Outlook India: Fallujah, The US Elections And 9/11

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OPINION

Fallujah, The US Elections And 9/11

 

If we refuse to question and probe the hidden agendas and

unaccountable secret power structures at the heart of " democratic "

governments and if we allow the people of Fallujah to be crushed in

our name, we surrender both democracy and humanity.

JOHN PILGER

 

Edward S Herman's landmark essay, The Banality of Evil, has never

seemed more apposite. " Doing terrible things in an organized and

systematic way rests on 'normalization', " wrote Herman. " There is

usually a division of labor in doing and rationalizing the

unthinkable, with the direct brutalizing and killing done by one set

of individuals... others working on improving technology (a better

crematory gas, a longer burning and more adhesive Napalm, bomb

fragments that penetrate flesh in hard-to-trace patterns). It is the

function of the experts, and the mainstream media, to normalize the

unthinkable for the general public. "

 

On Radio 4's Today (6 November), a BBC reporter in Baghdad referred to

the coming attack on the city of Fallujah as " dangerous " and " very

dangerous " for the Americans. When asked about civilians, he said,

reassuringly, that the US marines were " going about with a tannoy "

telling people to get out. He omitted to say that tens of thousands of

people would be left in the city. He mentioned in passing the " most

intense bombing " of the city with no suggestion of what that meant for

people beneath the bombs.

 

As for the defenders, those Iraqis who resist in a city that

heroically defied Saddam Hussein; they were merely " insurgents holed

up in the city " , as if they were an alien body, a lesser form of life

to be " flushed out " (the Guardian): a suitable quarry for " rat

catchers " , which is the term another BBC reporter told us the Black

Watch use. According to a senior British officer, the Americans view

Iraqis as untermenschen, a term that Hitler used in Mein Kampf to

describe Jews, Romanies, and Slavs as sub-humans. This is how the Nazi

army laid siege to Russian cities, slaughtering combatants and

non-combatants alike.

 

Normalizing colonial crimes like the attack on Fallujah requires such

racism, linking our imagination to " the other " . The thrust of the

reporting is that the " insurgents " are led by sinister foreigners of

the kind that behead people: for example, by Musab al-Zarqawi, a

Jordanian said to be al-Qaeda's " top operative " in Iraq. This is what

the Americans say; it is also Blair's latest lie to parliament. Count

the times it is parroted at a camera, at us. No irony is noted that

the foreigners in Iraq are overwhelmingly American and, by all

indications, loathed. These indications come from apparently credible

polling organizations, one of which estimates that of 2,700 attacks

every month by the resistance, six can be credited to the infamous

al-Zarqawi.

 

In a letter sent on 14 October to Kofi Annan, the Fallujah Shura

Council, which administers the city, said: " In Fallujah, [the

Americans] have created a new vague target: al-Zarqawi. Almost a year

has elapsed since they created this new pretext and whenever they

destroy houses, mosques, restaurants, and kill children and women,

they say, 'we have launched a successful operation against Al

Zarqawi'. The people of Fallujah assure you that this person, if he

exists, is not in Fallujah... and we have no links to any groups

supporting such inhuman behavior. We appeal to you to urge the UN [to

prevent] the new massacre which the Americans and the puppet

government are planning to start soon in Fallujah, as well as many

parts of the country. " Not a word of this was reported in the

mainstream in Britain and America.

 

" What does it take to shock them out of their baffling silence? " asked

the playwright Ronan Bennett in April after the US marines, in an act

of collective vengeance for the killing of four American mercenaries,

killed more than 600 people in Fallujah, a figure that was never denied.

 

Then, as now, they used the ferocious firepower of AC-130 gunships

and F-16 fighterbombers and 500-pound bombs against slums. They

incinerate children; their snipers boast of killing anyone, as snipers

did in Sarajevo.

 

Bennett was referring to the legion of silent Labour backbenchers,

with honourable exceptions, and lobotomized junior ministers (remember

Chris Mullin?). He might have added those journalists who strain every

sinew to protect " our " side, who normalize the unthinkable by not even

gesturing at the demonstrable immorality and criminality. Of course,

to be shocked by what " we " do is dangerous, because this can lead to a

wider understanding of why " we " are there in the first place and of

the grief " we " bring not only to Iraq, but to so many parts of the

world: that the terrorism of al-Qaeda is puny by comparison with ours.

There is nothing illicit about this cover-up; it happens in daylight.

The most striking recent example followed the announcement, on 29

October, by the prestigious scientific journal, the Lancet, of a study

estimating that 100,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the

Anglo-American invasion. Eighty-four per cent of the deaths were

caused by the actions of the Americans and the British, and 95 per

cent of these were killed by air attacks and artillery fire, most of

whom were women and children.

 

The editors of the excellent MediaLens observed the rush - no,

stampede - to smother this shocking news with " skepticism " and silence

(mediaLens.org). They reported that, by 2 November, the Lancet report

had been ignored by the Observer, the Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph,

the Financial Times, the Star, the Sun and many others. The BBC framed

the report in terms of the government's " doubts " and Channel 4 News

delivered a hatchet job, based on a Downing Street briefing.

 

With one exception, none of the scientists who compiled this

rigorously peer-reviewed report was asked to substantiate their work

until ten days later when the pro-war Observer published an interview

with the editor of the Lancet, slanted so that it appeared he was

" answering his critics " . David Edwards, a MediaLens editor, asked the

researchers to respond to the media criticism; their meticulous

demolition can be viewed on medialens.org 2 November.

 

None of this was published in the mainstream. Thus, the unthinkable

that " we " had engaged in such a slaughter was suppressed - normalized.

It is reminiscent of the suppression of the death of more than a

million Iraqis, including half a million infants under five, as a

result of the Anglo American driven embargo.

 

In contrast, there is no media questioning of the methodology of the

Iraq Special Tribune which has announced that mass graves contain

300,000 victims of Saddam Hussein. The Special Tribune, a product of

the quisling regime in Baghdad, is run by the Americans; respected

scientists want nothing to do with it. There is no questioning of what

the BBC calls " Iraq's first democratic elections " . There is no

reporting of the fact that the Americans have assumed control over the

electoral process with two decrees passed in June that allows an

" electoral commission " effectively to eliminate parties Washington

does not like. Time magazine reports the CIA buying its preferred

candidates, which is how the agency has fixed elections all over the

world. When or if the elections take place, we will be doused in

cliches about the nobility of voting as America's puppets are

" democratically " chosen.

 

The model for this was the " coverage " of the American presidential

election: a blizzard of platitudes normalizing the unthinkable that

what happened on 2 November was not democracy in action.

 

With one exception, no one in the flock of pundits flown from London

described the circus of Bush and Kerry as the contrivance of less than

one per cent of the population, the ultra-rich and powerful, who

control and manage a permanent war economy. That the losers were not

only the Democrats, but the vast majority of Americans, regardless of

whom they voted for, was unmentionable.

 

No one reported that John Kerry, by contrasting the " war on terror "

with Bush's disastrous attack on Iraq, merely exploited public

distrust of the invasion to build support for American dominance

throughout the world. " I'm not talking about leaving [iraq], " said

Kerry. " I'm talking about winning! " In this way, both he and Bush

shifted the agenda even further to the right, so that millions of

anti-war Democrats might be persuaded that the US has " the

responsibility to finish the job " lest there be " chaos " . The issue in

the presidential campaign was neither Bush nor Kerry but a war economy

aimed at conquest abroad and economic division at home. The silence on

this was comprehensive, both in America and here.

 

Bush won by invoking, more skillfully than Kerry, the fear of an

ill-defined threat. How was he able to normalize this paranoia? Let's

look at the recent past. Following the end of the cold war, the

American elite - Republican and Democrat - were having great

difficulty convincing the public that the billions of dollars spent on

the war economy should not be diverted to a " peace dividend " . A

majority of Americans refused to believe there was still a " threat " as

potent as the red menace. This did not prevent Bill Clinton sending to

Congress the biggest " defense " bill in history in support of a

Pentagon strategy called " full spectrum dominance " . On 11 September

2001 the threat was given a name: Islam.

 

Flying into Philadelphia recently, I spotted the Kean Congressional

report on 11 September on sale at the bookstalls. " How many do you

sell? " I asked. " One or two " was the reply. " It'll disappear soon. "

Yet, this modest, blue-covered book is a revelation. Like the Butler

report, which detailed all the incriminating evidence of Blair's

massaging of intelligence before the invasion of Iraq, then pulled its

punches and concluded nobody was responsible, so the Kean Commission

makes excruciatingly clear what really happened, then fails to draw

the conclusions that stare it in the face. It is a supreme act of

normalizing the unthinkable. This is not surprising as the conclusions

are volcanic.

 

The most important evidence to the commission came from General Ralph

Eberhart, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command

(Norad). " Air force jet fighters could have intercepted hijacked

airliners roaring towards the World Trade Center and Pentagon, " he

said, " if only air traffic controllers had asked for help 13 minutes

sooner... We would have been able to shoot down all three... all four

of them. "

 

Why did this not happen?

 

The Kean report makes clear that " the defense of US aerospace on 9/11

was not conducted in accord with pre-existing training and protocols...

 

If a hijack was confirmed, procedures called for the hijack

coordinator on duty to contact the Pentagon's National Military

Command Center (NMCC)... The NMCC would then seek approval from the

office of the Secretary of Defense to provide military assistance... "

Uniquely, this did not happen. The commission was told by the deputy

administrator of the Federal Aviation Authority there was no reason

the procedure was not operating that morning. " For my 30 years of

experience... " said Monte Belger, " the NMCC was on the net and hearing

everything real-time.

 

.. I can tell you I've lived through dozens of hijackings... and they

were always listening in with everybody else. " But on this occasion,

they were not. The Kean report says the NMCC were never informed. Why?

Again, uniquely, all lines of communication failed, the commission was

told, to America's top military brass. Secretary of Defense Donald

Rumsfeld could not be found; and when he finally spoke to Bush an hour

and a half later, it was, says the Kean report, " a brief call in which

the subject of shoot-down authority was not discussed. " As a result,

NORAD's commanders were " left in the dark about what their mission was " .

 

The report reveals that the only part of a previously fail-safe

command system that worked was in the White House where Vice-President

Cheney was in effective control that day, and in close touch with the

NMCC. Why did he do nothing about the first two hijacked planes? Why

was the NMCC, the vital link, silent for the first time in its

existence? Kean ostentatiously refuses to address this. Of course, it

could be due to the most extraordinary combination of coincidences. Or

it could not. In July 2001, a top secret briefing paper prepared for

Bush read: " We [the CIA and FBI] believe that OBL [Osama Bin Laden]

will launch a significant terrorist attack against US and/or Israeli

interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and

designed to inflict mass casualties against US facilities or

interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with

little or no warning. "

 

On the afternoon of 11 September, Donald Rumsfeld, having failed to

act against those who had just attacked the United States, told his

aides to set in motion an attack on Iraq - when the evidence was

non-existent.

 

Eighteen months later, the invasion of Iraq, unprovoked and based on

lies now documented, took place. This epic crime is the greatest

political scandal of our time, the latest chapter in the long

20th-century history of the west's conquests of other lands and their

resources. If we allow it to be normalized, if we refuse to question

and probe the hidden agendas and unaccountable secret power structures

at the heart of " democratic " governments and if we allow the people of

Fallujah to be crushed in our name, we surrender both democracy and

humanity.

 

John Pilger is a visiting professor at Cornell University, New York.

His latest book, Tell Me No Lies: investigative journalism and its

triumphs, is published in the UK by Random House. First published in

the New Statesman and published here courtesy, Znet