Tuesday 22 May 2012

Pointer Fingers


People around the World remember where they were on the morning of 9/11. I was 7 years old, eating cinnamon toast for breakfast before school. I remember the phone ringing, the blood draining from my mothers face, and a sudden flurry of activity as she rushed around the house turning on all the radios and TV's. I remember watching in confusion as the second tower fell to the ground in real time on the screen. At seven years old, the concept of global conflict is a hard one to grapple with. Today, I still face the questions I formulated over a decade ago on the morning of September 11th. I think the most prominent question I have is  WHO did this and WHY? I have already begun to address the "why" questions in my previous blog posts, so in this one I am going to explore the "who" questions that have taken me over a decade to understand.  

Front page of the New York Times September 11, 2001




Perhaps the most convoluted topic in the argument of "who was responsible for 9/11" is the role of President Bush. There are many activists poised with "9/11 was an inside job" stickers ready to put the blame on Bush and the United States government. There are political analysts, who have said they do not believe Bush had any part in planning the attacks. There are film-makers and journalists who angrily speak of the "warning signs" the US was given, and Bush's lack of interest in reading reports foreshadowing the attacks. Everywhere I turn, someone is pointing a finger at someone else. Largely, the blame is placed on the United States government. For the sake of this blog post, I am going to try to play devil's advocate. Which is a difficult role to play when there are so many "devils" on the playing field.


After 9/11, the first target was placed. This fell on Osama bin Laden, the Saudi founder of Al-Qaeda. His bounty was set at $25 million dollars by the FBI. In August 1996 bin Laden had issued a "Declaration of War" against the U.S. Bin Laden was the "guest" of the Taliban in Afghanistan until the U.S. drove them from power in Nov. 2001. Al-Qaeda set up terrorist training camps in the war-torn nation, as it had previously in Sudan. 


Osama Bin Laden
Source: STR/Reuters
Under the Bush administration, two million U.S. troops were deployed over the course of the War in Iraq. However, the real stakeholders in the conflict were not high profile politicians, radical terrorist leaders, or brave young American soldiers. The true stakeholders, who would suffer tremendously through the harsh reality of war for the next decade, were the Iraqi people. In 2009, Canadian author Deborah Ellis published a book entitled Children of War. The book contained hundreds of personal stories from children living in Iraq during the war. Here are three quotes that stood out in particular for me.


Source: Amazon

 
 "It's possible that we may soon be living in America.. I don't know how I feel about living in America, seeing the American flag every day. These are the people who destroyed my country, and they are over there across the ocean living a good life. They destroy things, then they forget about it and have a good supper and watch television... The Americans cut down trees in my country, and we will be looking at trees still standing in America. The Americans bombed our bridges, and we will be walking across bridges still standing in America. They killed children in my country, and we will be going to school with children who have never known troubles. I don't like to think about it."
Hibba, 16. Page 23-24.

"There was a lot of resistance in our area to the American troops. This wasn't because our area was full of terrorists. This was because people didn't like to see foreign troops trying to control their country. How would Americans or Canadians feel if there were Iraqi troops on your streets, and these Iraqi troops broke down doors and tried to tell you what to do?"
 Masim, 15. Page 91

"I wish we could use music somehow to stop war. Maybe it sounds silly, but instead of picking up a gun, soldiers should instead pick up a guitar or a saxophone or a trumpet. They could have battles with music, to see who could make the best music. That would make the world much, much better." 
Yeman, 13. Page 124 

These raw, candid depictions of war through the eyes of children made me realize that war is not (no-pun-intended) child's play. Waging war is a serious act of violence which impacts the lives of millions of people. Children in Iraq were often unable to attend school or go out walking in their neighborhoods during the war. Families were torn apart and forced into poverty. On the American side, it has been reported that 30% of soldiers deployed to Iraq, suffered post traumatic stress disorder within 4 or 5 months of returning home. 


Even though the war is over now, I still find myself plagued with questions. Given all of the information I have collected, I cannot help but ask "Was it worth it?"  The War in Iraq, brought chaos not only to the Middle East but also into the homes of North Americans. Post 9/11, I noticed a shift in the North American mindset. This shift favoured racism towards people of Middle Eastern descent. Middle Eastern people faced difficulty getting through airport security and were unjustly viewed in a negative light. This issue falls back onto the media. Media is arguably the most influential stakeholder in today's society. Media has the power to instill hatred and implement peace. In the case of 9/11, the mainstream media did nothing to establish an environment for peace keeping. Instead, it rallied the viewers of the World in preparation for the violent decade to come. The more I think about it, the more I can see how media's disproportionate power over society has negative affects on our lives. I have come to the realization that perhaps the solution to global conflict is sitting in our living rooms, and inside the pockets of our clothing. Now that the War in Iraq has ended, we must move forward in a manner which prevents dark elements in history from repeating themselves. I am intrigued by the notion that media, if used correctly, may have the power to do just that. I'll speak more on that in a later post. For now, I'll leave you with a question: "Can war be moral? Is there any justifiable reason to wage war in the first place?" Leave your comments below. After all, everybody loves a little controversy.

Thursday 10 May 2012

Cue Confusion


In December 2011, President Barack Obama declared the War in Iraq officially over and announced the withdrawal of thousands of American troops from the war torn country. In an article written by Greg Jaffe for the Washington Post entitled "Did the Iraq war have an iconic ending?" Jaffe depicted images of post-war reunions from previous conflicts. "The 1945 Life magazine photo of a sailor planting a kiss on an unsuspecting woman in Times Square captured the joy at the end of World War II." These sepia-toned descriptions evoked a sense of nostalgia within me and for a brief moment turned what was a brutal massacre into a romanticized moment in history. Shortly thereafter, the honeymoon was over. After searching "causes of the Iraq war" I received 20.6 million search results. Perhaps my most poignant finding was a response to a Yahoo answers question. The question read "Why did the war in Iraq end?" The first commenter said "I'm still waiting for the answer on why it began." Herein lies the dilemma. 


The famous "sailor kiss" picture.
Life Magazine, 1945
While researching the War in Iraq, I have hit a sizable wall many, many times. I find myself continually faced with the question of why the Americans went to Iraq in the first place. I am not quick to jump to conspiracy theories. Consequently, I find it hard to believe that the lives of thousands of innocent civilians and soldiers were lost solely over oil. However, upon further inspection, I have come to the sickening conclusion that this may have been just the case. Over the span of the 9-year war, the Americans located NO Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. What they did find, was a poverty stricken country full of courageous individuals trying to go about their everyday lives while living in the war zone they inflicted. 
George W. Bush and his father were both in the oil business in America. During the 1990's, Salem Bin-Laden, Osama's older brother, was an investor in Arbusto Oil. Arbusto was started by George Bush. One of Bush's earliest financial backers was James Bath. Bath served with President Bush in the Texas Air National Guard. Bath has a mysterious connection to the Central Intelligence Agency. According to a 1976 trust agreement, Salem bin Laden appointed James Bath as his business representative in Houston. Bath's relationship with the bin Laden financial empire and the CIA was made public in 1992 by Bill White, a former real estate business partner with Bath. White informed federal investigators in 1992 that Bath told him that he had assisted the CIA in a liaison role since 1976 - the same year former President George Herbert Walker Bush served as director of the CIA. White told a Texas court in 1992 that Bath and the Justice Department had "blackballed" him professionally and financially because he refused to keep quiet about his knowledge of an Arabic conspiracy to launder Middle Eastern money into the bank accounts of American businesses and politicians. 
In the movie Farenheit 9/11, Michael Moore narrates a brief section over a video of President Bush on the morning of 9/11. Bush, visiting an elementary school, becomes glazed and non-responsive upon being informed of the attacks occurring in New York. During the footage, Moore asks "What was Bush thinking about while he sat there? Was he wondering if his Saudi friends and business partners from the Middle East had betrayed him?" In my research, I began to see the link between Bush and the bin Laden Family. Now, do I think Bush was privy to the attacks on 9/11 or had some connection to them? Absolutely not. However, I do feel that his ties with them created somewhat of a dependency which hindered the process of identifying the organizers behind 9/11. For instance, after the planes  hit the twin towers, airports shut down and no flights were allowed to leave the United States. However, on September 11th, several private aircrafts were hired by the United States government to fly members of the Bin Laden family visiting America back home to the Middle East. The Bin Laden's were not questioned, or even put through standardized security checks before the flights. As we all know, security measures since 9/11 have increased and made it more difficult and cumbersome for the average person to travel. Why then, was the Bin Laden family permitted to fly without any trouble at all while the rest of the nation was put on lock down? 
George Bush, on the morning of 9/11 being informed of the attack on
the World Trade Center while visiting an elementary school in Florida.
Credit: Reuters/Win McNamee/Files
Truth be told, I don't know what caused the Iraq war or why it started. I could go on forever naming facts and pulling up reports but I believe that no one will ever truly know why the war started or who the real mastermind behind it was. I can see that 20,600,000 google search results have tried. All I know, is that I've come to realize that there is nothing romantic about war. No sepia-toned memories can erase the atrocities. No yellow ribbons or bumper stickers can make violence justifiable. Where innocent people are killed, there is no glory. And when a President can wage a war without justifying it, I see the repercussions of the human condition. I feel that somewhere at the heart of the U.S./Iraq conflict there is greed. Admittedly, Iraq is an untapped market of oil. If nothing more, the U.S. may have invaded the country just to get their chance at the jackpot. I want to believe that there is more to it then that. That the U.S. thought they were doing something for the greater good. But quite frankly, I just don't see it. If there's one thing I've been reminded of over the course of my research, it is that at our biological cores, human beings are animals. 

Tuesday 1 May 2012

The 'Era of Terror'

On January 20, 2001 George W. Bush was inaugurated as the 43rd President of the United States.  Unbeknownst to him, this moment marked the beginning of a convoluted and tragic era. Bush's presidency would arguably be the most controversial in America's history; laden with unimaginable violence, media misrepresentations, and an overall sense of fear and confusion. 
On election night of 2000; Florida, a swing state, was announced to have elected Democratic candidate Al Gore for presidency on mainstream TV networks across America. Several moments later, counter information was presented by Fox News announcing that Bush had, in fact, taken the state of Florida by a mere one precent over Gore. Upon this information being released, other news stations apologized for the confusion and also changed the state of Florida to have favoured Bush. Controversially, the man who announced Bush's election in Florida at Fox News was none other than Bush's first cousin John Ellis! Even more suspicious is the fact that Bush's brother, Jeb Bush, was the Governor of Florida at the time of the election. Furthermore, the chairwoman of the Bush campaign, Katherine Harris, was the official vote tallier for the state. During the campaign, Harris had hired Data Base Technologies to remove voters from the voting list. At the time, this action was supported by the notion that the removed voters were convicted criminals. However, upon further investigation, it was found that the only commonality between these voters was that they were of Black or Hispanic descent and were likely to have voted against Bush. Essentially, things weren't going well and Bush hadn't even been sworn in yet!

Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris
Source: Associated Press

The outcry of independent media and Americans suspicious of the scandal was quickly dampened by the mainstream American Media and ALL members of the American Senate. The House of Representatives saw many (predominantly African-American) representatives beg the senate to consider investigating Bush's win in the state of Florida. With the signature of a single senator, their requests would be honoured. They received no signatures. 
Bush spent an alleged 42% of the first eight months of his reign as President on vacation. So lets fast forward through the details of his golf career, time spent on his farm in Texas, and pictures of him petting his beloved Scottish Terriers Barney and Miss Beazley; and begin on September 11, 2001. A day that shook the world to its core and opened up Pandora's box to the frightening reality of the consequences ignorance can have. As the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre fell that morning, so crumbled the principle of peace and humanitarianism which had been valued and upheld by the American people for decades. The World entered into the age of terror. Trust dissolved. Suddenly, our neighbors became suspects and our foreheads suddenly felt like target circles. 

September 30, 2001: Bush declares 'War on Terror'
Source: Win McNamee/Associated Press




With nowhere to turn and a longing for answers, Americans found refuge in media. The message they received was concise and confident: terrorists from the Middle East have come to attack the most powerful country on Earth. A sudden sense of “US and THEM” was established. A classic scenario of “good guys” versus “bad guys” was laid out before them. The only problem was that the “bad guys” suddenly encompassed entire countries thousands of miles away full of civilians who had never been seen or heard by many Americans. Suddenly, “terrorists” could be characterized by the clothing they wore or the religion they practiced. With a terror agenda of their own, the Bush administration pushed forward and spread their message of security threats across North America. With the help of corporately managed media, and the motivation of oil money; the U.S. proudly marched its way into a 21st century nightmare, also known as the “War on Terror”. 


“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”

George W. Bush
September 20, 2001