War On Terror? Reflections on the Nine Eleven Event

Going to a far off foreign land, on a supremely important mission, consider if you will, the myriad problems those 20 dedicated Arab fanatics faced, as well as the challenges confronting their leader. Assembling the 20 men itself was not easy. Even in a country where religious fervor is more intense by several orders of magnitude than in most of the West.

Both adding to and subtracting from that difficulty, their religious intensity is indeed widely shared and is part and parcel of the extended family. The very foundation of the Middle East culture, contrast it with the nuclear family that is dominant in the US. Americans gave up the extended family with the coming of the Industrial Age of the post Civil War era. It is out of our collective memory. Some Jewish people, some Amish, and some other small and frequently isolated groups, still participate in this age old tradition that stood humanity in good stead from long before the Age of the Pyramids to 2006.

Islam is comparatively new, when viewed through the eye of the extended family. 10,000 - 15,000 years versus 1,400 years. Christianity is barely a half millennium older. Judaism may be dated back to 1,000 BCE. One more millennia. So it is true that the extended family long pre-dates all the major realigns of today.

Aside. I have an Iranian friend who explained to me that his “extended” family - he does not use that label - would have meetings every two or three years, lasting for several days, and would sometimes include 300 people. Important to him was the fact he got a family commitment to pay for his education, first in Tehran, then in Paris, and finally, at McGill in Montreal.

His nuclear family could not have afforded that. He became a medical doctor and has the FACS designation. He repaid the family which has been supporting its talented young men - sorry, ladies not allowed - and it still does. One example how extended families function in the ME.

Resume topic. Apparently the Nine Eleven Event was 2 years in the planning and preparation. The general outlines of the plan itself must have been determined early on. To use 20 people, allotting 5 to the plane meant that decision was made almost at the outset. It also means the final choice of targets was not made until shortly before the carrying out of the attack.

OTOH, I cannot suggest 4 targets better suited to convey the message of mal-content over our foreign policy. I estimate it cost $75,000 per year per man, to support the operation. In my mind, that meant OBL budgeted $3 million for his attack on America. Cost is an important element in my own understanding of the problems America faces because of Nine Eleven Event.

Once an operation is agreed on, the problem of selecting and then of maintaining internal security is ever present. I suspect the “volunteers” did not know the real purpose of their mission. That it would be suicidal I think was known. To speak of what those 20 young men believed would be their after life experience is not only demeaning, but is a cheap shot on Islam. And adds nothing to the equation. The Jews at Masada were willing to die for their beliefs, and were willing to “take” their children with them. Fifty thousand Christians were willing to die for their beliefs in 16th century France. So let’s try to get off this cheap sex angle so many demagogues love to employ.

I am not sure, but it seems likely the 4 groups of 5 were uninformed of the other groups. Need to know, you know. Perhaps the 20th hijacker was the only person acquainted with the others at the operational level. Perhaps he was not only the “lead man” or go-between, but #20 could also be a ready replacement for anyone that could not or would not make the trip.

I admit many of their actions were unusual, but none of those would be completely impossible to accept. To me, the most significant departure from normal conduct was their request to go straight to flying a plane, and avoiding take-off or landing instructions. It is not impossible to think maybe those guys are going to be “mid-flight relief” for a long distance cargo planes? Maybe their primary job was load-master, but they were adding an additional job qualification to their MOS or AFSC description.

At the final moment, coordination was imperative. Last minute ticket purchases would not a flag raiser it would be today as neither would one way tickets be unusual. In fact, I have two one-way tickets bought and paid for myself. One for October, one for November.

I don’t know how many flights the 4 groups of terrorists had to choose from. I recall from the 9/11 Commission report the terrorists had several options. It was essential that all flights taken over had to be trans-continental to assure a full load of fuel. All had to leave in a narrow time frame to prevent any shoot-down action by the USAF. As it turned out, the FAA and NORAD could not communicate directly with each other. This did not cause the Nine Eleven Event. It neither added to nor took from what happened. I’m sure OBL did not know of this gap. His goal would have been accomplished if all 4 planes had the same fate as Flt 93 met in Shanksville, PA.

The crash sequence was:
AA 11 hit the WTC North Tower at 8:46 AM.
UA 175 rammed the WTC South Tower at 9:03 AM.
AA 77 hit the Pentagon at 9:38 AM.
UA 93 crashed in PA at 10:00 AM.

Tapes played back show the Air Force and Air Traffic Controllers were never in direct contact. There had been no planning for such an event. But again, this is not to incriminate anyone. Of an infinite number of possibilities, it is no surprise the one that hurt us worst was one (of many) we did not foresee.

What have we learned since the Nine Eleven Event. 1) That “terrorism” is a form of waging war; it’s been around since Joshua employed it to gain control of Jericho and other parts of what the Romans called Palestine. 2) that finding one particular person on this planet can be nearly impossible. See, even I suffer from the American syndrome of refusing to admit anything is impossible!

Do you have any doubts that Bush43, in the run-up to the 2004 election, did not instruct the CIA and others, to “find him” and “bring him in! 3) At any cost!” I’m sure our standard $25 million in gold reward, which by the way is about 3,400 pounds at $600 an ounce, should have produced OBL. But it is now 1,833 days since the attack on America and we see not OBL. Oh, we the reward also includes American citizenship and a US Marshals new identity. This would include your immediate family. Not your extended family.

Why is it the standard of western culture - great wealth - has not brought in OBL? Everybody who acts as if he “knows” what he is talking about says OBL is in that region between Afghan and Pakistan. The area is very mountainous and is inhabited by people who do not like westerners in general and Americana in particular. OBL has been in and out of that area since the 1980s. He is one of the best known leaders of the resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghan.

4) Everybody who lives in the region knows both Pakistan’s Musharraf and Afghan’s Karzai are American puppets. In both instances, there are many areas of their countries they cannot go into. That is because their government does not have control we call that lacking “nominal” control. It is very much remenessicent of our various presidents of South Vietnam. In all cases, confined to their capital cities.

Even I agree the American campaign in Afghan in late 2001 probably killed 2/3rds of OBL’s 3,000 man following. 5) Tora Bora. Or, how you can win and lose at the same time. I don’t think OBL has caused the US much harm since then. I attribute that - no more attacks - to the fact he has made his point vis a vis the US and he is now attending to other business. I don’t think for one NY minute that if OBL wanted to continue to attack the US he could have and would have in the past 5 years. We receive seven million cargo containers per year, less than 400,000 are physically inspected. ICE says that 4 million people cross our Mexico-US border annually, and they catch or apprehend 1.4 million. I presume this means the other 2.6 million “got away.” Reminder: out of 12 million undocumented Latinos in the US, not one has been arrested as a terrorist!

Last. Jordan’s errant Abu Musab al Zarqawi who is believed to have founded the Jordanian group al Tawhid, renamed his group “al Qaeda in Iraq” getting free publicity every time it was mentioned, On June 7, 2006, the US claimed Zarqawi was killed but under murky circumstances allowing for speculation the US ordered him, as it did Che Guevara, to be killed. One Saddam at a time is enough!

On January 20, 2009, just afer 12 noon, America can begin un-doing the world-wide mess made by Bush43. It will take a long time, and of course, we cannot bring back those 3,000 GIs who died in Iraq, nor the 20,000 Iraqis we have killed. But you do the best you can. Leave the rest to Allah and God.


[edit on 9/18/2006 by donwhite]