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Two Years and Counting - No Closure
Editorial Team
Two books have recently been released, "Why America Slept" by Gerald Posner
and "Who Killed Daniel Pearl" by Bernard-Henri Levy
[Links to these two books are given below.].
Anyone who believes the "war on terror" is going in the right direction, and
that the tens of billions being spent by the war's leader, America, are being
wisely spent, would do well to pick up these two books and read them cover to
cover. These books, and many other pieces of the terrorism puzzle that are yet
to be stitched together, bring two nagging questions come to mind. Has
sufficient effort really been made to determine who were all the actors and what
were all the funding sources behind and attached to 9/11? And are the forces
that acted as enablers for Bin Laden and his henchmen being sufficiently
neutralized to make sure that they do not enable another 9/11?
The killing of Wall Street Journal South Asia editor Daniel Pearl is tied to
many of the same networks that were involved in 9/11. In fact the accused
murderer, Omar Sheikh had wired funds from Pakistan to WTC hijacker Mohammed
Atta. Posner's book explores further ties to 9/11 with Pakistani and Saudi
officials, several of whom died in mysterious circumstances in the year after
Abu Zubaidah's revelations about their links to the WTC and Pentagon attacks.
Omar Sheikh himself remains in Pakistan, with Musharraf refusing to allow his
extradition to the US. On its part, the Bush administration has hardly made an
effort to demand access to Sheikh, who could shed plenty of light on many of the
unknowns about 9/11.
Sheikh is only the tip of the iceberg though. Has anyone tried to finish the job
that Daniel Pearl embarked upon when he met his ghastly death, i.e., question
Sheikh Gilani, whose protégé Richard Reid tried to blow up an airbus with a shoe
bomb? B. Raman of the South Asia Analysis Group reminds us that the present ISI
chief, Ehsanul Haq, and the ISI chief during 2001, Mahmud Ahmed, both may have
been aware of 9/11 plans before the attacks were carried out. With two of his
ISI chiefs in the know, did Musharraf, Bush W.’s ugliest blue-eyed boy, also
know? Do we know the details of how Musharraf and Bin Laden collaborated in the
genocide in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir in response to a Shia uprising? Do we
know how US operations against Al Qaeda are leaked out in the tribal belts of
Pakistan, forcing American forces to stop bringing Pakistanis into the loop?
Have we asked Musharraf why the city of Quetta, hardly part of the
"uncontrollable tribal areas", has become the new haven for the Taliban? Have we
explored the mysterious deaths of Pakistani and Saudi officials who could have
helped piece together the 9/11 puzzle? A host of questions remain unanswered,
nay unasked, two years after 9/11!
The only thing we are told is that President Bush is fighting the war on terror
and now he needs another check, this time for over $80 billion. The question to
ask is, how is this money going to be spent? Is it being used to obliterate the
threats that helped create 9/11? Well we are now mired in Iraq, which had no
relation to 9/11, due to the detour in the war on terror. What about the perils
in Pakistan that had been exposed by 9/11? Let's check off some of them. The
Taliban is now back in action with Pakistani support, and attacking US soldiers
and the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. The groups that supported the Al
Qaeda - the uniquely Pakistani alphabet terror soup of LET, JEM, HUM and HUJI -
are all thriving under new names designed to avoid US sanctions. And the Al
Qaeda itself is working facelessly and namelessly to continue its mission - the
destruction of the US. Of course Pakistan hands over an Al Qaeda operative every
now and then, but in doing so it is actually preserving that terrorist outfit to
come back and destroy the infidels at a more suitable time. When the Bush
administration gets hold of an Al Qaeda guy, it writes another billion dollar
check to Musharraf and moves on to the manufactured Axis of Evil, which was
created at the whim of the neo-con cabal in the Pentagon.
The Saudis are equally adept at playing the double game, and the Bush
administration refuses to open the files on them, citing the usual national
security excuses. Has Bush acknowledged that the Saudis had a mutual
understanding with Bin Laden that both sides would keep out of each other’s way
as long as Laden’s jihad was directed outside the Saudi kingdom? US national
security would not be threatened by opening the Saudi dossiers or by reversing
the see no evil policy towards Pakistan. But it will be threatened by diverting
the terror war for personal pipe dreams of the neo-cons and for oil and
Halliburton. The result of the Iraq war is that the flashpoint for jehad is no
longer Palestine, or Kashmir, or Chechnya. The new jehad flashpoint is the US.
And the end result of the Iraq war is not that "we will be fighting the
terrorists outside the US", but that countless new recruits of the jehadi
persuasion will join the battle against the US and sooner or later, one or more
of them will succeed on US soil itself. As Levy points out in his book on
Pearl's murder, the war against Saddam was simply a circus aimed at deceiving
the world, while we pretend to enlist the Devil’s own world, Pakistan.
No, there is no closure two years later, there isn’t even an attempt at closure,
just the morose wait for the inevitable next 9/11. |
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