19:43 2001-10-17
Stan Goff: The So-Called Evidence Is a Farce
I'm a retired Special Forces Master Sergeant. That doesn't cut
much for those who will only accept the opinions of former
officers on military matters, since we enlisted swine are assumed
to be incapable of grasping the nuances of doctrine.
But I wasn't just in the army. I studied and taught military science
and doctrine. I was a tactics instructor at the Jungle
Operations Training Center in Panama, and I taught Military Science
at West Point. And contrary to the popular image of
what Special Forces does, SF's mission is to teach. We offer
advice and assistance to foreign forces. That's everything
from teaching marksmanship to a private to instructing a Battalion
staff on how to coordinate effective air operations with
a sister service.
Based on that experience, and operations in eight designated conflict
areas from Vietnam to Haiti, I have to say that the
story we hear on the news and read in the newspapers is simply
not believable. The most cursory glance at the
verifiable facts, before, during, and after September 11th, does
not support the official line or conform to the current
actions of the United States government.
But the official line only works if they can get everyone to accept
its underlying premises. I'm not at all surprised about the
Republican and Democratic Parties repeating these premises. They
are simply two factions within a single dominant
political class, and both are financed by the same economic powerhouses.
My biggest disappointment, as someone who
identifies himself with the left, has been the tacit acceptance
of those premises by others on the left, sometimes naively,
and sometimes to score some morality points. Those premises are
twofold. One, there is the premise that what this de
facto administration is doing now is a "response" to September
11th. Two, there is the premise that this attack on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon was done by people based
in Afghanistan. In my opinion, neither of these is sound.
To put this in perspective we have to go back not to September 11th, but to last year or further.
A man of limited intelligence, George W. Bush, with nothing more
than his name and the behind-the-scenes pressure of
his powerful father-a former President, ex-director of Central
Intelligence, and an oil man-is systematically constructed as
a candidate, at tremendous cost. Across the country, subtle and
not-so-subtle mechanisms are put into place to
disfranchise a significant fraction of the Democrat's African-American
voter base. This doesn't come out until Florida
becomes a battleground for Electoral College votes, and the magnitude
of the story has been suppressed by the
corporate media to this day. In a decision so lacking in legitimacy,
the Supreme Court will neither by-line the author of the
decision nor allow the decision to ever be used as a precedent,
Bush v. Gore awards the presidency of the United
States to a man who loses the popular vote in Florida and loses
the national popular vote by over 600,000.
This de facto regime then organizes a very interesting cabinet.
The Vice President is an oil executive and the former
Secretary of Defense. The National Security Advisor is a director
on the board of a transnational oil corporation and a
Russia scholar. The Secretary of State is a man with no diplomatic
experience whatsoever, and the former Chair of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff. The other interesting appointment is Donald
Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. Rumsfeld is the
former CEO of Searle Pharmaceuticals. He and Cheney were featured
as speakers at the May, 2000, Russian-American
Business Leaders Forum. So the consistent currents in this cabinet
are petroleum, the former Soviet Union, and the
military.
Based on the record of Daddy Bush, in all his guises, and the
general trajectory of US foreign policy as far back as the
Carter Administration, I feel I can reasonably conclude that
Middle Eastern and South Asian fossil fuels are one of their
major preoccupations. Not just because this klavern has some
very direct financial interests in fossil fuel, but because
they surely know that worldwide oil production is peaking as
we speak, and will soon begin a permanent and precipitous
decline that will completely change the character of civilization
as we know it within 20 years.
Even the left seems to be in deep denial about this, but the math
is available. And, no, alternative energies and energy
technologies will not save us. All the alternatives in the world
can not begin to provide more than a tiny fraction of the
energy base now provided by oil. This makes it more than a resource,
and the drive to control what's left more than an
economic competition.
I further conclude that the economic colonization of the former
Soviet Union is probably high on that agenda, and in fact
has a powerful synergy with the issue of petroleum. Russia not
only holds vast untapped resources that beckon to
imperialism in crisis, it remains a credible military and nuclear
challenger in the region.
We have not one, but three members of the Bush de facto cabinet
with military credentials, which makes the cabinet look
quite a lot like a military General Staff. All this way before
September 11th.
Then there's the subject of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
NATO might have expected consignment to the dustbin
of the Cold War after the Eastern Bloc shattered in 1991. Peace
dividend and all that. But it didn't. It expanded directly into
the former states of the Eastern Bloc toward the former Soviet
Union, and contributed significant forces to the
devastation of Iraq-a key country in the world oil market, over
which control translates into the ability to manipulate oil
prices.
NATO is a military formation, and the United States exerts the
controlling interest in it. It seemed like a form without a
function, but it remedied that pretty quickly.
Then when Yugoslavia refused to play ball with the International
Monetary Fund, the US and Germany began a
systematic campaign of destabilization there, even using some
of the veterans of Afghanistan in that campaign.
NATO became the military arm of that agenda-the break-up of Yugoslavia
into compliant statelets, the further containment
of the former Soviet Union, and the future pipeline easement
for Caspain Sea oil to Western European markets through
Kosovo.
You see, this is important to understand, and people-even those
against the war talk-are tending to overlook the
significance of it. NATO is not a guarantor of international
law, and it is not a humanitarian organization.
It is a military alliance with one very dominant partner. And
it can no longer claim to be a defensive alliance against
European socialists. It is an instrument of military aggression.
NATO is the organization that is now going to thrust further along
the 40th parallel from the Balkans through the Southern
Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union. The US military has
already taken control of a base in Uzbekistan. No one is
talking about how what we are doing seems to be a very logical
extension of a strategy that was already in motion, and
has been in motion for two decades. Once we recognize the pattern
of activity designed to simultaneously consolidate
control over Middle Eastern and South Asian oil, and contain
and colonize the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan is exactly
where they need to go to pursue that agenda.
Afghanistan borders Iran, India, and even China but, more importantly,
the Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet
Union, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. These border
Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan borders Russia. Turkmenistan sits
on the Southeastern quadrant of the Caspian Sea, whose oil the
Bush Administration dearly covets.
Afghanistan is necessary for two things: as a base of operations
to begin the process of destabilizing, breaking off, and
establishing control over the South Asian Republics, which will
begin within the next 18-24 months in my opinion, and
constructing a pipeline through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and
Pakistan to deliver petroleum to the Asian market.
The BBC was recently told by Niaz Naik, a Pakistani Foreign Secretary,
that senior American officials were warning them
as early as mid-July that military action for mid-October was
being planned for Afghanistan. In 1996, the Department of
Energy was issuing reports on the desirability of a pipeline
through Afghanistan, and in 1998, Unocal testified before the
House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific that this pipeline
was crucial to transport Caspian Basin oil to the Indian
Ocean.
Given this evidence that a military operation to secure at least
a portion of Afghanistan has been on the table, possibly as
early as five years ago, I can't help but conclude that the actions
we are seeing put into motion now are part of a
pre-September 11th agenda. I'm absolutely sure of that, in fact.
The planning alone for operations, of this scale, that are
now taking shape, would take many months. And we are seeing them
take shape in mere weeks.
It defies common sense. This administration is lying about this
whole thing being a "reaction" to September 11th. That
leads me, in short order, to be very suspicious of their yet-to-be-provided
evidence that someone in Afghanistan is
responsible. It's just too damn convenient. Which also leads
me to wonder-just for the sake of knowing-what actually did
happen on September 11th, and who actually is responsible.
The so-called evidence is a farce. The US presented Tony Blair's
puppet government with the evidence, and of the 70
so-called points of evidence, only nine even referred to the
attacks on the World Trade Center, and those points were
conjectural. This is a bullshit story from beginning to end.
Presented with the available facts, any 16-year old with a liking
for courtroom dramas could tear this story apart like a two-dollar
shirt. But our corporate press regurgitates it uncritically.
But then, as we should know by now, their role is to legitimize.
This cartoon heavy they've turned bin Laden into makes no sense,
when you begin to appreciate the complexity and
synchronicity of the attacks. As a former military person who's
been involved in the development of countless operations
orders over the years, I can tell you that this was a very sophisticated
and costly enterprise that would have left what
we call a huge "signature".
In other words, it would be very hard to effectively conceal.
So there's a real question about why there was no warning of this.
That can be a question about the efficacy of the
government's intelligence apparatus. That can be a question about
various policies in the various agencies that had to be
duped to orchestrate this action. And it can also be a question
about whether or not there was foreknowledge of the
event, and that foreknowledge is being covered up. To dismiss
this concern out of hand as the rantings of conspiracy
nuts is premature. And there is a history of this kind of thing
being done by national political bosses, including the darling
of liberals, Franklin Roosevelt. The evidence is very compelling
that the Roosevelt Administration deliberately failed to act
to stop Pearl Harbor in order to mobilize enough national anger
to enter the World War II.
I have no idea why people aren't asking some very specific questions
about the actions of Bush and company on the day
of the attacks.
Follow along:
Four planes get hijacked and deviate from their flight plans,
all the while on FAA radar. The planes are all hijacked
between 7:45 and 8:10 AM Eastern Daylight Time.
Who is notified?
This is an event already that is unprecedented. But the President
is not notified and going to a Florida elementary school to
hear children read.
By around 8:15 AM, it should be very apparent that something is terribly wrong. The President is glad-handing teachers.
By 8:45, when American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into the World
Trade Center, Bush is settling in with children for his
photo ops at Booker Elementary. Four planes have obviously been
hijacked simultaneously, an event never before seen in
history, and one has just dived into the worlds best know twin
towers, and still no one notifies the nominal Commander in
Chief.
No one has apparently scrambled any Air Force interceptors either.
At 9:03, United Flight 175 crashes into the remaining World Trade Center building. At
9:05, Andrew Card, the Presidential Chief of Staff whispers to
George W. Bush. Bush "briefly turns somber" according to
reporters.
Does he cancel the school visit and convene an emergency meeting?
No.
He resumes listening to second graders read about a little girl's
pet fucking goat, and continues this banality even as
American Airlines Flight 77 conducts an unscheduled point turn
over Ohio and heads in the direction of Washington DC.
Has he instructed Chief of Staff Card to scramble the Air Force?
No.
An excruciating 25 minutes later, he finally deigns to give a
public statement telling the United States what they already
have figured out; that there's been an attack by hijacked planes
on the World Trade Center.
There's a hijacked plane bee-lining to Washington, but has the
Air Force been scrambled to defend anything yet? No.
At 9:30, when he makes his announcement, American Flight 77 is still ten minutes from its target, the Pentagon.
The Administration will later claim they had no way of knowing
that the Pentagon might be a target, and that they thought
Flight 77 was headed to the White House, but the fact is that
the plane has already flown South and past the White House
no-fly zone, and is in fact tearing through the sky at over 400
nauts.
At 9:35, this plane conducts another turn, 360 degrees over the
Pentagon, all the while being tracked by radar, and the
Pentagon is not evacuated, and there are still no fast-movers
from the Air Force in the sky over Alexandria and DC.
Now, the real kicker: A pilot they want us to believe was trained
at a Florida puddle-jumper school for Piper Cubs and
Cessnas, conducts a well-controlled downward spiral, descending
the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes, brings
the plane in so low and flat that it clips the electrical wires
across the street from the Pentagon, and flies it with pinpoint
accuracy into the side of this building at 460 nauts.
When the theory about learning to fly this well at the puddle-jumper
school began to lose ground, it was added that they
received further training on a flight simulator.
This is like saying you prepared your teenager for her first
drive on I-40 at rush hour by buying her a video driving game.
It's horse shit!
There is a story being constructed about these events. My crystal ball is not working today, so I can't say why.
But at the least, this so-called Commander-in-Chief and his staff
that we are all supposed to follow blindly into some
ill-defined war on terrorism is criminally negligent or unspeakably
stupid. And at the worst, if more is known or was
known, and there is an effort to conceal the facts, there is
a criminal conspiracy going on.
Certainly, the Bush de facto administration was facing a confluence
of crises from which they were temporarily rescued
by this event. Whether they played a sinister role or not, there
is little doubt that they have at the very least
opportunistically pounced on this attack to overcome their lack
of legitimacy, to shift the blame for the encroaching
recession from capitalism to the September 11th terror attack,
to legitimize their pre-existing foreign policy agenda, and to
establish and consolidate repressive measures domestically and
silence dissent.
In many ways, September 11th pulled the Bush cookies out of the fire.
And given them the green light to begin constructing a long-term
scenario within which to establish fascistic control
measures at home and abroad as a citadel for the ruling class
in the catastrophic conjuncture that we are entering based
on the end of oil.
This elephant in the living room is being studiously ignored.
In fact, the domestic repression has already begun, officially
and unofficially. It's kind of a latter day McCarthyism. I participated
in a teach-in at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on the 17th
of September, and though not a single person on the panel excused
or justified the attacks, and every person there
offered either condolences and prayers for the victims, we were
excoriated within two days as "enemies of America."
Yesterday an op-ed called for my deportation (to where, one can
only guess). Now Herr Ashcroft is fast tracking the
biggest abrogation of US civil liberties since the so-called
anti-terrorism legislation after the Oklahoma City bombing -
which by the way hasn't resulted in anti-terrorism but in the
acceleration of the application of the racist death penalty. The
FBI has defined terrorist groups not by whether any given group
has ever acted as terrorists, but by their beliefs. Some
socialists and anti-globalization groups have already been identified
by name as terrorist groups, even though there is not
a single shred of evidence that they have ever participated in
any criminal activity. It reminds me of the Smith Act that was
finally declared unconstitutional, but only after a hell of a
lot of people served a hell of a long time in jail for the crime of
thinking.
I think this also points to yet another huge problems that the
Bush regime was facing. Worldwide resistance to the whole
so-called neoliberal agenda, which is a prettied up term for
debt-leverage imperialism. While debt and the threat of
sanctions has been used to coerce nations in the periphery, we
have to understand that the final guarantor of
compliance remains military action. For a global economic agenda,
there is always a corresponding political and military
agenda.
The focal point of these actions in the short term is Southern
Asia, but they have already scripted this as a worldwide
and protracted fight against terrorism.
It's far better than drug wars as a rationalization, and the drug
war thing was being discredited in any case. Leftists are
regaining power and popularity in Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua,
Ecuador, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Haiti,
Brazil, and Argentina. Cuba has gained immense prestige over
the last few years. The empire is beginning to unravel. We
can hardly justify intervention in these places by saying they
are not towing the economic line by allowing the absolute
domination of their societies by transnational corporations.
That exposes the agenda. So we simply claim they are
supporting terrorism.
It's for all these reasons I say the left has missed the boat
on this one, by allowing them to get away with rushing past the
question of who did what on September 11th.
If the official story is a lie, and I think the circumstantial
case is strong enough to stay with this question, then we really do
need to know what happened. And we need to understand concretely
what the motives of this administration are.
And we need to understand more than just their immediate motives,
but where the larger social forces that underwrite
our situation right now are headed. I do not think this administration
is engaged in the deliberative process of a political
grouping that is on top of their game. They are putting together
some very deliberative technical solutions in response to a
larger situation that it slipping rapidly out of their control.
Like clear cutting. There's a very smart technology being
employed to do a very dumb thing.
What they are responding to is not September 11th, but the beginning
of a permanent and precipitous decline in
worldwide oil production, the beginning of a deep and protracted
worldwide recession, and the unraveling of the empire.
This brings me to a point about what all this means for Americans'
security, which they are perfectly justified to worry
about.
The actions being prepared by this administration will not only
not enhance our security, it will significantly degrade it.
Military action against many groups across the globe, which is
what the administration is telling us quite openly they are
planning to do, will put a lot of backs against the wall. That
can't be very secure.
The concept of war being touted here is a violation of the principles
of war on several counts, and will inevitably lead to
military catastrophes, if you're inclined to view this from a
position of moral and political neutrality.
And the people who are now in possession of half the world's remaining
oil reserves are subject to destabilization for
which we can't even pretend to predict the consequences-but loss
of access to critical energy supplies is certainly
within the realm of possibility. Worst of all, we will be destabilizing
Pakistan, a nuclear power in an active conflict with its
neighbor, and we will be provoking Russia, another nuclear power.
The security stakes don't get any higher, and
Americans can ill afford to ignore nukes.
And I think that this domestic agenda is a tremendous threat to
the security of anyone who is critical of the government or
their corporate financiers, and we already know that the real
threats are against populations that can easily be
scapegoated as the domestic crisis deepens.
There is a very real threat right now of creeping fascism in this
country, and that phenomenon requires its domestic
enemies. Historically those enemies have included leftists, trade
unionists, and racially and nationally oppressed sectors.
This whole "state of emergency" mentality is already being used
to quiet the public discourses of anti-racism, of feminism,
of environmentalism, and of both socialism and anarchism. And
while there is token resistance by officials to anti-Muslim
xenophobia, the stereotypical images have saturated the media,
and the government is already beginning to openly
re-instate racial profiling. It is only a short step from there
to go after other groups. We have long been prepared by the
ideologies of overt and covert racism, and racism as both institution
and corresponding psychology in the United States is
nearly intractable.
It's for all these reasons that I say emphatically that we can
not accept anything from this administration; not their policies
nor their bullshit stories. What they are doing is very, very
dangerous, and the time to fight back against them, openly, is
right now, before they can consolidate their power and their
agenda. Once they have done that, our job becomes much
more difficult.
The left, if it has the capacity to self-organize out of its oblivion,
needs to understand its critical roles here. We have to
play the role of credible, hard-working, and non-sectarian partners
in a broader peace-movement. We have to study,
synthesize, and describe our current historical conjuncture.
And we have to prepare leadership for the decisive conflict
that will emerge to first defeat fascism then take political
power.
Rosa Luxemburg's words are truer than ever right now. We are not
faced with a choice between socialism and
capitalism, but socialism or barbarism.
And what we can least afford are denial and timidity.