Ten Lessons, Plus One, We Should Learn from 9/11

1. Killing one or many innocents, regardless of one's grievances, is monstrous. This elementary principle would seem to apply to George Bush, and now Barack Obama, as much as to the late Osama bin Laden and now Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his ilk. Can someone say why it doesn't?

2. Despite all its guarantees -- contrary to its ideological justification for existing -- the state can't protect us -- even from a ragtag group of hijackers. Trillions of dollars spent over many years built a "national security apparatus" that could not stop attacks on the two most prominent buildings in the most prominent city in the country -- or its own headquarters. That says a lot. No. That says it all. The state is a fraud. We have been duped.

3. The shameless state will stop at nothing to keep people's support by scaring the hell out of them. (Robert Higgs writes about this.) That people have taken its claims about "why they hate us" seriously after 9/11 shows what the government's schools and the mass media are capable of doing to people. But the people are not absolved of responsibility: They could think their way out of this if they cared to make the effort.

4. Blowback is real. Foreign-policy-makers never think how their decisions will harm Americans, much less others. They never wonder how their actions will look to their targets and those who suffer "collateral damage." That's because they are state employees.

5. As Randolph Bourne said, getting into a war is like riding a wild elephant. You may think you are in control -- you may believe your objectives and only your objectives are what count. If so, you are deluded. Consider the tens of thousands of dead and maimed Iraqis and Afghanis (and dead Pakistanis and Yemenis and Somalis and Libyans). What did they have to do with 9/11?

6. No one likes an occupying power.

7. Victims of foreign intervention don't forget, even if the perpetrators and their subjects do.

8. Terrorism is not an enemy. It's a tactic, one used by many different kinds of people in causes of varying moral hues, often against far stronger imperial powers. Declaring all those people one's enemy is criminally reckless. But it's a damn good way for a government to achieve potentially total power over its subjects.

9. They say the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Maybe, maybe not. But it seems abundantly clear that the enemy of my friend is also likely to be my enemy. See the U.S.-Israel relationship for details.

10. Assume "your" government is lying.

11. Politicians will stop at nothing to shamelessly exploit the memory of the American victims of blowback if it will aggrandize their power. No amount of national self-pity, self-congratulation, and vaunting is ever enough.

(Adapted and re-posted from 2006.)

Ten Lessons, Plus One, We Should Learn from 9/11

Ten Lessons, Plus One, We Should Learn from 9/11:

1. Killing one or many innocents, regardless of one's grievances, is monstrous. This elementary principle would seem to apply to George Bush, and now Barack Obama, as much as to Osama bin Laden. Can someone say why it doesn't?

2. Despite all its guarantees -- contrary to its ideological justification for existing -- the state can't protect us -- even from a ragtag group of hijackers. Trillions of dollars spent over many years built a "national security apparatus" that could not stop attacks on the two most prominent buildings in the most prominent city in the country -- or its own headquarters. That says a lot. No. That says it all. The state is a fraud. We have been duped.

3. The shameless state will stop at nothing to keep people's support by scaring the hell out of them. (Robert Higgs writes about this.) That people have taken its claims about "why they hate us" seriously after 9/11 shows what the public schools and the mass media are capable of doing to people. But the people are not absolved of responsibility: They could think their way out of this if they cared to make the effort.

4. Blowback is real. Foreign-policy-makers never think how their decisions will harm Americans, much less others. They never wonder how their actions will look to their targets. That's because they are state employees.

5. As Randolph Bourne said, getting into a war is like riding a wild elephant. You may think you are in control -- you may believe your objectives and only your objectives are what count. If so, you are deluded. Consider the tens of thousands of dead and maimed Iraqi and Afghanis (and dead Pakistanis and Yemenis and Somalis and Libyans). What did they have to do with 9/11?

6. No one likes an occupying power.

7. Victims of foreign intervention don't forget, even if the perpetrators and their subjects do.

8. Terrorism is not an enemy. It's a tactic, one used by many different kinds of people in causes of varying moral hues, often against far stronger imperial powers. Declaring all those people one's enemy is criminally reckless. But it's a damn good way for a government to achieve potentially total power over its subjects.

9. They say the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Maybe, maybe not. But it seems abundantly clear that the enemy of my friend is also likely to be my enemy. See the U.S.-Israel relationship for details.

10. Assume "your" government is lying.

11. Politicians will stop at nothing to shamelessly exploit the memory of the American victims of blowback if it will aggrandize their power. No amount of national self-pity, self-congratulation, and vaunting is ever enough.

(Adapted and re-posted from 2006.)

Ten Lessons

In my flurry of posts yesterday, I forgot to reprise this one:

1. Killing one or many innocents, regardless of one's grievances, is monstrous. This elementary principle would seem to apply to George Bush, and now Barack Obama, as much as to Osama bin Laden. Can someone say why it doesn't?

2. Despite all its guarantees -- contrary to its ideological justification for existing -- the state can't protect us -- even from a ragtag group of hijackers. Trillions of dollars spent over many years built a "national security apparatus" that could not stop attacks on the two most prominent buildings in the most prominent city in the country -- or its own headquarters. That says a lot. No. That says it all. The state is a fraud. We have been duped.

3. The shameless state will stop at nothing to keep people's support by scaring the hell out of them. (Robert Higgs writes about this.) That people take its claims about "why they hate us" seriously after 9/11 shows what the public schools and the mass media are capable of doing to people. But the people are not absolved of responsibility: they could think their way out of this if they cared to make the effort.

4. Blowback is real. Foreign-policy makers never think how their decisions will harm Americans, much less others. They never wonder how their actions will look to their targets. That's because they are state employees.

5. As Randolph Bourne said, getting into a war is like riding a wild elephant. You may think you are in control -- you may believe your objectives and only your objectives are what count. If so, you are deluded. Consider the tens of thousands of dead and maimed Iraqi and Afghanis. What did they have to do with 9/11?

6. No one likes an occupying power.

7. Victims of foreign intervention don't forget, even if the perpetrators and their subjects do.

8. Terrorism is not an enemy. It's a tactic, one used by many different kinds of people in causes of varying moral hues, often against far stronger imperial powers. Declaring all those people one's enemy is criminally reckless. But it's a damn good way for a government to achieve potentially total power over its subjects.

9. They say the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Maybe, maybe not. But it seems abundantly clear that the enemy of my friend is also likely to be my enemy. See the U.S.-Israel relationship for details.

10. Assume "your" government is lying.

(Adapted and re-posted from 2006.)

9/11 and the Israeli Government

For all the remembering of 9/11, you'd think there would be more demands for the full story. If you want a dramatic demonstration of what the U.S. government thinks of "its" people, follow these links about the activities of Israeli agents in the United States before and after the September 11 attacks. There is hard evidence that Israelis tracked the 9/11 hijackers' activities in the United States -- but apparently did not tell the FBI what was going on. Some even watched the Twin Towers being hit, and danced a celebratory dance when it happened. This is not fringe conspiracy stuff. It is hard news reported by ABC, Fox, The Forward (a major Jewish paper in the United States), and Israeli newspapers.

The American people have a right to know, but of course the government has locked up the information and pressured news agencies to keep it under wraps. This is intolerable.

Read and get mad:

What Did the Israelis Know in Advance of the 9/11 Attacks?
Israel Is Spying on and on the U.S.? (Carl Cameron, Fox News) Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
The Israeli "Art Student" Mystery
US Arrests 200 Young Israelis in Spying Operation
Next Door to Mohammad Atta

The Israeli government and the Americans who are complicit in its U.S. espionage are playing with fire -- and jeopardizing many innocent people in the process. The U.S. government should open up the records (fat chance) so the American people have finally have the truth. If there was no spying -- if there was no foreknowledge of the 9/11 events -- what is to fear from coming clean?

(HT: Justin Raimondo for the links)

"Never Forget": What Does that Mean?

It can't mean merely: "Remember the day big buildings fell down when planes slammed into them and a lot of people died." Who could forget that? There's no need for admonition. We also remember major hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis.

I think when people say that they mean: "Remember the day poor old good-for-the-world 'America' was victimized out of the blue by people who hate our way of life, our freedom, our Constitution, our Declaration of Independence, and our Founding Fathers." That, frankly, is bullshit. A herculean ignorance of recent history or nationalistic self-blindness is required to see things that way. Anyone who says 9/11 shows the United States (i.e., the government) cannot practice noninterventionism in foreign affairs in this dangerous world has no idea what he is talking about. (For details see this and this.)

September 11 should be remembered as the day the biggest flock of chickens, to date, came home to roost. Blowback Day. A better slogan would be: Never Again. And the way to make that come true is to heed George Washington:

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible....

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world;... Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest.

September 11, 2010

I can think of no more fitting way to observe 9/11 than for the U.S. government to halt the mass murder by drone it perpetrates throughout the Muslim world. What must the people there think of us Americans, who do nothing to stop the indiscriminate killing? I shudder at the question. I fear the whirlwind we will reap. We can't say we weren't warned.

War Crimes or Only Crimes

Why are conservatives (and some others) so bent on treating the atrocities committed on September 11, 2001, as acts of war rather than monstrous crimes? They don't look like acts of war. They were not launched by an aggressor nation with the intention of invading and conquering the United States, or overthrowing the government. Despite the enormity of the crimes, the viability of our society is not at risk in the least. Life has gone on rather normally, even allowing for all the ways politicians have exploited the situation in their quest for power. There just seems no good reason to respond by pretending "America is at war." Indeed, the reasons against this response could fill volumes.

So why the insistence that this is war? I think one big reason is that conservatives are, first and foremost, nationalists, and nothing makes nationalism (a form of collectivism) more real than war. Throw in the doctrine of "American exceptionalism" and you have a rationalization for an open-ended "war on terror" in which the world is the battlefield and civil liberties are a luxury we just can't afford.

The war footing also makes it easier to take attention off U.S. interventionist foreign policy, which has seeded the ground for terrorism directed at Americans. One need not excuse the inexcusable acts of September 11 to see how they fit into the big picture. Every empire was struck by terrorists because terrorism is the only low-cost means of retribution available to those who feel aggrieved by imperialism. Most Americans have no clue about what "their" government has been doing in the Middle East for the last couple of generations. It takes shocking ignorance or willful blindness to regard the United States as a gentle sleeping giant until September 11.

So . . . try the criminals in civilian courts. Meanwhile, bring the troops, the CIA, and the meddling diplomats home so this doesn't happen again.

Ten Lessons from 9/11

1. Killing one or many innocents, regardless of one's grievances, is monstrous. This elementary principle would seem to apply to George Bush, and now Barack Obama, as much as to Osama bin Laden. Can someone say why it doesn't?

2. Despite all its guarantees -- contrary to its ideological justification for existing -- the state can't protect us -- even from a ragtag group of hijackers. Trillions of dollars spent over many years built a "national security apparatus" that could not stop attacks on the two most prominent buildings in the most prominent city in the country -- or its own headquarters. That says a lot. No. That says it all. The state is a fraud. We have been duped.

3. The shameless state will stop at nothing to keep people's support by scaring the hell out of them. (Robert Higgs writes about this.) That people take its claims about "why they hate us" seriously after 9/11 shows what the public schools and the mass media are capable of doing to people. But the people are not absolved of responsibility: they could think their way out of this if they cared to make the effort.

4. Blowback is real. Foreign-policy makers never think how their decisions will harm Americans, much less others. They never wonder how their actions will look to their targets. That's because they are state employees.

5. As Randolph Bourne said, getting into a war is like riding a wild elephant. You may think you are in control -- you may believe your objectives and only your objectives are what count. If so, you are deluded. Consider the tens of thousands of dead and maimed Iraqi and Afghanis. What did they have to do with 9/11?

6. No one likes an occupying power.

7. Victims of foreign intervention don't forget, even if the perpetrators and their subjects do.

8. Terrorism is not an enemy. It's a tactic, one used by many different kinds of people in causes of varying moral hues, often against far stronger imperial powers. Declaring all those people one's enemy is criminally reckless. But it's a damn good way for a government to achieve potentially total power over its subjects.

9. They say the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Maybe, maybe not. But it seems abundantly clear that the enemy of my friend is also likely to be my enemy. See the U.S.-Israel relationship for details.

10. Assume "your" government is lying.

(Adapted and re-posted from 2006.)