PAGES 76-78 OF 9-11 Noam Chomsky (2002)
Could you imagine how the situation would be if the terrorist's attack in the U.S.A. had happened during the night, when very few people would be in the WTC? In other words, if there were very few victims, would the American government react in the same way? Up to what point is it influenced by the symbolism of this disaster, the fact that it was the Pentagon and the Twin Towers that were hit?
I doubt that it would have made any difference. It would have been a terrible crime even if the toll had been much smaller. The Pentagon is more than a "symbol," for reasons that need no comment. As for the World Trade Center, we scarcely know what the terrorists had in mind when they bombed it in 1993 and destroyed it on September 11. But we can be quite confident that it had little to do with such matters as "globalization," or "economic imperialism," or "cultural values," matters that are utterly unfamiliar to bin Laden and his associates, or other radical Islamists like those convicted for the 1993 bombings, and of no concern that their atrocities over the years have caused great harm to poor and oppressed people in the Muslim world and elsewhere, again on September 11. Among the immediate victims are Palestinians under military occupation, as the perpetrators surely must have known. Their concerns are different, and bin Laden, at least, has been eloquent enough in expressing them in many interviews: to overthrow the corrupt and repressive regimes of the Arab world and replace them with properly "Islamic" regimes, to support Muslims in their struggles against "infidels" in Saudi Arabia (which he regards as under U.S. occupation), Chechnya, Bosnia, western China, North Africa, and Southeast Asia; maybe elsewhere. It is convenient for Western intellectuals to speak of "deeper causes" such as hatred of Western values and progress. That is a useful way to avoid questions about the origin of the bin Laden network itself, and about the practices that lead to anger, fear, and desperation throughout the region, and provide a reservoir from which radical Islamic terrorist cells can sometimes draw. Since the answers to these questions are rather clear, and are inconsistent with preferred doctrine, it is better to dismiss the questions as "superficial" and "insignificant," and to turn to "deeper causes" that are in fact more superficial, even insofar as they are relevant.
COMMENTARY
The evasive maneuver taken to avoid the Pentagon's Anti Aircraft defenses. |
"The Pentagon is more than a "symbol," for reasons that need no comment (Chomsky 77)." This sentence is all Chomsky had to say in regards to the Pentagon and 911. In other words Chomsky had nothing to say about the precision strike on the Pentagon. The precision strike that took out two of the Pentagon's most important offices. Navy Operations Center (NOC) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
No two offices in the Pentagon are more important to the American Ruling Class's control of world trade than those two offices. The Navy keeps the sealanes secure and the DIA puppet's the countries American corporations offshored many of their factories and their mining interests. The DIA via the Special Forces kill off the union leaders and kills the foreign leaders who would want to nationalize American Ruling Class holdings overseas.
Chomsky had to take the conversation away from what the symbolism of the attacks were because the symbolism of the attacks were not congruent with the Bin Laden narrative. Skirting the Pentagon issue was a brilliant propagandist move by Chomsky. He talks about something else entirely and avoids talking about the true psychological message of the attacks.
The message of the attacks is congruent with what old hardline Soviet hawks have been saying about America. America cannot be the center of world trade without it's military. Bin Laden made it clear in an interview the day after 911 he was not angry with the American people. His grievance was with the American government.
The attackers on 911 were making a statement about American Ruling Class unipolar pretensions. It was not a defensive action to kick invaders out of the Holy Land. 911 showed that Russian Special Forces can bring down America with a commando raid. The strategic upper hand of America's space force is not as great as the people in the Pentagon thought it was prior to 911.
Side Note
The propaganda line on 911 is that Bin Laden wanted to lure America into a quagmire and do to the USA, what the US did to the USSR in Afghanistan. The USSR lost in Afghanistan because of the American logistical support and the Chinese backed the American sponsored insurgency. China even sent special forces to fight alongside the Afghans.
Assuming Bin Laden was capable of pulling off the attack, he wasn't. Bin Laden had to have known that the attacks would bring the full weight of the American military down on him. And he did not have the logistical base to fight off an American occupation. The weapons and the training have to come from somewhere. Who was going to sell them to him? America's surveillance systems will pick up large weapons transfers and spot the training grounds. Why would Bin Laden lure America into a quagmire, if it was logistically impossible for him to fight off the coming American occupation? These attacks did nothing to further his cause. Blaming Bin Laden is farcical on its face. That's the reason why there was no trial. Bin Laden was a patsy. Plain and simple.
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