Dissident Veteran For Peace: 9/11 Commission Chairmen Admit Whitewashing the Cause of the Attacks

Dissident Veteran For Peace

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." —Alexis de Tocquevile. Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter XV.

With a nod to the Most Rev. Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)

"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ' "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace,' ..." —The Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."

Sunday, August 13, 2006

9/11 Commission Chairmen Admit Whitewashing the Cause of the Attacks

Below are three excerpts from an August 7, 2006, article by Ivan Eland of the right-of-center think tank, The Independent Institute:

As both the Bush administration and its client government in Israel, with their invasions of Arab states in Iraq and Lebanon, respectively, make the United States ever more hated in the Islamic world, a new book by the chairmen of the 9/11 commission admits that the commission whitewashed the root cause of the 9/11 attacks—that same interventionist U.S. foreign policy.

... Apparently, unidentified commissioners wanted to cover up the fact that U.S. support for Israel was one of the motivating factors behind al Qaeda's 9/11 attack. Although Hamilton, to his credit, argued for saying that the reasons al Qaeda committed the heinous strike were the U.S. military presence in the Middle East and American support for Israel, the panel watered down that frank conclusion to state that U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. policy on Iraq are “dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world.”

Some commissioners wanted to cover up the link between the 9/11 attack and U.S. support for Israel because this might imply that the United States should alter policy and lessen its support for Israeli actions. How right they were. The question is simple: if the vast bulk of Americans would be safer if U.S. politicians moderated their slavish support of Israel, designed to win the support of key pressure groups at home, wouldn’t it be a good idea to make this change in course? Average U.S. citizens might attenuate their support for Israel if the link between the 9/11 attacks and unquestioning U.S. favoritism for Israeli excesses were more widely known. Similarly, if American taxpayers knew that the expensive and unnecessary U.S. policy of intervening in the affairs of countries all over the world—including the U.S. military presence in the Middle East—made them less secure from terrorist attacks at home, pressure would likely build for an abrupt change to a more restrained U.S. foreign policy. ...

Labels: 9/11, Israel, Israel Lobby, United States

# posted by PeaceMonger @ 8/13/2006 11:20:00 PM

Comments:

I am amazed and dismayed at the same time that the majority of Americans have NOT figured it out yet, everyone all over the world, the intelligent and the retarded have known that for a very long time. God help us, by the time the majority wake up it will be too late or irrelevant. Peace on earth.

# posted by

Anonymous : Tuesday, August 15, 2006 11:43:00 AM

We can at least tell the truth even if the policies remain locked in denial. It took an independent institute to recognize the news and significance of what was left out of the Commission's report. I, myself, remember that when the towers were struck, my mind placed the event in the sequence of news stories I had been following about whether the US would even send a representative to a conference on the issue of racism in Isreal's occupation and settlement policies. The attack on the towers followed the message the Bush administration sent, it seemed to me, that the US wouldn't even join a discussion of the Palestinian side of the conflict. Until then, many muslims were hopeful that Bush, jr., would follow the policies of his father, who tried to be fair to Palestinians. I knew Muslim's who campaigned for Bush, Jr., precisely because they assumed he would be like his father. They were naive about Bush, Jr.,'s simple fundamentalist "Chtistian" take on the MiddleEast. Since the attack, I don't know how many times I have seen statements by columnists -- Brooks, Friedman, especially -- and political leaders in the United States. including Madelaine Albright, that Palestinian grievances had nothing to do with the motivation for the timing of the towers attack. We are not helping Isreal when we deny the realities of the Palestinian situation. We are helping Isreal when we acknowledge that two wrongs do not make a right -- that doing to the Palestinian people what was done to Jewish people elsewhere in the world does not serve the causes of longterm justice in the world. We can support Isreal and support policies that send the message that our country cares about injustice to Palestinian people. When we send the message to the world that we believe God views us and Isreal as His favored people and the Palestinians as infidels, we have simply joined the forces of religious fundamentalism that motivate attacks like the one on the World Trade Center.

# posted by

Anonymous : Monday, August 21, 2006 5:57:00 AM