Perfil en LinkedInEuropeans tend to fall to the trap of reducing US foreign policies to stupidity. The trap is well planned though. Placing an amazingly stupid guy as president of the US is just one of those well thought of smoke-walls (or maybe just a happy-coincidence), through which the anger of any seeming stupid or nonsensical US action will be redirected towards the impersonation of leadership -as it is actually happening, all over the world; in fact it is under this scope that the victory claims of the religious Iranian leader after the defeat of Republicans in the US Senate and House elections can be understood.
But the stupidity trap hides uglier facts. The US has planned and taken into action a self-attack in order to prevail. The country has done it before. In 1898 the sinking of the USS Maine was used as a catalyst in order to (counter) attack Spain and overtake Cuba. In 1941 US allowed the attack against Pearl Harbor through the concealment of Japan's war declaration, which served US people as a catalyst with which to courageously undertake the hardships of the second world war.
The US has proved its capability to undertake whatever sacrifice necessary in order to fairly accomplish its objectives. Thus, it would be naive to accept as stupid the seeming nonsense, poor planning and lack of analysis of short term consequences after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The superficial chaos and counterproductivity of US measures (rise of anti-Americanism -specially in the Arab world-, increase of terror attacks and blind violence, increase of opium production in Afghanistan, rise of political and religious chaos in the Middle East, etc, etc...) can barely hide the middle and long term benefits of precisely such consequences; to lead a 'world war on terror'.
The benefits of such world lead are enormous; from economical to political, from strategic to philosophical. The imposition of a narrow definition of justice is just an example of superficial nonsense and basic benefit-seeking politics derived from this lead: justice is what the US and its allies do. For most Americans this is just proof of their taken-for-granted world leadership. For the Arab world, caught in the nonsense of seeing their own actions pointed out as 'terrorism' while those similar actions are defined as fair or just when committed by US allies, this is a concept that encourages the animosity against the US, thus further -circularly- justifying this 'world war', while obliging those who want to escape American animosity to align on the side -or on the back- of the US.
And of course the starting point of this advantaging position of the US is the new-Pearl-Harbor, the catalyzing 9/11 attack. Coincidence? Probably not. Such an attack could not and does not have any benefit at all for the supposed perpetrators while the fact is that the killing of American people in the Twin Towers, as well as in Afghanistan and Iraq, serves US interests (or at least it serves the US world wide economic leadership, and so, indirectly, it serves the American people as well).
But this is just cheap talk. The question, of course, is whether or not we appreciate so much our values and privileges so as to defect them... in order to protect them. Or is there any other way?
Hope so, for if not, we are fucked.
Excerpts from Jeff Wells, The Coincidence Theorist's Guide to 9/11:
On May 8, 2001, Dick Cheney took upon himself the job of co-ordinating a response to domestic terror attacks even as he was crafting the administration’s energy policy, circumventing the established infrastructure and ignoring the recommendations of the Hart-Rudman report.
The standing order which covered the shooting down of hijacked aircraft was altered on June 1, 2001, taking discretion away from field commanders and placing it solely in the hands of the Secretary of Defense (the order was rapidly revoked after the attack).
That influential figures in and close to the Bush White House had expressed, just a year before the attacks, the need for a "new Pearl Harbor" before their militarist ambitions could be fulfilled or that George Bush's brother Marvin sat on the board of the Kuwaiti-owned company which provided electronic security to the World Trade Centre, Dulles Airport and United Airlines, are probably just coincidences.
As coincidence is that State Department veteran of the Jeddah visa bureau, Michael Springman, claimed that the CIA issued visas to al-Qaeda members so that they could receive training in the US.
Just coincidences.
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