From Kevin Carson, at antiwar.org:
Every year, we’re subjected to another round of mawkish, smarmy 9/11 memorial ceremonies whose main purpose is to maintain loyalty to the very national security state whose aggression brought the terror attacks of September 11 on us in the first place. It’s all part of an endless cycle, repeated over and over, dating back to the late ’70s. 1) Criminal, aggressive intervention overseas by the American national security state; 2) the ensuing destabilization from that intervention results in terrorist blowback to the people of the United States; 3) the leaders of the American state take advantage of the terrorist attack by waving the bloody shirt to manipulate the public into supporting a new wave of criminal aggression; which leads to 4) more blowback. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Al Qaeda came into existence in the first place because the United States, under President Jimmy Carter and his National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, supported an Islamic fundamentalist uprising that destabilized the pro-Soviet government of Afghanistan, and the Reagan administration subsequently backed the Mujaheddin guerrillas against the Soviet invasion. All this was for the sake of bogging the Russians down in their own “Vietnam” – a move in the “Great Game” that Brzezinski, even after 9/11, said was worth it.
Another contributing factor to 9/11 was Operation Desert Shield/Storm – a war entirely engineered by the Bush’s quiet encouragements to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait – which outraged many in the Islamic world by bringing American troops on the soil of Saudi Arabia, home country of the holiest sites of Islam.
9/11 was, in turn, a bonanza for the U.S. national security state. Using the terror attacks as a pretext, the American leadership was able to stampede Congress into rubber stamping the USA PATRIOT Act (a grant of police state powers comparable to those granted Hitler under the Enabling Act passed after the Reichstag Fire) and two foreign wars, along with a blank check to initiate other wars at will (used to legitimize Obama’s interventions in Libya, Syria and Kurdistan, among others). Right up to the present, anyone opposing new military actions by the United States, or suggesting that terrorist attacks of the past were blowback from previous US interventions, is labeled a defeatist or worse. As antiwar blogger Jennifer Abel put it (“Your Annual 9/11 Memorial Riddle,” Ravings of a Feral Genius, Sept. 11): “Q: What’s the difference between 9/11 and a cow? A: The government can’t milk a cow for 14 years and counting.”
To continue reading: For the State Blowback Is a Feature, Not a Bug
