we predicted, would not solve our problems.

Five years later, one thing is clear: The antiwar voices were right. We saw what was coming, not because we were so smart but because it was so obvious.

Click here for the rest.

The real tragedy of 9/11 is that the US blew its best chance to live up to its stated ideals of freedom, equality, and justice. What's been missing for years from the mainstream narrative about the "war on terrorism" is that the whole thing takes place within the context of American econmic interests abroad. By and large, US foreign policy is about business, which is far more than simply trade deals and the WTO: when a relatively weak nation refuses to play the game by our rules, we send in covert operatives to cause instability in hopes of regime change; when the secret agents fail, we send in the military.

You can read up on the whole racket in this interview from Democracy Now, but suffice it to say that we're targeted by terrorists not because of the comic book motivation that "they hate our freedom;" rather, they attack us because our government treats their fellow Muslims as resources to be exploited rather than human beings. The only way out of this is to start treating the people of the world with respect, to construct our foreign policy around the concept of help rather than profit. Alas, the entire US power structure refuses to do things differently. What do they care if average Americans are hurt or killed by terrorists? We already know that they couldn't care less about the loss of foreign lives--just read up a bit on Chile in the 70s to understand exactly what I mean. It's just the cost of doing business; they're getting rich otherwise.

So, while Jensen is absolutely right to observe the real tragedy of 9/11, he completely glosses over the fact that it would take a near revolution here in the US to actually realize our potential to be a guiding light for justice among nations. The US isn't really interested in justice: there's no profit in it.

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