After the Sept. 11 anniversary last week, I decided that enough time must have passed for someone to have written a reliable account of what led to the terrorist attacks six years ago. I didn't want a partisan overview of Middle East history, or an anti-Muslim (or anti-Israeli) polemic, or a self-serving apologia by any "statesman" who played any part in enabling this long-simmering and sadly predictable debacle.
I found the book—Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (2006). Then I read it, and for once I agree with Dan Rather about something. He called The Looming Tower "a story every American should know."
However, thanks in part to Rather, every American was sold a different story after 9/11. Rather was, in fact, the first in line to surrender his journalistic integrity to the Bush propaganda machine, saying, "He's my Commander-in-Chief. All he has to do is tell me where to line up and I'll do it." He also sat on the Abu Ghraib story for two weeks, so that the Pentagon could line up their straw men to blame it on. If one were so inclined, one might see Rather's own fall from grace—over dubious sources for a story on Bush's military record—as karmic.
However, Rather was just one of the hundreds of corporate media "journalists" who worked to keep us ignorant of the story that Wright so brilliantly weaves in The Looming Tower. Space doesn't permit a proper summation of the scope of Wright's achievement here, but suffice it to say that you will not be able to put the book down. And when you are done, you will walk around in a daze for several hours.
From my own reading of the book, some general things seem obvious.
First, the U. S. has suffered a crisis of leadership since the 1960s. That's when we passed peak oil, when our oil fields were unable to produce as much as we consumed. We were forced to find it elsewhere or—and here's the rub—find other sources of energy. Though we began to use up our oil surplus 50 years ago, our elected leaders still have not done the obvious: implement a policy of energy independence. Instead, the people's government was hijacked by the multinational oil companies, and we entered unholy alliances with the likes of Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
After Vietnam ran its course, our foreign policy was predicated on protecting our addiction to foreign oil. Osama bin Laden would be just another poor little rich Saudi boy had we steered the proper course.
Second, we had no leverage in the Middle East then, and we have no leverage now, though our entire foreign policy is based on the delusion that we do.
Third, the radical Muslims who comprise al Qaeda are deadly serious, and they have been a long time in the making. They have no crisis of leadership. They are, it is reasonable to assume, more committed to their cause than we are. In fact, I would wager that most Americans couldn't tell you what our "cause" is, other than cheap gas.
Fourth, it has been said that the forerunners to al Qaeda, like Zawahiri, were "radicalized" by the deprivations and torture they suffered in Egyptian jails after the murder of Sadat. If this is so, then every one of the prisoners we tortured at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay is a potential Zawahiri.
Fifth, without oil revenue the Arab world is screwed. They produce and export little else. If other nations stopped needing their product, they would fall back on ancient tribal enmities, the Saudis would no longer be able to fund jihad, and Osama would live out his remaining days inside his dark and dingy cave.
Sixth, we were given ample warning over the years about the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda by some brave and honest Americans, like the FBI's John O'Neill and Richard Clarke, but we didn't listen.
Seventh, this crisis will not end when Bush leaves office. He has arranged it so that we all remain hijacked by the multinational oil companies for the foreseeable future. After all, that's where all his and his posse's money comes from.
