At Commondreams, Ira Chernus explains how the ’60s prepared us to live with the fact that we will never, ever know for sure who was behind the 9/11 attacks. Whoops, I had always thought the counterculture’s primary message was never, ever eat fried food.
Are we to blame the Saudis, the Israelis or the Bushies? Heather Wokusch warns it could be decades before the truth is finally revealed.
At Antiwar, Justin Raimondo points out the Saudi and Israeli theories are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The salient point is that it’s three years later and 9/11 seems ever more shrouded in mystery.
Well, as the seasons they go ’round and ’round, while we’re waiting to see if Raimondo and others can prove Chernus wrong by lifting the fog, there’s plenty of time to consider the question which tends to go unasked, why did nineteen people want to inflict such horrible pain on us? The reasons were pretty clear three years before 9/11, at least to one Jennifer Loewenstein. The following letter was also printed in the Chicago Tribune under the title “A World’s View”:
FOREIGN POLICY IN ARAB NATIONS TIED TO EMBASSY BOMBINGS?
Madison Capital Times, Madison, Wisconsin
Aug 14, 1998
Dear Editor: Americans have every reason to be horrified by the recent terror attacks against U.S. targets in Africa. Nevertheless, a failure to understand the sources of such violence will only hinder efforts to thwart it in the future.
Eight years to the day after the arrival of the U.S. 82nd Airborne division to Saudi Arabia, bombs exploded almost simultaneously at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Is this a coincidence?
Days after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the United States sought and obtained permission from Saudi King Fahd to station American troops there on the condition that they would leave once the threat of Iraqi aggression had ended. Nevertheless, a U.S. military presence continues to this day – to the dismay of many Saudis, including Crown Prince Abdullah.
Today, comfortable relationships between the United States and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, and King Hussein of Jordan seem to be taken for granted by our government despite the sentiments of growing numbers of people within these (and other) countries. A careful examination of the reasons why anti-American feeling is on the rise should lead to changes in our foreign policy vis-a-vis these countries.
Apparently, however, where strategic and economic interests are at stake, respect for the integrity and the political climate of independent nations plays a very small role. The consequences of such nationally self-interested behavior could well be dire.
U.S. control over Arab oil, its unconditional alliance with the state of Israel coupled with the failure of the Clinton administration to intervene over the failed Oslo peace accords, crippling seven-year-old economic sanctions imposed upon Iraq – which have been particularly devastating to civilians – and the continued American military presence in Saudi Arabia all weaken friendly sentiments toward the United States, even – and most conspicuously – in our closest allies. If there is a Saudi connection to bombings in East Africa, the warning bells should be heeded in Washington.
Jennifer Loewenstein, Madison
It’s worth mentioning that in a Vanity Fair interview May 9, 2003, when asked what good has come out of the Iraq invasion, Paul Wolfowitz answered
“There are a lot of things that are different now, and one that has gone by almost unnoticed–but it’s huge–is that by complete mutual agreement between the U.S. and the Saudi government we can now remove almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia. Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government. It’s been a huge recruiting device for al Qaeda. In fact if you look at bin Laden, one of his principle grievances was the presence of so-called crusader forces on the holy land, Mecca and Medina. I think just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door to other positive things.”
Unfortunately, the interviewer didn’t ask if that positive was perhaps just a little bit offset by the prospect of keeping tens or hundred of thousands of troops in Iraq for as many as ten years“, its taking as many as 10 years to crush the insurgency.
Note: The Financial Times has called for a US/UK withdrawal from Iraq, with, “ideally,” the US “stating it has no intention of establishing bases” there.