9/11 Anniversary 9 Years On

For many, Obama's 9/11 rallying cry rings hollow

By Bill Van Auken

The American people were first told that their enemy was Osama bin Laden, who was assigned responsibility for the September 11 attacks, events that remain shrouded in mystery and have yet to be subjected to any credible investigation.

That bin Laden began his career as a CIA “asset” in Afghanistan, when massive amounts of US military and financial aid were being poured into financing an Islamist insurgency against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul, is something neither the government nor the media wished to dwell upon.
Then the Bush administration launched an unprovoked war against Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban government, which had come to power with US support, and install its own puppet regime, backed by US troops. The hunt for bin Laden was largely abandoned.
Within a year and a half of 9/11, the enemy became the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, which had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks. The war was launched based upon lies about “weapons of mass destruction” and fabricated links between Baghdad and Al Qaeda.
Now the Obama administration is engaged in the continued occupation of Iraq and a major escalation of the war in Afghanistan, as the number of US troops killed in both wars has climbed to nearly 5,700.
Obama is claiming that 100,000 US troops are in Afghanistan to battle Al Qaeda, even as US commanders acknowledge that there are less than 100 members of the terrorist group in the entire country.
That the anniversary of 9/11, used by two administrations to legitimize war crimes and violations of constitutional rights, is now overshadowed by the Koran-burning circus is symptomatic of a deep-going crisis within the US ruling establishment.
The wars that were supposed to secure US domination of key global energy resources have produced only mayhem and instability, while opposition to them among the American people is at record levels.
The concern that the demented actions of a Florida religious sect could endanger the military’s effort in Afghanistan is indicative of the fragility of the US occupation of that country.
Meanwhile, Obama’s attempt to use the September 11 anniversary to affirm that “we are all Americans” and must “stand together” rings ever more hollow.