Why Osama bin Laden is winning

author : Marco Rosaire Rossi topic : Terrorism | Free speech

by Marco Rosaire Rossi

One of the unacknowledged tragedies of terrorist attacks on September 11 was that the attacks passed so quickly into from the realm of occurrence to the realm of legend in the collective psyches of Americans that it has become impossible to truly understand those events. Even years after the attacks, September 11 is drenched in an almost religious and often ritualized sentimentality, often involving reflexive flag-waving or slogan-chanting. The problem with such sentimentality is that it stifles critical thinking. It is quite unusual to have an open discussion on the events of September 11 without having the conversation rapidly decline into either nonsensical rhetoric about “why they hate our freedom” or overly elaborate, and often quite bizarre, conspiracy theories. The danger of such a lack of critical thinking leads to a failure to grasp the factors which led to the attacks, and thus increases the likelihood that similar tragedies, or even worse ones, will happen in the future.

A key component to understanding the attacks is knowing why the World Trade Center was the focal point. We must remember, while the attackers only planned one plane for the Pentagon and the White House they planned two for the World Trade Center. If their goal was really just to strike as severely as possible then why not aim for a sports stadium or college campus? If the objective was to hold the designers of American foreign policy accountable, then why not focus more energy on government buildings?

The reason that the World Trade Center was hit was explained by Osama bin Laden in his “The Towers of Lebanon” speech on October 29, 2004. In it bin Laden stated that Al Qaeda’s goal had never been to defeat the United States militarily. Admittedly so, that feat is impossible. Rather, Al Qaeda has sought a collapse of the United States from within. The point of the attacks was to lure the United States into military conflicts and weaken its economic infrastructure in order to “bleed America to the point of bankruptcy, by God’s will. For God is able to do that.” He brags that for every dollar that Al Qaeda spends in their jihad, the Bush administration spends a million on the war on terror.

The collapse of the World Trade Centers did not lead to the immediate economic meltdown that Al Qaeda was hoping for. However, where Islamic fundamentalists have failed, Wall Street has succeeded. The United States is now experiencing a massive economic meltdown not seen since the Great Depression. It is the result, not of the terrorism of airplane highjackings, but of the terrorism of predatory lending, speculative investing, and bogging debt. In response to this crisis, the Bush administration has proposed a $700 billion bailout, a solution that will at best slightly forestall the collapse and probably make it much worse later on. The bailout is all to the delight of corporate executives who will get a golden parachute out of the deal, and of course Osama bin Laden. In fact, bin Laden has never really seen the Bush administration as an enemy – trusting in the irresponsibility and zealotry of the administration to lead to America’s decline. He admits that to some “analysts and diplomats, it seems as if we and the White House are on the same team, shooting at the United States’ own goal, despite our different intentions.”

Bin Laden’s strategy of economically bleeding a country by getting it bogged down in military conflicts is not exactly original. It was the same strategy that the United States adopted in trying to destroy the Soviet Union. Since the oil crisis of the 1970s, the CIA was aware that the Soviet Union was economically vulnerable to collapse. All that was needed to force the country into bankruptcy was an ongoing military conflict. The United States got its opportunity to give the Soviet Union “its Vietnam” – as members of the Carter administration put it - when it invaded and occupied Afghanistan in 1978. The Islamic fundamentalists that fought the Soviets – including Osama bin Laden – were given covert weapons and training by the CIA and realized, whether through CIA influence or not, that they could win the war against the Soviets just by dragging the conflict out as long a possible.

Osama bin Laden tried to use the same strategy in bringing down the United States. As bin Laden is well aware, the differences between the United States and the Soviet Union are quite superficial. While the Soviet Union practiced a communism for party elites, giving them the benefits of the empire while the rest of the population waited in bread lines, the United States practices a communism for the rich, giving the most wealthy in the country massive state support while everyone else is expected to obey free market principles. Those differences will become even more blurred if the Bush administration gets its way, and uses the current economic crisis to transform the United States into an evenly more blatantly centrally planned economy -- something that it has been doing, despite ongoing free market rhetoric, ever since the World War II.

The connection between military quagmire and economic bankruptcy is something that the Bush administration seems oblivious to. In his recent speech to the United Nations, George Bush spoke at nauseating length on the need of governments of the world to devote more resources to fighting terrorism, then ended with only a few remarks on the economy. The claim that his administration has “taken bold steps to prevent a severe disruption of the American economy, which would have a devastating effect on other economies around the world” didn’t seem to reassure the rest of the world. After all, the only solution that Bush has is authorizing the Federal Reserve to put “urgently-needed liquidity into the system.” In other words, throw more money at the rich and hope the problem goes away. Underlying these statements is a denial of reality, a belief that a government can foot the bill of massive military expenditures and massive corporate bail-outs -- including tax breaks for the wealthiest which would prevent revenue from coming into the reserve -- without expecting to go bankrupt.

The obliviousness to the military quagmire/economic bankruptcy connection is not isolated to the Bush administration or to the Republican Party. Many people still cling to the hope that the United States’ war economy can somehow rescue it from the turbulence and downswings of the market like it did during the Great Depression. For example, Washington State Senator Patty Murray -- a liberal Democratic -- was overjoyed that Washington State was receiving $72 million dollars in military defense work for the 2009 fiscal year. Murray commented that “at a time when our state needs an economic boost, this bill will… provide family wage jobs throughout Washington State.” The morality of trying to base a country on a war economy aside, the hope that bombs will lead to economic boom is outrageously naïve. The war economy dragged the United States out of the Great Depression by opening new markets through the building-up of the military-industrial complex. Now, the military-industrial complex is established. No new markets can be created. More war will only drain government resources that could otherwise be spent on important services at homes. Such services could redistribute wealth and create real purchasing power among the poor – stimulating the economy from the ground up. Unfortunately, the idea that socialism is something for the poor, rather than the rich, still hasn’t entered the realm of serious debate in the United States. Both major political party candidates generate rhetoric about cleaning up Wall Street corruption, but neither talks of establishing public programs or returning the commons to the American people.

The most important outcome of investing in services at home rather than war abroad would be the suspension of the imperial ambitions at the core of bin Laden’s grievances. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have only swelled the ranks of Al Qaeda, and ensured the type of collapse that bin Laden is waiting for. Indeed, we may be long past the point where the choices of the American people are either democracy or empire and into the realm where the choices are either democracy or existing at all.

Marco Rosaire Rossi is a graduate from the University for Peace in San Jose, Costa Rica and lives in Chicago, IL. And, like a lot of Americans right now, he really needs a job. Oh well, Viva Revolution!