9/11 Commission: Failure No. 4

July 29, 2004

In its workmanlike account of the birth and rise of bin Ladenism, the 9/11 Commission flatly ignores America's role in creating the conditions for the triumph of that ideology, including of course, its support for the Afghan jihad, sponsoring the training of the “Arab Afghans,” and creating the monster that stalked the world in the 1990s. In keeping with its obsessive need to find “consensus” among the five Republicans and five Democrats on the panel—which steered the panel away from making any observations about whether the war in Iraq helped or hurt the War On Terrorism, and away from saying if the 9/11 attacks could have been prevented—the 9/11 Commission also avoided casting any blame for the pandemonium that followed on the American support for the jihadists of the 1980s in Afghanistan, and on American foreign policy more specifically.

In fact, throughout the report, its account of both the history of U.S. foreign policy and of domestic counterterrorism is painted in soft, pastel colors—no evildoers there.

The commission’s history of the region is laughably flawed. “After gaining independence from Western powers following World War II, the Arab Middle East followed an arc from initial pride and optimism to today’s mix of indifference, cynicism and despair.” (Page 52)  But the chief Arab countries—Egypt , Iraq , and Syria —were long independent by then, and Saudi Arabia was never colonized. Whatever “despair” settled in by the 1960s had more to do with America ’s imperial role in the Middle East than with some failing by Arab leaders. Secular Arab leaders—that is, those opposed to fanatical Islam—were vigorously suppressed by American foreign policy, including a countless string of CIA-inspired coups d’etat, revolts, ethnic insurgencies, and, of course, wars sparked by American- and European-backed Israeli regimes in 1956 and 1967. The commission ignores all this, but says: “The bankruptcy of secular, autocratic nationalism was evident across the Muslim world by the late 1970s.” True—but had the United States supported Iran’s Mossadegh, Egypt’s Nasser, Algeria’s Ben Bella, and secular Syrian and Iraqi leaders rather than blindly approaching the Middle East and the Arab world as a Cold War battleground, things might have been different.

What caused bin Ladenism? According to the commission, it was “social and economic malaise.” (Shades of Jimmy Carter!) Then, it says, “A decade of conflict in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 gave Islamist extremists a rallying point and training field…. Young Muslims from around the world flocked to Afghanistan to join as volunteers in what was seen as a ‘holy war’—jihad—against an invader.” That’s it. No mention of the CIA’s role in backing Osama bin Laden and his crew. No mention of the CIA, working with Egypt and Saudi Arabia , in recruiting the jihadists. The fact that the CIA encouraged the most vicious of the Afghan fundamentalists because they were seen as the most bloodthirsty in killing Soviet soldiers goes unmentioned.

Not that any of this is secret. But the commission blithely ignores history in its report. (It goes without saying that there’s no mention of U.S. support for the Taliban in the 1990s.)