| jayeff |
05-14-2004 04:40 AM |
Most of us accept that we are frequently lied to by politicians and that it's very rare for us to be told the unadorned truth, without some kind of spin.
For example, the "official" translation of the beheading tape has one sentence as "Does Al Quaeda need any further excuses?". That is the basis on which the beheading is attributed to Al Quaeda. But since the speaker says "al quaed" and not "al quaedA", then according to CNN's senior editor for Arab affairs, what he actually said was "Is there any excuse for one who sits down and does nothing?".
And once the official line was that this beheading was the work of Al Quaeda, why not dramatize it a little more, making the speaker Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (someone we are told is very close to Bin Laden and operating in Iraq on his behalf). The only flaw is that Zarqawi is Jordanian and the speaker was not. But how many Americans would know that?
It's only a small step from bending reality to actually creating it. But we don't want to believe our own people or our allies would carry out atrocities just to manipulate our opinions. Even to suggest that, means running the risk of being labelled with the loonies who come up with conspiracy theories for just about everything.
That's the position I find myself in about 911. My reaction was "Arabs" as the first plan hit. But when there was a second plane, then a third, here was something which needed long-term planning and coordination a world apart from anything that Arab terrorists had done before. As far as a private citizen can, I have followed middle east affairs for 35 years, and 911 just didn't fit.
With all the anomalies that have emerged since, I still wouldn't try to argue the case for alternative perpetrators. But even the idea of Al Quaeda as an international terrorist organisation is hard to swallow. It had been known for some time that Bin Laden operated a training camp for terrorists. And as with all such camps, some of the people who passed through went back to their respective countries and put their training to use. So the name "Al Quaeda" had surfaced from time to time and there was every reason to want to shut Bin Laden down. But before 911, I don't recall a single reference to Al Quaeda ("The Base") as more than a training camp.
It is possible that a guy hiding out somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan really does control an international network, but it was also a lucky coincidence that he happened to be based in the very country where we wanted to start an oil pipeline. I don't doubt that for a while the world might be a marginally safer place without Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. But I also believe that they have been demonized and their potential impact on world affairs has been hugely exaggerated in order to get American voters lined up behind a quite different program from the one we are being sold.
That isn't as blatant as the outright misdirection that Donovan was thinking about. But we are being played just as effectively.
|
