Sept. 11, 1973....

And let's not forget all those who lost their lives--not least, Salvador Allende--in the U.S.-formulated coup in Chile 30 years ago today.

Will we never learn from history?

My op-ed....

No mainstream newspaper that I queried opted to publish this. So I'm publishing it here today, in memory of the people who needlessly lost their lives two years ago.

"Black September Revisited"

In the two years since the attacks of 9/11, I have searched through mountains of U.S. commentary and commemoration for mention of a 33-year-old terrorist strike that chillingly prefigured the 2001 attacks.

Without success.

On September 6, 1970, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) simultaneously hijacked four airliners bound for New York. Two—TWA Flight 741 of Frankfurt and Swissair Flight 100 of Zurich--were forced to land at Dawson's Field, a former RAF airstrip in the Jordanian desert. The third, Pan American Flight 93 of Amsterdam, was too large for Dawson's, so hijackers forced it down in Cairo, where passengers and crew were evacuated and the plane blown up.

In uncanny parallel to what happened 31 years later, the PFLP’s fourth hijacking attempt was foiled in flight. At the outset, the pilots of El Al Flight 219 from Amsterdam to New York plunged their jet into a steep dive, throwing the hijackers off their feet. One, Leila Khaled, 24, was overpowered by passengers. The other, Californian Patrick Arguello, 27, was fatally shot by an El Al onboard security guard.

Unlike United Flight 93, which on September 11th, 2001, plunged to the ground in Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board after passengers tried to regain control from hijackers, El Al 219 landed safely in London.

Yet the drama was far from over. On September 9th, PFLP operatives hijacked a fifth jet, adding it to the two planes in Jordan. Passengers were exchanged for Leila Khaled. Then, on September 12, 1970, the three empty airliners were blown up on the ground while television crews broadcast the spectacle to the world.

The diplomatic embarrassment spurred King Hussein of Jordan to declare military rule, provoking a bloody civil war between Palestinian refugees and the Jordanian army. Some 15,000 people died before the Palestinians, under Yassir Arafat, fled Jordan. The debacle spawned the infamous Black September Movement, responsible for killing 10 Israeli athletes and their coach at the Munich Olympics—two years later, again in early September.

The PFLP spelled out their motive for the 1970 hijackings as retribution for American arms-sales to Israel—sales which continue to this day. Since Israel’s founding in 1948, America has given the state a staggering $97 billion in foreign aid, a sizeable portion of which has gone towards weapons.

With such an investment, are we closer to peace in the Middle East? Is terrorism waning?

You judge: in 1970, one person was killed in five hijackings over six days. In 2001, some 3,044 people died in four hijackings in a matter of hours.

Those numbers expose a terrible trend. Noncombatant casualties are growing in lock-step with “get tough” policies of governments towards extremists. The policy of “No negotiation with terrorists” has escalated into all-out war, frequently pitting professional armies against civilians.

U.S. Predator drones track automobiles across Afghani deserts, obliterating alleged Taliban ringleaders and passengers alike. Israeli missiles target Hamas operatives, slaughtering bystanders in crowded Palestinian alleyways. “Coalition Forces” pulverize Iraqi cities, maiming tens of thousands who have nowhere to flee. In response, terrorists strap on explosives and board crowded busses. Civilians die regardless, “collateral damage” to one side or another.

History could have played out differently. What if Americans had paid heed to legitimate Palestinian concerns after the first hijackings and reassessed foreign policy in the region? Might 9/11 have been averted?

These questions are not even being posed. In contrast to al Qaeda, who one can assume studied the 1970 hijackings, U.S. leaders have “disappeared” them. President Bush publicly treated 9/11 as if it came out of nowhere—which is curious, given his neocon advisors are steeped in Middle Eastern history.

Take neocon godfather, Irving Podhoretz. On September 13, 1970, he signed a letter to The New York Times condemning the PFLP hijackings. More recently, he signed the statement of principles for the Project for the New American Century, with Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. Podhoretz is also father-in-law to Elliott Abrams, director of Near Eastern & North American Affairs in the National Security Council.

Given the striking parallels, these men must discuss the earlier hijackings? Yet posing before news cameras, all Bush can ask is, “Why do they hate us?” Our rejoinder should be, “Why play dumb?” Why conceal the fact we were warned decades ago that our foreign policy, if unaltered, would result in devastating blowback?

Obscuring the fact that 9/11 was a by-product of corporate greed, arms sales and America’s unquenchable thirst for oil is fundamental to the pursuit of Bush’s foolhardy, expensive and ineffectual “War on Terrorism.” This never-ending conflict, with its lucrative war profiteering and curbs on civil liberties, advances both the fortunes and longstanding political aims of Bush’s closest supporters.

An even more dangerous obfuscation, however, is that we can deter future attacks through a “get tough” military strategy. If that were true, Israelis and Palestinians would not be dying at a rate of nearly 100 a month since the outbreak of the second Intifada in September—there’s that month again—2000.

We now have more than 33 years experience to demonstrate the futility of force as a deterrent to terrorism. Isn’t it time to try something new? Maybe refurbishing hospitals, schools, roads and power plants, instead of bombing them into rubble. How about offering Palestinians, ancient regional inhabitants, a standard of living comparable to that offered Jewish immigrants the minute they step foot on Israeli soil? Not only would these measures prove less expensive in money and lives in the long run, but Islamic fundamentalists have won over the Middle East’s poverty-stricken inhabitants by offering far less in the way of social services.

Or we can continue our present course of action: disregard the past, feign innocence and hope for the best. Just keep in mind, though, what the next escalation could involve. Can you imagine the death toll were a determined martyr to detonate a nuclear device in Manhattan?

Horrific as 9/11 was, it was also a second opportunity to change our ways. I, for one, am still hoping for a miracle, that we take the chance and avoid being condemned to relive history.

END

As far as I can ascertain, until Tuesday of this week when Walter Chronkite did a piece on NPR, this story remained essentially uncovered in the mainstream American media.

I can't help but wonder if circulating my piece wasn't the spark that finally got someone with access to cover it.

The NPR story, by the way, was gutless. Rather than making any points about American foreign policy, the media's lack of historical memory, or questioning why the 1970 hijackings have been ignored for two years, the best Chronkite could do was claim the event represented "the moment when the jet plane first became an instrument of international terror."

Which is not only absurd, but historically inaccurate. What a total waste of the public's airwaves!

Krugman vets Bush's speech....

And, as usual, is right on.

In his Sunday speech President Bush made a call for unity: "We cannot let past differences interfere with present duties." He also spoke, in a way he hasn't before, about "sacrifice." Yet, as always, what he means by unity is that he should receive a blank check, and it turns out that what he means by sacrifice is sacrifice by other people.

Complete op-ed here.

A "decent and democratic society" in the making...?

Christian Parenti describes an Iraq going from bad to worse:

…Here the criminal is king. Saddam emptied the prisons and the United States disbanded the police, while 60 percent of people are unemployed. As a result, carjacking, robbery, looting, and murder are rife. Marauding men in “misery gangs” kidnap and rape women and girls at will. Some of these victims are dumped back on the streets only to be executed by their “disgraced” male relatives in what are called “honor killings.”

Many women and girls stay locked inside their homes for weeks at a time. And increasingly those who do venture out wear veils, as the misogynist threats and ravings of the more fundamentalist Shia and Sunni clerics have warned that women who do not wear the hijab should not be protected.

According to the city morgue, there were 470 fatal shootings in July, up from 10 the year before. Not surprisingly, most people in Baghdad are armed and edgy.

[...]

As for the American troops—whom Iraqis call the kuwat al-ihtilal, or forces of occupation—they are stretched too thin to deal effectively with such crimes. And they have little understanding of Iraqi culture or politics. They are adrift in a sea of unintelligible Arabic, where even the street names are a mystery. At crime scenes they can just as easily arrest the victims as the perpetrators. Their small convoys are under constant assault.

Officially there are, on average, 13 attacks on Coalition Forces in Baghdad every day. Since May 1, when the war “ended,” more than 404 U.S. soldiers have been permanently removed from action due to wounds, while more that 60 have been killed in attacks.

[...]

Baghdad also suffers from the less dramatic structural violence of epidemic poverty. War, sanctions, and Saddam’s greed have left a large destitute class with no work, medicine, or schooling. Exploring the rubble of some government ministry, two colleagues and I meet Ibrahim Kadum, who lost his foot in the Iran-Iraq war, then he lost his home and now squats in these ruins with his wife, nine children, and a shaggy and bleating ewe.

[...]

A young woman, through a translator, explains the details of her work. She sells herself to American soldiers for $15 a session. She’s seventeen, wants to go to college and leave Iraq.

“Do you use protection with the soldiers?”

She blushes and pauses. “She says she takes the pills,” explains our translator Ahmed. Does she know about AIDS? “No condoms?” I ask. She blushes even more deeply and answers directly in English. “Sometimes.”

Read more here via Common Dreams.

Bush's speech deconstructed....

An excellent critical analysis of Bush's Sunday speech. A must read, by Stephen Zunes, associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.

A sample:

...“We have learned that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength; they are invited by the perception of weakness.”

Again, there are no doubts among extremists in the Middle East regarding America’s military strength. The perceived weakness is in regard to America’s moral strength. Millions of people in the Middle East and beyond believe that it is morally wrong for the United States to support Arab dictatorships and Israeli occupation forces. They believe it is morally wrong that the amount of U.S. military aid to the Middle East is six times that of its economic aid. They believe it is morally wrong that the #1 U.S. export to the region is not consumer goods, high-tech equipment or agricultural products, but armaments. They believe it is morally wrong that a powerful country from the other side of the world would invade a sovereign Arab nation and justify it by falsely claiming that its government currently had weapons of mass destruction and was supporting Al-Qaeda. They believe it is morally wrong that U.S. bombing and sanctions against Muslim countries has killed far more civilians than have the terrorists themselves.

The unfortunate reality is that the more the United States has militarized the Middle East, the less secure we have become.

“And the surest way to avoid attacks on our own people is to engage the enemy where he lives and plans. We are fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities.”

It is absurd to believe that those Iraqis and Afghanis currently fighting U.S. occupation forces in their own countries actually want to somehow sneak into the United States to fight Americans here. Indeed, no Afghans or Iraqis are known to have ever committed an act of terrorism against Americans on American soil.

The president’s statement is essentially a retread of the line used by supporters of the Vietnam War that “If we don’t fight them over there, we will have to fight them here.” However, more than 28 years after the Communist victory in Vietnam, we are yet to fight the Vietnamese in our streets and there is no indication that we ever will. The Iraqis and Afghans, as were the Vietnamese, are fighting Americans because U.S. troops are in their country and, like the Vietnamese, will stop fighting Americans once U.S. troops leave their country.

Complete story here via Common Dreams

Every pol for himself....

FRESNO — In a significant shift of campaign strategy, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante on Sunday moved away from urging a "no" vote in the Oct. 7 recall election, abandoning Gov. Gray Davis to fight alone and focusing instead on the merits of his own candidacy.

This really doesn't surprise me, I have such low expectations of all professional politicians.

Yet it does repel me.

Let's just hope his political aspirations don't fatally fracture the Democratic vote and put The Terminator in office.

Complete story here.

Bitter pill, indeed....

We feel angry about the money--and justifiably so! But we still have it better than the Iraqis.

I just wish the members of Congress would grow a collective spine and stand up to the petulant bully in the Whitehouse.

WASHINGTON -- Members of Congress are preparing to swallow hard and approve the $87 billion President Bush has requested for U.S. operations in Iraq, but it will be a more bitter pill than earlier votes to authorize the war against Saddam Hussein and to begin funding the enterprise, legislators and political analysts said today.

In the year since Congress authorized the war and the six months since it passed the first, $79 billion installment of funding, the political and fiscal picture has changed significantly in a way that will prompt greater scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

The federal budget deficit has soared. Few allies have offered to help with postwar troops or funding. U.S. casualties have mounted. No caches of unconventional weapons have been found. Even some members of Bush's own party have openly complained that the administration had inadequately planned for the rebuilding of Iraq after an unexpectedly rapid military victory over Saddam Hussein. [Emphasis mine.]

What irritates me about the tone of this article is the sense of surprise. Like no one could have seen these developments coming. When, in fact, the situation in Iraq is unfolding just as many anti-war activists predicted.

Complete story here.

By the way...

That $87 billion is in addition to the $79 billion already approved for the war and occupation through September 30. (See it ticking way on the counter to the left?)

What's that add up to...$166 billion? And with no end in sight.

Just remember, that's yours and my tax dollars.

Think about that as our bridges crumble, our roads decay, our lights go out, our public schools get dingier and dingier and the only job you can find is toting an M-16 in Iraq or flipping burgers for McDonald's.

Unbelievable...!

The Bush administration plans to ask Congress for $87 billion in emergency spending for military and intelligence operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that Iraq had now become ``the central front'' in the war against terror.

Mr. Bush's request for $87 billion was on the high end of what Congress expected. In recent days, administration officials have said they anticipated asking Congress for an additional $60 billion to $80 billion for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The financing, if approved by Congress, would significantly add to the federal government's deficit, which is approaching $500 billion. Mr. Bush said that $66 billion would be for the next fiscal year. White House officials said tonight they could not specify how the $87 billion would be spent.

[...]

In his 15-minute speech, Mr. Bush did not specifically mention the searches for Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden, who have so far eluded American capture. He also did not mention the failure so far to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the major stated reason that the United States went to war. Nor did Mr. Bush dwell on the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, which he once predicted would abate if Mr. Hussein was ousted from power.

$87 billion...!

Complete story here.

Organ donors needed...



and these bighearted folks are tossing their helmets into the lottery to volunteer.

The "barbeque" was to celebrate the fact that state legislators have done their part by repealing Pennsylvania’s helmet law.

…Thursday was the first day that Pennsylvania's more than 750,000 motorcyclists could ride bareheaded in 35 years. This summer, the Legislature voted to repeal the helmet requirement by comfortable margins, after more than two decades of unsuccessful attempts by motorcycle groups to repeal the helmet law.

Statistics show that fatalities will rise. Even minor accidents can result in serious injuries when a motorcyclist isn't wearing a helmet.

Per mile traveled, motorcyclists are 16 times more likely than passenger car occupants to die in a traffic crash and about four times as likely to be injured. While only 20 percent of car crashes result in injury or death, that figure jumps to an astounding 80 percent for motorcycle crashes, according to the administration.

Complete story here.