By BLACKIE D.
The researchers in various disciplines have this really neat mode of investigation into the order of reality. They issue a theoretical concept (often pages of mathematical formulas and a volume of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew characters). Then they predict: if this is correct, they say, so and so and thus and so will be found.
Well, sometimes it is and sometimes it’s not. Often the negative finding is the more valuable.
Which leads to the 19 hijackers of four airplanes who crashed them in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. Why did they do it, taking their own lives in the process?
There is general agreement that the 19 were of Middle Eastern background and that the attacks constituted a political protest. I believe it is feasible to construct a general outline of their thinking. It’s certain that they reflected in a distorted fashion the hopes, anger, and disillusion of the masses stretching from North Africa to South Central Asia. Thus, it would have consisted of three parts:
The first is a protest against Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. The second is anger and opposition to the continued bombing and blockade of Iraq.
The last is the knowledge that the advanced Western nations (Europe, the U.S., and Japan) exercise political control and are economic overseers of the sizable commercial operations in the region.
Back to science: How did the attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the four planes affect these complaints? Note that there is a fourth section held by the people of those areas that was not held by the 19 attackers-the wish to overthrow their local oppressors-dictators, sheiks, generals, capitalists, and religious fundamentalists.
Regarding Palestinians: their oppression has intensified. Ariel Sharon, the militarist Likud leader, has ordered tanks and troops into most of the Gaza and West Bank towns, killing, destroying as they enter, and cutting off the Palestinian areas from each other and from the outside world.
Sharon’s aim is to make conditions so difficult and the people so despairing that they will depart and leave the land “Arab-free” (that is, empty). These concepts are not new, and indeed were held by Adolph Hitler in Nazi Germany against the Jews themselves.
In Iraq, the bombing continues. The blockade remains. The children die en masse for lack of food and medicine. Indeed, the threats of the New World Order have become even more brazen, with various American government officials hinting that another invasion is in the works.
Regarding Western control of the Middle East, there is no way the leading capitalist nations will release their death grip on the oil and gas properties. Political control of the Near East now resembles a stranglehold. These separate countries have been hauled in feet first to become members of the collective New Order, under strict discipline of the U.S. ruling class, despite the opposition of their populations.
So it is perfectly clear, the sacrifice of the 19 lives of those who seized the planes, as well as the loss of passengers and the workers in the twin towers and the lower ranks of the military in the Pentagon, was not only to no avail but redounded sharply against Arab aims and hopes.
Indeed, the world has been put into a military straight jacket, forced to agree to whatever issues from the mouth in the White House. As a result of the action of the 19, the Western military has the Middle East by the throat. There is no room for doubt-this type of action is self-defeating!
What is the answer, what course would succeed? There must be the formation of mass, independent socialist organizations willing to struggle for power. These groups would not be welcomed by the owning classes of the West; on the contrary, those ruling classes would be utterly hostile, as these new groups would endanger their political power, and even worse, the ownership of their wealth.
Don’t kid yourself; there have been such mass organizations in the Middle East in the past, and there will be again! The task becomes more urgent with every passing day!
