What Can 9/11 Teach Us?

When I saw the "new" Osama videotape on the nightly news the first thing that came to mind was that it had been released by the Republicans or the administration. Such is the cynicism that five plus years of Dubya's "leadership" has caused. Actually, not having seen the full video and not knowing Arabic I, like all of you, am forced to rely on the media to do the interpreting for me. But we know trusting journalists and media owners to educate us puts us at peril. So I don't know what to make of it; what it is supposed to mean; why it is both old and newly released. It has been reported that Osama wanted the US to invade Afghanistan to further incense Muslims and that Bush was all too obliging, and that the Iraqi invasion was icing on the cake for anti-American recruiting. If Osama or AlQaeda is behind the release of the video maybe he wants to help Republicans in November, the idea being that Bush is Osama's unwitting(?) accomplice.

There are several competing conspiracy theories about 9/11. The official one is that Osama, once a CIA asset in the mujihadeen war against the USSR in Afghanistan, used Taliban-led Afghanistan to develop and deploy suicide bombers to attack America. It's been reported that in the days before 9/11 the US sought agreement with the Taliban to build a pipeline from former Soviet republics (primarily Turkmenistan) through Afghan territory to Pakistan and India. The purpose was to use natural resources open to US control and to ice out Iran, the logical competitor. These reports include threats from the US representatives to bomb Afghanistan if they refused. Then 9/11 occurred and we simply invaded. Other reports exist that the Taliban offered to turn over Osama to the US if we provided some evidence of his guilt. It has never been clear to me just why and how Osama was tied to 9/11 and this latest video release hasn't increased my knowledge. Currently, the Taliban resurgence should be worrisome to Americans; the British in the 19th century and the Russians in the 20th couldn't subdue and hold that country. What makes us think we can succeed today? At any event, this resurgence is throwing the monkey wrench into the proposed Turkmenistan-Baluchistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline and Indians are hurriedly intensifying their discussions with Iran over getting natural gas from an Iranian pipeline. All of this does help to explain why we invaded Afghanistan in the first place and why we haven't found Osama and why Bush doesn't really want to talk about that. Both invasions and occupations, Afghanistan and Iraq, are part of a policy of increasing domination of US-based capital over world energy resources, and if we bomb Iran that will be part of that same policy. The old saw, useful in Watergate: follow the money. It is about oil; and economic domination in general.

Akin to a magician or mesmerizer, Bush wants to control our focus, our attention. He wants us only to see what he is willing to show, and to believe only what he preaches. And his prime motivator is fear. When the 9/11 events were researched and reviewed it was found that US intelligence was, in fact, pretty good. Bureaucracy, interagency communication, disinterested leadership were at fault. People failed, not law or technology! But from those days in 2001 we've had a steady drumbeat demaninding more draconian laws, more intrusive spying, more and more secrecy. Perhaps one day we'll have a president who wears a hood so malefactors won't be able to identify, find and harm him. Never having been a supporter of Clinton, nonetheless, in comparison he seemed more intelligent and a lot less dangerous than our current leader. Clinton was impeached over lying about sex acts. Bush got reelected by lying about Iraq, and starting an illegal, aggressive war. Listening to the news I often think that a group of bright 9th graders would make both better leaders and better journalists. Intelligent youths would see to the heart of matters and ask provocative questions that cut to the quick. In the world that we know, it takes many years of indoctrination to learn to lie well and to become stupid enough to swallow those lies. So much for education.