October 15, 2001
Historical Analysis of Terrorist Attacks on the United States
By Dariush Sajjadi
Six months after Buddha’s monument was dismantled and destroyed in Bamian province in Afghanistan upon Mulla Omar’s orders, Buddhists around the world can now consider the US-led military strikes on Afghanistan as the price the Taliban has to pay for desecrating their religion.
The salient feature of the US-led war against global terrorism is that it does not match any classic wars. Nor does it comply with any definitions of war expounded in military academies around the world.
This is a war against an invisible enemy whose possible retaliatory measures against US-led strikes could be unconventional and, as such, hard to predict – a factor that has caused alarm in the US administration.
Though the US possesses the power and capability to launch massive strikes against terrorist hideouts and training camps to root out terrorism, she seems to fall short of staving off terrorist attacks on her own soil and interests.
The September 11 terrorist attacks proved that despite possession of advanced technological and military equipment, the US appears extremely vulnerable to her faceless enemies, so much so that she cannot suppress these enemies without being troubled by the thoughts that they might strike back.
The unconventional enemy that can resort to an incomprehensible "logic" to hijack passenger planes and slam them into non-military targets on US soil could have the potential to surprise the US again with other terrorist moves.
Such unconventional behavior should indicate to the US that even though she has initiated the war on global terrorism by striking the Taliban, this does not mean that she can be the one to end it.
Obviously any group that launches terrorist operations thinks through the consequences of its activities and knows that the more extensive its operations are, the more powerful the anti-terrorist responses will be.
The masterminds of the September 11 terrorist attacks should have naturally known that by conducting terrorist activities of such magnitude they were bringing about their own organized self-destruction.
They should have known that the US – or any other country exposed to such atrocities – would not sit back and would respond with full force, mobilizing its political will and military might to wipe out the terrorists even in the bloodiest way, if need be.
Surely the radical Islamist Osama Bin Laden – whose terrorist activities until September 11 were confined to setting off car bombs in US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and attacking the USS Cole, and who is now introduced as the mastermind of the September 11 attacks – would have known that the terrorist operations that claimed the lives of 7,000 people on US soil would backfire.
Being aware of the dire consequences of terrorist operations, how then could Bin Laden have paved the way for the ultimate destruction of himself and his organization by launching the September 11 attacks? This is hard to digest.
Given its outright opposition with US policies in the Middle East over the past two decades, Islamic radicalism naturally came to mind as the prime suspect behind the September 11 attacks.
In fact, whoever orchestrated the September 11 terrorist operations must have known with certainty that the Middle East’s radical Islamic movements would be singled out as the culprits.
Capitalizing on radical Islamism’s hostility with the US, the masterminds behind the September 11 attacks seem to have been bent on tilting the world public opinion toward believing that radical Islamic movements were to blame for the terrorist operations and prompting the US to launch a war, outside her borders, on a part of the Islamic world.
And this seems to have been done with a dual purpose: First, to expose the US to those opposing her in the Middle East. Second, to undermine radical Islamic movements without even raising a finger, as this will be taken care of by the powerful US war machine.
Granted this were the purpose, the September 11 attacks could have been orchestrated by those who hate both the US and the Muslims.
In studying radical Islamic movements, political analysts tend to overlook these movements’ rise in the Middle East, knowledge of which prepares the ground for an understanding of the present clashes between the West and the world of Islam.
To scrutinize the roots of Islamic radicalism, it is imperative to reflect upon the developments of the 1950s, especially the profound impacts which the US-led 1953 coup de’tat in Iran had over Middle East politics.
Some political analysts trace the roots of Islamic radicalism to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, but the Iranian Revolution is in a way the product of the US officials’ political mishandling of Iran’s political developments in the 1950s.
The US-orchestrated 1953 coup de’tat against Dr. Mosaddeq can definitely be taken as the most blatant diplomatic mistake the US ever committed, as the coup spurred the rise of new political movements in the Middle East and led to the dramatic development of those that already existed.
After abandoning her isolationist policy which was derived from the Monroe Doctrine and after exercising her positive influence to end World War II, the US lost her immense popularity in the world, especially in the Middle East, due to her pursuit of an uncalculated diplomacy vis-à-vis global developments.
The US joy over the successful 1953 coup in Iran prevented her from realizing the profound impacts the coup had on political developments in the Middle East.
The said coup serves as the most important development in the past 60-year history of the Middle East, as it changed the region’s course of history, prompting it to become anti-US.
Disillusionment of freedom movements with the liberating nationalist movements was the first upshot of the coup. Though late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, following Dr. Mosaddeq’s suit and relying on Arab nationalism, initially fostered Arab unity, the 1953 coup and the Arabs’ defeat in the 1973 war dampened any hope that was pinned on liberating nationalist movements in the Middle East.
Since then, the revolutionaries, fed up with the uncalculated policies of the US and her favorite ally in occupied Palestine, have endeavored to find an alternative to rely on to harmonize the existing revolutionary and liberation tendencies in the Middle East.
A quarter century after the 1953 coup, Ayatollah Khomeini offered a revolutionary interpretation of Islam through Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. He provided an attractive alternative to the suppressed liberating nationalism in the Middle East, an alternative that was outright anti-US, because of the latter’s involvement in the coup that brought Dr. Mosaddeq’s nationalist movement down.
The 1980 occupation of the US embassy in Tehran by revolutionary and religious students following Imam Khomeini was caused by the anticipated flare-up of anti-US sentiments of the revolutionaries who harbored a deep grudge against the US for her role in defeating Iran’s nationalist movement in the 1950s.
Oppressed masses throughout the Middle East lauded the pro-Imam students for taking over the US embassy. Anti-domination movements that opposed the United States’ intolerant policies in the Middle East put the adventurist Islamic radicalism on a pedestal, as it proved the possibility of combating the US without relying on a big power, in this case the Soviet Union. By seizing the US embassy, the revolutionaries actually broke off a taboo in the cold war era bipolar world.
Prior to Iran’s Islamic Revolution, the Soviet Union, relying on Marxist teachings and placing itself and its satellites in the frontline of the campaign against the US-led capitalist world, had succeeded in dividing the world into the oppressive West and the anti-oppression East and as such forced the Third World to make a difficult choice by noting: "In the campaign against the capitalist world, you are either with us or against us."
Interestingly, in their revolutionary teachings, the communists preached that religion would stupefy the masses, a situation from which, they believed, only the capitalists would reap benefit.
The victory of Iran’s Islamic Revolution and the religious revolutionaries’ unprecedented take-over of the US Embassy, however, allowed the Third World to see a group of revolutionary religious youth, headed by a devout cleric, outpace the communists who claimed to herald the fight against US imperialism.
Ironically, these were the same religious revolutionaries who, according to communist instructions, were supposed to use religious texts to stupefy the masses to spread and broaden imperialist influence over the world!
Prior to Iran’s Islamic Revolution, Gamal Abdel Nasser, inspired by Mosaddeq’s nationalist movement which he transformed into pan-Arabism, highly motivated the Arabs’ anti-domination campaigns against Israel.
But Gamal Abdel Nasser’s defeat in the 1973 war disillusioned the anti-domination movements that relied on Arab nationalism. In such an atmosphere of despair, the Camp David Peace Treaty dashed any hope that Arab nationalists still harbored.
Then came Iran’s Islamic Revolution which injected new life into the region’s anti-domination movements by promoting Islamic radicalism in the gloomy Middle East.
And this was the offshoot of the uncalculated US diplomacy toward Iran in the 1950s. When Britain raised claims that Dr. Mosaddeq had communist tendencies and his hold on power would drive Iran into the arms of the Soviet Union, Washington should have exercised political discretion and tried to work things out with Mosaddeq who had pinned hopes on US assistance vis-à-vis Britain’s interventionist policies.
Had the US done so, it would have, firstly, retained her high popularity among Iran’s public opinion, a popularity arising from brilliant services rendered by people such as expert American economist Morgan Shuster and stemming from the US exertion of pressure on the Soviet Union to withdraw from Iranian territories at the end of World War II.
Secondly, the US would have averted the hostile radical religious revolution that culminated in Iran some 25 years after Washington’s seemingly successful coup in the country, a revolution that turned into the most attractive Middle Eastern model of bold combat with the US.
The US has time and again committed this mistake, ever since it entered the scene of international diplomacy. Pursuing iron fist policies, the US easily lost its extensive global popularity as a country championing freedom and democracy and became the bane of the Middle East.
And all the while the US could have taken a lesson from Britain’s sagacity over the 1953 coup. On his way back to the United States following the 1953 coup in Iran, Kermit Roosevelt, a major player in the coup, held a historical meeting with Churchill in London, a meeting that highlighted the foresight of British veterans of politics.
Upon congratulating Roosevelt on the successful coup, Churchill shrewdly said that Roosevelt would obviously do what all world diplomats do upon retirement, and that is to write their memoirs. Churchill, however, asked him not to ever mention Britain when writing about the 1953 coup against Iran, noting that he wanted the entire honor of orchestrating the coup to go to the US.
These words indicated Churchill’s far-sighted glimpse into a possible future regime change in Iran and his preference to minimize any trace of Britain’s involvement in the coup to channel the Iranian peoples’ wrath toward Washington so that the Iranians would be angry only with the US. And this did happen.
Such historical examples prove the US’s enormous talent to make enemies and spur abhorrence toward her policies and actions, an abhorrence that has compelled the US over the past 22 years to feel nostalgic for the cordial relations she had with Iran during the Pahlavi era and to spend her time and energy on bringing the recalcitrant Islamic revolutionary Iran to its knees.
The US which had spent 50 years combating the Soviet Union was thrilled with that superpower’s collapse, since it freed her from having to worry over the Soviet Union’s historical materialistic campaign against the capitalist world. However the continued presence of the radical Islam that burgeoned from Iran’s Islamic Revolution was a source of grave concern for the US and its allies, as they now had to tackle the new worldwide campaign which relied on Islamic revolutionary teachings modeled after Iran.
When Ayatollah Khomeini was compelled to "drink the poisonous cup" of truce with Iraq in 1989 by accepting UN Security Council Resolution 598, the US tried to convince the public opinion that the Iranian leader’s acceptance of cease-fire proved that the Iranian Revolution which claimed to save the world of Islam from US oppression had come to its knees.
But Ayatollah Khomeini once again shrewdly demonstrated the perpetuation of his campaign against the West by issuing a fatwa (religious decree) against Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses.
The fatwa which was widely welcomed by Muslims all over the world sparked the wrath of the West. It, moreover, prompted the Muslims who were fed up with Western domination to adhere to the revolutionary Islam that sought to enforce justice.
Also on the trail of World War II and the emergence of the bipolar order, the capitalist world attempted to prevent Karl Marx’s predictions from coming true, especially his prediction that world laborers would unite as they have nothing to lose but the chains on their feet.
The capitalist world, therefore, endeavored to offer its laborers relative welfare and limited benefit from capital owners. This was aimed at curbing any unity and uprising against the capitalists (as envisioned by Marx) by prompting the laborers to fret over what they had just acquired and abstain from an uprising on the ground that it would not be economically justified.
The West, especially the US, decided to transfer any labor-related crisis from within the capitalist borders to the Third World. Because of this, the Third World is now faced with Western dominance over all its labor, service, economic, mineral potentials and serves as the whipping boy for the Western laborers who were previously supposed to fight capitalism.
In tune with this policy, the Western workers – including government employees, laborers, and bureaucrats – gradually acquired relative welfare and moved up the ladder of success to form the middle class which before long constituted a huge majority in the West.
Western capital owners, meanwhile, realized that these former laborers who comprised the present middle class had gained not only relative welfare but also free time during which they could think over and criticize their masters’ policies, especially their inhuman policies and actions in the Middle East.
To solve this problem, the capitalist world decided to fill up its middle class’ leisure time by offering mundane recreations and pastimes that would take their minds off their governments’ Middle Eastern policies.
Producing multitudes of sensual films, Hollywood works hand-in-hand with the Western media that are monopolized by the capital owners and that bombard the public opinion with tilted news and analyses to preclude the Western masses from developing their own opinions over serious issues.
The present-day indifference of most Americans toward bombardment of Afghanistan in the name of fighting against terrorism is a crystal clear indication of the stupefying effect the American mass media has had on the masses. This is while the Americans are very kind and compassionate people.
The tilted US media policy has kept the Americans from developing their personal opinions on political hot potatoes with the aim of keeping their political understanding at the lowest level, even much lower than that of their counterparts in other parts of the world.
The Americans, however, are highly capable of improving their political and social understanding by dispensing with the tilted interpretations offered by the mass media.
But as long as the capitalist system holds sway and keeps up its domineering policies in the Third World, the Americans will not be able to get rid of the vicious circle of stupefaction.
Meanwhile the West’s transfer of the capitalist crises to the Third world has deepened and escalated poverty, discrimination, corruption, oppression, and social injustice in this part of the globe.
The Third World, and especially the world of Islam, harbors deep grudges against the US for leading the capitalist world and enforcing suppressive policies toward the Third World. This is such that any individual or movement in the Middle East that combats the US becomes popular in a flash.
When Osama bin Laden was declared the mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the US, he immediately became the most popular "hated" figure – just like Anthony Hopkins in Hollywood – among the Muslims and the oppressed masses in the Middle East.
The West’s global policies have actually turned the tables: Instead of the capitalist laborers and workers of the past century, today the Muslims and the deprived and oppressed masses in the Third World are uniting against the West, especially the US, since they have nothing to lose but the chains on their feet.
And in such an atmosphere, anyone who cries against the unjust US policies toward the Middle East will gain tremendous popularity.
During their recently declared campaign against terrorism, American – and some European – statesmen have announced that they are not fighting Islam but are targeting terrorism and that they regard Islam as the religion of peace. Statements of this kind indicate these statesmen’s profound understanding of the danger associated with confronting the world of Islam which, contrary to recent remarks by President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has never claimed to foster peace.
Ironically, the West is walking on such a tight rope that it has attempted to preach for the Muslims and tried to teach them about Islam.
If President Bush and Prime Minister Blair read Islam’s holy Book The Quran, they will notice that Islam is neither a peaceful nor a war-mongering religion.
What differentiates Islam from other divine religions is its bent to seek justice, a quality that enables the Muslims to sign peace treaties with their enemies only to have justice fulfilled (just as Prophet Mohammad signed a historical peace treaty in Hudaybiyeh with the enemies of the fledgling Islamic society). The same quality also allows the Muslims to fight their enemies to enforce justice (just as the Prophet of Islam launched an expedition against the enemies after they violated the Hudaybiyeh peace pact).
The injustice springing from US policies has so antagonized the Middle Eastern Muslims that they would laud anyone – even Osama bin Laden – who engages in adventurism and terrorist combat against the US.
A major reason why the Muslims display hatred toward the United States is Washington’s blind support for Israel. This has prompted the Muslims to demand justice vis-a-vis 50 years of unfriendly policies which Tel Aviv has pursued against them while relying on US support.
All these instances should be strong enough reasons to convince the US that she has not gotten a high mark in the test of international diplomacy over the past 50 years and to know that the time has now come for the American statesmen to hand the scene of world diplomacy to other countries more qualified to govern the international order.
And like the years before the 1950s Washington should refocus on domestic issues and concurrently revise her past half-century political stances and policies to regain its tarnished image and popularity.
Famous military strategist Klassovitz believed that when political solutions are exhausted, war comes to the rescue of politics as the last resort. US diplomacy has, however, proven that Washington prefers to solve regional and international crises with war rather than with recourse to politics. As such, it is apt for the US administration to heed this insightful Iranian proverb: A person given to war should be willing and ready to run as well.
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