It is not possible to imagine with any true depth or clarity the level of shock with which U.S. political elites experienced the events of 9/11. To do that you would have had to be one of those elites, to have spent all your days invested with an inherent sense of America's power and dominant influence on the world. The assured self-confidence of those elites had for generations been at a level that no other nation's political elites could ever approach. Believing in the exceptional nature of the USA and conceiving its effect on the world to be beneficial, benign and invulnerable as it carried out its manifest destiny across the planet that was in essence its domain which carried a God-given duty of vigilant guardianship.
Rising from already privileged ranks where almost unending financial resources provided access to the very best of everything including education and importantly to the social circles and connections that a certain strata of North American life retains from generation to generation, political elite power in the USA tends to be born rather than elected. The election process simply decides which of this strata gains the greatest power and which less, but still significant power. Entry to others than those who come from this strata is almost unknown in the USA. A brilliant mind with "odd ideas" without well-heeled backers with extremely deep pockets who see in him or her even the remotest danger to their own power, wealth or influence will not get off the starting blocks.
But we are talking of those select few who have those certain ingredients and opinions which match the needs of those who supply the funds to get them elected. Those few who had risen to the highest offices available imbued just as their predecessors were with supreme confidence that all was going to go supremely well for them within the milieu of the great prize they had won for themselves, to reach the pinnacle of political success in the most powerful nation in the world.
Then 9/11 happened to them. Suddenly all their notions of how it was 'meant to be' to be the most powerful people in the world were shattered. All their self-praise at having reached the top of the tree, all the patting on the back (with knives prepared to reach even higher) of colleagues came to naught, and with devastating force. Now they were faced with some REAL responsibility rather than with endlessly satisfying preening and posturing acting their part in the political theatre that poses as democracy in the United States.
Rocked on their heels and aware of the inevitability of their being seen as having failed to protect America they were collectively faced with how to react.
In my view the political elites of that time, led by a rather low-brow leader George W. Bush came to a certain consensus.
By the way, none of this discounts what some believe, that 9/11 was an inside job. I am talking here of how the political elites of the time reacted to those events unaware of any such internal machinations, if such they were.
These were men and women who knew they must find their inner hawk if they were not hawks already. Their determinations were not to be bounded by barriers of any kind in furtherance of their goals. Morality and ethical conduct, the norms of international law and codes of normal behaviour were to be abandoned in a no-holds-barred, all out campaign of perpetual attack until every last opponent of the USA was replaced and every last system of governance not corresponding to U.S. needs was replaced also.
These decisions, made in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 are I believe still very much alive and operating today. This despite the highly negative consequences of the acts of war already effected or those planned for. The prevalent attitude remains in my opinion that it is better to have no world at all rather than a world the USA does not control and control effectively for its own safety.
The decisions made and the policies conceived of were given no option to have a reverse gear, this is an all-or-nothing project with a goal that MUST be achieved to 100% with no opponent left standing, or leave the USA vulnerable to the degree it fails, left open to further attack(s). And this despite whatever catastrophic circumstances these policies may engender.Â
So, if this is insane and the effects, policies and acts employed may well seem so, they do have a basis in reasoning of a sort I maintain, and that reasoning says that the world must be tamed and made to submit to the USA or be destroyed in the process.
There can be no denying that the resulting world future generations would inherit if something remains of it after the elites of the USA have their way would be described as many things by those winners, a free and safe world, a world without authoritarianism or totalitarianism, a world where democracy and western liberal values reign supreme. But a more fitting description which I favour myself is a description that envisages the monitoring that would take place in such a world, the constant surveillance and constant requirement to in one form or another to punish 'dangerous thoughts, words, deeds or associations'. That world I would call a virtual prison planet.
But one very safe for the USA do you see?
I believe this is why we see the reckless pursuit of Russia now and China also to some degree now but mostly lined up for a little later, the pursuit also of others such as Iran, Syria again, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Yemen and all and any other individuals or entities that could in even some small way be the dark seed that could steadily grow if unchecked to enact similar black plumes of smoke as seen on 9/11.Â
EXCELLENT ARTICLE. BRAVO.