After Ten Septembers

From the first moment that television channels around the world broadcast the image of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center in New York, it became apparent that the world was on the verge of great events, not because of the magnitude of the event itself, but because the global changes that paved the way for it. On the day the U.S. was basking in the glory of victory and was proud of its strength at the end of the cold war, after the socialist movement collapsed in the Soviet Union itself without the U.S. having to suffer significant casualties for more than half a century. The sole significant power after the almost complete humbling of Europe, they had to search for a new enemy, making a current investment for the sake of future profits, a point expressed by Henry Kissinger in his book

The New American Century

The new enemy was ready from the first moment, if not before, and the phrase in the aftermath was “Death to the Arabs,” a phrase which the media adopted at once. In the next few days, this joke circulated: in the year 2021, a child visits the site where the World Trade Center Towers used to be. She asks her father about it and he says that the Arabs did it, and the child asked “what’s an Arab?”

This was before any official accusation, but rumors were already being born, and popular sentiments were against Arabs and Muslims. It became acceptable then to believe that a few young Arabs hijacked four planes after reading pamphlets and newsletters resembling language learning pamphlets found in the car of one of the hijackers and the discovery of the passport of another in the charred wreckage of the tower. In this way, it became reasonable to invade and occupy entire countries.

It was not useful after all of this to doubt the interpretation of events, until showing that some of the suicide bombers who were accused of participating in the attack did not in fact leave their country and are actually alive now, and until after the publication of some books refuting the possibility of the towers collapsing without an internal explosion, and denying the possibility that a passenger plane could have hit the Pentagon, as in the book The Big Lie by Thierry Meyssan. However, the American media is sticking to the preferred, mainstream version.

In criminal investigation, they look first for who benefits from the crime, and it is worthwhile to remember that after September 11 came the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, threats to Syria and talk of targeting other Arab nations, including those with whom they have good relations: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, in addition to Lebanon, Libya, and the Sudan.

Perhaps this helps to understand what is actually happening in our world today, what is sometimes called the fight against terrorism, and at other times the spread of democracy.