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George W. Bush–who had won a bizarre election in 2000 that was finally
decided by the Supreme Court even though he lost the popular vote and got
the electoral votes of Florida, where his brother was governor, under incred-
ibly suspicious circumstances–took office in January 2001. Little did anyone
know that the world was about to change dramatically and within a few years
the U.S. would be involved in two major wars and the Middle East would be
in total upheaval.Prologue to 9/11/01
Images of September 11th, 2001 will always scar us. Two airplanes, hijacked
by terrorists associated with the al Qaeda group led by Osama bin Laden,
slammed into World Trade Center buildings in New York; another hijacked
plane went down in a wooded area in Pennsylvania, killing all aboard; and a
fourth plane crashed into the Pentagon in Washington D.C. In all, over 3000
people died in the attacks. It was the single worst day of terrorism in U.S.
history.
We now speak of “9/11” with a level of seriousness and depth that only a
few other events in U.S. history have, much like the World War II generation
remembered Pearl Harbor. It has become the defining moment in modern
life. Yet, to simply focus on September 11th would be a historical mistake.
Events do not happen in a vacuum or without context, and the events of that
date have a long background, and we ignore it at our peril. Nothing, of course,
will ever justify the horrors of 9/11 yet it is crucial to understand them
within their larger framework–namely, U.S. affairs in the Middle East, particu-
larly in the post-1945 era. While the media and politicians overwhelmingly
discuss 9/11 in the context of “Islamic fundamentalism” or a “clash of civili-
zations,” it is more completely examined as part of a longer history of impe-
rial control, struggles for influence and access, support of Israel, and, perhaps
most importantly, the importance of oil. In fact, the first confrontation of the
Cold War, as we have seen, between the U.S. and Soviet Union was a conflict
over oil, in Iran. Not long after, the U.S. sponsored a coup to remove
Mossadegh from power in Iran, and helped prevent a major war from erupting
in 1956 when Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. And meanwhile, Israel
became a state, removed Arabs by the millions, and received billions of dollars
in U.S. aid throughout the post-World War II period.