The world after 9/11 and Iraq
If one week is a long time in politics, one year is too short a period to make any historical assessment.
Nonetheless, the Sept 11, 2001 destruction of the World Trade Centre and the US- led invasion of Iraq which commenced on 20 March last year have so transformed the world as few defining moments in modern world history have that it is crucial to review their impact even if one is accused of instant history, with all its inherent defects.
If one week is a long time in politics, one year is too short a period to make any historical assessment.
Nonetheless, the Sept 11, 2001 destruction of the World Trade Centre and the US- led invasion of Iraq which commenced on 20 March last year have so transformed the world as few defining moments in modern world history have that it is crucial to review their impact even if one is accused of instant history, with all its inherent defects.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991 resulted in the end of the Cold War and ushered in high hopes of world peace and the declining role of war as a means of changing the world order. Indeed, one commentator, Francis Fukuyama went so far as to describe the post-Cold War era as "the end of history".
There is no doubt that substantial and widespread opinion the world over considered the 1990s as a relatively peaceful period and expectations were at an all time high that the new millennium would nurture the growth of democracy in many countries, that freedom would flourish and the space for human rights would expand.
Yet within two to three years, hope has been dashed, the flame of freedom has dimmed and paranoia has swept the minds of not only the elite decision-making neo-conservative cabal surrounding US President George W Bush but also traditionally independent American institutions like the press, the judiciary, academia, bureaucracy and even Hollywood.
Because the US is the pre-dominant military, economic, technological and cultural power in the world dominating the ever-shrinking Internet world with hubris in a way unparalleled in history, developments there have an awesome effect on the rest of the world.
Even if one accepts that the unprovoked attack on the World Trade Centre was a cowardly attack on innocent civilians, one must consider with calm detachment the reasons for the attack and the proper response that the US ought to have made. It is a clich that large sections of the world's population detested the policies and attitudes of the US well before 9/11. Part of the reason was sheer envy of a super-power as had happened with past empires.
The US, however, managed to attract distrust and hatred well before 9/11 to a degree and scale unmatched in history. Its support for dictatorial leaders without any popular support in their own countries, its interventionist foreign policy and its clear tilt in favour of Israel seen in the background of constant public disapproval of the human rights record of other nations thus smacking of preaching and hypocrisy provided millions of people the world over reason to hate Americans. The seeds of such hatred were sown years before 9/11.
Yet, no attempt was made by the decision-makers or serious commentators in the US to study the causes of 9/11 and to ask the pertinent question: What drove 19 persons to give up their life in such a dramatic and violent way? Is this not relevant? If future attacks are to be eliminated, should not the causes of 9/11 be studied and lessons learnt.
Next, a question of perspective. However sympathetic one is to the families of the 3,000 who died (a substantial number were not American citizens), one must view the attack in perspective. Murders committed in the major US cities in one month exceed the numbers who died on 9/11. Likewise, the numbers killed in road accidents in a month.
The damage to the buildings destroyed and aeroplanes crashed are in the final analysis monetary in nature and can be restored, particularly for the world's wealthiest nation. Natural calamities like hurricanes and earthquakes cause greater damage. One is not minimising the gravity of the 9/11 incident; one is merely placing it in context.
When viewed objectively against thousands of crimes committed in the bloody 20 th century against innocent civilians, not just in the countries under colonial yoke in Asia, Africa or South America but also in Hitler's concentration camps or Stalin's Gulap Archipelago, the true scale and magnitude of 9/11 would come into focus. Hence, the true significance of 9/11 is not the actual event but how Bush and his hawks exploited and manipulated it for the furtherance of their private goals.
Finally, the response. Never in the American public debate following 9/11 was the option of a peaceful resolution to the problem considered. The debate began and ended with force. War was the only response ever considered by all concerned in Washington. The only question was when Afghanistan should be invaded.
Different strokes
It is doubted that there were in fact available non-military responses to 9/11, one should consider how Indonesia and India dealt with similar, but perhaps less violent problems shortly after 9/11. The Bali bombing in October 2002 took the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians. The terrorist bombing of the Indian Parliament in New Delhi in 2002 also resulted in the loss of life and a physical attack against the heart of India's democracy. In each case, Indonesia and India eschewed the military option.
Indonesia was vigorously criticised by the Western powers for its very laid-back, slow and soft reaction to the Bali bombing. In its own way the Balinese dealt with the terrorist attack. At the core of its reaction were understanding, calmness and forgiveness. Bali has returned to normalcy and Indonesia is not at war with terrorists in the way the US still is.
After the attack on India's Parliament drums were beaten and trumpets blown in the usual emotional way whenever tension is heightened between India and Pakistan and both nations were on the brink of nuclear war. However, Prime Minister AB Vajpayee was resolute in wanting to resolve the dispute peacefully. After a decade of not being on talking terms, relations between India and Pakistan in the last 12 months have thawed.
Confidence building measures involving people to people contact have been encouraged. The Indian cricket team is on tour in Pakistan. Negotiations to settling the bane of their relationship, Kashmir, are expected to commence after India's general election. Thus, India's soft approach, spearheaded by Vajpayee, may even deliver long term peace dividends.
Can an objective observer therefore confidently state that America's response in dealing with 9/11 by going to war with Afghanistan, the killing of thousands of innocent civilians (a much higher number were killed there than the victims of 9/11), the occupation of Afghanistan by its troops, the defeat of Taliban, the "expulsion" of Osama bin Laden from the country and the continuing "war on terror" have resulted in America becoming a safer country and that repeat terrorist attacks will not occur in the US? Or did the United States overreact and use disproportionate force in dealing with 9/11?
Furthermore, can it be objectively stated that the Indonesian and Indian method of dealing with terrorist attacks on their homeland, which was in essence peaceful in nature, was less conducive to long term peace, security and the avoidance of future attacks in their countries?
The actions of 19 persons who spent a mere US$100,000/- and destroyed some buildings and aircraft have in two years transformed not just the foreign policy of the US but also its domestic life. By all accounts, the US has become a scarier place to live since 9/11:
- Alternative opinion is not tolerated.
Despite its Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the US has often in recent decades lurched into behaviour which was intolerant of minorities and hostile to dissenters. During World War II, the treatment meted out to American citizens of Japanese origin was terrible. In the 1950s McCathyism had a frightening effect on thousands of innocent Americans.
In the late 1960s, particularly during Richard Nixon's presidency, the state's action against Blacks and those opposing the Vietnam war bordered on the violent. However, even by those deplorable standards, what an average American citizen of the Muslim faith endures today as he goes about his daily life is atrocious. Whether in school, the workplace, hospital, library, supermarket, airport, train or plane, he is discriminated against because of his 'Islamic' name or appearance; the clash of civilisations has a real meaning to him. As for foreigners, the horror stories that have been publicised on the treatment they receive when they arrive at US airports are replete
Hence, it is tragic that the actions of 19 hijackers have eroded the American way of life in the name of homeland security. The US has lost the moral high ground it painstakingly built for decades. It is just like any other third world country where life is on the edge for many individuals. Americans like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King who in their time stood for liberty would be turning in their graves at Bush's America.
One must acknowledge the skill and sleight of hand employed by Bush and his spin doctors in transforming the American psyche by spreading the hate against Osama to Saddam Hussein, although there was hardly any evidence to connect Iraq with 9/11. The intellectual and psychological environment in the US early last year was such that it was regarded as unpatriotic to question Bush's war plans. There was non-partisan consensus, with the Democrats not putting forward a principled opposition to war.]
Reasons re-examined
With the passing of exactly one year since the war let us recall the five reasons which the US put forward early last year to justify war.
Firstly, that Iraq possessed weapons of destruction. No one in the world seriously believes this fiction any more; the current debate is whether the US and Britain spied on any other major player apart from Kofi Annan, Hans Blix and the non-permanent members of the Security Council who were expected to vote on the 2nd Resolution in February 2003!
Secondly, Saddam Hussein's involvement in 9/11. If the evidence linking Iraq to 9/11 was thin even before the outbreak of the March 2003 war, the evidence has just not surfaced since. In fact, the US does not even mention this reason any longer.
Thirdly, regime change. The 48-hour ultimatum issued to Saddam and his sons to leave Iraq just prior to the invasion and the Bush's family personal hatred for Saddam suggest that this was a strong factor for war. Neither international law nor international relations permit a change of government in this manner.
Fourthly, that Iraq was in material breach of resolutions passed by the Security Council. The poverty of this argument can be measured by the fact that neither Bush nor British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been resorting to this reason after the war had ended.
Finally, the desire to introduce democracy, first into Iraq and then into the neighbouring Middle Eastern States. This reason is still alluded to from time to time, but even its strongest adherents have to concede that Iraq is just not ready to "receive" (whatever that concept may mean) democracy and its attendant features like pluralism, consensus, political parties, free speech, tolerance for minority views, space for dissenters, rule of law, press freedom and an independent judiciary, a fact which was known for decades to anyone with even a passing knowledge of Iraqi history and society.
Credibility defied
If a scrutiny of each of the five grounds relied upon by the US to justify an invasion of Iraq seemed spurious and tenuous before the war in March 2003, they defy credibility one year later.
The true reasons for going to war thus remain the same five 'undisclosed' grounds: oil, the failure of Bush Sr. to 'finish off' Saddam in 1991, Pax Americana and the need for a substantial American armed presence in the Gulf, the opportunity to give lucrative contracts to the industrial-business-military complex which supported Bush and Dick Cheney in 2000 and whose finances will come in handy in November 2004 and a diversion from the problems facing the US economy - particularly the increasing federal budget deficit and unemployment and the declining US dollar.
Extremely significant was the recent admission by Paul O'Neill, Bush's former Treasury Secretary, that Bush had planned to attack Iraq shortly after he took office in January 2001 and well before 9/11. It is a paradox that in the Information Age the disinformation about the Iraq war has reached Orwellian proportions.
What the world has forgotten in the short space of one year and needs reminding is that in the final analysis the war against Iraq was illegal, principally because of the failure to secure a second Security Council explicitly authorising the use of force, and in consequence the US and Britain have been illegally occupying Iraq since April 2003 and as colonial powers conquering and ruling another nation.
Thus, the present occupation of Iraq is no different from America's conquest of Phillipines in 1898 and subsequent rule or the British conquest of and rule over India from 1757 to 1947. President Theodore Roosevelt was in the forefront of the attack on British colonialism during World War II; his pressure to some extent paved the way for India's independence in 1947 which itself provided the impetus for the independence of countless British, French and Dutch colonies, including Malaya in 1957.
The second half of the 20 th century saw the independent movement reaching its zenith so that by the turn of the century the United Nations had over 180 independent, sovereign nations.
Accordingly, if an international relations scholar had been asked at the beginning of the new millenium that within three years the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation state would be violated by another nation followed by foreign rule the scholar's response would have been "things do not work like that anymore".
He would say colonialism is long dead and buried. He may have cited Hitler's forcible incorporation of Austria into the German Reich - the Anschluss in March 1938 and the surrender by President Hacha of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 after Hitler's threat to destroy Prague by bombing as historical examples but would have gone to say that both seizures of power were condemned by the Nuremburg Tribunal in 1946 as illegal under international law.
The scholar would finally have remarked that the United Nations was established in June 1945 to avoid the use of force to settle international disputes, and that, absent self-defence, one nation cannot simply invade another. Yet that is exactly what the US and Britain did to Iraq.
Non-military options
What should be done to arrest this dangerous state of affairs? One can hope that the world would be a less dangerous place if John Kerry defeats Bush in November 2004. Despite the universal dislike of Bush outside the US, he retains a very strong following in his country. He has all the advantages of an incumbent; hence he can conjure up another war with another soft country as the election looms or capture Osama. In any event, one is never sure whether Kerry would act differently if he becomes president.
Likewise, Blair, for whom the Iraq war never seems to go away. The Hutton Report was considered by large sections of the British public to be a whitewash. If the opinion polls are to believed, the majority of Britons do not trust Blair and want him to quit. He will not. Hopefully, he will be defeated in the general election.
The importance of public opinion must never be underestimated. The good sense of the ordinary person must be articulated: he or she should not accept helplessness or powerlessness. Public opinion must continue to manifest itself at two levels: domestically in the key countries of US and Britain, and internationally at the supra-national level.
Peace marches must resume, the academic world must give the lead in the battle for the intellect and the press must be supportive. The people of Iraq must not be forgotten. They were not responsible for Saddam's evil deeds and should not suffer the ignominy of foreign rule in 2004!
A radical fresh attitude and approach must be adopted by the US in dealing with the consequences of 9/11 and the Iraq war. It must start with the recognition that merely because the 19 hijackers were Muslim, the entire Islamic world is not evil and that the vast majority of the members of the faith are peace-loving.
The perception that the war on terror is a war against Islam must be removed. Muslims in the US must not be discriminated against or humiliated. The right to practise a minority religion in the US must become a practical reality.
A more even-handed foreign policy must be adopted by the US in the Middle East, and particularly with regard to Israel and Palestine. There should not be automatic and total support for all the policies implemented by Israel in Palestine. Israeli brutality and humiliation of ordinary Palestinians must cease.
In the final analysis, the US must engage in dialogue. Negotiations with one's enemies is not appeasement, surrender or weakness. After all, even at the height of the Cold War, a hot line operated between the White House and Kremlin.
If East and West, Israel and Egypt, the Koreas, India and Pakistan and Sri Lanka could engage in negotiations, neither principle nor logic prevents the Americans from conducting a dialogue with Osama. Even if immediate peace does not flow from such talks, there would be a reduction in suspicion and tension and the world would be a less dangerous place.
The point is that non-military options must be seriously considered. At its best, crude force only works for brief periods, perhaps just a couple of years. Seeds of humiliation and resentment are sown when people are beaten into forceful submission. Engagement, negotiations and consensual arrangements, on the other hand, pave the way for peace, both in the medium term and in the long run.
One hopes that wisdom, prudence, compromise, tolerance and good sense - old fashioned values which apparently have disappeared in recent times - return to their rightful place in the US decision making milieu so that the world becomes a safer place in the years to come, and that the spirit of liberty which characterised the birth of the 21 st century would animate the rest of a decade which has started on a completely wrong note.
TOMMY THOMAS is an advocate and solicitor of the High Court who read international relations at the London School of Economics, and who has always maintained an interest in politics.
