On September 10, 2001, the world believed the United States was well prepared against anyone who might be so foolish as to attack it. They believed, with what seemed like good reason, that the US had powerful and sophisticated security systems in place to handle anything an enemy might throw at it.

On September 11, 2001, the world learned it was wrong.

On September 12, 2001, the world knew that things had changed. And even the most naïve among us knew that the US soon would lash out at somebody, somewhere, and exact a punishment far out of proportion to the harm done to it.

And ten years later, only self-centered Americans have much sympathy remaining for what happened that morning. Many of us still have empathy, yes. It is always sad when innocent people lose their lives. But more and more, thinking people have realized that on a clear late-summer morning in 2001, America reaped what it had sown.

Background

As news of the story spread around the world ten years ago today, what we heard over and again was the voice of Franklin Roosevelt referring to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour as a day that would “live in infamy”. The September 2001 events were being viewed through the same deer-caught-in-the-headlights lens as Pearl Harbour. And the analogy was appropriate; both were surprises to the American people, and neither was a surprise to the American government. That’s not to imply, or deny, that the US government was involved in either event. But, in both cases, a nation with every reason to be on heightened alert was asleep at the wheel.

In the case of Pearl Harbour, the US and Japan had been jousting with each other since the 1920s. The situation began to be more serious when Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, beginning a decade-long expansion into China. In 1940, it invaded French Indochina, leading to the US imposing an oil embargo on Japan. Since it is a nation with virtually no resources of its own, Japan must import everything and it saw the embargo as a supreme act of aggression. And, in line with international law, imposing sanctions on a sovereign nation is technically an Act of War, so Japan could claim with legitimacy that the US had declared war against it in 1940.

At least as early as October 1940, Roosevelt stated publicly that a war with Japan was inevitable. Over the next year, tensions between the two rose steadily. But, in August 1941, Japanese Prime Minister Kanoe proposed a summit meeting with Roosevelt in order to find a resolution to their differences. Roosevelt refused.

As the Japanese mobilized in the Pacific in late November 1941, the US seems to have gone to sleep. It cannot have failed to notice the Japanese movements. And, yet, on the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese managed to attack Pearl Harbour with barely a ripple of response from the Americans. This is despite the facts that intelligence had already alerted the US to an unidentified Japanese action to take place December 7, and that the planes were spotted on radar about an hour before they arrived.

In fact, US military and naval authorities were convinced as early as the summer of 1941 that they would be going to war with Japan, although they preferred to have the Japanese make the first strike. So given that scenario, there is certainly some question about why the US would leave its guard down and its fleet tied up in port. And then not react even when they saw the attack coming. That’s not to suggest the US was setting up an inviting target for the Japanese; but it isn’t so far-fetched, given the Machiavellian way governments work.

In the summer of 2001, the underworld of espionage was apparently full of chatter about some big thing being planned by enemies of the United States. Right on US soil. That might not be terribly specific, given that almost everyone has grudges against the United States; but, in recent years, the US had identified fanatical Muslim elements as their worst worry. Yet, the vaunted US spy industry seemingly failed to notice a bunch of guys taking lessons on how to fly planes, with no apparent interest in learning how to land them. Security at three airports completely failed to find sharp knives being carried by 19 men. And the rough-and-ready US air force, which can scramble jets into the sky in a heartbeat, utterly failed to wake up on the morning of September 11.

Who knows why any of that happened (or failed to happen)? It’s likely that someone does, and it’s even more likely that we’ll never know who that might be. Were we witnesses to another event like Pearl Harbour, where it is possible a known threat was ignored in order to invite an attack that could lead to a response? We don’t know. But we do know that the Bush administration had been itching to attack someone long before September 11. In fact, the initial distraction of attacking Afghanistan was really just the warm-up act for the invasion of Iraq, which had been on the planning books almost from the day Bush took office early in 2001, and perhaps even earlier in the minds of his handlers.

So on September 11, nineteen guys who seemed to be completely unknown to US authorities managed to pull off the biggest coup of their lives. They paid the ultimate price, of course, but not before taking almost 3,000 people with them. It’s amazing that although authorities claim to have been taken by surprise by these guys, within just a matter of hours we knew all their names and their pictures were being broadcast around the world. That’s pretty quick after-the-fact detective work.

What came next has been interesting, to say the least.

A Story Hidden in Plain Sight

Almost from the beginning, there were questions. Without a doubt the most serious, and least explained, is how a handful of terrorists managed to outwit the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and a dozen or so other US security agencies, allies such as Mossad, the US State Department, NORAD, airport security four times in a single morning, air traffic control.

But, seemingly, they did. So it’s hard to understand why the President, the Congress, the media, and the entire nation weren’t all over this like flies on shit, demanding answers.

Instead, the White House tried to block any sort of investigation into the events. A commission of paid stooges was established to whitewash whatever might be the truth, but it was so constrained that one member, Senator Max Cleland, resigned because, as he put it, “… I, as a member of the commission, cannot look any American in the eye …’ Even though President Bush appeared before the commission, he refused to do so without his puppeteer, Dick Cheney, and only on the condition that neither of them was put under oath.

In short, the commission’s report seems to have satisfied so few, yet it is the official record. A wide range of theories and opinions about September 11 have arisen, ranging from highly credible scientists and engineers who refute the official story, to the truly nutty. Regardless of who criticizes the work of the commission or the government’s public posturing, they are characterized as crackpot conspiracy theorists.

Wherever the truth lies, it is not to be found in the official record.

The Bush Conspiracy

Following the events of September 11, US president George W Bush tried to look: (1) surprised; (2) concerned; (3) presidential. He failed on every count. In fact, over the balance of his presidency, his actions could lead a conspiracy theorist to believe that Bush might have been a ‘sleeper’ for a fanatical Muslim sect. In a clearly tongue-in-cheek article, Canadian journalist Dr Gwynne Dyer suggested as much.

Consider what happened. He ordered the invasion of Afghanistan and threatened the rest of the world that they had better damn well do what he wanted, or else. Afghanistan was the natural target, of course, because none of the September 11 perpetrators was from Afghanistan. You can see the logic.

It was assumed quickly that Al Qaeda, a group whose very existence is in some doubt, was behind the attacks. But the alleged leader of that group, Osama bin Laden, denied involvement. He later claimed responsibility in 2004, but why would we believe his claims in 2004 any more than we believed the opposite in 2001? Well, because we know the man wouldn’t lie. In any event, he may or may not have been in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, so bombing the bejeezus out of the country just in case seemed like a good idea.

Following Afghanistan, Bush manufactured evidence to invade and destroy Iraq. Later, he arranged for the installation of a government led by Nuri al-Maliki. His government is a friend of Iran, and Syria’s only supporter in the Arab world. [al-Maliki has lived in and worked for both Syria and Iran.] Now, you can't assume that Bush was in Iran's pay just because his invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq destroyed Iran’s two most serious enemies in the region, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. Or that he installed an Iran-friendly government in Iraq. This could just have been his characteristic deep ignorance and ideologically driven blindness.

Still, maybe he really was a sleeper. Certainly the world became a safer place for Iran because of Bush and, at least until recently, Syria was better off than previously.

The End of the US

No matter what really happened on September 11, or in the months leading up to it, the ten years that have followed make clear those terrorists achieved what they were after – the fall of America.

Over ten years, civil liberties in the US have all but disappeared; its Constitution is seen to be what George Bush always claimed it was – just a goddam piece of paper. The US has engaged itself in horrendously expensive and futile wars that have put it into a financial spot from which it is highly unlikely to emerge, and it has made huge buckets of money disappear down a hole from which it will never be recovered.

And for what? Sure, Americans can gloat over lots of dead Muslims who have borne the wrath of the US, despite being utterly innocent of the September 11 events. And maybe the lives of Muslims aren’t any better than before that day. While that might satisfy some Americans and the US government, the Muslims who remain alive have at least the grim satisfaction of knowing that the mighty US has fallen. This is not a mere flesh wound – the US is mortally injured.

So the terrorists seem to have achieved what they set out to accomplish, haven’t they?

Celebrating this Anniversary

On this day, it is right to pause and remember the thousands who lost their lives on September 11, 2001. They didn’t ask for this - but it should be remembered that their country did. So we might also pause to remember the many more thousands who have paid with their lives for something done by 19 guys most of them had never heard of.

The United States has ‘bestrode the narrow world like a Colossus’ for close to a century. It has randomly and indiscriminately attacked or invaded many dozens of countries, assassinated world leaders – especially those duly elected – and has attempted to turn the entire world into its warehouse and source of cheap labour. Its doctrine of ‘American Exceptionalism’ is simply an arrogant and obnoxious way of saying to the rest of the world: Fuck you.

While we can mourn the men and women who lost their lives at Pearl Harbour, we should also remember the 150,000-250,000 Japanese who died in 1945 as a result of two simple bombs.

We can condemn the US for its deliberate efforts to prevent the stopping of needless tragedy. In 1994, for example, exasperated calls from Rwanda seeking military assistance to thwart an uprising that was clearly imminent was shut down because the US vetoed UN involvement. We all know that more than 800,000 people died because the UN didn’t show up.

In 1960, the US had the opportunity to assist the new government of Cuba to rid itself of the vestiges of colonial rule, but instead it turned its back and forced Cuba to choose a path that might have been much softer otherwise. Also, in the Cold War era of 1960, the US decided to assassinate the first democratically elected leader of the Congo – not because he had gone over to the Communist side, but because he declared that he wished to remain neutral and not cleave to either side.

And in one of the curious bookends of history, on September 11, 1973 Americans illegally overthrew and assassinated the duly elected president of Chile – because he was a Communist. That is to say, he favoured an economic model that was not the same as that of the US – and you can clearly see why that meant he must die.

One thing we can’t do is to accept that an attack like that of September 11, 2001 was undeserved. Certainly, those individual people didn’t deserve to die. But the US has done so much harm and damage around the world it has absolutely no right to claim itself a victim when someone finally says ‘enough’ and strikes back.

So Happy Anniversary to all who are planning to wallow in self-pity today. You can be sure this day will be remembered every year for the brief time the US has left to live. Maybe, just maybe, if the US got over itself and started to behave as if the rest of the world mattered, as if the US weren’t the only thing that mattered, this might never have happened and could be prevented from happening again.

Paul Richard Harris is an Axis of Logic editor and columnist, based in Canada. He can be reached at paul@axisoflogic.com.

Read the Biography and additional articles by Axis Columnist, Paul Richard Harris