Who Saw It Coming?

by Alexander Cockburn

Not in terms of destructive extent, but in terms of symbolic obliteration the attack is virtually without historic parallel, a trauma at least as great as the San Francisco earthquake or the Chicago fire.

There may be another similarity to Pearl Harbor. The possibility of a Japanese attack in early December of 1941 was known to U.S. Naval Intelligence and to President Roosevelt. Last Tuesday, derision at the failure of U.S. intelligence was widespread. The Washington Post quoted an unnamed top official at the National Security Council as saying, "We don't know anything here. We're watching CNN, too." Are we to believe that the $30 billion annual intelligence budget, immense electronic eavesdropping capacity and thousands of agents around the world produced nothing in the way of a warning? In fact, Osama bin Laden, now a prime suspect, said in an interview three weeks ago with Abdel-Bari Atwan, the editor of the London-based al-Quds al-Araby newspaper, that he planned "very, very big attacks against American interests."

Here is bin-Laden, probably the most notorious Islamic foe of America on the planet, originally trained by the CIA, planner of other successful attacks on U.S. installations such as the embassies in East Africa, carrying a $5 million FBI bounty on his head proclaiming the imminence of another assault, and U.S. intelligence was impotent, even though the attacks must have taken months, if not years, to plan.

The lust for retaliation traditionally outstrips precision in identifying the actual assailant. By early evening on Tuesday, America's national security establishment was calling for a removal of all impediments on the assassination of foreign leaders. Led by President Bush, They were endorsing the prospect of attacks not just on the perpetrators but on those who might have harbored them. From the nuclear priesthood is coming the demand that mini-nukes be deployed on a preemptive basis against the enemies of America.

The targets abroad will be all the usual suspects: rogue states, (most of which, like the Taliban or Saddam Hussein, started off as creatures of U.S. intelligence). The target at home will, of course, be the Bill of Rights. Less than a week ago, the FBI raided Infocom, the Texas-based Web host for Muslim groups such as the Council on Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, the Islamic Association for Palestine and the Holy Land Foundation. Palestinians have been denied visas, and those in this country can, under the terms of the CounterTerrorism Act of the Clinton years, be held and expelled without due process.

The explosions of Tuesday were not an hour old before terror pundits like Anthony Cordesman, Wesley Clark, Robert Gates and Lawrence Eagleburger were saying that these attacks had been possible "because America is a democracy," adding that now some democratic perquisites might have to be abandoned? What might this mean? Increased domestic snooping by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies; ethnic profiling; another drive for a national ID card system.

Tuesday did not offer a flattering exhibition of America's leaders. For most of the day the only Bush who looked composed and in control in Washington was Laura, who happened to be waiting to testify on Capitol Hill. Her husband gave a timid and stilted initial reaction in Sarasota, Fla., then disappeared for an hour before resurfacing at a base in Barksdale, La., where he gave another flaccid address with every appearance of being on tranquilizers. He was then flown to a bunker in Nebraska, before someone finally had the wit to suggest that the best place for an American president at time of national emergency is the Oval Office.

The commentators were incapable of explaining with any depth the likely context of the attacks; that these attacks might be the consequence of the recent Israeli rampages in the Occupied Territories, which have included assassinations of Palestinian leaders and the slaughter of Palestinian civilians with the use of American aircraft; that these attacks might also stem from the sanctions against Iraq that have seen upward of a million children die; that these attacks might, in part, be a response to U.S. cruise missile attacks on the Sudanese factories that had been loosely fingered by U.S. intelligence as connected to bin-Laden.

One certain beneficiary of the attacks is Israel. Polls had been showing popular dislike here for Israel's recent tactics, which may have been the motivation for Colin Powell's few bleats of reproof to Israel. We will be hearing no such bleats in the weeks to come, as Israel's leaders advise America on how exactly to deal with Muslims. The attackers probably bet on that, too, as a way of making the United States' support for Israeli intransigence even more explicit, finishing off Arafat in the process.

"Freedom," said George Bush in Sarasota, Fla., in the first sentence of his first reaction, "was attacked this morning by a faceless coward." That properly represents the stupidity and blindness of almost all of Tuesday's mainstream political commentary. By contrast, the commentary on economic consequences was informative and sophisticated. Worst hit: the insurance industry. Likely outfall in the short-term: hiked energy prices, a further drop in global stock markets. George Bush will have no trouble in raiding the famous lockbox, using Social Security Trust Funds to give more money to the Defense Department. That about sums it up. Three planes are successfully steered into three of America's most conspicuous buildings, and America's response will be to put more money in missile defense as a way of bolstering the economy.