In human terms, the events of September 11 were a great tragedy: 5,000 lives snuffed out in a terrifying few minutes, 5,000 families deprived of a loved one, an entire nation traumatized. As Mayor Guiliani said, " it is more than any of us can bear." Yet, I think the tragedy will go far beyond anything we have yet been able to realize.

One of the first questions that sprang into many minds was "Why are so many people so angry at the U.S.?" A shocked naive innocence was expressed on that day by Attorney General Ashcroft when he asked "Why us? What have we done?" The American people see themselves as a generous and kind-hearted people who do not deserve such hatred, such violence.

To answer that question, why so many people have hatred toward the U.S., we need to put the events of September 11 into a historical context. We need to look honestly at the role of the U.S. in the world over the last half century. Specifically, we need to look at the Cold War.

The Cold War ended over a decade ago. It was a 40 yearlong struggle between two superpowers: the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. It ended when the arms race finally bankrupted the U.S.S.R. resulting in its collapse. They could no longer sustain the struggle either economically or politically. But the U.S. -the sole surviving superpower-has also paid a heavy price, a debt that is now coming due in a terrifying fashion.

You see, in order to prevail in the Cold War, the U.S. put itself in opposition to almost every progressive movement anywhere in the world. A few brief examples:

» Item #1: In 1953 the CIA overthrew a reform-minded government in Iran and installed the Shah in power, insuring that Western oil companies would continue to control that nation's chief natural resource. He ruled by repressive means fully backed by the U.S. for 26 years until he was overthrown by a fundamentalist Muslim movement in 1979.20

» Item #2: In 1954 the CIA overthrew an elected progressive president in Guatemala who had threatened to nationalize United Fruit land, a company in which the Dulles brothers had major interests. John Foster Dulles was Secretary of State and Alan Dulles was head of the CIA. So the U.S. backed the wealthy oligarchy, which maintained its oppressive rule over the poor majority by the most brutal means for more than four decades.

» Item #3: In 1961 the CIA assassinated the popular anti-colonial Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba to maintain Western control of the mineral wealth of that former Belgian colony.

» Item #4: Since it overthrew a corrupt U.S. backed dictator in 1959, Cuba has been a special target of U.S. aggression. From a failed invasion, repeated assassination attempts, sabotage, disinformation, and the longest and most thorough economic blockade in our history, the U.S. continues to this day to seek the overthrow of Cuba's government and the return of that island to U.S. economic and political control. Cuba is the one example of a progressive nation that has been able to survive such U.S. attacks -much to the admiration of most of the world.

» Item #5: Chile was not so fortunate. It's Marxist President, Salvador Allende, was overthrown and assassinated in a U.S. backed military coup in 1973 (September 11th, to be exact), ushering in two decades of harsh repression under the dictator, General Augusto Pinochet. This was in spite of the fact that Allende had been elected in a free, democratic election -in spite of U.S. efforts to prevent that. In the memorable words of then National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people."

» Item #6: In 1979 the people of Nicaragua overthrew the corrupt U.S. backed dictator, Anastacio Somoza, ushering in a reform-minded government. The U.S. conducted a decade long dirty war against it, secretly using funds from illegal arms sales to Iran to finance Somoza's thugs in a terror campaign to overthrow it. The U.S. refused to accept several elections in Nicaragua when its revolutionaries won, until finally in 1990, a war-weary people finally elected a government to the liking of the U.S. in hopes that its rich northern neighbor would help it get back on its feet. But the U.S promptly forgot about the country it had spent a decade ravaging.

» Item #7: For decades the U.S. supported the apartheid white minority government in South Africa against the struggles of the Black majority for democracy, branding the African National Congress as "terrorist". It also supported South African surrogates in neighboring states who fought to overthrow progressive forces in Mozambique, Angola and Namibia.

» Item #8: Finally we come to Afghanistan. In the late 1970s, a reform-minded government sought to modernize the culture, changing many oppressive practices against women. This brought the ire of Muslim fundamentalists. The U.S. began to aid these groups, hoping thereby to lure the Soviet Union into a trap by aiding the government. The trap worked and the U.S.S.R. became bogged down in a Vietnam-like war that bled it dearly. The CIA aided these reactionary fundamentalists to the tune of $3 billion, leveraging that amount by promoting heroin as a cash crop. The Soviet Union was defeated, the country was devastated, and the U.S. left it to the competing tribal fundamentalist terrorists it had trained, organized, equipped and financed (with the help of Saudi friends).

And the list could go on and on. All told, it has been calculated that since World War II, direct and indirect U.S. military and covert action has taken 10 million lives.

Yes, the U.S. did win the Cold War. But at what a price! By crushing every progressive movement that it could, it not only denied the U.S.S.R. new allies in its sphere of influence, it also dashed the hopes of the wretched masses of the earth for liberation from oppression and exploitation. And it bred a deeply felt resentment beneath the silence that was imposed on them. It is not envy of "our freedom and prosperity" (as Bush would have us believe) that they feel against us. It is resentment of the arrogant domination over them that we have imposed. That is what moves the anti-Americanism that now haunts us. For over a half century the U.S. inflicted violence on the wretched of the earth. Now they have turned the guns on us. As Malcolm X said, "the chickens are coming home to roost." Or, in CIA parlance, it's blowback time, as previous actions, both covert and overt, both tactical and strategic, now blowback on us in the most frightful ways.

Don't get me wrong. The terrorist attack of September 11 was terribly wrong, both morally and strategically. It richly deserves the appellation 'evil' in its callous disregard for the suffering of others. And it was strategically wrong in that its terror brings forth a still greater terror in response as violence begets violence. An eye for an eye will soon leave us all blind --blind to what is good in the other and blind to what is evil in ourselves. The terrorism of some of the most reactionary elements in the Islamic world has strengthened some of the most reactionary elements in our own ruling elite. That too is blowback.

By destroying progressive forces around the world, the Cold War left behind only reactionary elements with the power to act. And that is now threatening to extinguish what progressive elements remain here in the U.S. as we are drowned out by the war hysteria being whipped up by our political elite. It even makes it difficult to hear the voices that urge us to look within ourselves to understand how we might have brought this tragedy on ourselves.

It is said a nation gets the leaders it deserves. It is also true that the leaders get the enemy they deserve.

But what of the American people? We are very much like the family of a Mafia boss who does not know what their father does, and don't want to know, but then wonder why someone just threw a firebomb through the living room window. Most Americans don't know, don't want to know, and have been told little about what our national political elite has done in our name.

This elite has not served America well. While it has built the greatest empire in the history of mankind, the American people are now paying the price of that empire. The attack of September 11 targeted centers of U.S. economic and military dominance in the world. But what made it so morally wrong was the resulting heavy "collateral damage" (to use that cold hearted term of the military mind). So it was interpreted as an attack on the American people, rather than the American Empire. And so now the Empire is able to strike back with the full support of the American people. And I fear what we will see result from that is the further consolidation of the national security state that our political elite has been constructing over the past 60 years. Rather than dismantling those institutions and policies that have placed us all in great jeopardy, we are now faced with what may well be an irrevocable strengthening of the national security state -the permanent militarization of American society in the service of the transnational corporations -the true beneficiaries of the Empire. We are a generous and kind-hearted people; we deserve better.

The up side of the Cold War was that in order to present a humane face to the world, our elite had to concede to popular demands for expanded social programs as part of the national defense. Since the end of the Cold War we have seen those social programs severely curtailed under a rampant neo-liberal philosophy. Now in the new period ahead of us with the right wing of our elite firmly in charge, I expect we will be told to accept further curtailment of the social gains won by a century of popular struggles. That too will be a price we will have to pay for Empire.

October 2001