Pacific Views

THE 2ND ANNIVERSARY OF 9-11

[I spent hours writing this piece thinking that I could get it published in a local paper. I thought wrong. So I'd like to post it here if you don't mind ... even if I am preaching to the converted and not to the folks who need to hear it.}

In March of this year, the United States of America instigated a “pre-emptive” war on a much smaller, weaker nation, virtually unilaterally. 166 out of 209 nations refused to go along with us. Of the 43 who did, not one had a population that was pro-invasion. The United Nations told us “NO”. NATO told us “NO”. Every major religion and religious leader told us “NO”. But we invaded Iraq anyway.

We rained bombs, including cluster bombs, including those containing depleted uranium, on a population that could not defend itself against us. We decimated that country’s infrastructure. We left a civilian population with no reliable electricity, no reliable running water, no banks, no government ministries, few police, and a health care system in near total collapse. We killed an as yet uncounted number of its civilian population … 50% of which are under the age of 18.

We, the United States of America, did this. Why?

One of the most common answers heard in America is that we are fighting al Qaeda. We are avenging 9-11.

Yet how can this be when there is not a shred of solid evidence that Iraq had anything to do with 9-11, or with the Al Qaeda terrorists who perpetrated that horror?

Two years after 9-11 there are still substantial numbers of Americans who staunchly believe that Iraq had “something” to do with it. In an article from the Christian Science Monitor on March 14, 2003: “A New York Times/CBS poll this week shows that 45 percent of Americans believe Mr. Hussein was ‘personally involved’ in Sept. 11, about the same figure as a month ago.” According to the latest Washington Post poll, “Sixty-nine percent of Americans said they thought it was at least likely that Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.” However:

• “I’m not sure even now that I would say Iraq had something to do with it [9-11]”. Paul Wolfowitz. Aug. 1, 2003.

• General Wesley Clark, when pressured by the White House immediately after 9-11 to implicate Iraq refused to do so. In an interview with Tim Russert on June 20th of this year, he said, “I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, ‘You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.’ I said, ‘But – I’m willing to say it, but what’s your evidence?’ And I never got any evidence.”

• The 800 page report from the U.S. congressional investigation into 9-11, long delayed by the Bush administration, has not a word in it on a connection. According to an article in Time magazine on July 30, 2003: “The 9/11 congressional inquiry in the most comprehensive inquiry to date into the attacks makes no link between Iraq and al-Qaeda … the claim of Iraqi involvement in the attack or with the organization responsible simply does not feature in the report.”

Two years after 9-11 there are still substantial numbers of Americans who believe that some of the 19 hijackers involved in 9-11 were Iraqis. Again, from the Christian Science Monitor: “In a Knight Ridder poll [from early in 2003], 44% of Americans reported that either “most” or “some” of the Sept. 11th hijackers were Iraqi citizens. The answer is zero.” 15 out of 19 hijackers were Saudis. None were Iraqi.

Two years after 9-11 there are still substantial numbers of Americans who believe that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda. A Harris Poll conducted from Aug. 12-17, 2003, asked this question: “Do you believe clear evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda has been found in Iraq, or not?” Fully 50% of those polled answered “Yes”. However:

• As reported by the Houston Chronicle on June 26, 2003: “The U.N. terrorism committee has found no evidence linking Iraq to al-Qaeda … Nowhere in the 42-page draft is there any mention of Iraq or claims that it served as a safe haven for al-Qaeda. ‘Nothing has come to our notice that would indicate links between Iraq and al-Quaeda,’ said Michael Chandler, the committee’s chief investigator."

• From the BBC: “The UN Terrorism committee has released a draft report on al-Qaeda … Nowhere does the document mention that Baghdad may have served as a support or safe-haven for supporters of Osama bin Laden”
  
  
• From Time magazine: “Reports of the interrogations of the most senior captive al-Qaeda men also suggest that they deny any link between the organization and Iraq.”

• From Max Cleland, former Senator, D-Ga, and a member of the independent commission set up to investigate 9-11: “The administration sold the connection (between Iraq and al-Qaeda) to scare the pants off the American people and justify the war. There’s no connection, and that’s been confirmed by some of bin Laden’s terrorist followers.”

• From the London Guardian: “When … a large proportion of Americans are reputed to believe that Saddam Hussein was implicated in al-Qaida terrorism, a belief for which there is not a shred of credible evidence, one wonders if the world’s largest democracy is being well served by its media.”

• And from the National Journal: “Bush particularly irked intelligence analysts when he landed on an aircraft carrier right after Baghdad fell and proclaimed that the U.S. had just ‘removed an ally of al Qaeda’. [Greg] Thielman, the former State Department analyst, calls this statement ‘an outrageous distortion’ and a ‘shameless falsehood’.”

This Thursday will mark the 2nd anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers and part of the Pentagon. 3,000 innocent people lost their lives on that horrific day. In the days afterward, America came together as a nation. We had the sympathy of most of the world.

Two years later we are a bitterly divided country. We have bombed and invaded two nations. We have caused the deaths of at least 1,000 innocent civilians in Afghanistan. We have caused the deaths of over 6,118 innocent civilians in Iraq … some estimates hint at numbers as high as 37,000. Those thousands whom we have maimed for life have yet to be adequately tallied. We have lost over 370 of our servicemen and women in Iraq and elsewhere. Our military is stretched to the breaking point.

And we have very much lost the sympathy of the rest of the world. We are hated, feared and despised across the globe.

Worse, Al-Qaeda and its ilk are now as menacing a threat as they were two long and bloody years ago.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “Yet without a well-informed public, our liberty itself is in peril.” And the world becomes a darker and more dangerous place.

This September 11th, some of us will pause and soberly ponder Thomas Jefferson’s words in a special two hour vigil in Benicia, CA, from 5 PM to 7 PM at the corner of 1st and Military. We will remember the dead on both sides of our recent wars. And we will find the strength to face the future with a renewed conviction that, after two long years of blood of death, war is not the answer.

All of you are welcome to join us, if only for a few minutes on this anniversary day. Endless wars and violence are not only taking us further and further from our goal of ending terrorism in our time, but are eroding our very souls as Americans. Please. We can do little enough alone. Together we can and will find a way.

[No, I don't imagine too many of you can come! This little essay was meant for local consumption after all. But would you think about doing something special to mark this anniversary in your own part of the world?]

Posted by Pat K., California at September 9, 2003 10:10 PM | TrackBack