Aftermath of 9/11 . . .
Soon after the attack of September 11, 2001 on the United States one commentator said that in the future people would divide time as before and after 9/11. The comment was prescient. 9/11 has changed the world.
By now many may have forgotten that the United Nations designated the year 2001 as the "Year of Dialogue Among Civilisations" largely at the suggestion of the Iranian President Khatami who wanted to promote world peace through dialogue among civilisations. The idea was bred in the atmosphere of a sense of optimism ushered by the new millennium following the end of the debacle of the Cold War. The end of the history thesis popularised by Francis Fukuyama created a mood of complacence, hence the US was completely unprepared for such an attack.
The condemnation of the heinous attack was nearly universal at the time. Except for an odd celebratory footage in the West Bank, news of shock, sympathy and solidarity with the victims poured in. "We are all Americans," was the caption in Le Monde on September 12, 2001. A candlelight vigil in Tehran expressed solidarity with the victims.
The great loss suffered by the Americans was matched by the outpouring of sympathy worldwide. Only odd commentators such as Susan Sontag, in the New Yorker of September 24, 2001, criticised the self-righteousness of the US position and reminded Americans of the ongoing bombing of Iraq (following the First Gulf war). Noam Chomsky criticised the US as a terrorist state a year later. However, these were voices from the margin.
It was expected that the US would be able to make good use of the spirit of solidarity, and consolidate the support it received to launch a jihad against terrorism by taking the whole world with it. The disaster presented an opportunity in its wake. The Bush response frittered away such an opportunity and divided the world.
Sections of hawkish groups in Washington were waiting for such an opportunity to pursue their own pro-Israeli agenda. What could be a genuine war on terror was hijacked into a war against the vocal enemy of Israel, namely Mr. Saddam Hussein, who was a dictator but not the only one. President George Bush, whose MBA degree from Harvard prepared him to be decisive, decided to fight a war. It did not matter whether the target was Iraq or Iran. Heads of some dictators had to roll.
I spent my sabbatical in the US in 2002 with memories of 9/11 fresh in the minds of the Americans. My friends invited me to give a talk at Colorado School of Mines at Golden, Colorado. My audience expected me to give a justification of the attack. I disappointed them. I saw 9/11 as a macabre attack where civilians were targeted (except for the Pentagon) and innocent passengers of civilian airlines were used as weapons in one of history's most horrific attacks. I spoke my mind and called it a crime against humanity. My talk dwelt on the responses from Asian countries on the attack.
Like all historic events, the meaning and interpretations of events change over time. Interpretations of 9/11 also changed over time. Some American critics began to question the passionate patriotism and pursued a dispassionate analysis of the events. The idea of "blow back" gained some traction. On 9/11 of 1973, the democratically elected president of Chile Salvador Allende was removed by a CIA-sponsored coup d'état. Some critics did not hesitate to remind us of the notion of collateral damage. Yet, one crime cannot be justified by another. Two wrongs do not make a right.
The US response was rash. Looking back, it was not justified to launch a regime change attack in Afghanistan. The attack on Iraq was unnecessary and morally reprehensible. The clock of much promised progress of the 21st century was set back to the 19th century imperialism.
The popularity of the US declined worldwide. In 2011, only 54% Indonesians, 44% Chinese, 41% Indians, 20% Egyptians, 12% Pakistanis and 10% Turks had favourable opinion of the US, according to a PEW survey. A similar survey in 2002 found that 61% Indonesians, 54% Indians and 30% Turks had favourable opinion of the US.
9/11 has also spun a host of conspiracy theories. Rather than trying to refute such theories, it may be useful to examine the variations in the reception of conspiracy theories across countries. For example, in 2008 in Germany 64% people believe that al-Qaida was responsible for the attack yet 23% of the Germans believed that the US itself was behind the attack. 36% Turks, 30% Mexicans, 27% Palestinians, 15% Italians, 15% Russians and 14% Indonesians believed that US itself could have been responsible for the attack. (Worldpublicoopinin.com).
There may be a correlation between unpopularity of the US and the popularity of conspiracy theory exonerating the al-Qaeda of this heinous attack. Rational discourse must reject the conspiracy theories for what they are, unsubstantiated hypotheses, yet one can hardly ignore the decline of the popularity of the US. Such unpopularity, sadly, is of America's own doing.
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