The Day (& 18 Years) After

From Intersections of Fate (Antiwar.com, September 13, 2001):

America is now emerging from the shock of Black Tuesday with an understandable desire to avenge its dead. Many suggestions on how to do that are outlandish, and some border on insanity. If the most vocal warmongers get their way, this country would become embroiled in an endless war against the entire world, destroying entire cities at a whim. Any effort to make the world safe for America while making the world less safe for everyone else is ultimately both futile and paradoxical.
Opposing all terrorism as a principle is a truly noble endeavor, one which the author of these lines would eagerly join. Experiences in the Balkans point to a different reality, though. One cannot fight terrorism and use it at the same time. (emphasis added)

From War Without End (September 27, 2001):

Far from the eyes of the American public, still intently focused on a scorched patch of mountains in central Asia, the first battle of "Operation Enduring Freedom" ("Supreme Irony" having been too obvious) has already been fought. No shots were fired. No lives were lost, not yet. But the battle – and with it, perhaps the entire war – was lost.
[...]
This week’s events in the Balkans clearly show that the war on terrorism is anything but, and that the only benefactor of Black Tuesday will be the apocalyptic vision of American Empire, now finally able to assert itself in a war without end.

From The Day Nothing Changed (September 12, 2002):

The time was right to re-examine America's Balkans policies of the past decade, and possibly even extricate itself from an Imperial commitment in the peninsula that seemed irrelevant and wasteful in the light of the new "War on Terror." Was this done? No.
[...]
The aftermath of Black Tuesday was a golden opportunity to redefine America as a Republic, not an Empire. It was missed.

From The Lost Terror War (September 11, 2003)

George [W.] Bush's claim that America was after terrorists everywhere was seriously undermined from the very beginning by its continued support for terrorists in the Balkans...

Those familiar with events in Kosovo and Macedonia, and certain personalities in Bosnia, were forced to conclude that terrorism was considered "evil" only when it targeted Americans. Others were fair game, especially when the terrorists were American "allies."

[...]

Americans desperately need to decide whether to support a policy that aims to create a global Balkans, where US power and hypocrisy rule supreme. They should know that in the real Balkans, where US power is unchallenged, terrorism thrives...

From Eppur si muove (Gray Falcon, September 11, 2014),

I've said everything I've cared to say over the past thirteen years - how one cannot fight terrorism and support it at the same time, how there are no "good" terrorists just because they currently serve one's agenda, how it's madness to appease jihadists in hopes of earning their gratitude, etc. etc. Go through the posts tagged 9/11 if you wish, and see for yourselves whether the questions I've posed are not just as relevant today as a year ago, or five, or ten.

And I stand by my contention that there was never any war on terror(ism): the grand crusade was all about power.

Memory eternal to those who perished on 9/11. Maybe some day we can actually make sure their deaths have not been in vain. 

War Without End

(via Wikipedia)

"I've said everything I've cared to say over the past thirteen years - how one cannot fight terrorism and support it at the same time, how there are no 'good' terrorists just because they currently serve one's agenda, how it's madness to appease jihadists in hopes of earning their gratitude, etc... there was never any war on terror(ism): the grand crusade was all about power."

- Eppur si muove, 2014

"Terrorism cannot be defeated. But terrorists can. The first step towards doing so is to stop enabling them, supporting them, cultivating them as a weapon against enemies real or imagined, and harboring the delusion that they can be controlled."

- From Beslan to Boston, 2013

"[B]elieving that jihad could be harnessed, controlled and directed to achieve a strategic purpose... was wrong in 1978, it was wrong in 2001, it is wrong now, and it will be wrong tomorrow." 

- 9/11, 2011

It's been 15 years. Yet we seem to have forgotten almost everything that mattered... and learned nothing at all.

Karadzic and the dogs of war

In July 2008, after the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, Brendan O'Neill wrote an article that provided the crucial missing piece to the puzzle of how the Atlantic Empire has interacted with jihadists: Bosnia.

Pointing out that America armed and trained a military machine that was using Mujahideen as "shock troops," O'Neill reminds us of the striking parallels between the positions of Al-Qaeda militants and "liberal hawks in newsrooms across America and Europe":

Indeed, many of the Mujahideen who fought in Bosnia were inspired to do so by simplistic media coverage of the sort written by liberal-left journalists in the West. Many of the testimonies made by Arab fighters reveal that they first ventured to Bosnia because they "saw US media reports on rape camps" or read about the "genocide" in Bosnia and the "camps used by Serb soldiers systematically to rape thousands of Muslim women." Holy warriors seem to have been moved to action by some of the more shrill and unsubstantiated coverage of the war in Bosnia.

Both Western liberals and the Mujahideen ventured to Bosnia in response to their own crises of legitimacy, and in search of a sense of purpose, O'Neill argues, citing a number of sources. The Serbs provided a convenient enemy to project all their pent-up frustration, anger and hatred onto.

"For both Western liberals (governments and thinkers) and the Mujahideen, Bosnia became a refuge from these harsh realities, a place where they could fight fantasy battles against evil to make themselves feel dynamic and heroic instead of having to face up to the real problems in their movements and in politics more broadly."

Both Western imperialists and Islamic jihadists became "super-moralized, militarized, internationalized" in Bosnia, as a result of their struggle against the "evil Serbs." Today, the Empire and its allies accuse Russia of "revisionism" but it was they who chose to trample international law and the existing order by inventing "humanitarian" wars and "responsibility to protect," reviving "coalitions of the willing" 200 years after Napoleon.

As for the Islamists, they went internationalist, spreading the message of jihad everywhere - fueled by Washington's wars, no less - from Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings to 9/11 and Brussels just this week.

O'Neill says Karadzic has much to answer for. I'll accept that. But he also says that the demonization of Karadzic and the Serbs, and the resulting "rehabilitation of both Western militarism and Islamic radicalism, has also done a great deal to destabilize international affairs and destroy entire communities." Just ask the Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans, Egyptians, Kurds...

Which brings me to a point I've been making here for years. I find it utterly disgusting that the same people who howl in outrage over the "genocide in Srebrenica" never seem to realize - or perhaps don't care - that "Srebrenica" has been used to justify the deaths of a million Muslims, and maybe more, in Western "humanitarian interventions" since 9/11. 

Eppur si muove

I chose not to write a special essay on the anniversary of 9/11. What would be the point?

I've said everything I've cared to say over the past thirteen years - how one cannot fight terrorism and support it at the same time, how there are no "good" terrorists just because they currently serve one's agenda, how it's madness to appease jihadists in hopes of earning their gratitude, etc. etc. Go through the posts tagged 9/11 if you wish, and see for yourselves whether the questions I've posed are not just as relevant today as a year ago, or five, or ten.

And I stand by my contention that there was never any war on terror(ism): the grand crusade was all about power. Don't believe me? Listen to the Emperor's speech declaring war on ISIS.

Proving that the brevity of Twitter can be the soul of wit, someone named "Stalingrad & Poorski" summarized the speech thus:

POTUS Summary: We'll be bombing a sovereign nation (Syria) We'll be arming terrorist groups while fighting them. #Ref Economy is Great
— Stalingrad & Poorski (@Stalingrad_Poor) September 11, 2014

Justin Raimondo rightly called the speech a "dreary peroration exuding a skunk-like aura of insincerity" and correctly identifies it as a back-door attempt to effect "regime change" in Syria. Make no mistake, that is what "assistance to the Syrian opposition" really means. By the by, the mythical "Syrian opposition" is basically an adjunct of ISIS!

Jan Oberg dubbed the speech a "record low in terms of moral and intellectual analysis," and dwelt on the last two minutes of "everything is fine" (continuing the theme of protesting too much): "A combination of unbearable self-praise, slight megalomania and denial of the changing U.S. role in our changing world."

It's like watching the coyote from the old cartoons, chasing the road-runner bird over a chasm. Once he realizes he's running on air - but not a moment sooner - he immediately plummets to the ground. It now appears as if the Imperial government has convinced itself that so long as it pays no attention to the chasm, the law of gravity does not apply.

Newsflash: it does. 

Gazing at the Abyss

The real error was believing that jihad could be harnessed, controlled and directed to achieve a strategic purpose. That belief was wrong in 1978, it was wrong in 2001, it is wrong now, and it will be wrong tomorrow.

(9/11, 2011)

Terrorism cannot be defeated. But terrorists can. The first step towards doing so is to stop enabling them, supporting them, cultivating them as a weapon against enemies real or imagined, and harboring the delusion that they can be controlled.

(From Beslan to Boston, 2013)

Draw your own conclusions.

That September Day

From the Gray Falcon archives:

"I remember that Tuesday morning the way I remember much of the Bosnian War: in vivid detail. The confusion, the shock, the horror of the burning and crumbling towers, the pillar of black smoke coming from the Pentagon. But the world didn't stop turning. And nothing actually changed that day." 

(9/11, September 11, 2011; Read the rest)

9/11

I remember that Tuesday morning the way I remember much of the Bosnian War: in vivid detail. The confusion, the shock, the horror of the burning and crumbling towers, the pillar of black smoke coming from the Pentagon. But the world didn't stop turning. And nothing actually changed that day.

Within weeks, the man who got into the Oval Office on a promise of a "more humble foreign policy" had launched a war without end. Except that the "War on terror(ism)" was lost before it began. U.S. policymakers have persisted in believing their own myth about the "good" terrorists (i.e. ones they could control) versus the "bad" ones (the ones that would attack America), no matter how much the terrorists themselves blurred that line, repeatedly. They even begged jihadists to like them (again)!

Eventually, the "War on Terror" became a "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism", a term signifying precisely nothing. Instead of fighting fear and terror, the Empire unleashed them upon the world. The discrepancies between reality and fantasy were discounted through perception management. The 2006 mockumentary "Borat" was supposed to have been a comedy. But when the title character enthuses about the "war of terror", it wasn't funny. It rang true.

Seven years after that fateful Tuesday, the American public knew it wasn't really involved in a war on terrorism any more, only in the protracted and pointless occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq (a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, but was nonetheless invaded). The man who promised Hope and Change promised to end those wars. He hasn't delivered.

In May this year, the alleged mastermind behind 9/11, Osama bin Laden, was killed in Pakistan. If the official version of events is to be believed (so many lies have been told about the wars, it's hard to believe anything any more), he was taken out by Seal Team Six, a special forces unit. The question that begs to be asked is, couldn't something like that have been done in the first place, without two full-scale invasions and a bunch of proxy wars? Instead, bin Laden's alleged purpose - to bleed America dry in the sands of the Muslim world - seems to have been achieved, all right.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist (I'm more interested in conspiracy facts). Nor do I believe for a second that everything would have been just fine had America not "provoked" the jihadists, as some well-meaning folks think. Jihad isn't some benevolent ideology of spiritual self-fulfillment, but a religious commandment to perpetrate violence upon the infidel. Many people who call themselves Christians may not take the commandments of their faith very seriously. Rest assured, many Muslims do. The real error was believing that jihad could be harnessed, controlled and directed to achieve a strategic purpose. That belief was wrong in 1978, it was wrong in 2001, it is wrong now, and it will be wrong tomorrow.

It isn't quite right to say that nothing has changed since that Tuesday, ten years ago. While the government, and the thinking behind it, has remained much the same (though a different faction is in power; that ought to suggest a few things, by itself), the United States of America isn't the same country any more. I have trouble recognizing it, and I've witnessed the transformation, gradual as it was.

Whether things keep getting worse, or some day take a turn for the better, there is no going back. Panta rei.

Apt Comparison

One would think that, for an analysis titled "What Kosovo means to the Serbs," Olivia Ward of the Toronto Star would have talked to, you know, an actual Serb or two.

No such luck; the story quotes two (!) officials of the International Crisis Group, and former NATO commander in Bosnia Gen. William Nash, now at the Council of Foreign Relations. The rest is a rather familiar dish of boilerplate serbophobic rhetoric wrapped in distortions of history.

And yet, I cannot help but wonder what James Lyon (ICG's man in Belgrade) was thinking when he said:

"Kosovo plays an integral role in Serbian identity," says Belgrade-based James Lyon, senior adviser on the Balkans for the International Crisis Group. "Without Kosovo, they suffer an identity crisis that is much more serious than just losing territory."

But he added that "the overriding factor is how easy it is to mobilize the crowds. You could compare it with mobilizing an anti-Muslim rally in New York the day after Sept. 11."

Yes, he did just compare the U.S. recognition of Kosovo to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Perhaps now it will be easier for Americans to understand why the Serbs are so upset.

Perhaps.