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As Usual, the Wrong Question Is Being Asked

The 9-11 Commission is supposedly focusing on all aspects of the attack -- all aspects except the one that is by far the most important question: why did the hijackers knowingly give up their lives to destroy the World Trade Center?

President Bush has a ready answer. He tells us it's because they hate American freedoms, American democracy, and American prosperity. How could any intelligent person believe that there are hundreds -- more likely, thousands -- of people around the world who would knowingly sacrifice their lives just to protest American freedom, democracy, or prosperity? As Charley Reese has put it: "It is absurd to suppose that a human being sitting around suddenly stands up and says: 'You know, I hate freedom. I think I'll go blow myself up.'"

The Motive: There was only one possible motive for the 9-11 attackers: they were protesting the way the American government has been using force for half a century to overrule the wishes of people in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Our government has overthrown democratically elected governments, it has supported with money and weapons dictatorial governments that have tortured and killed dissenters (just as George Bush keeps saying Saddam Hussein was doing), it has bribed foreign governments to join in enterprises of the U.S. government (as it did with Spain and tried to do with Turkey before Operation Kill Iraqis).

Because of very little press coverage, most Americans have no idea that our government has been doing these things. How many people know, for example, that Iran had a democratically elected government until the U.S. and British governments engineered a coup to install the tyrannical Shah of Iran in 1953?

Then there was all the U.S. government help to Diem in South Vietnam, Suharto in Indonesia, Somoza in Nicaragua, Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Stalin during World War II, Lumumba in the Congo, Saddam Hussein in Iraq (yes, that Saddam Hussein), and dozens more tyrants — all of whom used American taxpayer money to oppress their own citizens.

Americans may not know about the support provided to these tyrants by the U.S. government, but I can assure you that plenty of people in those countries do know what our government has done to them. Because Americans know so little about the history of our government's adventures of the last 50 years (and the last place anyone's likely to learn about them is in a government school), it's easy for Americans to buy George Bush's logic when he says, "See, these people hate freedom." Consequently, most people believe that the history of violence began on 9-11, when it's actually been building for 50 years.

It isn't even just history. Today George Bush is sending money and other resources to governments in Uzbekistan, Turkminestan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Pakistan -- governments that are oppressing their subjects in much the same way Hussein was supposed to have oppressed Iraq.

posted by Hal 9:24 AM