For a man who spent years living in caves, Osama bin Laden sure
knows his Sun Tzu and the basics of jujitsu. Sun Tzu's famous dictum was
"know yourself" and "know your enemy." Jujitsu is based
upon using your enemy's strength against him, e.g., like Jack in "Jack
and the Beanstalk," who used the giant's own size and anger to get him
to crash from his own weight. Bin Laden understood that the way to beat
America was to turn its power back upon itself. His early stated aim was to bankrupt America. He knew his own
weaknesses, and he profoundly understood America's, how its pride and
fears could trigger irrational, self-destructive reactions.
The genius of bin Laden's
pinprick attacks, costing a few hundred thousand dollars, has left America
reeling with two unending multi-trillion-dollar wars it doesn't know how to
get out of.
He knew that his own strength was mainly in his appeal to the minds of men,
particularly to the lost dignity of Muslims trampled under the heel of
their own dictators, Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and
America's military. Getting rid of the
"far" enemy was the way to take on the "near" ones.
Instigating
America to destroy Iraq was a triumph of genius. He must have known about
the neoconservative cabal in Washington that was
itching to start wars and destroy Iraq. In bin Laden's wildest dreams he
then imagined that he could get an enraged America to destroy his enemies
while, at the same time, isolating itself from allies and becoming
seriously weakened. His prime Arab enemy, secular nationalist socialism,
was embodied by the Ba'athist rulers in Iraq. Once destroyed, Muslim
resistance could be channeled to religious fundamentalism as the only
remaining force honest and profound enough to challenge Arab dictators and
American soldiers successfully. In that sense he was allied with Israel,
again an intelligent strategy of harnessing his enemies' strength, which,
for different reasons, feared Iraq as the most modern, secular nation among
the Arabs far more than it feared Muslim fundamentalists. Indeed, in
Palestine, Israel built up Islamist Hamas at first as a counterforce to the
secular PLO. Successful terrorists come from the well educated, not from
fundamentalist fanatics.
Next
was his hope that he might get America to destroy his Shi'ite enemy, Iran.
He almost succeeded in this too. His prime
aim, though, was to get America bogged down in endless, resource-sapping wars
on the Asian landmass and disrupt oil flows that benefited his enemies.
Bin Laden understood how
America's religious fundamentalists, who had inordinate power in
Washington, could be encouraged to sustain religious wars. He
"knew" them precisely because he understood his own Muslim
fundamentalists, as indeed also the Israeli ones. All could work together
in his scheming mind to wreck the global economy, which so benefited
American power. In 2002 at a party in my home, I said to Peru's
brilliant economist Hernando de Soto that, of course, bin Laden's objective
was to drive America out of the Middle East. He replied to me, "Not
just that, out of the whole Third World!"
The actual crash in America
came about because of the wars, in several ways: First, financing the wars
with debt was the final straw that broke the camel's back. No one knew how much
debt would break America, but doubling the national debt from $5 trillion
to $10 trillion, with new trillions being borrowed now, finally did it. A government at war seeks political support. Spending
billions for an unpopular war and its waste makes it far more difficult to
deny billions for more welfare. That's why America is called a
warfare-welfare state. Welfare began in Germany in the 19th century when Bismarck
sought popular support for his military ventures. It was the trade-off.
Second, the destruction of Iraq,
and Bush's constant threats to start bombing Iran, which could have closed
down the Strait of Hormuz, brought about sky-high oil prices, which then
busted world prosperity. Still, bin Laden might not have imagined that
hedge funds would feed the speculation, and that Bush would not release oil
from the petroleum reserve, which could have broken the price, because he
wanted to keep it in reserve for war against Iran. Then the subsequent collapse of oil prices dried up a major
source of foreign buyers for U.S. government bonds, which finance America's
wars and reckless debts.
Third, all of Washington's
attention was absorbed by the wars, leaving little time or energy for dull
domestic issues such as debating reforms to the financial markets. Anyone
who questioned the wars' costs was dismissed as unpatriotic. Lies are
part of waging war, and losing discredits and exposes the leaders' lies. From discredited American
leaders, it was a short step to discredited American financial markets.
Fourth was the toxic alliance of neoconservatives and religious
fundamentalists. The neocons were academic
Washington policy wonks who dreamed of ruling the world. The "fundies"
provided electoral support, because they viewed America as doing God's work
among the foreign heathens. Their extremists indeed wanted chaos in the
Middle East to "hurry up" God's plans for Armageddon. Instead they served bin Laden's goals.
Fifth, war spending deficits were
in effect a massive Keynesian pump-priming operation, bound in the end to
leave an economic hangover. Wars make the economy boom with seeming
prosperity, but they are actually incredible wastes of resources. Over $200 million for
each new fighter plane, $1,000 a day for mercenaries, massive corruption
and incompetence in the military occupation – even bin Laden could not have
anticipated how costly the war would become.
All of this was indeed
foreseen by the
wars' many critics, but
they could not break through in the major media against the powers and lies of the Bush administration.
Editor John Feffer forecast the wars' consequences precisely in 2002:
"The successful realization of bin Laden's
secret strategy will happen not with a bang but with a whimper. Having
failed to use the unipolar moment for the world's advantage, the United
States runs the risk of following the examples of Russia and England and
Turkey, all faded empires whose ambitions overreached themselves. In the
worst-case scenario, the U.S. will become the sick man of North America, a
victim of military hypertrophy, extremes of wealth and poverty, decay of
civil infrastructure, and loss of competitive economic advantage."
At
least Americans are told that Washington "succeeded" in preventing
any more attacks on the homeland. Maybe, but the more likely reason there
have been no further attacks was explained in a letter to the editor of Foreign
Policy magazine [.pdf] by researcher Laura Garcés:
"But one could venture that Osama bin
Laden has no reason now to expose himself and expend massive resources when he
accomplished exactly what he wanted: billions of dollars
of expenditures in launching wars, the total neglect of infrastructure, the
loss of thousands of tourists who are wary of staying in line for hours
dealing with airport. Decay and bankruptcy is what he sought, and fear is
what he wanted to instill. Can anyone doubt that he succeeded?"
