The suicide missions that destroyed the World Trade Centre and one
wing of the U.S. Pentagon killing thousands of people on September
11, 2001, connect to wider patterns.
The first mark of a truly civilised person or culture is that they
can "put themselves in the other's place". This is an ancient
recognition, linking teachings of both Confucian and Christian founders,
and it is daily preached to children as the basis of being human.
Yet when the U.S.'s most populous city is hit by the equivalent of
three large bombs terrorising and murdering thousands of people, one
would have hoped that the recognition would at last have dawned that
a country's most populous city being bombed is a terrible event, a
crime against humanity in its mass destruction of innocent civilians
and their infrastructures. One would have hoped that the lesson taught
to children over millennia would have been felt from the inside as
people witnessed on the lifeground the terror, suffering and death.
Yet in all the outrage and condemnations that have flooded from reported
public figures and observers around the world, not one has made the
connection. None has "put themselves in the other's place"
to connect what happened to New York to the more life destructive
bombing of civilians and civilian infrastructures in Baghdad in 1991,
or Belgrade in 1998. In Iraq, a UN-estimated 5000 children a month
have died year in and year out because of the infrastructure bombing,
as well as by the contamination of the countryside by nuclear-tipped
weapons and their deadly after-effects. In both countries, the most
developed social infrastructures in their regions have been irreversibly
destroyed by the attacks. The bombings of capital cities in each case
went on, in fact, not just for a few hours, but days and weeks on
end without stop, while people in the U.S. and allied countries watched
the exploding bombs night after night on their home televisions as
the top-rated entertainment of the time.
But the New York attack goes deeper in unseen connections. How could
it have happened? After all, the pervasive Echelon surveillance apparatus
and the most sophisticated intelligence machinery ever built is unlikely
not to have eavesdropped on some of the very complicated organisation
and plans across states and boundaries for the multi-site hijacking
of planes from major security structures across the U.S. - especially
since the suicide pilots were trained as pilots in the U.S., and the
World Trade Centre had already been bombed in 1993 by Afghan ex-allies
of the CIA. Since the prime suspect, Osama bin Laden, is himself an
ex-CIA operative in Afghanistan, and his moves presumably under the
intensest scrutiny for past successful terrorist attacks on two U.S.
embassies in 1998, one has to reflect on the connections.
One would be naive to think the Bush Jr. faction and its oil, military-industrial
and Wall Street backers who had stolen an election with its man rated
in office by the majority of Americans as poor on the economy (a Netscape
Poll poll taken off the screen when the planes hit the towers), and
more deplored by the rest of the world as a deep danger to the global
environment and the international rule of law, do not benefit astronomically
from this mass-kill explosion. If there was a wish-list, it is all
granted by this numbing turn of events. Americans are diverted from
a free-falling economy to attack another foreign Satan, while the
Bush regime's popularity climbs. The military, the CIA and every satellite
armed security apparatus have more money and power than ever, and
become as dominant as they can over civilians in "the whole new
era" now being declared by the White House. The anti-missile
plan to rule the skies is now exonerated (if irrelevantly so), and
Israel's apartheid civil war is vindicated at the same time. Even
the surgingly popular "anti world-trade" movement is now
associated with foreign terrorists blowing up the World Trade Centre.
The more you review the connections and the sweeping lapse of security
across so many co-ordinates, the more the lines of force point backwards.
Behind the terrible event on all sides, the deepest problem is not
seen. The closed mind of life-disconnection is being locked in. Even
now, even after suffering through the inside taste of bombed-city
horror in the capital of the world's number one aerial bombing nation,
the leaders and their peoples across borders are now being drawn into
preparing and calling for more. None but the silenced grasp the meaning
that stands before them in the rubble, the death and the pain.
Bombing civilian population centres is evil - whether from outer-space
as now researched by the Bush administration, or by kami-kasi hijackers
dive-bombing into city skyscrapers more close-up. With rising talk
about "the civilised world against the uncivilised world"
and demands to do it again, the mind-lock has to be broken. It is
not just that the evil of aerial bombing civilians exposes our own
civilians to still more bloodshed and terror ahead, while military
gangs and complexes grow richer and more in command. Bear in mind
that over 90% of military-wrought deaths in the world have been unarmed
people since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. At some point the
pretense of "civilisation" and "the free world"
by our leaders has to move beyond ideological cant to be more than
lawless mass murder in emperor's clothes.