Obscuring the Reasons for 9/11

From Ivan Eland of the Independent Institute:

As both the Bush administration and its client government in Israel, with their invasions of Arab states in Iraq and Lebanon respectively, make the United States ever more hated in the Islamic world, a new book by the Chairmen of the 9/11 commission admits that the commission whitewashed the root cause of the 9/11 attacks—that same interventionist U.S. foreign policy. . . .

The book usefully details the administration’s willful misrepresentation of its incompetent actions that day, but makes the shocking admission that some commission members deliberately wanted to distort an even more important issue. Apparently, unidentified commissioners wanted to cover up the fact that U.S. support for Israel was one of the motivating factors behind al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack. Although to his credit, [cochairman Lee] Hamilton argued for saying that al Qaeda committed the heinous strike because of the U.S. military presence in the Middle East and American support for Israel, the panel watered down that frank conclusion to state that U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iraq are “dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world.”

Some [9/11] commissioners wanted to cover up the link between the 9/11 attack and U.S. support for Israel because this might imply that the United States should alter policy and lessen its support for Israeli actions. How right they were. The question is simple: If the vast bulk of Americans would be safer if U.S. politicians moderated their slavish support of Israel, designed to win the support of key pressure groups at home, wouldn’t it be a good idea to make this change in course? Average U.S. citizens might attenuate their support for Israel if the link between the 9/11 attacks and unquestioning U.S. favoritism for Israeli excesses were more widely known. Similarly, if American taxpayers knew that the expensive and unnecessary U.S. policy of intervening in the affairs of countries all over the world—including the U.S. military presence in the Middle East—made them less secure from terrorist attacks at home, pressure would likely build for an abrupt change to a more restrained U.S. foreign policy. But like the original 9/11 Commission report, President Bush regularly obscures this important reality by saying that America was attacked on 9/11 because of its freedoms, making no mention of U.S. interventionist foreign policy as the root cause.

Read the rest here.

Hat tip: Ralph Raico.

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.