mbs: sure, but ex ante, none of these acts required cover-up because none of them were blatant violations of U.S. law. GoT and Iraq were pedestrian exercises in official high-level b.s. Afghan provocations were similarly mundane, in and of themselves. Only in retrospect in light of implications do they loom large. Even so, none of them hold a candle to a terrorist act that claims thousands of lives.
HA: the secret did not get out and what leaks occurred were not sufficient to discredit a US government legitimized by the symbols of freedom and democracy. Precisely the same thing is happening now, there are leaks of CIA-ObL collusion, of the US threatening war before S11, etc. None of this can penetrate the patriotic frenzy whipped up by the terror attack. The
mbs: this is all inside baseball from the public's standpoint. People don't give a shit. There is no comparison between this and hatching a terrorist attack on one's own nation. That is the sort of thing that cannot easily be done in secret, so basing historical analysis on a supposition that it can is not good practice. Of genuine interest is the confluence of forces and history that hatches something as perversely interesting as al-qaida, the Taliban, and related intrigue.
HA: . . . But aren't these "triggers" the artefacts? The same strategic goals can theoretically be achieved using different triggers. What counts are the goals, which are the true causes of these wars, and which can be somewhat crudely (no pun intended) reduced to one word: oil.
mbs: Ordinarily yes. But an attack on the U.S. is not ordinary. Put it this way. Suppose the whole area was embroiled in a regional war involving rival 'stans' and there was no terrorism against the U.S. at issue. Then all of the oil and strategic stuff would be proper background for analyzing U.S. policy towards the region. But you can't get there legitimately by putting aside an event with the U.S. domestic political implications of a 9/11. It's a shortcut that glosses over the political needs of the U.S. state, in light of such an incident, and the political views of the population. Bad analysis and bad politics.
|| mbs: maybe they did threaten because of oil. that doesn't mean
|| 9/11 orignated anywhere else but in OBL's fevered mind, nor that
|| he deserves to live.
|| What does that have to do with political usefulness? ObL is bad, sure, but so are the Saudis, so is Pakistan. How is killing a bit player going to help the left, as opposed to laying open the imperialist web of deceit that unleashed Wahhabite terrorism on the world and is protecting its main instigators now? Hakki
mbs: Killing ObL doesn't help the left a bit, but taking an agnostic stance towards killing ObL hurts the left a lot. Ironically, I would say that this whole affair has done more to illuminate the Wahhabite/U.S. complex more than anything else could have (another reason to doubt U.S. complicity in 9/11, BTW). In this context, the conspiratorial layer -- all the intimations of foreknowledge, Elder Bush eating spaghetti in Italy on certain days with certain people -- is an obstruction to clarity.
I think there are some great openings for the left in all this now, including along the following lines:
1. GWB sez we fight for freedom, but our allies (and not just the recent, opportunistic ones) are little different in this respect from the Taliban. Note that lumping the U.S. together with all of this -- discounting the extent of democratic freedom here -- vitiates this point; same idea, re: laura Bush's women and children routine.
2. everyone understands that economic deprivation at least contributes to terrorism, though it is not necessarily a key cause of it, so let's get serious, why don't we, about aid to under-developed countries;
3. nuclear proliferation. Amy Carter was right. Aid to Russia, especially re: nuke-savvy scientists.
4. Palestine; two state solution. undercut the jihadist maniacs.
5. Let's look at current U.S. collaboration with future ObL's in South America, Asia, Africa.
In other posts I've talked about the domestic side, so I won't rehash. I think these are more useful subjects of political discourse than whether Buck Revell knew about Pan Am 103.
mbs