by Ron Unz, The Unz Review:
The eleven month anniversary of the October 7th Hamas attacks on Israel passed two days ago and in two more days we will reach the twenty-third anniversary of the September 11th Attacks on America.
Both these events have become so infamous that they are now among the tiny handful that can easily be identified merely by the date on which they occurred, and they are both likely to be remembered for their world historic significance. The 2001 attacks unleashed a long series of devastating Middle Eastern wars, and last year’s Hamas attack now threatens to do the same, perhaps drawing in the United States. There are differences as well as some significant parallels, but taken together they may have combined consequences that are too controversial to be widely discussed.
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From almost the first hours after the huge October raid by Gaza militants, Israeli officials and their media allies had declared that the attack was Israel’s own 9/11, and I believe that in many respects that analogy is a very apt one.
Back in 2001, the newly installed administration of President George W. Bush had paid little attention to foreign affairs and almost none to the Middle East, with its focus overwhelmingly upon domestic political projects. Bush had actively courted Muslim support during his 2000 campaign while promising Americans that he would pursue a “humble” foreign policy. All of these plans were transformed in a single day as tens of millions of Americans watched the towers of our World Trade Center collapse and the newscasters reported that the Pentagon had also been attacked and seriously damaged.
Not since the Pearl Harbor attack of 1941 had America suffered such an enemy assault on its own soil, and nearly 3,000 Americans were dead, so major military retaliation was inevitable. But with our top leaders reeling in dismay and confusion, uncertain exactly how to respond, a tight network of fervently pro-Israel Neocons situated in various sub-Cabinet positions quickly sprang into action. These individuals took advantage of the sudden, unexpected crisis to convince their superiors to undertake a long-planned agenda of regime change operations and wars across much of the Middle East and other portions of the Muslim world, a project largely intended to reshape that region for the benefit of Israel.
In the initial days and weeks after those terrorist attacks, America attracted huge sympathy from the entire world, but we would soon squander that important geostrategic asset by launching an unprovoked war of aggression against Iraq, justifying that attack by blatant lies regarding Saddam Hussein’s WMDs. The cycle of resulting wars we set into motion would lead to the death or displacement of many millions of Muslim civilians, severely damaging our national reputation and upsetting the regional balance of power. Those wars mostly ended in shame and humiliation, while costing our country as much as eight trillion dollars. My old friend Bill Odom, the three-star general who had run the NSA for Ronald Reagan, later described our Iraq War as “the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history,” and I entirely seconded his verdict.
The 9/11 Attacks themselves had inflicted relatively minor injury upon America. But the gigantic, ideologically-driven overreaction promoted by extremist elements of the Bush Administration severely damaged our national interests and global reputation, inflicting losses vastly greater than anything that a few hijacked jetliners could possibly have done.
The Hamas raid against Israel seemed to follow a remarkably similar trajectory. At the time it occurred, Israelis were entirely focused upon domestic issues, especially a very bitter ideological battle over judicial reform between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his political opponents, with almost no one paying any attention to the simmering conflict with the Palestinians, least of all the ones in quiet Gaza. Just as the American people and its leaders had assumed that our country was protected from any significant foreign attack by two wide oceans, the Israelis had put their faith in the elaborate, high-tech defenses they had erected around the besieged Gaza enclave at the cost of a half-billion dollars, believing that these were completely impenetrable.
