The Herd of Elephants in the Room

On this 5th anniversary of 9/11, the question often heard is: "If Al Gore had been elected, would it have happened?" Having read and viewed many thoughtful commentaries on the incident and its motivations, aftermath and implications, it’s apparent that there are two implacably opposed schools of thought.

The first group advocates that these and other Al Qaeda-inspired attacks on Western interests, both before (USS Cole in Yemen, East African embassies etc) and since (Bali, Madrid, London) are a response to decades of unjust US Middle East policy – specifically its military support for Israel, its cosiness with the regime in Saudi Arabia, and of course the more recent debacle that is Iraq. This is repeatedly stated in Al Qaeda broadcasts and suicide bomber videos, and is self-evident to most commentators, including many senior conservative ex-US Administration figures such as Richard Clarke. Our own very sensible head of the AFP, Mick Keelty, voiced the bleeding obvious some years ago, but was quickly silenced by his political masters.

The second group takes the view that the attacks are because of “what we are, not what we’ve done”. This includes John Howard, the Bush Administration and (with rapidly diminishing conviction) the British Government. The fact that New Zealand, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, and most other ‘Western’ countries have not been targeted by Al Qaeda, is dismissed by this group as yet another ‘inconvenient truth’. They argue that these countries are inevitably next in line – because of their civil freedoms, and their religious traditions. However five years of repetition of this mantra has not convinced the fearful population of the USA, and certainly not Australians. Ask anyone.

I think it's quite probable that if Al Gore had been inaugurated as the rightfully elected President in 2000, and the USA had not lurched so dramatically and suddenly towards the fundamentalist, NeoCon-dominated right, the attacks of 9/11 would not have happened, but of course "they did, Blanche, they did".

But consider the possibility, and the world we might now be living in. I don’t argue there would be no problems. There had been a previous attempt to blow up the WTC, and attacks on US interests (USS Cole etc) during the Clinton years. Post Soviet-occupied Afghanistan under a Pakistan-sponsored Taliban was a dangerous result of Western indifference. Then, as now, there were longstanding resentments of US policy in the Middle East – mainly focussed on perceived double standards regarding Israel/Palestine, but also historically in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia, linked to a widespread perception that US policy was motivated primarily by access to oil. Saudi Arabia has always been the real geopolitical prize in Al Qaeda’s assault on the US and its allies. For the US, apart from oil security, it represents an important client state and military base in the region. For devout Muslims, the presence of US troops and air bases in the Holy Land of the Prophet is a greater affront to Islam than even the recent invasion of Iraq. Before and since the Iraq invasion, several Al Qaeda attacks on Western enclaves in Saudi Arabia itself reinforce this view.

Despite these historical factors, American Middle East policy was improving under both the Bush Snr and Clinton Administrations, moving towards negotiated multilateral solutions, underpinned by political realism and an understanding of the underlying causes of discontent in the region. In 2000, an apparently viable peace process seemed to be taking hold in Palestine, the Intifada had died down, Israel had good and realistic leadership, dialogues had been opened up with Iran and Syria, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein was kept carefully in check, subject to UN weapons inspections and balanced by powerful neighbours.

There is every reason to believe that the highly intelligent Al Gore, advised by some of the best minds in the US, would have built on this legacy, understanding that America’s long-term interests in the region are best served by building consensus, trust and economic opportunity. There was the potential for events to develop very differently, and to usher in a new era of peace and stability in the Middle East. Even without 9/11 the military removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan may still have been ultimately required, but I have no no doubt that Gore would have ensured this happened under the multilateral auspices of the UN or even NATO (like the successful Kosovo campaign).

Into this delicate realpolitik stepped Bush, the most incompetent and ill-educated president in US history, the NeoCon warriors Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle et al, and the bizarre Condoleeza Rice, with her now discredited vision of a ‘Pax Americana’ – i.e. exporting democracy by force. Only poor old Colin Powell stood for reason and commonsense, and had the experience to back it up. Commentators at the time noted an immediate and extreme lurch to the right in American foreign policy (despite a non-existent mandate) – first felt in a sudden chill in relations with China, North Korea, Iran and Syria, but the mutterings about invading Iraq and finishing off what George Bush Snr had left unfinished, were already being heard well before 9/11. This from those who had helped create the monster under Ronald Reagan.

The result? The worst terrorist attack in history and the resulting ‘War on Terror’ – a misnomer if ever there was one. Terrorism is a method, a mindset – you cannot wage a war on it, or not an effective military one. The only way to combat terrorism is to address the motivations driving it, but that would mean acknowledging that it has causes beyond the “who we are, not what we’ve done” mantra. It would mean acknowledging the herd of elephants in the room.

And what has this ‘War on Terror’ delivered in five tears? Hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, unimaginable suffering and displacement, a civil war in Iraq, the resurgence of a fundamentalist Iran, the creation of a rallying point for millions of new jihadists, home grown suicide bombers in western cities, thousands of US soldiers returning in body bags, and Australians a target of terror for the first time in our history. To say nothing of the erosion of the civil liberties for which this so-called war is being fought.

You have to ask yourself whether this is playing out exactly as Osama bin Laden foresaw.
Maybe it’s no too late to elect Al Gore in 2008?