9-11 (9 page)

I spent almost the entire day afterwards on radio and television around the world. I kept bringing it up. Nobody in Europe or the U.S. could think of one word of reaction. Elsewhere in the world there was plenty of reaction, even around the periphery of Europe, like Greece. How should we have reacted to this? Suppose some power was strong enough to say, Let’s do something that will cause a huge number of Americans to die of starvation. Would you think it’s a serious problem? And again, it’s not a fair analogy.
In the case of Afghanistan, left to rot after it had been ruined by the Soviet invasion and exploited for Washington’s war, much of the country is in ruins and its people are desperate, already one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

National Public Radio, which in the 1980s was denounced by the Reagan administration as “Radio Managua on the Potomac,” is also considered “out there” on the liberal end of respectable debate. Noah Adams, the host of
All Things Considered
,
asked these questions on September 17: “Should assassinations be allowed? Should the CIA be given more operating leeway?”

The CIA should not be permitted to carry out assassinations, but that’s the least of it. Should the CIA be permitted to organize a car bombing in Beirut like the one I just mentioned?

Not a secret, incidentally; prominently reported in the mainstream, though easily forgotten. That didn’t violate any laws. And it’s not just the CIA. Should they have been permitted to organize in Nicaragua a terrorist army that had the official task, straight out of the mouth of the State Department, to attack “soft targets” in Nicaragua, meaning undefended agricultural cooperatives and health clinics? Remember that the State Department officially approved such attacks immediately after the World Court had ordered the U.S. to end its international terrorist campaign and pay substantial reparations.

What’s the name for that? Or to set up something like
the bin Laden network, not him himself, but the background organizations?

Should the U.S. be authorized to provide Israel with attack helicopters used to carry out political assassinations and attacks on civilian targets? That’s not the CIA. That’s the Clinton administration, with no noticeable objection. In fact, it wasn’t even reported, though the sources were impeccable.

Could you very briefly define the political uses of terrorism? Where does it fit in the doctrinal system?

The U.S. is officially committed to what is called “low-intensity warfare.” That’s the official doctrine. If you read the standard definitions of low-intensity conflict and compare them with official definitions of “terrorism” in army manuals, or the U.S. Code (see
this footnote
), you find they’re almost the same. Terrorism is the use of coercive means aimed at civilian populations in an effort to achieve political, religious, or other aims. That’s what the World Trade Center attack was, a particularly horrifying terrorist crime.

Terrorism, according to the official definitions, is simply part of state action, official doctrine, and not just that of the U.S., of course.

It is not, as is often claimed, “the weapon of the weak.”

Furthermore, all of these things should be well known. It’s shameful that they’re not. Anybody who wants to find out about them can begin by reading the Alex George collection mentioned earlier, which runs through lots and lots
of cases. These are things people need to know if they want to understand anything about themselves. They are known by the victims, of course, but the perpetrators prefer to look elsewhere.

5.
Choice of Action

Based on an interview with Michael Albert on September 22, 2001.

Q: Let’s assume, for the sake of discussion, that bin Laden was behind the events. If so, what reason might he have had? It certainly can’t help poor and disempowered people anywhere, much less Palestinians, so what is his aim, if he planned the action?

CHOMSKY:
One has to be cautious about this. According to Robert Fisk, who has interviewed him repeatedly and at length, Osama bin Laden shares the anger felt throughout the region at the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, support for atrocities against Palestinians, along with U.S.-led devastation of Iraqi civilian society. That feeling of anger is shared by rich and poor, and across the political and other spectrums.

Many who know the conditions well are also dubious about bin Laden’s capacity to plan that incredibly sophisticated operation from a cave somewhere in Afghanistan. But that his network was involved is highly plausible, and that he is an inspiration for them, also. These are decentralized, non-hierarchic structures, probably with quite
limited communication links among them. It’s entirely possible that bin Laden’s telling the truth when he says he didn’t know about the operation.

All that aside, bin Laden is quite clear about what he wants, not only to any westerners who want to interview him, like Fisk, but more importantly to the Arabic-speaking audience that he reaches through the cassettes that circulate widely. Adopting his framework for the sake of discussion, the prime target is Saudi Arabia and other corrupt and repressive regimes of the region, none of which are truly “Islamic.” And he and his network are intent on supporting Muslims defending themselves against “infidels” wherever it may be: Chechnya, Bosnia, Kashmir, Western China, Southeast Asia, North Africa, maybe elsewhere. They fought and won a Holy War to drive the Russians (Europeans who are presumably not relevantly different from British or Americans in their view) out of Muslim Afghanistan, and they are even more intent on driving the Americans out of Saudi Arabia, a far more important country to them, as it is the home of the holiest Islamic sites.

His call for the overthrow of corrupt and brutal regimes of gangsters and torturers resonates quite widely, as does his indignation against the atrocities that he and others attribute to the United States, hardly without reason. It’s entirely true that his crimes are extremely harmful to the poorest and most oppressed people of the region. The latest attacks, for example, were extremely harmful to the Palestinians. But what looks like sharp inconsistency from outside may be perceived rather differently from within. By courageously fighting oppressors, who are quite real,
bin Laden may appear to be a hero, however harmful his actions are to the poor majority. And if the United States succeeds in killing him, he may become even more powerful as a martyr whose voice will continue to be heard on the cassettes that are circulating and through other means. He is, after all, as much of a symbol as an objective force, both for the U.S. and probably much of the population.

There’s every reason, I think, to take him at his word. And his crimes can hardly come as a surprise to the CIA. “Blowback” from the radical Islamic forces organized, armed, and trained by the U.S., Egypt, France, Pakistan, and others began almost at once, with the 1981 assassination of President Sadat of Egypt, one of the most enthusiastic of the creators of the forces assembled to fight a Holy War against the Russians. The violence has been continuing since without letup.

The blowback has been quite direct, and of a kind very familiar from fifty years of history, including the drug flow and the violence. To take one case, the leading specialist on this topic, John Cooley, reports that CIA officers “consciously assisted” the entry of the radical Islamic Egyptian cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman to the U.S. in 1990 (
Unholy Wars
). He was already wanted by Egypt on charges of terrorism. In 1993, he was implicated in the bombing of the World Trade Center, which followed procedures taught in CIA manuals that were, presumably, provided to the “Afghanis” fighting the Russians. The plan was to blow up the UN building, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, and other targets as well. Sheikh Omar was convicted of conspiracy and given a long jail sentence.

Again, if bin Laden planned these actions, and especially if popular fears of more such actions to come are credible, what is the proper approach to reducing or eliminating the danger? What steps should be taken by the U.S. or others, domestically or internationally? What would be the results of those steps?

Every case is different, but let’s take a few analogies. What was the right way for Britain to deal with IRA bombs in London? One choice would have been to send the RAF to bomb the source of their finances, places like Boston, or to infiltrate commandos to capture those suspected of involvement in such financing and kill them or spirit them to London to face trial.

Putting aside feasibility, that would have been criminal idiocy. Another possibility was to consider realistically the background concerns and grievances, and to try to remedy them, while at the same time following the rule of law to punish criminals. That would make a lot more sense, one would think. Or take the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. There were immediate calls for bombing the Middle East, and it probably would have happened if even a remote hint of a link had been found. When it was instead discovered to be a domestically devised attack, by someone with militia connections, there was no call to obliterate Montana and Idaho, or the “Republic of Texas,” which has been calling for secession from the oppressive and illegitimate government in Washington. Rather, there was a search for the perpetrator, who was found, brought to court, and sentenced, and to the extent that the reaction was sensible, there were efforts to understand the grievances
that lie behind such crimes and to address the problems. At least, that is the course we follow if we have any concern for genuine justice and hope to reduce the likelihood of further atrocities rather than increase it. The same principles hold quite generally, with due attention to variation of circumstances. Specifically, they hold in this case.

What steps, in contrast, is the U.S. government seeking to undertake? What will be the results, if they succeed in their plans?

What has been announced is a virtual declaration of war against all who do not join Washington in its resort to violence, however it chooses.

The nations of the world face a “stark choice”: join us in our crusade or “face the certain prospect of death and destruction” (R. W. Apple,
New York Times
, September 14). Bush’s rhetoric of September 20 forcefully reiterates that stance. Taken literally, it’s virtually a declaration of war against much of the world. But I am sure we should not take it literally. Government planners do not want to undermine their own interests so grievously. What their actual plans are, we do not know. But I suppose they will take to heart the warnings they are receiving from foreign leaders, specialists in the region, and presumably their own intelligence agencies that a massive military assault, which would kill many innocent civilians, would be exactly “what the perpetrators of the Manhattan slaughter must want above all. Military retaliation would elevate their cause, idolize their leader, devalue moderation and validate fanaticism.
If ever history needed a catalyst for a new and awful conflict between Arabs and the West, this could be it” (Simon Jenkins,
Times
[London], September 14, one of many who made these points insistently from the outset).

Even if bin Laden is killed—maybe even more so if he is killed—a slaughter of innocents would only intensify the feelings of anger, desperation and frustration that are rampant in the region, and mobilize others to his horrendous cause.

What the administration does will depend, in part at least, on the mood at home, which we can hope to influence. What the consequences of their actions will be we cannot say with much confidence, any more than they can. But there are plausible estimates, and unless the course of reason, law, and treaty obligations is pursued, the prospects could be quite grim.

Many people say that the citizens of Arab nations should have taken responsibility to remove terrorists from the planet, or governments that support terrorists. How do you react?

It makes sense to call upon citizens to eliminate terrorists instead of electing them to high office, lauding and rewarding them. But I would not suggest that we should have “removed our elected officials, their advisers, their intellectual claque, and their clients from the planet,” or destroyed our own and other Western governments because of their terrorist crimes and their support for terrorists worldwide, including many who were transferred from favored friends and allies to the category of “terrorists”
because they disobeyed U.S. orders: Saddam Hussein, and many others like him. However, it is rather unfair to blame citizens of harsh and brutal regimes that we support for not undertaking this responsibility, when we do not do so under vastly more propitious circumstances.

Many people say that all through history when a nation is attacked, it attacks in kind. How do you react?

When countries are attacked they try to defend themselves, if they can. According to the doctrine proposed, Nicaragua, South Vietnam, Cuba, and numerous others should have been setting off bombs in Washington and other U.S. cities, Palestinians should be applauded for bombings in Tel Aviv, and on and on. It is because such doctrines had brought Europe to virtual self-annihilation after hundreds of years of savagery that the nations of the world forged a different compact after World War II, establishing—at least formally—the principle that the resort to force is barred except in the case of self-defense against armed attack until the Security Council acts to protect international peace and security. Specifically, retaliation is barred. Since the U.S. is not under armed attack, in the sense of Article 51 of the UN Charter, these considerations are irrelevant—at least, if we agree that the fundamental principles of international law should apply to ourselves, not only to those we dislike.

International law aside, we have centuries of experience that tell us exactly what is entailed by the doctrines now being proposed and hailed by many commentators. In a
world with weapons of mass destruction, what it entails is an imminent termination of the human experiment—which is, after all, why Europeans decided half a century ago that the game of mutual slaughter in which they had been indulging for centuries had better come to an end, or else.