On September 11, at close to nine in the morning, I watched
aircraft flying overhead. Minutes later I heard explosive sounds and
saw
fireballs of smoke fill the sky. As a result of these attacks
thousands
died, including two good friends of mine.
I am not talking about September 11 2001 in New York City.
On that date I was thousands of miles away in Berkeley, California.
I am
talking about another September 11, just over twenty-eight years ago
in
1973 when I was living in Santiago, Chile. On that date I indeed
saw
planes flying overhead. They were warplanes and their target
was the
presidential palace in Santiago.
There resided Salvador Allende, who had been elected president
three years before. He was the first elected socialist leader
in the world
and ever since his election in September 1970 he was opposed by the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the U.S. government headed by
Richard Nixon and by Henry Kissinger who chaired the National Security
Council. The Council orchestrated and coordinated U.S. policies aimed
at overthrowing Salvador Allende and his Popular Unity government.
It was on September 11, 1973 that they finally succeeded in
getting the Chilean military lead by General Augusto Pinochet to
overthrow Allende who died in the presidential palace. Over three
thousand people perished in the bloody repression that followed under
Pinochet’s rule, including two American friends of mine, Charles
Horman and Frank Terrugi.
What I am going to do in this talk is link up the two September
eleven’s of 1973 and 2001, to show how U.S. intervention in Chile,
Latin
America, the Middle East and Central Asia have helped spawn
international terrorism. I will also discuss how the process
of
globalization has been a factor in the brave new world we face after
September 11, 2001.
Unfortunately the coup in Chile is only one of a number of U.S.
covert operations and interventions over the past three decades.
The
United States has all too often acted as a rogue nation, imposing its
fiat
on other countries and peoples, funding military coups, and gross human
rights violators, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
Let’s return to the case of Chile briefly. It is a small country
of
15 million people. If we take the number of casualties suffered
in Chile
as a result of the U.S. backed military coup, approximately 3,200,
and
project that onto the population of the United States which has 270
million, that would mean that a proportionate death toll in the United
States would be over 57,000, roughly eight times the number that died
in
the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Part of the general argument I want to make here is that one
reason why the attacks occurred on the United States on September 11
of
this year is due to what the CIA itself calls “blowback.” Blowback
means
that because of operations we carry out abroad there are unintended
consequences that blowback, adversely affecting U.S. interests and
even
U.S. lives.
The attacks of September were not the first time that U.S.
operations abroad have lead to blowback and the taking of lives on
U.S.
soil by foreign terrorists. To return to the case of Chile, the most
important foreign act of terrorism carried out in our nation’s capital
prior to the attack on the Pentagon took place on September 21, 1976
when Pinochet’s secret police blew up the car of one of the military
regime’s more vocal opponents, Orlando Letelier, killing him and his
assistant, Ronnie Moffit. That act of terrorism took place just
blocks
from the White House.
These assassinations in Washington were linked to the first
international terrorist network in the Western Hemisphere, known as
Operation Condor. Launched in 1974 at the instigation of the
Chilean
secret police, Operation Condor was comprised of the intelligence
services of at least six South American countries that collaborated
in
tracking, kidnapping and assassinating hundreds of political opponents.
Based on declassified documents, it is now recognized that the CIA
knew
about these international terrorist activities and may have even abetted
them.
After the murders of Letelier-Moffit in Washington D.C. it
appears the CIA may have tried to contain the activities of Operation
Condor. However, the Southern Cone military and intelligence
network
continued to act throughout Latin America at least until the early
1980s,
often carrying out activities that coincided with U.S. foreign policy
objectives. Chilean and Argentine military units assisted the
dictator
Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua and helped set up death squads in El
Salvador. Argentine units also aided and supervised Honduran
military
death squads that began operating in the early 1980s with the direct
assistance and collaboration of the CIA.
This international network of terrorism clearly proceeded the
terrorist network Al Qaeda, the one linked to Osama bin Laden.
Indeed it
could even be argued that Al Qaeda learned from the experiences of
this
earlier network in the Western Hemisphere.
But to fully understand the rise of bin Laden and the assumption
of power of the Taliban in Afghanistan we need to look at the biggest
CIA
operation in history. In 1979, the Soviet Union at the request of a
moderate socialist government in Kabul, Afghanistan sent in tens of
thousands of troops to help prop up the government. The CIA in response
began to arm and fund dissident tribal groups in Afghanistan known
as the
Mujahideen. The primary conduit for this not-so secret war was the
Pakistani military and its intelligence forces. The U.S. government
literally pumped billions of dollars into the war during the 1980s,
rallying Muslims from around the Islamic world to fight a Jihad, or
Holy
War. It is estimated that some 35,000 Muslim radicals from over
forty
Islamic countries went to fight in Afghanistan.
One of them was Osama bin Laden, a member of a very wealthy
family in Saudi Arabia. There is no evidence that he received
any monies
or training directly from the CIA, but there is no doubt that many
who
fought under him and with him did benefit from CIA funding and training.
When the Soviet Union began to collapse around 1990, it
withdrew its troops from Afghanistan and the CIA folded up its
operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the Mujahideen warriors
in
Afghanistan fell to fighting among each other for power in a bloody
war
that savaged the civilian population. It was in the late 1990s that
the
Taliban, the most radical, fundamentalist sect, managed to take power
in
Kabul and much of the country. The Taliban was aligned with, and
supported by bin Laden.
Now you may ask, why did bin Laden, after getting support from
the United States, turn around and bite the hand that had funded his
comrades-in-war? Why did he become an implacable foe of the United
States?
Here we have to look at the broader U.S. geo-political and
economic interests that were at work throughout the Middle East and
the
Islamic World. Benjamin Barber in 1995 wrote a book titled Jihad
Versus McWorld. His basic argument was that a fundamental conflict
was brewing in the world between traditionalist, tribal forces on the
one
hand and the forces of international corporate capitalism on the other.
McDonalds, or McWorld, was the name Barber gave to the secularizing,
materialist corporations that had no moral principles, which had the
sole
objective of making money and spreading their corporate interests and
holdings around the world.
What this meant was that many Muslims in the Middle East and
elsewhere were not exposed to what many of us would consider the best
attributes of the United States and the Western world--individual liberty,
the rule of law and economic prosperity. Rather they experienced the
worst traits of what I would call economic globalization, namely the
imposition of rank materialism, the imagery of Hollywood, militarism,
and racism on impoverished societies.
In contrast it is important to step back and see what Islam has
meant historically for hundreds of millions of people. It is
not the
fanaticism of the Taliban or bin Laden that has predominated in Islam.
Islam is a faith with a clear sense of social justice, one that is
often
much
deeper than that expressed by many Christian believers. In countries
where the governments have been weak, especially in the area of social
welfare, it is often the Mosque that has been the one place where people
could come together and feel equal and empowered. The Mosque
even
provided social assistance to people in need, and lending would occur,
often without interest. Education and technical training even
occurred
through the Mosque.
Aside from this clash between the materialist, amoral and often
racist values of globalization and McWorld on the one hand, and those
of
a more egalitarian and moral Islam on the other, there was also the
striking fact that the Western world in general, and the United States
in
particular came to represent militarism and intervention.
Here we need to ask what is the lifeblood of the international
economy? What is the one basic resource that we have remained totally
dependent upon, even as we enter the epoch of globalization? The answer
is petroleum, or “black gold.” The United States as the hegemonic
power
in the post-World War II period made it clear that it believed that
its
destiny was to insure that it would have virtually unhindered access
to
this commodity, particularly in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.
For over half a century we have been militarizing and intervening
in that part of the world in order to secure the god named petroleum.
The
first major CIA operation in the post war world was in Iran in 1953.
There, Mohammed Mossadegh had formed a moderate reformist
government in the early 1950s. Among the reforms he called for
greater
Iranian control over its oil resources. The U.S government opposed
these measures. Accordingly the CIA staged a coup and brought
in the
Shah of Iran who ran the country as a monarchy, employing bloody
repression and terror to sustain his regime while granting the United
States and the international petroleum companies access to the country’s
oil resources on highly favorable terms.
The first and most dramatic case of Blowback came in 1979 in
Iran when a coalition lead by Islamic forces and the Ayatollah Khomeini
overthrew the Shah. As a result of this revolution, the United
States
basically went to war with the radical fundamentalist Islamic movement.
Not only did we bomb Iran and impose an economic blockade on that
country, we also bombed radical Islamic forces in Lebanon, the Sudan,
Afghanistan, and of course Iraqi. Aside from U.S. direct and indirect
support for many Israel military strikes in the region, the United
States in
the Sudan supported the bloody regime of Jafaar Nimeiry for sixteen
years who leveled that country’s civil society. Over the course of
the past
two decades our intervention has turned many moderates into militants,
who have perhaps correctly come to perceive the Untied States as the
“Great Satan.”
Now to more fully understand Islamic fundamentalism and the
first war of the twenty first century, we need to focus on Osama bin
Laden’s homeland—Saudi Arabia. That country contains one-quarter
of
the world’s oil reserves. At the end of World War II the United
States
made a bargain with the extended Saudi royal family: We would
indefinitely back its members as the country’s autocratic rulers in
exchange for favorable access to its oil reserves. The instrument
of
insuring Saudi royal rule became the Saudi Arabian National Guard.
It is
funded, trained and even managed by the United States, largely through
U.S. military contractors, some of whom have links to the CIA.
It should be noted that Saudi Arabia has no constitution, no bill
of rights, no freedom of the press or assembly, no Parliament or
Congress. Dissidents are arrested, put in jail, exiled or executed.
In
1981 Saudi dissidents staged a revolt against the regime. The
Saudi
National Guard brutally repressed it. When asked about the revolt
and
the repression, Ronald Reagan stated: “I will not allow Saudi Arabia
to be
an Iran.”
In passing it is interesting to note that our current freedom-
loving president, George W. Bush, attempted one of his first business
dealings with a prominent Saudi family. Indeed it was with one
of the
wealthiest and most famous families, that of bin Laden. After
graduating
from Harvard Business school, Bush set up Arbusto Energy in 1978 with
Salem bin Laden, the brother of Osama, as a partner. In 1983,
Salem died
in an airplane crash. It’s unclear to me what happened to Arbusto
Energy.
Perhaps some of its funds went to buy a stake in the Texas Rangers
for
George W. This is one of the questions our “free press” should
be asking
our president these days.
But back to Saudi Arabia. It was in the early 1980s while Bush
was trying to make money with Arbusto Energy that Osama bin Laden
broke with his family and went to Afghanistan. His reasons for
the break
are fairly clear. He was upset with the U.S. presence in his
country, in
particular he felt that it violated the Islamic religion to have a
secular
power like the United States entrenched in his country which was home
to some of Islam’s most holy sites, including Mecca. He believed
the
Saudi regime was corrupt, having squandered Arab money and wealth on
palaces and conspicuous consumption. The Saudi leaders were basically
anti-Islamic and should be swept away in a Jihad.
This is what Osama bin Laden set out to do in the 1990s.
Because his forces were weak militarily, they turned to acts of terrorism.
Their first attacks abroad were against U.S. military assets in Saudi
Arabia. In November, 1995 the headquarters of the Saudi Arabian
National Guard were bombed, killing five U.S. servicemen. In
June
1996, the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia which housed U.S. soldiers
were bombed, killing nineteen servicemen.
When this failed to affect the United States, he spread the war
further afield, bombing the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Then
last year his forces bombed the U.S. ship Cole in Yemen. And
now he
has struck the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in the United States.
Throughout all these bombings and attacks, his objectives have remained
basically the same: to drive the United States out of the Middle East
and
the Islamic world and to sweep away the corrupt regimes that collaborate
with the United States.
Ronald Reagan in the mid-1980s, when the CIA was backing the
Mujahideen warriors in Afghanistan, likened them to our “founding
fathers,” meaning George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams
and others. Reagan made no distinctions in his declaration among
the
fundamentalists, apparently lumping together many torturers and rapists
among the Mujahideen along with radical fundamentalists like bin Laden.
I didn’t agree with Reagan characterization of the Mujahideen then,
and I
certainly disagree today with praising those who carried out the horrific
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
But I do think many of us can understand why millions of people
in the Islamic and Arab world’s regard Osama bin Laden as a hero.
He
wants to take control of the oil resources and on behalf of the Islamic
peoples. He wants to sweep away the corrupt regimes that squander
billions of dollars. And he wants to establish social justice in line
with
fundamentalist Islamic clerics who see the West as representing crass
materialism and social decadence. For many in the Islamic world,
he
may not exactly be a founding father, but he is seen as a figure who
is
trying to right many of the wrongs that the Arabic and Muslim peoples
have suffered for the past half century at the hands of the United
States
and the western world.
In conclusion I would like to say that we cannot end terrorism in
the United States or the world until we recognize why terrorism occurs.
Terrorism is often an act of the desperate. It is not simply that others
hate the United States or are religious fanatics. It is because of
the
tremendous injustices and suffering that billions of people are
experiencing around the world right now. And we must also recognize
that the United States itself has often created and abetted terrorism.
Americans must begin to realize we have to act responsibly in a
world in which we are increasingly interdependent. We must reverse
course in our foreign policy. We cannot act unilaterally. We
cannot
abandon the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, we shouldn’t have walked
out on the Durban, South African conference on racism, and we should
not abrogate arms controls treaties in order to satiate the defense
industry with massive spending on programs like “star wars.”
And above all we cannot walk away from the international
treaties establishing the International Criminal Court and other
international organizations. If we want to prosecute Osama bin Laden
for
his horrific crimes, then we should not do it by going after him by
bombing the impoverished Afghan peoples. We should do it by
strengthening and building a permanent United Nations police and peace
keeping force that compliments and works with bodies like the
International Criminal Court. We should not try bin Laden with
the CIA
or U.S. special forces that operate as judge, jury and executioner,
but
through an open transparent world court system.
Judge Baltasar Garzon of Spain, who put out the warrant that lead
to the arrest of General Augusto Pinochet in England in 1998, has also
been the leading judicial figure in the prosecution of terrorists in
Spain,
particularly from the Basque region. His own life has been threatened
by
terrorists and he is forced to live surrounded by bodyguards.
In the
aftermath of the September 11 attacks, he proclaimed that even this
“horrible crime” requires “due process.” He called for justice “which
should be brought to bear not only on the Taliban for its brutal and
oppressive regime but also on the leaders of Western countries, who,
irresponsibly and through the media, have generated panic among the
Afghan people.”
He went on to exclaim: “The response that I seek is not military.
It is one based on law, through the immediate approval of an international
convention on terrorism. Such a convention should, among other things,
include: rules governing co-operation between police and the judiciary;
rules that enable investigations to take place in tax havens; the urgent
ratification of the statute of the International Criminal Court; and
the
definition of terrorism as a crime against humanity.”
To return to my starting point, the CIA backed coup against Salvador
Allende in 1973, I would argue that it is time to try U.S. officials
who
supported the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. At the head of
the list
should be Henry Kissinger, the principal living U.S. official who backed
the coup and headed up the National Security Council in 1973. If the
United States really wants to root out international terrorism and
demonstrate that it is sincere in this cause, then it has to begin
by
putting
some of its own officials in the docket of international justice.