Ten years later

This coming weekend will mark 10 years since the 9/11 terrorist attack from the air on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon just outside Washington DC in which nearly 3 000 people died. But still Americans and the world do not know the full truth behind the event that has changed that country and most of the rest of the world forever and probably never will.

I am particularly cynical when conspiracy theories are advanced in the absence of hard evidence, believing that it is usually a copout when things become just too complex or emotionally laden for people to deal with.

It is, however difficult in the case of official investigations into 9/11 not to come to the conclusion that there has been at least a cover-up of some of the facts – maybe or even probably because the truth is too embarrassing to face in public.

How else is one to interpret the fact that the chairman, the vice-chairman and a senior legal counsel of the official 9/11 Commission have written a book in which they, at least partially, disassociate themselves from the commission’s report. They claim the then Bush-administration put obstacles in the commission’s path and that information was withheld.

How is one to interpret their claim that President Bush agreed to testify only if he was allowed to be accompanied by his vice-president, Dick Cheney and if both of them were not put under oath?

They also claim that officials of both the Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) lied to the commission and that they considered referring the false testimony for investigation for obstruction of justice. And, they claim the commission was “set up to fail.”

One member of the commission, former senator Max Cleland, resigned from the commission in the face of the restrictions imposed on it, saying: “If this decision (restriction) stands, I, as a member of the commission, cannot look any American in the eye, especially family members of victims, and say the commission had full access. This investigation is now compromised.”

Under these circumstances it is understandable that some, even outlandish, conspiracy theories have developed over the past decade.

Impact of 9/11

Whatever the full truth, there is little doubt that the events of 10 years ago have had a profound impact not only on American society,but also on  Western countries and the world at large at many levels – from the very personal for those who were directly affected to ongoing conflicts in far-flung regions of the globe.

At the personal level one report last week stated that the September 11, 2001 terror strikes have left American psychiatrists a lasting legacy of an unexpected size – thousands of people living and struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder (PYSD).

According to official New York City figures, at least 10 000 people, directly exposed to the 9/11 attack in one way or another, have experienced PTSD.

Recently, when a relatively rare earthquake was felt along much of the US east coast, many New York City residents spontaneously evacuated high-rise buildings, pouring into the streets in distress, fearing they were experiencing a repeat of the events of 10 years ago.

In a recent article in the Baltimore Sun on how 9/11 impacted on public opinion it was reported that a month after the attacks 46% of Americans viewed terrorism as the country’s foremost problem. Five years later it was down to 11% and by 2010 only 1% regarded terrorism as the top problem – about the same as before the 9/11 attacks.

But many American commentators are of the opinion that the response to the attacks via president Bush’s war on terror has had a bigger impact on people’s lives than the actual atrocities.

For a start, while just short of 3 000 people died in the attacks, more than 6 200 American service men died in what president Barack Obama last week described as the “hard decade of war” spawned by the September 11 attacks. In comparison only eight Americans have since lost their lives in what can be described as acts of terror.

Quite apart from the trillions of dollars spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Department of Homeland Security, that was created by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11, spends $75 billion on domestic projects that include a Zodiac boat with side-scan sonar to respond to a potential attack on a lake in tiny Keith County, Nebraska.

The unsuccessful 2009-attempt by a man to blow up a flight to Detroit with explosives sewn into his underpants led to White House intervention, congressional hearings and a controversial airport screening upgrade costing more than $1.6 billion.

Some commentators like Glenn Greenwald in an article in Information Clearing House argue that a security state that has developd in the wake of 9/11 “… has little to do with addressing ostensible terrorist threats. It has much to do with targeting perceived domestic and political threats, especially threats brought about by social unrest from austerity and the growing wealth gap.”

He also writes that the “British Government, for instance, is continuing its efforts to restrict social media in the wake of the poverty-fuelled riots that plagued that country; as the New York Times reports …, it is secretly meeting with representatives of Twitter, Facebook, and the company that owns Blackberry to discuss voluntary ways to limit or restrict the use of social media to combat crime and periods of civil unrest."

An Associate Fellow at Britain's prestigious Chatham House, Matthew Goodwin last week told the International News magazine the impact of the 9/11-events was not limited to the US.

Nine Eleven also influenced domestic political arenas. And this in three main ways:

• Citizens across many Western democracies have become more concerned over security matters;
• Party politics has been affected. Prior to 9/11, European far-right parties had begun to poll well by focusing on public anxiety over immigration, integration, and law and order; and
• Public policy has been influenced. The events on 9/11 forced European governments to think more seriously about how to prevent violent extremism and counter radicalisation within Muslim communities.

"Yet, 10 years on," he added, "we are still some way from understanding the precise drivers of support for violent extremism in all its forms and it might not be another 10 years before we can begin to explain convincingly its causes."

Professor Richard English, an expert on terrorism at  St Andrew’s University in  Scotland told a conference at the Royal Society in London recently: “Despite the awfulness of the attacks in 2001, arguably the main change has been that the USA and its allies engaged in policies which did change the world, far more than the terrorism itself would have done.”

He added that terrorism experts believe a primary military response to terrorisms

could be counter-productive. ”In 2011 we probably have a more realistic approach to what can be achieved in terms of containing terrorism rather than getting rid of it. Getting rid of terrorism isn’t a realistic aspiration.”

Piet Coetzer