A trial America desperately needs
The tasks of holding individuals accountable for their crimes and nations for their foreign policy actions are cut from the same cloth. For individuals, justice is rendered for the sake of both the victims and the larger society. For a nation, the trust of its citizens gained by the governing class' accountability to the governed is a basic requirement for maintaining legitimacy. .jpg)
A look at the not distant past is instructive. In 1940, while under Soviet occupation 14,000 Polish army and civilians were cold-bloodily murdered, methodically taken one by one and shot in Katyn forest on the orders of Joseph Stalin, our country’s comrade-in-arms during WWII. Unlike many crimes carried out during this time the atrocity was concealed for 50 years. Complicit in an existential lie imposed upon an entire nation, the Soviet government forced its subject people to live under a criminal regime until its own collapse in 1989. Without question a political, moral and social cancer spawned by the original slaughter continued to consume over the years an ever greater number of victims precisely because the truth was hidden and the perpetrator government, recognized as legitimate for too long by other nations, forced its citizens to swallow an enormous falsehood.
T
hat there is more we need to know about the 911 attack is accepted across the political spectrum. However, unlike the thuggish and brutal Stalinist cover-up by Soviet political and security apparatus leaders who plotted in secret, no like-minded expose of simlar acts by our political leaders will be discovered. Instead a public trial will provide long overdue clarity as to why we were attacked and also dispel much of the extreme 911 conspiracy theories that have come to own a growing corner of the public discussion. While affixing guilt (or very unlikely innocence) to defendants the trial will most importantly lay bare, as expected in criminal trials, the motives behind the crime.
hat there is more we need to know about the 911 attack is accepted across the political spectrum. However, unlike the thuggish and brutal Stalinist cover-up by Soviet political and security apparatus leaders who plotted in secret, no like-minded expose of simlar acts by our political leaders will be discovered. Instead a public trial will provide long overdue clarity as to why we were attacked and also dispel much of the extreme 911 conspiracy theories that have come to own a growing corner of the public discussion. While affixing guilt (or very unlikely innocence) to defendants the trial will most importantly lay bare, as expected in criminal trials, the motives behind the crime.Instead of muzzling events as in Katyn which contributed to suffocation of the Polish national psyche for 50 years, the N.Y. trial will provide Americans with the chance for a public discussion to bring to light a good measure of truth about why 3000 Americans died. We should make full use of the opportunity for in doing so we will honor each individual life taken that day.
“Chickens coming home to roost?”
Even before the trial begins, there will be pressure to restrict a full examination. To suggest, as will certainly be done by the defense, there are mitigating reasons behind the 911 attack, for example that it did not happen in a vacuum and going so far as to say, as was done in 2001 by Ward Churchill, that the ‘chickens came home to roost’, raises for most Americans the unacceptable odor of ‘justifying the indefensible’. Though it is an explosive and insulting idea it is not reason enough to stop our efforts to discover the motivations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Nineteen men do not commit an act of murder and suicide on a whim or in lunacy and a public trial that delves into this minefield will go a long way towards heading off future tragedy.
Nothing indicates Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision was based on any reason other than those commonly given by local DAs when they choose to bring a defendant to trial and both he and President Obama believe the men will be convicted and executed. A DA’s job is to convince a judge or jury of guilt, more than to examine 'why', and Holder will be anything but a proponent of the misnamed ‘blame America’ defense. But the president and the AG are being quite cagey or incredibly naïve (take your pick) if they believe that US foreign policy will not become a part of the trial. Already, the lawyer for one defendant has made it clear that motive will be part of the defense and that the suspects will plead not guilty for that purpose. Scott Fenstermaker, representing Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but would explain what happened and why they did it.”
Fluff for the public
Until now the American public’s source of information has been a steady stream of pabulum, mostly though not exclusively from neo-conservative Republicans, of the type provided by Rudy Giuliani’s that the hijackers “…attacked us because of our freedom of religion; they attacked us because of our economic freedom; they attacked us because of our political freedom ” (Giuliani speaking on 10/20/2007 at the Family Research Council) and continuing with the recent rhetoric by Sarah Palin: “[w]hat is Al Qaeda's goal? Growing those terror cells so they can come and destroy America. That's what Al Qaeda is for, is for that.”
Even non-interventionist paleo-conservative Pat Buchanan is susceptible to the short money view when arguing against a New York trial. “Minoru Genda, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, a naval base on U.S. soil, when America was at peace, and killed as many Americans as the Sept. 11 hijackers, was not brought here for trial. He was an enemy combatant under the Geneva Conventions and treated as such.” Except Congress never declared war in this conflict and we are not now at war with any nation unlike our war with Japan. And, as Buchanan well knows, yes, America may have been at peace in our homeland prior to Dec. 7 that fateful year but the US was bombing (and killing) the Japanese in mainland China well before the Pearl Harbor attack. Even that Pacific tragedy did not happen out of the blue as common mythology presents. Nor did 911.
Unfortunately the seemingly scripted nonsense that we are hated us for our freedoms continues to underpin and guide US foreign policy discussion, a dangerous and destructive self-delusion. A public trial can help wake us from this national stupor so that we may discover why we indeed have true enemies and perhaps point the way out of the mess in which we are entangled with the Muslim world.
From the horse’s mouth
It is not that other more tangible information has not been available. For starters we could have taken a good look at what Bin Laden said in Aug. 1996, a full 5 years before the attack, when he told the world why he was declaring war on the US and would undertake actions that eventually led to the killings of 911. He cited the occupation by ‘infidels’ of the Saudi Peninsula, an area which historically and religiously includes not only all of Saudi Arabia but also Iraq, and the ‘massacres of Muslims’ in 12 countries which he attributed either directly or indirectly to the US government:
Tajikistan (50-100,000 killed in a civil war 1992-1997);
Burma (affecting 2-300,000 Muslim Rohingya starting in 1978);
Kashmir. (since 1989 some 3000 civilians killed);
Assam (2-5000 mainly women and children killed in 1982);
and in the Philippines, Fatani, Ogadin (Ethiopia), Somalia, Erithria., Chechnya and Bodnia-Herzegovina.
Shortly before in April there was a massacre in Qana, Lebanon, cited by Bin Laden, where 800 civilians taking shelter in a UN compound were shelled by Israeli forces, killing 106 people.
Bin Laden also rejected the imposition of Western secular law in place of Shari’a law in Muslim lands, an undertaking unfortunately part of current US efforts to transform the governments in Iraq and Afghanistan more to our liking and one quite contrary to our national interests. It should hardly be surprising that this ongoing attempt to export Western legal and cultural values will add fuel to continued opposition to the US.
A solution for America
There is good reason to question the motivations of past leading US policy makers who are now arguing against holding the criminal trial in New York. Whether or not any shred of Bin Laden or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s indictment against the US holds water, and some certainly will, putting these individuals under a highly charged public microscope is sorely needed. If any momentum builds towards the belief that foreign policy decisions contributed to motivating the attack of 911 a positive shift in our policy direction is possible. After all, Americans are fully aware that day has led directly to the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, the deaths of more than 700,000 people, US and foreign, and to the quagmire the US finds itself in today. No matter where the trial investigation officially leads, past policy decisions an the individuals who made them will certainly be on the table for examination..jpg)
At times, even US empire-supporting neo-conservatives like Rudy Giuliani can highlight, if even by accident, a kernel of truth. He “believed once Sept. 11 happened, Republican and Democrat would never go back to where we were before in that foolish state of denial” (Fox News 11/16/09). He is right. We have yet to take proper stock of why our political leadership brought our country to its current condition but the ‘foolish denial’ is not in refusing to accept his proposal for an endless war. It is a much simpler and infinitely more beneficial one for the country - looking in the mirror as a nation to remember that not just the US but all peoples want to be independent, sovereign and free of outside interference. The NY trial can be the most important step in that process.David Beamer (writing in the Wall Street Journal 11/20/09), whose son died on Flight 93, argued against the trial and wondered “How can we be assured that these enemies will be found guilty?” An excellent question and of course the answer is that no assurance can be given. However, absent an unlikely tsunami of retrospection by the US public about the very treatment of Muslims of which Bin Laden complained, they will be convicted and that, for better or worse, will by all reports be just fine with them. If only Stalin would have been as willing to account likewise for his crime at Katyn.
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1000 now. They are the worlds best and brightest architects, engineers of all trades, physicists, chemists, professors, doctors..etc these people understand the forensic science and the forensics of 9/11 says mass murder by explosives. Like DNA forensics works on a nano level. Military grade explosives, elevator renovations at the WTC, power downs at the WTC, Larry Silverstein takes control of the WTC 6 weeks before 9/11, Larry Silverstein takes out an insurance policy that includes acts of terrorism 6 WEEKS BEFORE 9/11. He claims two seperate attacks and collects nearly $7 BILLION DOLLARS on a $200 MILLION DOLLAR INVESTMENT ? What's to think about ? Mass murder is mass murder and it didn't come from 19 phantom patsies from Saudi Arabia...Keep dreaming.
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