by Gore Vidal
Where does Osama’s money now come from? He is a superb fundraiser for Allah but only within the Arab world; contrary to legend, he has taken no CIA money. He warned the Saudi king that Saddam Hussein was going to invade Kuwait. Osama assumed that after his own victories as a guerrilla against the Russians, he and his organization would be used by the Saudis to stop the Iraqis. To Osama’s horror, King Fahd sent for the Americans: thus were infidels established on the sacred soil of Mohammed. “This was,” he said, “the most shocking moment of my life.” “Infidel,” in his sense, does not mean anything of great moral consequence—like cheating sexually on your partner; rather it means lack of faith in Allah—the one God—and in his prophet Mohammed.
Osama persuaded four thousand Saudis to go to Afghanistan for military training by his group. In 1991, Osama moved on to Sudan. In 1994, when the Saudis withdrew his citizenship, Osama was already a legendary figure in the Islamic world and so, like Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, he could tell the royal Saudis, “I banish you. There is a world elsewhere.” Unfortunately, that world is us.
In a twelve-page “declaration of war,” Osama presented himself as the potential liberator of the Muslim world from the great Satan of modern corruption, the United States.
Osama’s organization blew up two of our embassies in Africa, and put a hole in the side of an American warship off Yemen, Clinton lobbed a missile at a Sudanese aspirin factory, and so on to the events of Black Tuesday. G. W. Bush was then transformed before our eyes into the cheerleader that he had been in prep school. First he promised us not only “a new war” but a “secret war” and, best of all, according to the twinkle in his eye, “a very long war.” Meanwhile, “this administration will not talk about any plans we may or may not have…We’re going to find these evildoers and we’re going to hold them accountable,” along with the other devils who have given Osama shelter.
As of the first month of 2002, the Pentagon Junta pretends that the devastation of Afghanistan by our high-flying air force has been a great victory (no one mentions that the Afghans were not an American enemy—it was like destroying Palermo in order to eliminate the Mafia). In any case, we may never know what, if anything, was won or lost (other than much of the Bill of Rights).
A member of the Pentagon Junta, Rumsfeld, a skilled stand-up comic, daily made fun of a large group of “journalists” on prime-time TV. At great, and often amusing, length, Rummy tells us nothing about our losses and their losses. He did seem to believe that the sentimental Osama was holed up in a cave on the Pakistan border instead of settled in a palace in Indonesia or Malaysia, two densely populated countries where he is admired and we are not. In any case, never before in our long history of undeclared unconstitutional wars have we, the American people, been treated with such impish disdain—so many irrelevant spear carriers to be highly taxed (those of us who are not rich) and occasionally invited to participate in the odd rigged poll.
When Osama was four years old I arrived in Cairo for a conversation with Nasser, to appear in Look magazine. I was received by Mohammed Heikal, Nasser’s chief adviser. Nasser himself was not to be seen. He was at the Barricade, his retreat on the Nile; he had just survived an assassination attempt. Heikal spoke perfect English; he was sardonic, worldly. “We are studying the Koran for hints on birth control.” A sigh.
“Not helpful?”
“Not very. But we keep looking for a text.” We talked off and on for a week. Nasser wanted to modernize Egypt. But there was a reactionary, religious element…Another sigh. Then a surprise. “We’ve found something very odd, the young village boys—the bright ones that we are educating to be engineers, chemists, and so on, are turning religious on us.”
“Right wing?”
“Very.” Heikal was a spiritual son of our eighteenth-century Enlightenment. I thought of Heikal on Dark Tuesday when one of his modernized Arab generation had, in the name of Islam, struck at what had been, forty years earlier, Nasser’s model for a modern state. Yet Osama seemed, from all accounts, no more than a practicing, as opposed to zealous, Muslim. Ironically, he was trained as an engineer. Understandably, he dislikes the United States as symbol and as fact. But when our clients, the Saudi royal family, allowed American troops to occupy the Prophet’s holy land, Osama named the fundamental enemy “the Crusader Zionist Alliance.” Thus, in a phrase, he defined himself and reminded his critics that he is a Wahabi Muslim, a Puritan activist not unlike our Falwell/Robertson zanies, only serious. He would go to war against the United States, “the head of the serpent.” Even more ambitiously, he would rid all the Muslim states of their Western-supported regimes, starting with that of his native land. The word “Crusader” was the giveaway. In the eyes of many Muslims, the Christian West, currently in alliance with Zionism, has for a thousand years tried to dominate the lands of the Umma—the true believers. That is why Osama is seen by so many simple folk as the true heir to Saladin, the great warrior king who defeated Richard of England and the Western crusaders.
Who was Saladin? Dates 1138–1193. He was an Armenian Kurd. In the century before his birth, Western Christians had established a kingdom at Jerusalem, to the horror of the Islamic Faithful. Much as the United States used the Gulf War as pretext for our current occupation of Saudi Arabia, Saladin raised armies to drive out the Crusaders. He conquered Egypt, annexed Syria, and finally smashed the Kingdom of Jerusalem in a religious war that pitted Mohammedan against Christian. He united and “purified” the Muslim world and though Richard Lion-heart was the better general, in the end he gave up and went home. As one historian put it, Saladin “typified the Mohammedan utter self-surrender to a sacred cause.” But he left no government behind him, no political system because, as he himself said, “My troops will do nothing save when I ride at their head….” Now his spirit has returned with avengeance.
The Bush administration, though eerily inept in all but its principal task, which is to exempt the rich from taxes, has casually torn up most of the treaties to which civilized nations subscribe—like the Kyoto Accords or the nuclear missile agreement with Russia. The Bushites go about their relentless plundering of the Treasury and now, thanks to Osama, Social Security (a supposedly untouchable trust fund), which, like Lucky Strike green, has gone to a war currently costing us $3 billion a month. They have also allowed the FBI and CIA either to run amok or not budge at all, leaving us, the very first “indispensable” and—at popular request—last global empire, rather like the Wizard of Oz doing his odd pretend-magic tricks while hoping not to be found out. Meanwhile, G.W. booms, “Either you are with us or you are with the Terrorists.” That’s known as asking for it.
To be fair, one cannot entirely blame the current Oval One for our incoherence. Though his predecessors have generally had rather higher IQs than his, they, too, assiduously served the 1 percent that owns the country while allowing everyone else to drift. Particularly culpable was Bill Clinton. Although the most able chief executive since FDR, Clinton, in his frantic pursuit of election victories, set in place the trigger for a police state that his successor is now happily squeezing.
Police state? What’s that all about? In April 1996, one year after the Oklahoma City bombing, President Clinton signed into law the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, a so-called conference bill in which many grubby hands played a part, including the bill’s cosponsor, Senate Majority leader Dole. Although Clinton, in order to win elections, did many unwise and opportunistic things, he seldom, like Charles II, ever said an unwise one. But faced with opposition to antiterrorism legislation that not only gives the attorney general the power to use the armed services against the civilian population, neatly nullifying the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, it also, selectively, suspends habeas corpus, the heart of Anglo-American liberty. Clinton attacked his critics as “unpatriotic.” Then, wrapped in the flag, he spoke from the throne: “There is nothing patriotic about our pretending that you can love your country but despise your government.” This is breathtaking since
it includes, at one time or another, most of us. Put another way, was a German in 1939 who said that he detested the Nazi dictatorship unpatriotic?
There have been ominous signs that our fragile liberties have been dramatically at risk since the 1970s when the white-shirt-blue-suit-discreet-tie FBI reinvented itself from a corps of “generalists,” trained in law and accounting, into a confrontational “Special Weapons and Tactics”(a.k.a. SWAT) Green Beret–style army of warriors who like to dress up in camouflage or black ninja clothing and, depending on the caper, ski masks. In the early Eighties an FBI super-SWAT team, the Hostage 270 Rescue Team, was formed. As so often happens in United States–speak, this group specialized not in freeing hostages or saving lives but in murderous attacks on groups that offended them, like the Branch Davidians—evangelical Christians who were living peaceably in their own compound at Waco, Texas, until an FBI SWAT team, illegally using army tanks, killed eighty-two of them, including twenty-five children. This was 1993.
Post Tuesday, SWAT teams can now be used to go after suspect Arab Americans or, indeed, anyone who might be guilty of terrorism, a word without legal definition (how can you fight terrorism by suspending habeas corpus since those who want their corpuses released from prison are already locked up?). But in the post–Oklahoma City trauma, Clinton said that those who did not support his draconian legislation were terrorist co-conspirators who wanted to turn “America into a safe house for terrorists.” If the cool Clinton could so froth, what are we to expect from the overheated post-Tuesday Bush?
Incidentally, those who were shocked by Bush the Younger’s shout that we are now “at war” with Osama should have quickly put on their collective thinking caps. Since a nation can only be at war with another nation-state, why did our smoldering if not yet burning bush come up with such a war cry? Think hard. This will count against your final grade. Give up? Well, most insurance companies have a rider that they need not pay for damage done by “an act of war.” Although the men and women around Bush know nothing of war and less of our Constitution, they understand fund-raising. For this wartime exclusion, Hartford Life would soon be breaking open its piggy bank to finance Republicans for years to come. But the mean-spirited Washington Post pointed out that under U.S. case law, only a sovereign nation, not a bunch of radicals, can commit an “act of war.” Good try, G.W. This now means that we the people, with our tax money, will be allowed to bail out the insurance companies, a rare privilege not afforded to just any old generation.
Although the American people have no direct means of influencing their government, their “opinions” are occasionally sampled through polls. According to a November 1995 CNN-Time poll, 55 percent of the people believe “the federal government has become so powerful that it poses a threat to the rights of ordinary citizens.” Three days after Dark Tuesday, 74 percent said they thought, “It would be necessary for Americans to give up some of their personal freedoms.” Eighty-six percent favored guards and metal detectors at public buildings and events. Thus, as the police state settles comfortably in place, one can imagine Cheney and Rumsfeld studying these figures, transfixed with joy. “It’s what they always wanted, Dick.”
“And to think we never knew, Don.”
“Thanks to those liberals, Dick.”
“We’ll get those bastards now, Don.”
It seems forgotten by our amnesiac media that we once energetically supported Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s war against Iran and so Saddam thought, not unnaturally, that we wouldn’t mind his taking over Kuwait’s filling stations. Overnight our employee became Satan—and so remains, as we torment his people in the hope that they will rise up and overthrow him—as the Cubans were supposed, in their U.S.-imposed poverty, to have dismissed Castro for his ongoing refusal to allow the Kennedy brothers to murder him in their so-called Operation Mongoose. Our imperial disdain for the lesser breeds did not go unnoticed by the latest educated generation of Saudi Arabians, and by their evolving leader, Osama bin Laden, whose moment came in 2001 when a weak American president took office in questionable circumstances.
The New York Times is the principal dispenser of opinion received from corporate America. It generally stands tall, or tries to. Even so, as of September 13 the NYT’s editorial columns were all slightly off-key.
Under the heading “Demands of Leadership” the NYT was upbeat, sort of. It’s going to be okay if you work hard and keep your eye on the ball, Mr. President. Apparently Bush is “facing multiple challenges, but his most important job is a simple matter of leadership.” Thank God. Not only is that all it takes, but it’s simple, too! For a moment…The NYT then slips into the way things look as opposed to the way they ought to look. “The Administration spent much of yesterday trying to overcome the impression that Mr. Bush showed weakness when he did not return to Washington after the terrorists struck.” But from what I could tell no one cared, while some of us felt marginally safer, that the national sillybilly was trapped in his Nebraska bunker. Patiently, the NYT spells it out for Bush and for us, too. “In the days ahead, Mr. Bush may be asking the nation to support military actions that many citizens, particularly those with relations in the service, will find alarming. He must show that he knows what he is doing.” Well, that’s a bull’s-eye. If only FDR had got letters like that from Arthur Krock at the old NYT.
Finally, Anthony Lewis thinks it wise to eschew Bushite unilateralism in favor of cooperation with other nations in order to contain Tuesday’s darkness by understanding its origin (my emphasis) while ceasing our provocations of cultures opposed to us and our arrangements. Lewis, unusually for a New York Times writer, favors peace now. So do I. But then we are old and have been to the wars and value our fast-diminishing freedoms unlike those jingoes now beating their tom-toms in Times Square in favor of all-out war for other Americans to fight.
As usual, the political columnist who has made the most sense of all this is William Pfaff in the international Herald Tribune (September 17, 2001). Unlike the provincial war lovers at The New York Times, he is appalled by the spectacle of an American president who declined to serve his country in Vietnam, howling for war against not a nation or even a religion but one man and his accomplices, a category that will ever widen.
Pfaff: The riposte of a civilized nation: one that believes in good, in human society and does oppose evil, has to be narrowly focused and, above all, intelligent.
Missiles are blunt weapons. Those terrorists are smart enough to make others bear the price for what they have done, and to exploit the results.
A maddened U.S. response that hurts still others is what they want: It will fuel the hatred that already fires the self-righteousness about their criminal acts against the innocent.
What the United States needs is cold reconsideration of how it has arrived at this pass. It needs, even more, to foresee disasters that might lie in the future.
War is the no-win all-lose option. The time has come to put the good Kofi Annan to use. As glorious as total revenge will be for our war lovers, a truce between Saladin and the Crusader-Zionists is in the interest of the entire human race. Long before the dread monotheists got their hands on history’s neck, we had been taught how to handle feuds by none other than the god Apollo as dramatized by Aeschylus in Eumenides (a polite Greek term for the Furies who keep us daily company on CNN). Orestes, for the sin of matricide, cannot rid himself of the Furies who hound him wherever he goes. He appeals to the god Apollo who tells him to go to the UN—also known as the citizens’ assembly at Athens—which he does and is acquitted on the ground that blood feuds must be ended or they will smolder forever, generation after generation, and great towers shall turn to flame and incinerate us all until “the thirsty dust shall never more suck up the darkly steaming blood…and vengeance crying death for death! But man with man and state with state shall vow the pledge of common hate and common friendship, that for man has oft made blessing out of ban, be ours until all time.” Let Annan mediate between East and West before there is
nothing left of either of us to salvage.
The awesome physical damage Osama and company did to us on Dark Tuesday is as nothing compared to the knockout blow to our vanishing liberties—the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996 combined with the recent requests to Congress for additional special powers to wiretap without judicial order; to deport lawful permanent residents, visitors, and undocumented immigrants without due process; and so on. As I write, U.S. “Concentration Camp X-Ray” is filling up at marine base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. No one knows whether or not these unhappy residents are prisoners of war or just plain evildoers. In any case, they were kidnapped in Afghanistan by U.S. forces and now appear to be subject to kangaroo courts when let out of their cages.
This is from a pre-Osama text: “Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and associations; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.” The tone is familiar. Clinton? Bush? Ashcroft? No. It is from Hitler’s 1933 speech calling for “an Enabling Act” for “the protection of the People and the State” after the catastrophic Reichstag fire that the Nazis had secretly lit.