We shall soon be marking yet againthe heinous 9/11 terrorist attack on American soil. This year, we shall do so with a difference.
It will be the 10th anniversary of the blood-letting event. And it will come about in the same year in which Osama bin Laden was killed on Pakistani territory after a never-ending manhunt that for many years seemed to be going nowhere.
It also comes at a time when the US is gearing up for the forthcoming Presidential elections, with Barack Obama struggling against all odds to regain lost turf. He is up against a number of Tea Party messiahs, hawks and Mormons who tend to constantly switch between isolationism and sheer militarism in their foreign policy stances.
The moment President Obama called in June for Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians on the basis of 1967 borders inclusive of a number of territorial swaps, all hell broke loose. Not only was he accused of selling Israel down the river, which he definitely did not do, but he was also rubbished for not taking a stronger stance against Iran. Others hinted that they could even be looking for new and other conflicts.
I personally think that one has to distinguish between the massive terrorist attack of 9/11 in 2001 itself and its political and geostrategic aftermath. One can only do so by attempting to gauge effectively and objectively the US response, the UN response and also that of the EU itself.
One thing is certain and that is that 9/11 changed the American way of doing politics as well as its international relations and the conduct of its foreign policy. Some even argue that the blistering terrorist attacks actually transformed the United States’ Middle East policy.
Others like Steven A. Cook, from the Council on Foreign Relations, also argued that the attacks led to the conclusion that it showed that it was perhaps no longer appropriate to rely on “authoritarian stability”, a euphemism for reliance on authoritarian leaders in the region to help create a political order that made it relatively easier for the US to pursue its interests in the region, an issue that, to my mind, remains somewhat debatable.
What the terrorist attack sure did was to fuel a debate as to whether one should adopt a more decisive or a more cautious approach against this “new” political backdrop, which is now no longer “new” anymore because it will be marking its 10th anniversary.
Another question that 9/11 posed was whether such terrorist attacks should be and should have been addressed by unilateral military force, as it might have appeared to do then, or whether multilateral action might have made more sense. Something that still lingers in the mind is whether declaring a state of war was the best option to react to an international criminal action of gargantuan proportions.
In my opinion, the best litmus test is whether America did or can help build a world that scaled down significantly the threat of terrorism. Equally so, if such terror had to rear its head again, would it or should it handle it the same way, better or differently?
To argue that the events proper of 9/11 might have been anticipated and, possibly, even prevented can be the subject of a fully fledged debate too. It was to be expected that such a massive attack on “the world’s greatest democracy” was bound to fuel endless conspiracy theories.
It comes as no surprise that one of the major game changers right now is The Eleventh Day by New York Times’ bestselling authors Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan who have, according to their publishers, come up with “the first panoramic, authoritative account of 9/11”. The full title says it all: The Eleventh Day – The Full Story Of 9/11 And Osama Bin Laden.
Although reading it is still on my To Do list, from what I have heard, the book offers far more depth, breadth and “accurate” research and reporting than other spin-offs. I am told that the final version also includes a late revision to take on board Mr bin Laden’s death. And that it finds many holes in the conclusions of the 9/11 commission.
What will intrigue me and others most will be whether there was a support network in the US or not for the hijackers and also whether, as has long been implied, that network actually extended itself to a major Gulf country and a close ally of the US itself.
What continues to baffle many observers of the international scene is how a manhunt morphed into a war plan for Iraq. In its response, the UN Security Council provided legitimacy to a military response against both the Al Qaeda forces reported to have planned the terrorist attack and the Taliban government in Afghanistan.
As confirmed in a book on the life of Kofi Annan, that same day in Brussels, Nato for the first time in its history invoked article 5, declaring the terror attacks a breach of collective security.
But at day’s end, as Mr Annan’s biographer pointed out, the Nato proposal for a collective response in Afghanistan was brushed aside. The US went to war in Afghanistan with only the UK and Australia. The Europeans meanwhile were “left feeling bruised by American unilateralism, while the White House concluded that it could not count on the West in the fight against terrorism”.
While the UN Security Council adopted the by now historical resolution 1373, the developing world urged the international community to delve into the root causes of terrorism, so much so that certain countries could not even agree on what terrorism was: 9/11 was definitely such an act by any yardstick given its magnitude and intensity.
Ten years on, one sincerely hopes that no such attacks will repeat themselves and also that blood-spilling and global political upheaval of this magnitude will be avoided… on any given territory.
Brincat.leo@gmail.com
www.leobrincat.com
The author, a Labour MP, sits on the House Standing Committee for Foreign and European Affairs.