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by Sunder Katwala
America's most controversial
novelist calls for an investigation into whether the Bush administration
deliberately allowed the terrorist attacks to happen
Sunday October 27, 2002
America's most controversial writer
Gore Vidal has launched the most scathing attack to date on George W
Bush's Presidency, calling for an investigation into the events of 9/11 to
discover whether the Bush administration deliberately chose not to act on
warnings of Al-Qaeda's plans.
Vidal's highly controversial 7000 word polemic titled 'The Enemy Within' -
published in the print edition of The Observer today - argues that what he
calls a 'Bush junta' used the terrorist attacks as a pretext to enact a
pre-existing agenda to invade Afghanistan and crack down on civil
liberties at home.
Vidal writes: 'We still don't know
by whom we were struck that infamous Tuesday, or for what true purpose.
But it is fairly plain to many civil libertarians that 9/11 put paid not
only to much of our fragile Bill of Rights but also to our once-envied
system of government which had taken a mortal blow the previous year when
the Supreme Court did a little dance in 5/4 time and replaced a popularly
elected President with the oil and gas Bush-Cheney junta.'
Vidal argues that the real motive
for the Afghanistan war was to control the gateway to Eurasia and Central
Asia's energy riches. He quotes extensively from a 1997 analysis of the
region by Zgibniew Brzezinski, formerly national security adviser to
President Carter, in support of this theory. But, Vidal argues, US
administrations, both Democrat and Republican, were aware that the
American public would resist any war in Afghanistan without a truly
massive and widely perceived external threat.
'Osama was chosen on aesthetic
grounds to be the frightening logo for our long-contemplated invasion and
conquest of Afghanistan ... [because] the administration is convinced that
Americans are so simple-minded that they can deal with no scenario more
complex than the venerable, lone, crazed killer (this time with zombie
helpers) who does evil just for the fun of it 'cause he hates us because
we're rich 'n free 'n he's not.' Vidal also attacks the American media's
failure to discuss 11 September and its consequences: 'Apparently,
"conspiracy stuff" is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.'
'It is an article of faith that
there are no conspiracies in American life. Yet, a year or so ago, who
would have thought that most of corporate America had been conspiring with
accountants to cook their books since - well, at least the bright dawn of
the era of Reagan and deregulation.'
At the heart of the essay are
questions about the events of 9/11 itself and the two hours after the
planes were hijacked. Vidal writes that 'astonished military experts
cannot fathom why the government's "automatic standard order of procedure
in the event of a hijacking" was not followed'.
These procedures, says Vidal,
determine that fighter planes should automatically be sent aloft as soon
as a plane has deviated from its flight plan. Presidential authority is
not required until a plane is to be shot down. But, on 11 September, no
decision to start launching planes was taken until 9.40am, eighty minutes
after air controllers first knew that Flight 11 had been hijacked and
fifty minutes after the first plane had struck the North Tower.
'By law, the fighters should have
been up at around 8.15. If they had, all the hijacked planes might have
been diverted and shot down.'
Vidal asks why Bush, as
Commander-in-Chief, stayed in a Florida classroom as news of the attacks
broke: 'The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives
rise to not unnatural suspicions.' He also attacks the 'nonchalance' of
General Richard B Myers, acting Joint Chief of Staff, in failing to
respond until the planes had crashed into the twin towers.
Asking whether these failures to act
expeditiously were down to conspiracy, coincidence or error, Vidal notes
that incompetence would usually lead to reprimands for those responsible,
writing that 'It is interesting how often in our history, when disaster
strikes, incompetence is considered a better alibi than .... Well, yes,
there are worse things.'
Vidal draws comparisons with another 'day of infamy' in American history,
writing that 'The truth about Pearl Harbour is obscured to this day. But
it has been much studied. 11 September, it is plain, is never going to be
investigated if Bush has anything to say about it.' He quotes CNN reports
that Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to limit
Congressional investigation of the day itself, ostensibly on grounds of
not diverting resources from the anti-terror campaign.
Vidal calls bin Laden an 'Islamic
zealot' and 'evil doer' but argues that 'war' cannot be waged on the
abstraction of 'terrorism'. He says that 'Every nation knows how - if it
has the means and will - to protect itself from thugs of the sort that
brought us 9/11 ... You put a price on their heads and hunt them down. In
recent years, Italy has been doing that with the Sicilian Mafia; and
no-one has suggested bombing Palermo.'
Vidal also highlights the role of
American and Pakistani intelligence in creating the fundamentalist
terrorist threat: 'Apparently, Pakistan did do it - or some of it' but
with American support. "From 1979, the largest covert operation in the
history of the CIA was launched in response to the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan ... the CIA covertly trained and sponsored these warriors.'
Vidal also quotes the highly
respected defence journal Jane's Defence Weekly on how this support for
Islamic fundamentalism continued after the emergence of bin Laden: 'In
1988, with US knowledge, bin Laden created Al-Qaeda (The Base); a
conglomerate of quasi-independent Islamic terrorist cells spread across 26
or so countries. Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda.'
Vidal, 77, and internationally
renowned for his award-winning novels and plays, has long been a
ferocious, and often isolated, critic of the Bush administration at home
and abroad. He now lives in Italy. In Vidal's most recent book, The Last
Empire, he argued that 'Americans have no idea of the extent of their
government's mischief ... the number of military strikes we have made
unprovoked, against other countries, since 1947 is more than 250.'
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