‘Why’ can be such an inconvenient question.
As the twin towers of the World Trade Centre collapsed, the Pentagon was hit by a crashing aircraft and another aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania, America and much of the world went into shock and the immediate response was to start a war on terrorism.
Journalist Robert Fisk was on his way to New York from Brussels as those terrorist attacks were occurring. The flight had to return to Brussels since American air space was locked down. Two thousand nine hundred and ninety six people died, many more suffered injuries and thousands more have suffered long term health effects as a result of the deadliest terror attack in human history, according to Wikipedia. Fisk dared to ask that question – why? – and was pilloried in a subsequent interview.
In his 2006 book, The Great War For Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, chapter 21 is titled ‘Why?’, and over the next 75 pages considers some of the possible reasons: why 19 men would hijack four passenger-filled aircraft and commit one of the greatest acts of terrorism ever.
The immediate questions from the media, from pretty much every one was:
“Who did it” How did they do it? No one – but no one – wanted to know why ‘they’ might want to do it, for this was the forbidden question… Only one line was going to be allowed after these massacres in America. Any opposition to US policy – especially in the Middle East – was criminal and ‘pro-terrorist’. Any one who criticised America now was an anti-Semite….” (p 1034)
Much the same was the response to the October 7, 2023 attack led by Hamas where some 1200 innocent people were murdered and another 250 abducted as hostages.
Don’t ask why, don’t ask what possessed those terrorists from conducting the murderous rampage, they were terrorists.
There are so many times when to ask ‘why’ is just wrong, as it is seen as support for the terrorists, support for this who want to kill us, who ever the ‘us’ may be.
The ‘War on Terror’ initiated as a response to the 9/11 attacks led to the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, targeted at overthrowing the Taliban government for harbouring al-Qaeda terrorist training camps, and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 based on disputed claims of the Saddam Hussein regime’s development of weapons of mass destruction.
Estimates of the fatalities incurred during the twenty-year Afghan campaign is around 176,000 people including an estimated 47,000 civilians, 69,000 Afghan military and police and over 52,000 opposition fighters.
Estimates for the Iraq war of 2003-2011 vary from roughly 150,000 to over a million, the documented civilian deaths recorded by the Iraqi Body Count Project is at over 186,000.
Israel’s response to the October 7 attack has seen Gaza, a small coastal strip housing over 2.3 million Palestinians pretty much levelled, made uninhabitable, the official death toll of the reprisal sits at over 73,380 and over 174,200 wounded.
Let me repeat. The number dead and injured from the 9/11 attacks was 2,996 killed, the number injured was many… No final figure was found.
How many people were killed in retaliation? 176,000 in Afghanistan and in Iraq anywhere between 150,000 and a million, but who cares, they were terrorists. Well most of them. Just ask the war hero, Ben Roberts-Smith.
I wonder what Afghans and Iraqis think of America, or more broadly, the west, and yes, we were involved in both conflicts.
By not asking ‘WHY?’, reprisal becomes legitimised, but the causes of the initial attacks are ignored. Terrorists just ‘hate our freedoms’, was George W Bush’s response. To not consider the history behind the frustrations which drive the terrorists, we are doomed to suffer more terrorist attacks.
Without trying to understand the background, we will continue to make the same mistakes, to pigeon-hole people for who they are, for what they are, their religion, their skin colour, or what ever other definition we choose to marginalise them.
Why are Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signing up to a NATO-like defence pact? Each country is Sunni Muslim, Pakistan is nuclear powered. What threats are those nations faced with? What threat are they to peace and stability? And is the threat in anyway connected to the rapaciousness of post-colonialism? An interesting aside is that Saudis were offered access to nuclear enrichment, conditional to them signing the Abraham Accords, recognising the legitimacy of Israel. That would have enabled peace-loving Saudis the same ability to make nuclear weapons as Iran has.
Why is Iran a threat? Why have there been two wars launched against Iran in the last 15 months, both aimed at limiting its nuclear enrichment programmes, the fear being that Iran could develop nuclear weapons, despite the repeated assertions that they are not interested in having nuclear weapons. Iran heads an axis of resistance, essentially a resistance movement against Israel, and it includes Houthis, Hezbollah, and resistance groups in Iraq and Syria.
A bit of history would have been useful before the attack on Iran in February, an understanding that Iran, formerly Persia, has a rich history of survival, of building defences, a proud heritage which has survived over 3,000 years.
Even considering the last 120 years, the changes in government, from autocratic to democratic to autocratic to theocracy, but never colonised by western powers, remained neutral through two world wars fought on their doorstop, and yes, there were ‘spheres of influence’, but diplomatically controlled toward Britain and Russia, both had imperial aspirations. What can at times be seen as fragility, especially in the autocratic rule which has been so severe on its people, has seen survival skills which have flummoxed even ‘the best deal maker in the world’. A quick delve into the history of Iran may just have given a clue that they are not about to buckle, but look more like winning against the world’s most powerful military.
Understanding the religious divide may have been a useful bit of knowledge when the Middle East was divvied up at the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1917. Consideration to both the religious divides as well as the ethnic, with the Kurds being marginalised in northern Iraq and in Iran. But far more important at that time was to join the Mediterranean to the South Asian Imperial possessions in collaboration with the French. Neither country was all that interested in what the indigenous peoples thought.
A further interest is that when George W Bush described the ‘axis of evil’, including Iraq, Iran and North Korea, only North Korea had, and still has nuclear weapons, and only North Korea has not been attacked since 2001.
Perhaps it is in Iran’s interest to declare that they have nuclear weapons, it seems to have protected North Korea from being attacked.
Other questions – particularly regarding the Middle East – such as more ‘why’ questions around why is Lebanon so unstable? The construction of the political system, with shared power across the ethnic divides, why did Hezbollah gain traction? Why are Palestinian refugee camps still there, a displaced people for over 75 years, are questions we do not dare ask for fear of being branded ant-Semite, Yet, time and again violence directed at the refugee camps, refugees from the Nakba of 1948 and their descendants, who under the human right laws have the right of return, and yet, are targets of Israeli and their proxies Phalangists, an armed wing of Lebanese Christian Maronites. That does not make headline news though, Israel and the Phalangists are protecting innocent Israelis from terrorist attacks, that’s the news headlines.
The power struggles in Lebanon have resulted in civil wars and cross-border conflicts since its independence from France in 1944, political assassinations and corruption in government, instability as power is divided along religious divides, and a lack of respect for border integrity.
Al Qaeda and ISIS are both Sunni terrorist organisations which their origins in Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia. Why is Saudi Arabia such a breeding ground for terrorist organisations? And yet, why is Saudi Arabia so closely allied to the US?
The problem with the why question is that if it considered at all, it may just turn out that the control of oil is an important factor, with the rapacious west not wanting to share the spoils of oil with the ‘owners’ of the oil. The control or power to control governments to ensure that oil flows to the industrialised west, and then there was what to do with the Jews who were not wanted in Eastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere, and that became more significant after the Nazi holocaust, when it was deemed good to create Israel, despite other people inhabiting that land: Palestinians.
But don’t ask the Palestinians what they thought of that good idea, just follow the colonialist play book and take the land.
So the ‘WHY’ we are not allowed to ask has to do with western interference, the ongoing supply of weapons and the hardware of war, whether as direct sales to Saudi Arabia or just giving bombs to Israel, or supplying ‘intermediaries’, the powder-keg being topped up by Russia, France and other players seeking to influence various powers.
War is a very profitable enterprise.
The danger with the ‘why’ question is that when carefully considered, the reasons are so often to do with the way power and might are flexed, how the lives of ordinary people are deemed insignificant in the grander scheme of things. The grander scheme being the assurance that oil will flow, that Israel reigns supreme, that any one who looks like a terrorist, or could potentially breed the next generation of terrorists be eliminated. Palestinians, Bedouin in the West Bank, refugees in refugee camps with no prospect of settling either on their homelands or being accepted anywhere else.
In the case of the west, America, Nato, Australia among others, terrorists are defined as those who are anti-American, anti-Semitic, or anti anything we like. Muslims particularly are easy to mark as terrorists. Just accept that as truth: Look at 9/11, look at 7 October, but don’t ask why those terrorist attack the US, Israel or any other target.
Also by Bert
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In answer to the question: A large part of the world’s population has been for centuries subjugated, due to the greed of others. As the knowledge of their plight has become more obvious to both them and others like them, emotional and mental revolution has take place and acts of terror against what are seen as their subjugators has taken place.
Until such time as there is a fairer distribution of the world’s assets and subsequent wealth, terrorism will not only be with us, but will increase. The worm is turning.
Great work Bert.
Thought provoking article, unfortunately, those who do ask why don’t need it spelled out, those who don’t are too easily distracted by the latest shiny offerings from mainstream media and its ilk…
Hope this article is shared far and wide…
a great article, thanks Bert. The answer to “why?” with all these questions lies in the fact that USA is a socially, culturally, politically and spiritually fractured nation. Rather than facing the task of providing for their future peace, prosperity and harmony from within, those with evil intentions distract the gaze of the population so that they can divide and destroy all other nations that do not align with USA’s hegemonic requirements. American exceptionalism was embedded in US foreign policy with the Monroe Doctrine of 1828. This will only end when USA finally destroys itself from within.
Americans are cursed by the weft & warp of their social fabric; the relatively rapid evolution of the oligarchs, the utterly compromised nature of politics at all levels, the overwhelming influence of corporations and capitalism when it comes to determining priorities… all of these and more conspire to maintain the schizoid nature of that country’s ebb and flow – who is working for whom, just what is really important, and why are the priorities as they evidence themselves so relatively unquestioningly accepted?
The MIC is entrenched, ergo, forever wars are the de facto reality. The big crimes, the big corruptions, the big failures, all swept underneath some illusive carpet and sprinkled over with fairy dust and glitter; movie making, Disneylands, kicking and whacking and tossing balls of different sizes into different targets, as if these distractions somehow substitute for an absence of depth and appropriate maturity. A lost society, unmoored, paranoid, scared, suspicious, callous & cruel and seemingly seeing the Shadow at every turn.
September 11, 2001, the attack on the Twin Towers with a predetermined narrative as to who the protagonists were, and thus a casus belli for the disastrous forays into the Middle East at the cost of hundreds of thousands lives lost, damaged, ruined, societies traumatised, including the USA, and yet, curiously, the narrative stuck – people living in caves were responsible for bringing down the towers, despite the mountain of evidence to that all points directly at Israel being the architect of that heinous crime.
Why, it may be appropriately asked, was that line of enquiry shelved at the official level? What is it about that little country that it exerts such a hypnotic effect over the American powers that be?
Strange days indeed.
Thanks for a great article
@ Canguro: It goes back further than 9/11 starting with the suppression of the knowledge of the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the Gulf of Tonkin lie, denial of Israel’s attack on USS Liberty, the investigative fiascos of the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, lies about Saddam Hussein’s WMDs and more recently lies about Iran’s imminent nuclear capability. Americans are programmed to listen to and accept inveterate lying politicians and their influencers rather than exercise their natural (but non-functional) capability of clear thinking.
Sadly, the actions of the USA is only one facet of the cause of “why”, revolution by those suffering suppression by those suppressing them is only the current trend.
Suppression of what was seen as Third World peoples is a an ongoing thing, Gaza, Sudan, some south American states, so the list goes on.
What the Coalition of the Willing see as actions of “Terrorism” is in fact revolution, third world countries have had enough.
Raise world standards or face more, much more Terrorism.
Mediocrates, if you want a origin for terrorism you can go back a lot further than World War two. But I am not sure “terrorism” is a useful descriptor for these conspiracies that lead to indiscriminate murder of masses of people. I would like the term “terrorist” to disappear. Let the perpetrators be known as murderers and treated as such by the law. Let their stated motives and manifestos be set aside as the writings of madmen. Let no national government send its military forces to avenge such attacks, or use them as an excuse to wage war.
Israel and the USA have demonstrated why Iran has every right to develop nuclear weapons
Many of us are still asking WHY On October 7, 2023, a surprise, multi-pronged assault on southern Israel was allegedly carried out by factions of Hamas. The attack killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and resulted in 251 hostages being taken to Gaza. Inevitably this attack led to the Gaza onslaught which decimated the Gaza strip and killed some 70,000 Palestinians and triggered a massive regional war which now embraces Iran, Lebanon and Syria.
We still don’t know if the October 2023 attack was sanctioned by Hamas leadership or was carried out by a militant offshoot. Clearly those behind the attack had not thought through the consequences of their actions.
We still ask WHY?
Great article Bert. Well said.
Most don’t want to know “Why?”. They’d much rather cringe, then go on harvesting the bullshit in the dark like so many dung beetles.
American foreign policies and blowback go hand in hand.