Bush Reflects on September 11 Attacks

President Bush is marking the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with a pilgrimage to the three sites where Americans lost their lives. It is a day of reflection for the president and the nation.

Throughout this day, images will tell the story: faces of the families of the dead, the barren pit where New York's World Trade Center towers once stood, the flags flying in remembrance at the Pentagon and in a field in western Pennsylvania, where the last of four hijacked planes went down.

The president has no plans to speak at any of the commemorative events, although he will share his personal thoughts with the nation in a speech at the end of the day. In a recorded interview broadcast on the morning of the anniversary, he offered a bit of a preview.

He reflected on his first look at the devastation in New York in the days immediately following the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, and the words he shouted into a bullhorn, while standing with exhausted rescue workers atop a pile of crumbled concrete and twisted metal.

"I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon," he said.

Mr. Bush told NBC's Today Show that those words captured the emotions of the day.

"That was not a planned speech. It just came out," the president explained. "There was still smoke, and there was haze. The emotions were unbelievable. There were tears in peoples' eyes, there was hugging, there was exhaustion, and there was anger."

The president said there was no way to envision at that time that, five years later, 150,000 U.S. troops would be fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. But he said the determination needed to wage the war on terror was already evident.

"I knew that we were going to have to be a nation of resolve, and I knew that we were dealing with cold-blooded killers, the likes of which we hadn't seen in a long period of time," he said.

He said once again that, five years after the attacks, America is safer, but not yet safe. He said the only way to protect the nation from the terrorist threat is to "defeat an ideology of hate with an ideology of hope."

The "War on Terrorism"

We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies hostile. — George W. Bush, Des Moines, Iowa, Aug. 21, 2000

In a speech to a joint session of Congress on September 17th, 2001, Bush announced that America was embarked upon a "War on Terrorism" (in that speech he used the words "terror", "terrorist" and "terrorism" at total of 32 times, and "war" twelve times, so no-one would fail to get the message). But before the U.S. retaliated by bombing Afghanistan day and night for weeks it should first have established exactly who instigated, planned and directed the terrorist attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. Despite the attempt to blame nineteen Arabs, allegedly the hijackers of the four planes, this was not done. Such evidence, if it were ever produced (and, of course, it will never be produced), must be such as to convince third parties such as the Europeans, and the evidence must be made public (not every last detail, but enough to establish the case). Insiders such as the U.S. President, the British Prime Minister and the NATO Secretary-General declaring themselves "convinced" is insufficient. Such declarations will fool some people, but these officials are literally warmongers and will do anything to justify their waging of war, including lying to the public about the convincingness of the alleged evidence. Only when convincing evidence has been made public, and the identity of the attackers established, would it be possible to declare "war" without misuse of language. Until then the "War on Terrorism" will be a propaganda campaign like the "War on Drugs" — a way of disguising the true aims and motivations of those waging this "war", which in this case is that age-old motivation: territorial and economic conquest.

But, of course, the U.S. government will never reveal who exactly planned and directed these attacks, firstly because it was an inside job, and secondly because blame must be laid upon "Arab terrorists" in order to "justify" the "War on Terrorism" and the military assaults upon Arab countries (recently and, as the U.S. and Britain plan at least, for years to come; indeed, in the words of one Pentagon official, possibly "for the rest of our lives").

The "War on Terrorism" has three major components:

(1) A propaganda war waged firstly against the American people and secondly against the rest of the people on this planet who have access to TV and newspapers.
(2) A large increase in the powers of surveillance and control exercised by the U.S. federal government over U.S. citizens and residents and in the ability of the government to impose censorship.
(3) The use of American military force (with help mainly from the British), to whatever extent necessary, to gain control of the oil reserves of the Caspian Basin, the mineral wealth of Central Asia and whatever other economic resources in other parts of Asia that the U.S. wishes to control.

The purpose of (1) is to disguise the true nature of (3) by presenting it as the use of military force to protect Americans against future terrorist attacks. The purpose of (2) is to stifle any protest and dissent from those Americans who are not fooled by (1) and who object to (3). Bush, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft & Co. know from the 1960s demonstrations against the Vietnam War that domestic opposition to military aggression abroad can bring that aggression to an end, and they wish to make sure in advance that the same thing will not happen this time.

The American government says that America is "at war" (as if that justifies anything the government wishes to do). But a war requires an identifiable enemy. A war is a war between two or more opposing sides. A "war" in which one side is invisible is a fantasy — a pretext to restrict civil liberties, to impose censorship and to deny rights guaranteed to American citizens under the U.S. Constitution. It is a tool for psychological operations directed against both domestic and foreign populations, for deceiving the American people and others and persuading them to submit willingly to violations of their human rights. (Though one might say that if they do submit then they deserve the enslavement that will come to them.) And in this case, as noted above, the purpose is to suppress any domestic opposition to U.S. military action abroad. And at home; remember that the U.S. military has been used against American citizens before — at Waco.

What is too shocking for many Americans to contemplate is that the terrorist attacks, from which the people of the U.S. are supposed to be protected by the "War on Terrorism", are themselves part of the propaganda war. In order to "justify" to the American people the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan and the deaths of Afghan civilians, the violent overthrow of the (admittedly reprehensible) Taleban government, the deployment of U.S. ground troops to sieze territory in Afghanistan and in other countries, and the use of whatever weapons of death the Pentagon plans to use (including "low yield" nuclear weapons), the U.S. must present its actions as being morally good and noble (as in World War II), specifically, as motivated by the desire to protect decent, innocent American citizens from the evil of terrorist attacks.

Thus the American people are presented with staged photo ops such as that of the firemen raising the American flag (this was filmed by the NYPD video team), which most people would (subconsciously at least) associate with the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima in World War II in the noble fight against the evil fascist forces of Imperialist Japan.

Without terrorist attacks there is no justification for the military action, so terrorist attacks there must be (or at least, the perpetual fear of such). The attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon were the first (unless we count the Waco Massacre and the Oklahoma City Bombing), brought to you by those people who are directing the propaganda campaign and, indeed, scripting this entire "War on Terrorism". And (as the CIA informed members of Congress in early October 2001) it is certain that there will be more terrorist attacks (how did they know?) — most of them far less spectacular than the destruction of the Twin Towers, but sufficient (such as the controlled release of anthrax bacteria, probably by the CIA itself) to induce in the American public a state of constant fear — made worse by their not knowing who is really behind these attacks.

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