Perhaps not surprisingly, with the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaching there is a lot of commentary around about what the last 10 years have wrought.
First up, The Washington Post:
"The Queen’s Guard at Buckingham Palace played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was photographed donating blood. Cuba offered use of its airspace and medical facilities. And the French daily Le Monde ran the front-page headline: “We are all Americans.”
Around the world on 9/11 and in the days that followed, there was widespread empathy and a sense of shared struggle against a new, unseen enemy. Overnight, it seemed, the fight against terrorism might redefine the global order. Old enemies would become new allies. Antagonism would give way to opportunity.
But that window proved fleeting, the sense of sympathy and solidarity short-lived.
From Egypt to Pakistan, large majorities of Muslims have an unfavorable opinion of the United States and its policies abroad 10 years after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project. Even among traditional allies in Europe, the United States is widely viewed as acting too unilaterally and failing to take into account the interests of other countries in foreign policy decisions.
In some countries, such as China, animosity toward the United States and suspicion of American intentions has deepened. Ordinary people describe a sense of dismay over what they see as an American preoccupation with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Noam Chomksy on TomDispatch:
"We are approaching the 10th anniversary of the horrendous atrocities of September 11, 2001, which, it is commonly held, changed the world. On May 1st, the presumed mastermind of the crime, Osama bin Laden, was assassinated in Pakistan by a team of elite US commandos, Navy SEALs, after he was captured, unarmed and undefended, in Operation Geronimo.
A number of analysts have observed that although bin Laden was finally killed, he won some major successes in his war against the U.S. "He repeatedly asserted that the only way to drive the U.S. from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing Americans into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt them," Eric Margolis writes. "'Bleeding the U.S.,' in his words." The United States, first under George W. Bush and then Barack Obama, rushed right into bin Laden’s trap... Grotesquely overblown military outlays and debt addiction... may be the most pernicious legacy of the man who thought he could defeat the United States” -- particularly when the debt is being cynically exploited by the far right, with the collusion of the Democrat establishment, to undermine what remains of social programs, public education, unions, and, in general, remaining barriers to corporate tyranny.
That Washington was bent on fulfilling bin Laden’s fervent wishes was evident at once. As discussed in my book 9-11, written shortly after those attacks occurred, anyone with knowledge of the region could recognize “that a massive assault on a Muslim population would be the answer to the prayers of bin Laden and his associates, and would lead the U.S. and its allies into a ‘diabolical trap,’ as the French foreign minister put it.”
The senior CIA analyst responsible for tracking Osama bin Laden from 1996, Michael Scheuer, wrote shortly after that “bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. [He] is out to drastically alter U.S. and Western policies toward the Islamic world,” and largely succeeded: “U.S. forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, I think it is fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden’s only indispensable ally.” And arguably remains so, even after his death."
Finally, Robert Fisk in The Independent:
"By their books, ye shall know them.
I'm talking about the volumes, the libraries – nay, the very halls of literature – which the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001 have spawned. Many are spavined with pseudo-patriotism and self-regard, others rotten with the hopeless mythology of CIA/Mossad culprits, a few (from the Muslim world, alas) even referring to the killers as "boys", almost all avoiding the one thing which any cop looks for after a street crime: the motive.
Why so, I ask myself, after 10 years of war, hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths, lies and hypocrisy and betrayal and sadistic torture by the Americans – our MI5 chaps just heard, understood, maybe looked, of course no touchy-touchy nonsense – and the Taliban? Have we managed to silence ourselves as well as the world with our own fears? Are we still not able to say those three sentences: The 19 murderers of 9/11 claimed they were Muslims. They came from a place called the Middle East. Is there a problem out there?"
First up, The Washington Post:
"The Queen’s Guard at Buckingham Palace played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was photographed donating blood. Cuba offered use of its airspace and medical facilities. And the French daily Le Monde ran the front-page headline: “We are all Americans.”
Around the world on 9/11 and in the days that followed, there was widespread empathy and a sense of shared struggle against a new, unseen enemy. Overnight, it seemed, the fight against terrorism might redefine the global order. Old enemies would become new allies. Antagonism would give way to opportunity.
But that window proved fleeting, the sense of sympathy and solidarity short-lived.
From Egypt to Pakistan, large majorities of Muslims have an unfavorable opinion of the United States and its policies abroad 10 years after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project. Even among traditional allies in Europe, the United States is widely viewed as acting too unilaterally and failing to take into account the interests of other countries in foreign policy decisions.
In some countries, such as China, animosity toward the United States and suspicion of American intentions has deepened. Ordinary people describe a sense of dismay over what they see as an American preoccupation with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Noam Chomksy on TomDispatch:
"We are approaching the 10th anniversary of the horrendous atrocities of September 11, 2001, which, it is commonly held, changed the world. On May 1st, the presumed mastermind of the crime, Osama bin Laden, was assassinated in Pakistan by a team of elite US commandos, Navy SEALs, after he was captured, unarmed and undefended, in Operation Geronimo.
A number of analysts have observed that although bin Laden was finally killed, he won some major successes in his war against the U.S. "He repeatedly asserted that the only way to drive the U.S. from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing Americans into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt them," Eric Margolis writes. "'Bleeding the U.S.,' in his words." The United States, first under George W. Bush and then Barack Obama, rushed right into bin Laden’s trap... Grotesquely overblown military outlays and debt addiction... may be the most pernicious legacy of the man who thought he could defeat the United States” -- particularly when the debt is being cynically exploited by the far right, with the collusion of the Democrat establishment, to undermine what remains of social programs, public education, unions, and, in general, remaining barriers to corporate tyranny.
That Washington was bent on fulfilling bin Laden’s fervent wishes was evident at once. As discussed in my book 9-11, written shortly after those attacks occurred, anyone with knowledge of the region could recognize “that a massive assault on a Muslim population would be the answer to the prayers of bin Laden and his associates, and would lead the U.S. and its allies into a ‘diabolical trap,’ as the French foreign minister put it.”
The senior CIA analyst responsible for tracking Osama bin Laden from 1996, Michael Scheuer, wrote shortly after that “bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. [He] is out to drastically alter U.S. and Western policies toward the Islamic world,” and largely succeeded: “U.S. forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, I think it is fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden’s only indispensable ally.” And arguably remains so, even after his death."
Finally, Robert Fisk in The Independent:
"By their books, ye shall know them.
I'm talking about the volumes, the libraries – nay, the very halls of literature – which the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001 have spawned. Many are spavined with pseudo-patriotism and self-regard, others rotten with the hopeless mythology of CIA/Mossad culprits, a few (from the Muslim world, alas) even referring to the killers as "boys", almost all avoiding the one thing which any cop looks for after a street crime: the motive.
Why so, I ask myself, after 10 years of war, hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths, lies and hypocrisy and betrayal and sadistic torture by the Americans – our MI5 chaps just heard, understood, maybe looked, of course no touchy-touchy nonsense – and the Taliban? Have we managed to silence ourselves as well as the world with our own fears? Are we still not able to say those three sentences: The 19 murderers of 9/11 claimed they were Muslims. They came from a place called the Middle East. Is there a problem out there?"
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