Two decades of U.S. policy appear to be rooted in a mistaken understanding of what happened that day. archive
I’m old enough to remember the 9/11 attacks. It was never in question that Saudi Arabia was complicit in what happened. The majority of the terrorists were Saudi. It took a bit longer for the fact that the Saudi government was complicit to emerge, but we knew within a short time that at the very least, they provided financial support to the terrorists.
The argument for starting the “war on terror” was that Al-Qaeda planned the attack, so we should attack the countries that harbor them. At the time, the majority of the country supported this; I remember George Bush Jr.'s approval ratings being in the 90s for a short time. Even then, most of us knew that Saudi Arabia was at least complicit in what happened. The lust for revenge, as much as it was justified, made people forget that.
Over the last 23 years, I feel like a lot of Americans have forgotten the role that Saudi Arabia played in the events of 9/11; after all, they’re our “ally,” right? I have always been on the fence regarding whether or not invading Iraq and Afghanistan was a good idea. Back in 2001, though, I felt like invading Saudi Arabia was a great idea. 23 years later, I don’t feel any different. Should the United States have attacked Iraq and Afghanistan, I’d say “probably”; should we have attacked Saudi Arabia? Absolutely. Yet it never happened.
I agree with your entire comment except the end.
We shouldn’t have attacked Iraq or Afghanistan. The premise for the war in Iraq was that Saddam was harboring weapons of mass destruction. That was a flat out lie. The Iraq war and the power vacuum it created led to the creation of ISIS.
Afghanistan had elements of Al-Qaeda present. The Taliban tolerated them. We should have hunted bin Laden there and hit Al-Qaeda where we could find them, but toppling the government was mostly useless and we ended up needing to get the hell out of there after spending $2 trillion dollars, only to have the Taliban return.
Should we have attacked Saudi Arabia though? Absolutely. We should have actually done regime change there and maybe even helped ourselves to the oil revenues to cover the costs of 9/11 and our military. Our presence would’ve also helped modernize their medieval society in ways beneficial to the Middle East.
I agree with your entire comment except the end.
I’m not sure the US has the greatest track record when it comes to those sorts of occupational wars, realistically. I think the only times we’ve ever really seen it turn out well is maybe in vietnam, where we actively just like, lost the entire war and got sent packing, and they’re still having to deal with the ongoing problem of their country being contaminated by chemical incendiary weapons that produce larger percentages of birth defects. So, even given that Saudi Arabia is kind of a theocratic monarchic shithole, I dunno if us overthrowing it would realistically do any good, you know? I dunno. I’d probably need to see more on the numbers of dissent amount the saudi population. I think probably capitalizing on a popular movement for regime change, much like the arab spring, would probably be the best route if that was possible, and it would probably have to be more grassroots than something that the US might intentionally attempt to foment in the population, I’d imagine.
In totality though I’m not really sure to what extent it’s in the US’s best interest to destabilize saudi arabia. I think the US would probably prefer predictable fascists compared to, say, if they decided to rapidly nationalize and democratize their oil supply. Another, relatively understated, good reason to move away from petroleum, I would say.
I’m not sure the US has the greatest track record when it comes to those sorts of occupational wars, realistically. I think the only times we’ve ever really seen it turn out well is maybe in vietnam, where we actively just like, lost the entire war and got sent packing, and they’re still having to deal with the ongoing problem of their country being contaminated by chemical incendiary weapons that produce larger percentages of birth defects.
Not disputing anything you said about Vietnam, but we did alright with Japan and South Korea.
If we had only invaded Afghanistan, I could understand it. But Iraq, as I said at the time, had absolutely nothing to do with it, and it was bullshit.
People seem to forget, people even seemed to forget in 2002 and 2003, that Bush had been talking about finishing what his father started all the way back when he was running for president the first time in 1999. I kept telling people at the time.
I was in the Army then and we all knew it was Daddies War 2.0. I tried to help as many people get out of the Army as I could and then got myself out with full honors and no PTSD. Being a conscientious objector was hilariously easy because everyone knew “fuck bush and fuck the army – I aint fighting.”
We didn’t need to invade any damn whole country, we have multiple special teams that train precisely for hunting and gathering. The govt of Iraq and the poppy fields of Afghanistan needed freedom though, so we went hot after the Saudis attacked us.
Murican capitalism war hooah!
Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, did not have wmd’s, and was the only major Sunni power in the region. Saddam Hussain was not a good guy by any means but he actively worked against Iranian influence and was a stabilizing presence on the middle east after the first Gulf War. Pre-invasion Iraq was good for US policy. The invasion led to the growth of Iranian influence in the region and the rise of the Islamic State terrorist organization. We should not have attacked Iraq.
I was in support of attacking Afghanistan at the time and still think military action to go after Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Ladin was warranted. The diversion of resources from that conflict is another reason we shouldn’t have attacked Iraq. We probably should have extended that conflict into northern Pakistan where we knew Al-Qaeda’s leadership and the bulk of their fighters were hiding.
We definitely should have invaded Saudi Arabia. They provided training, equipment, travel, and money to enable the 9/11 attacks. 9/11 would not have been possible without Saudi Arabia’s support. Saudi Arabia was(is) in the curious position of publicly allying with us while plotting terrorism against us. Curious because by siding with us publicly they gave up Iran’s advantage of attacks against them potentially leading to conflict with Russia. Iran had some part in 9/11 but between their having a lesser role and the risk of Russia coming to their defense it would not have been worth it to attack Iran. Saudi Arabia had our backing instead of Russia’s. When they used proxies to attack us we should have leveled their royal palace. So far we haven’t even pulled our support.
I haven’t forgotten that George H.W. Bush (the President’s father) was literally in a meeting with a member of the bin Laden family when the attacks occurred. The Bush and the bin Laden families were highly entangled in oil business dealings. I remember, too, that the only airplanes allowed to fly in U.S. airspace in the days after 9/11—all other traffic everywhere being grounded, stranding Americans far from home—were the flights taking members of the bin Laden family out of the United States, and back to Saudi Arabia.
I wonder why that attack on Saudi Arabia never happened?
I haven’t forgotten that George H.W. Bush (the President’s father) was literally in a meeting with a member of the bin Laden family when the attacks occurred.
Got a source for that?
Best I can find/remember, it is a distortion of this passage from Dan Briody’s book The Iron Triangle, or at the very least it is an unproven claim.
A Chance Meeting
That same morning, in the plush setting of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Washington, DC, the Carlyle Group was holding its annual international investor conference. Frank Carlucci, James Baker III, David Rubenstein, William Conway, and Dan D’Aniello were together, along with a host of former world leaders, former defense experts, wealthy Arabs from the Middle East, and major international investors as the terror played out on television. There with them, looking after the investments of his family was Shafiq bin Laden, Osama bin Laden’s estranged half-brother. George Bush Sr. was also at the conference, but Carlyle’s spokesperson says the former president left before the terror attacks, and was on an airplane over the Midwest when flights across the country were grounded on the morning of September 11. In any circumstance, a confluence of such politically complex and globally connected people would have been curious, even newsworthy. But in the context of the terrorist attacks being waged against the United States by a group of Saudi nationals led by Osama bin Laden, the group assembled at the Ritz-Carlton that day was a disconcerting and freakish coincidence.
I do not, so I’ll take that back. It was widely discussed at the time, so I remembered it as Bush being there when the attack occurred, not that he left shortly before. I will say that I think it’s close enough for the point to stand that the Bush and bin Laden families had business interests in common, and had had personal dealings prior.
Thanks for the correction.
Don’t you love how Saudi Arabia, the country who was very obviously behind 9/11, hasn’t suffered a single negative consequence as a result of their actions? They literally got away with 9/11. And then the US invaded some unrelated countries. Mind blowing.
Remember kids: Iran is the bad Middle East autocracy and Saudi Arabia is the good Middle East autocracy.
US foreign policy has always been and will always be interest based rather than value based, but they will use moral arguments and threat inflation to drum up support for their misadventures abroad.
Or… one is bad and the other one is way worse.
Anyway this just means that a straight B-line for no longer being fossil fuel dependent is just more important.
If we can then combine that by sourcing the oil from countries that do not perform stonings and public executions in stadiums, of call it a win.
Keep in mind that not 50 years ago, we had an oil crisis that showed how incredibly depended we where, and the EU learned the hard way what energy dependence on Russia meant.
Solar, Wind and a hydro/Geothermal/nuclear baseload with at least 60 months of stored fission material would be my hope.
Or… one is bad and the other one is way worse.
The thing that always amuses me about this is that Iran was a burgeoning liberal democracy until the CIA and MI6 toppled it in 1953, installing a previously overthrown autocrat (overthrown by said forces of democracy), who ruled until 1979, when he was overthrown by religious hard liners, who really only had mass support because the autocrat was too authoritarian.
And the reason the U.S. and Britain overthrew their democracy?
They nationalized their oil industry to give profits back to their people, which entailed taking over refineries and wells ‘owned’ by British Petroleum.
The U.S. created their own boogeyman in the area because they wanted to give a corporation near-free access to Iran’s oil. Which in turn lead to the oil crisis and instability in the region.
The U.S. has really got to stop trying to put out fires while covered in crude oil.
Which one is the way worse one? Because I can’t really think of a way in which one is way worse than the other. I wouldn’t ever want to live in either place if I were a woman or a queer person.
I think Iran is worse personally across the board. But I intentionally left that out of my comment as it does not really matter. And for minorities and women both are … unsafe.
100% agree, no longer being oil dependent would make the middle east a saver place (as well as having many other advantages).
But even the green revolution needs cheap labor, recourses, and rare-earth metals. Countries that do not want to play game and want to nationalize key industries for instance, will be coerced financially or militarily by greater powers (be it the West, China, or Russia).
So the idea of one country being worse than the other is not really relevant and moreover a known strategy for getting war support. I am happy that I don’t live in Iran or Saudi Arabia, but escalating conflict with either of them will not improve anybody’s life. Look at Syria or Libya.
Are you referring to the $2 billion U.S. dollars that Saudi Arabia gave to Jared Kushner as an “investment” in his consulting company that has never made a profit for anyone before? The $2 billion Saudi Arabia apparently gave Jared Kushner as a gift that may be related to the extremely valuable government secrets illegally stolen by his father-in-law Donald Trump? That $2 billion?
I love The Atlantic but “Two decades of U.S. policy appear to be rooted in a mistaken understanding of what happened that day”? I’m not sure I buy that. Maybe the Saudi complicity is deeper than we originally realized but I don’t think anybody is really shocked by these recent revelations. US policy has driven by political agendas or, sadly, certain VP’s business interests
Perhaps it would make more sense to describe it as an intentionally mistaken understanding.
We’ve been a fragile, fractured country since that day. Al Qaida - and Saudi Arabia - did us lasting, potentially terminal, damage.
In 2001 before 9/11, George W. Bush was clearly going to be a one-term failure of a president, a mistake of the electoral college brought about by complacency, never to be repeated. He would get the boot, be replaced by a better and more competent president in 2005, and that would be that. No Patriot Act. No Department of Homeland Security. No TSA security theater. No war against Iraq, no formation of ISIS, and likely no Tea Party, let alone the travesty that was four years of Donald Trump.
Saudi Arabia may have actually dealt the killing blow to this country, causing the ongoing, slow-motion disaster in politics we see today.
One could argue that the Florida Supreme Court is responsible for millions of Iraqi/Afghan deaths and untold damage to democracy and the climate by forcing that election the way people didn’t vote. W should have been a baseball manager, he was, as the Rs do, completely unqualified against an actual experienced person at the job but had the quips and genealogy.
Florida, republicans, consistently making everyone’s life worse. WHY DO PEOPLE STILL VOTE FOR THEM
Hesitant, forlorn and very much hopefully misplaced resigned upvote.
I want to dismiss your assertions out of hand as too pessimistic and cynical but…yeah, we let them win at least the battle if not the whole shebang.
My hope stems from kids today generally being kinder, open minded and not “tolerant” but actually coexisting with nary a thought. Better people will make a better world if we give them the chance to before fucking up beyond repair.
Propaganda was fed to the mainstream at record levels.
It was done to fool the public into a war and reconstruction effort that fleeced America, destroyed countries, and killed a shitload.
A few got rich. A few jumped up a few spots on the power scale.
And Russia has taken over the role of primary sponsor of the Republican party from Saudi.
