[lit-ideas] The Hyperpower Hype

From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2006 03:20:51 -0700 (PDT)
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=73663

(excerpts)

The brilliance of the al-Qaeda assault that day lay in
its creation of a vision of destruction out of all
proportion to the organization's modest strength. At
best, al-Qaeda had adherents in the thousands as well
as a "headquarters" and training camps located in the
backlands of one of the poorest countries on the
planet. 

Its leaders made the bold decision to launch an attack
on the political and the financial capitals of what
was then regularly termed the globe's "sole
hyperpower." Although this face-off might have seemed
the ultimate definition of asymmetric warfare, in
terms of theatrical value -- no small thing in our
world of 24/7 news and entertainment -- the struggle
turned out to be eerily symmetrical. By the look of it
(but only the look), the Earth's lone superpower met
its match that day. With box cutters, mace, two
planes, and the use of Microsoft piloting software to
speed their learning curve, a few determined fanatics,
ready to kill and die, took aim at the two most iconic
(if uninspired) buildings at the financial heart of
the American system and managed to top the climax of
any disaster film ever shot. What they created, in
fact, was a Hollywood-style vision of the apocalypse,
enough so that our media promptly dubbed the spot
where those two towers crumbled in those vast clouds
of dust and smoke, "Ground Zero," a term previously
reserved for an atomic explosion. 

This was -- let's be blunt -- an extraordinary
accomplishment for a tiny band of men with one of the
more extreme religious/political ideologies around;
and, if the testimony under CIA interrogation of
al-Qaeda's Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is to be believed --
summaries were released at the Moussaoui sentencing
hearing -- what happened seems to have stunned even
him. ("According to the CIA summary, he said he ?had
no idea that the damage of the first attack would be
as catastrophic as it was.'") 

And yet, so many years later, there have been no
follow-up attacks here. This was obviously never the
equivalent of breaking through military lines in war.
There were no al-Qaeda troops poised to pour through
that breach, ransack the rubble, and spread across New
York; nor, like the Japanese at Pearl Harbor (to which
the 9/11 assault was often compared), did al-Qaeda
launch a simultaneous set of strikes elsewhere. Of
this sort of activity the group was incapable. Such
acts were far beyond its means. 

By the look of it, there weren't even sleeper cells in
the U.S. ready to launch devastating follow-up
attacks. (Given the Bush administration's record from
New Orleans to Iraq, we can take it for granted that
its officials would have been incapable of stopping
any such well-planned attacks.) As far as we can tell,
most of the major terrorist assaults launched since
then, from Bali to Baghdad, were essentially
franchised operations, undertaken by groups who
claimed a kinship of inspiration and ideology; and, in
a number of devastating cases, including London and
Madrid, by small, self-organized groups, brought to a
boil by Bush's War in Iraq, who struck on their own
as, in essence, al-Qaeda wannabes. What al-Qaeda has
really been promoting, because it was never capable of
promoting much else, is a DIY world of terrorism. 


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[lit-ideas] The Hyperpower Hype

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