Mountain Views News          Saturday, September 11, 2010

12

OPINION

 MountainViews-News Saturday, September 11, 2010 

9/11 and the Myth of the “Outside Enemy”

HAIL Hamilton

My Turn

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At eleven o’clock, 
on the morning of 
September 11, the Bush 
administration had 
already announced that 
Al Qaeda was responsible 
for the attacks on the 
World Trade Center 
and the Pentagon. This 
assertion was made prior to the conduct of any in-
depth police investigation.

That same evening at 9.30 pm, a “War Cabinet” 
was formed integrated by a select number of top 
intelligence and military advisors. And at 11.00 
pm, at the end of that historic meeting at the White 
House, the “War on Terrorism” was officially 
launched.

The decision was announced to wage war against 
the Taliban and Al Qaeda in retribution for the 
9/11 attacks. The following morning on September 
12th, the news headlines indelibly pointed to “state 
sponsorship” of the 9/11 attacks. In chorus, the 
US media was calling for a military intervention 
against Afghanistan.

Barely four weeks later, on the 7th of October, 
Afghanistan was bombed and invaded by US 
troops. Americans were led to believe that the 
decision to go to war had been taken on the spur 
of the moment, on the evening of September 11, in 
response to the attacks and their tragic 
consequences.

Little did the public realize that the decision to 
launch a war and send troops to Afghanistan had 
been taken well in advance of 9/11. The “terrorist, 
massive, casualty-producing event” as it was later 
described by CentCom Commander General 
Tommy Franks, served to galvanize public opinion 
in support of a war agenda which was already in its 
final planning stage.

The tragic events of 9/11 provided the required 
justification to wage a war on “humanitarian 
grounds”, with the full support of World public 
opinion and the endorsement of the “international 
community”.

Several prominent “progressive” intellectuals made 
a case for “retaliation against terrorism”, on moral 
and ethical grounds. The “just cause” military 
doctrine was accepted and upheld at face value as a 
legitimate response to 9/11, without examining the 
fact that Washington had not only supported the 
“Islamic terror network”, it was also instrumental 
in the installation of the Taliban government in 
1996.

In the wake of 9/11, any opposition to the war 
was completely isolated. The trade unions and 
civil society organizations had swallowed the 
media lies and government propaganda. They had 
accepted a war of retribution against Afghanistan, 
an impoverished country of 30 million people.

The official story described nineteen Al Qaeda 
sponsored hijackers involved in a highly 
sophisticated and organized operation. This 
myth of the “outside enemy” and the threat of 
“Islamic terrorists” was the cornerstone of the 
Bush administrations’ military doctrine, used 
as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, 
not to mention the repeal of civil liberties and 
constitutional government in America.

Without an “outside enemy”, there could be no 
“war on terrorism”. The entire national security 
agenda would collapse “like a deck of cards”. The 
war criminals in high office would have no leg to 
stand on.

Amply documented but rarely mentioned by the 
mainstream media, Al Qaeda was a creation of the 
CIA going back to the Soviet-Afghan war. This was 
a known fact, corroborated by numerous sources 
including official documents of the US Congress. 
The intelligence community had time and again 
acknowledged that they had indeed supported 
Osama bin Laden, but that in the wake of the 
Cold War: “he turned against us”. After 9/11, the 
campaign of media disinformation served not 
only to drown the truth but also to kill much of the 
historical evidence on how this illusive “outside 
enemy” had been fabricated and transformed into 
“Enemy Number One”.

 Hope everyone had a nice Labor Day weekend. 
For me it brought back memories of clam-
digging, weenie-roasts, and a history they don’t 
teach at schools anymore. At least by high school, 
we’d have learned about Samuel Gompers, the 
AFL-CIO, John L. Lewis and the United Mine 
Workers, the Flint, Michigan auto workers 
strike, Harry Bridges and the longshoremen in San Francisco. 

 If you remember such things being taught in school, you’re 
old enough to remember growing up when blue-collar meant 
middle-class, when one income was sufficient to raise a family in 
a decent home, when more than one-in-five American workers 
belonged to a union (around 7% today) and the daily newspaper 
contained not just a “Business Section” of Wall Street numbers 
but a prominent section of “Labor News”.

 The August 1963 “March on Washington” featured Rev. Martin 
Luther King, Jr., but was initiated by long-time labor organizer 
A. Philip Randolph, AFL-CIO vice-president and head of the 
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Many of those “sleeping 
cars” were manufactured by the Pullman Company, which itself 
has a relevant history.

 By the 1890s, George Pullman had created a “company town” 
for employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company in what is now 
part of Chicago. The homes workers lived in and the stores they 
shopped at were all owned by the company. During the “Panic of 
1893”, wages were dropped but living expenses and store prices 
stayed the same - and Pullman refused to meet with workers to 
discuss the low wages and 12-hour work days. Employees went 
on strike, and soon railroad workers throughout the country were 
refusing to handle trains pulling Pullman cars.

 In response, Pullman arranged to have Pullman cars attached 
to trains carrying the U.S. Mail - forcing the federal government 
to act. President Grover Cleveland dispatched 12,000 U.S. Army 
troops, and after several days the strike ended with 13 strikers 
killed and 57 wounded. Partially in atonement, partially in 
recognition of the political need to maintain good relations with 
the growing labor movement, six days after the strike ended 
President Cleveland pushed through a measure to recognize as 
a national holiday an annual observance of the Central Labor 
Union of New York (the first major integrated union) called 
“Labor Day”.

 The holiday is also seen as the unofficial kick-off of the final 
stretch in the campaign season, so I managed to break away 
to attend the opening of the Democratic Volunteer Center in 
Claremont and engage in one of my favorite pastimes - talking 
politics.

 I chatted with our mayor, Joe Mosca. He’s into the nuts-and-
bolts of the process, and spoke of dealing with those convoluted 
legislative district boundaries. As he explained, the boundaries 
were drawn initially with the intent of ensuring those who had 
power would keep it. Representatives of the relatively well-to-
do communities of the foothills didn’t want to be threatened by 
voters from the lower-income, working-class communities to 
the south, while office-holders from those communities didn’t 
want to worry about the upper-income electorate to the north. 
Increasingly, distinctions became blurred as shared concerns 
regarding families, communities and country became more 
apparent - and those boundaries became more an impediment to 
effective representation.

 I spoke with Karen Suarez of Foothill Community Democrats, 
who found she’s in agreement with Carly Fiorina. She recalled 
that in Fiorina’s recent debate with incumbent Sen. Barbara 
Boxer, the challenger made the observation that if we did away 
with environmental and worker protections, if an American 
worker were entitled to expect no better quality of life than that of 
a typical factory worker in China, India or Mexico, we probably 
wouldn’t be off-shoring so many jobs. I could agree with that, 
too.

 I had the opportunity to speak again with Russ Warner, seeking 
to unseat thirty-year incumbent David Dreier in our 26th District. 
Russ describes himself as a “common man with common-sense 
ideas”. He’s gone through experiences shared by many of us; 
himself having been a victim of “corporate downsizing”, starting 
his own successful small business, raising a family and seeing a 
son off to serve our country in Iraq - as opposed to our current 
congressman having spent his entire professional life making 
millions serving the interests of corporate lobbyists inside the 
D.C. beltway.

 Speaking with Russ, it’s clear it’s not just a matter of personal 
wealth, but of one’s sense of community with others. Wealthy 
media stars come to the aid of victims of AIDS in Africa and 
earthquakes in Haiti, and Warren Buffet decries the absurdity 
of his paying a lower tax rate than his secretary. Then there are 
politicians like Dreier, who (just in the past few weeks) would 
sacrifice the jobs of teachers and the health of firefighters to 
protect the ability of billionaires to shelter income in the Cayman 
Islands and maximize the profits of sending jobs overseas.

 From 1980 through 2005, 80% of the nation’s growth in incomes 
went to the wealthiest 1% of the population. When Congress 
approved the $700 billion TARP bailout at the end of President 
Bush’s term in 2008, we were told the funds would be used to 
open credit again for consumers and small businesses. Instead, 
credit’s remained closed and Wall Street execs raked in larger 
bonuses than they received in 2007, before the crisis.

 Our country was founded by those who sought escape from 
the European model of wealth controlled by a small aristocracy. 
Ironically, those European countries now enjoy a more equitable 
distribution than here, while we see an increasing concentration 
of wealth into the hands of an elite few, with the rest of us asked to 
rely upon their largesse. 

 Countless men and women gave their lives, falling victim to 
the gas, guns and clubs of hired thugs, local police and federal 
troops, fighting for the right to organize into unions and striving 
for the ideal of middle-class security for their families and future 
generations. They worked to make sure we could enjoy a leisurely 
last weekend of summer. Let’s work to honor their memory.

HOWARD Hays 

As I See It

Dreier Statement on September 11th Anniversary

 "Nine years later, the memories of September 11, 2001 remain as vivid as ever. We remember 
and honor the victims, their families, and those who worked so selflessly to ensure the toll 
was not greater than it ended up being. Our country entered a new era of vigilance that day, 
and the men and women of our military remain on the frontlines of that effort. Although 
tremendous progress has been made across the globe, the fight against terrorism continues. 
Today, we pay tribute to those who perished on September 11, 2001 and those who have 
maintained our security, here at home and abroad, ever since."

—Congressman David Dreier


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STUART Tolchin ..........On LIFE 


A Weekday Visit To The Doctor

 This morning I took my 
mother to see the doctor. 
She’s ninety-five years old 
and lives at this old-age 
home, an hour and a half-
away, that provides a kind 
of minimal supervision. 
One of the administrators had called me 
and said that my mom had recently seemed 
more bewildered than usual and seemed 
very confused as to where she was and why 
she was there. I asked that an appointment 
with a doctor be made and I arrived this 
morning, a Tuesday to take her to the 
doctor. . Off we went, all the way hearing my 
mother tell me that she had no reason to see 
the doctor and even if she did who was I to 
make an appointment for her

 And why hadn’t I told her about it? I 
tried explaining to her that I had to make 
the appointment because she wouldn’t go to 
the doctor voluntarily and if I told her over 
the phone that an appointment had been 
made for her she would just get mad and say 
she wouldn’t go and would worry why an 
appointment was being made. She agreed 
that she would never voluntarily go to a 
doctor unless something was really wrong 
and condescendingly explained to me that 
the doctors really have nothing to do and 
that they just want to see you so they can 
charge money and act like big-shots.

 Finally we get to the doctor’s office and 
find the right suite and are greeted by this 
lovely fresh-faced young girl who treats her 
like an old friend. I am very pleased by the 
cheeriness of the place and say something 
like, “Isn’t this nice?” What a mistake! My 
mom let’s me have it. “Do you think I’m an 
imbecile. Why does she pretend she knows 
me?. I’ve never seen her before in my life. 
Why are all these flowers here? What are 
they trying to hide? Everybody lies to me all 
the time. No wonder I’m lonely all the time 
and can’t talk to anybody. Take me home I 
don’t want to be here.”

 Eventually we are taken in to see the 
doctor who seems to be very good at his job. 
He takes my mom’s blood pressure and I 
notice that her pressure is a great deal better 
than my own. My mother asks him why I 
brought her there and he explains that the 
place where she lives is concerned about her 
and thinks she might be a little confused. He 
asks her what day is today. My mother says 
it has to be a weekend or a holiday because 
her son (me) works and needs to make 
money and would not take a whole day off 
to see her unless there was something really 
wrong with her, and then she starts to get 
sad and says, “Is something really wrong 
with me?” She admits to feeling lonely and 
confused and not understanding who pays 
her bills and worrying that she is going to 
be thrown in the street. I explain, as I have 
a thousand times, that she gets money form 
the government which goes to the place 
where she lives and that I pay the rest of her 
bills.

 This makes her even madder. She says, 
“Aha, that explains why I never have a penny 
in my purse.” She then expectedly laughs 
and says, “Of course I never have to pay for 
anything but that makes me crazy.” I give 
my mother twenty dollars which she puts 
into her purse and worries that someone will 
take her money. The doctor interjects that 
mother hasn’t had a flu shot. She says why 
do I need a flu shot; I don’t have the flu. The 
doctor says she should have the shot anyway. 
My mother nods at me in that way that let’s 
me know that this is proof that the doctor 
has nothing to do and wants to give her a 
shot just to make money. I look sad and my 
mom says, “All right, if it you will make me 
happy I’ll let them give me a shot.”

 After the shot the doctor and I talk to 
my mother about using a walker which she 
refuses. “What am I, an invalid?” I take 
her back to the Residence Home and walk 
her back to her room. She cries and doesn’t 
want me to leave and tells me how happy she 
is to see me. We hug and I leave and wipe 
away a few tears. I realize how fortunate I 
am to have a mother who at ninety-five does 
not wear glasses or use a hearing aid and still 
makes me feel privileged to be connected 
to such a vital and real person. Much as 
we all find our lives being dominated by 
electronic technology that changes most of 
social connections to a cyber-world, there is 
still nothing that can replace our very real 
connections with our loved- ones. How 
lucky we all are! 

Mountain Views 
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