Unholy Trinity? Neoliberalism – 9/11 – Afghanistan
by Wolfgang Effenberger1
(24 October 2021) On 30 August – one day before the definitive withdrawal of the USA from Afghanistan – the pro-war article “Für Dich zieh ich in den Krieg” (I'm going to war for you) by Anne Applebaum, a writer for “The Atlantic”, appeared in the “ipg-journal” of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Germany [associated with the Social Democratic Party of Germany, edit.]. It was preceded by the picture below with the caption: “Enough talking”.
The “ipg-journal” [journal for international politics and society, edit.] sees itself “as a committed debate platform for questions of international and European politics. We do not only want to describe, but also to give impulses through critical interpretations and assessments. The range of topics includes foreign policy, security and policy development issues as well as the challenges of European integration and global environmental topics.”2
No striving for peace and understanding
In this range of topics, one looks in vain for the most important prerequisite, especially with regard to global environmental issues: the pursuit of peace and understanding. The never-ending wars since 1945 not only create endless suffering for the people affected, but also permanently destroy the environment – see the use of Agent Orange to defoliate the forests or the condemnable use of geoengineering to turn the triangle of countries Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam into a mud desert so that the Vietcong only find impassable supply routes. For everyone to see, the US wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan ended in disaster. Problems were not solved, but only exacerbated – and new ones created. A perpetuum mobile of destruction and exploitation for the profit of the military-industrial-financial complex.
Anne Applebaum, however, describes the – dearly paid – realisation: “this conflict cannot be solved militarily” as one of the “many trivial and meaningless statements that Western politicians keep making at regular intervals”.3
She sees the case of Kabul as a helpful wake-up call: “while we and our European allies may be tired of ‘perpetual wars’, the Taliban are not in the least tired of war, nor are the Pakistanis, or the regimes in Russia, China and Iran.”
These countries would regard “liberal democracies as a powerful and dangerous ideology that threatens their power and must be defeated wherever it exists. They will use corruption, propaganda and even violence to achieve this goal. They will do this in Syria and in Ukraine, and also within the US, the EU and the UK.”4
Applebaum sees the struggle to defend liberal democracy as a military and not just an ideological one. It cannot always be waged “with words, arguments, conferences or diplomacy, with the engagement of human rights organisations, with UN declarations and passionate expressions of concern from the EU. Or rather: you can try to fight the battle with these means, but then you will lose it.”5
That such an anti-peace and pro-war article can appear in the organ of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation renders one speechless.
A struggle that is waged under mendacious premises – such as “Western values”, “freedom and democracy” or “nation building” – in reality for the “freedom of neoliberalism”, i.e. capitalism, must fail.
“Freedom and democratic developments cannot be carried to distant lands with jackboots. Tank tracks and drone assassinations only create enmity.”6
Neoliberalism is not the salvation from, but the trigger of conflicts that bring chaos, suffering and death to oppressed populations.
USA continues to strive for world domination
While Applebaum prepares for future wars against Russia and China, Professor Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Centre for Globalisation Studies, reminds us “that these two countries, now listed as enemies, are the ones who, when allied with the United States in World War II, paid the highest price in human lives for victory over the Nazi-Fascist axis of Berlin-Rome-Tokyo – some 26 million from the Soviet Union and 20 million from China, compared to just over 400,000 from the United States.”7
Further, Chossudovsky points to the death toll from the United States' unbroken series of wars, coups and other subversive operations from the end of the war in 1945 until today – a figure estimated at 20 to 30 million.8 That is about twice as many deaths as in the First World War.
The worst autocrats could not act more cruelly than the USA. US General Smedley Butler (1881-1940) – twice awarded the medal of honour – testifies:
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. […] I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints [notorious Mafia gangster, WE). The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”9
General Douglas MacArthur called Butler “one of the truly great generals in American history” and named the military base at Okinawa after him.
That the US continues to strive for world domination is evident from the fact that it spans the globe with six regional commands and operates some 800 military bases in foreign countries and (its own) overseas regions, most of them around Eurasia. This “power projection” illustrates the character of the US empire. The number of foreign military bases of all other states in the world amounts to only slightly more than five percent of this.10
The majority of these US bases are certainly not intended to protect countries, but to safeguard US economic interests and, in case of doubt, to intervene in the event of unwelcome political developments.
Terrorist attacks on the USA
On 11 September 2001, the world witnessed the terrorist attacks on the USA.
President George W. Bush, who had started the day with an educational event in Florida, sat on board “Air Force One” with scanty information and was instructed at 10.41 a.m. by his Vice President Dick Cheney – who had been in the White House bunker making decisions11 since the second plane hit the south tower of the World Trade Centre at 9.03 a.m. – to fly to the Strategic Air Command near Omaha/Nebraska. Thus, the US President was no longer involved in the decisions of that day.
After the impact on the Pentagon at 9.37 a.m., Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld did not immediately visit the bunker, but inspected the hit side of the Pentagon building, contrary to regulations, but with media attention.
The day after the attack, US President Bush spoke of a “monumental struggle” to be waged by “good against evil” and which he would win. The USA was facing a new enemy that struck “from the shadows” and then ran and hid. Earlier, US Secretary of State Colin Powell had told the American people that they were in for a long-term conflict and that the US would respond to the attacks “as if it were at war”.12 And this without any evidence. Among other things, it has not been proven to this day that a commercial airliner crashed into the Pentagon.
Harsh criticism against the official version of 9/11
Seven former CIA officials have harshly criticised the official version of 9/11 and called for a new investigation.13 “I think if you want to put it very simply, you can say there is a cover-up. The investigation report is a joke”,14 said Raymond McGovern, a CIA official with a 27-year career who was chairman of the National Intelligence Estimates in the 1970s. Major General Albert Stubblebine, former commanding general of the “United States Army Intelligence” and “Security Command” (INSCOM), also criticises the official version of the events of 9/11 as a former top aerial photo analyst. In a 2006 video production entitled “One Nation Under Siege”, Stubblebine said:
“Now when I look at the hole in the Pentagon and then the size of a plane that supposedly hit the Pentagon. And I say, the plane doesn't fit in that hole, so what hit the Pentagon? What was it? Where is it? What’s going on here?”15
The Kremlin could provide the answer. On 11 September 2001, the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, was informed by his General Staff “that a Russian satellite had observed the firing of a missile from a Navy ship off the coast of Washington at the Pentagon.”16
Putin’s attempt to reach his US counterpart failed because on 11 September Vice President Dick Cheney had taken command.
On 11 September, at the same time as the hijackings, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) of Canada and the USA were conducting a joint air exercise to practise countering such attacks. The following day, another exercise was to take place to simulate the defence against a bio-terrorist attack.17 This was very prescient, because soon after 9/11, letters containing anthrax turned up in the US mail. Five Americans were killed. A panic fear of anthrax infection dominated the American public even more than the 9/11 shock. For the first time in history, Congress was shut down and Saddam Hussein was quickly identified as the culprit – an immediate war against Iraq loomed.18 But the trail eventually led to microbiologist and bioweapons researcher at the Fort Detrick bioweapons lab, Bruce E. Ivins, in 2008. He had exposed up to 30,000 people to the deadly spores. Before his arrest, he took his own life.
US President George W. Bush spoke of a new enemy on 12 September 2001. But this new enemy had already been defined by the “Training and Doctrine Command” in August 1994 in Instruction 525-5 “A World in Transition”.
The new enemy: national and religious extremism
Instead of fighting communism, the 21st century will have to fight national and religious extremism. Whereas in the 20th century we had permanent allies, in the 21st century they are only temporary allies. The US Army had to take into account two premises: “rapid technological change – combat robots and drones [...] and the realignment of geostrategy.”19
Three years later, a neoconservative think tank, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), was founded (Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Libby, Kagan, Perle, Kristol). In September 2000, PNAC published an 80-page report entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces, And Resources For a New Century”.
Power projection of the USA throughout the world
The aim was to provide a secure basis for US power projection throughout the world. This “transformation process [...] is likely to take place over a long period of time unless a catastrophic and triggering event – such as a new Pearl Harbor – occurs”, the report said.
In 2021 – 20 years after the terrorist attack – the problem, according to Thierry Meyssan, is not to know how the attacks were mounted “but to know why the United States reacted that day by violating its own constitution, why in the days that followed it carried out profound reforms of its institutions that changed its nature.”20
In this context, the incredible swiftness of the US government’s profound response, both internally and externally, is surprising. Only two days after 9/11, the Combat Terrorism Act of 2001 passed Congress.
As early as 20 September 2001, US General Wesley Clark learned by chance at the Pentagon that seven countries were to be attacked militarily in the next five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.21
While Iran is the only one of the countries that has not yet been attacked and Afghanistan was on the list, American and British bombers already flew the first wave against strategic targets in Afghanistan on 7 October 2001, only 25 days after the terrorist attacks. Of the 19 suspected bombers, 15 came from Saudi Arabia, but none from Afghanistan.
“Patriot Act” to restrict constitutional freedoms at home
On 26 October 2001, the US Congress passed a hastily crafted 342-page bill to “unify and strengthen America by providing appropriate tools”22 to stop and prevent terrorism. It allows for cuts in the “Bill of Rights” and restricts constitutional freedoms. The list of suspected terrorist acts has been considerably expanded, house searches facilitated, and cooperation between police and military strengthened.23 The Department of Homeland Security was created to implement this. It has equipped itself with a political police force that can spy on any US citizen. According to the Washington Post, which revealed it in 2011, “it has hired 835,000 officers, 112,000 of them secretly, meaning one spy for every 370 residents, making the US the most Orwellian country in the world.”24 Edward Snowden, a political refugee living in Russia, revealed these connections in 2013. He was denied asylum in the so-called “values West” because the US considers him a criminal.
On 29 October 2001, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld created the “Office of Force Transformation”, which he entrusted to Admiral Arthur Cebrowski.
Rumsfeld/Cebrowski Doctrine
The Rumsfeld/Cebrowski Doctrine25 is about no longer trying to win wars in the interest of finance capitalism, but making them last as long as possible. This is in the spirit of the neocon philosopher Leo Strauss: to create worldwide chaos in order to use it “creatively”.
The aim is to destroy local state structures so that natural wealth can be exploited without political control. US Colonel Ralph Peters summed it up this way: “stability: America’s enemy.”26
Further, Rumsfeld and Cebrowski suggest “that globalised powers like Russia and China should not be fought. Rather, they must be given access to the natural wealth they have conquered, but be forced to pay royalties to the United States in order to use it.”27
The war on terrorism that began immediately after September 11 has not ended with the fall of Kabul. In Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon, chaos with its civil war-like conditions has been successfully established. Before the Western interventions, Libya and Lebanon were allies of the United States and the US itself is in a condition that can quickly escalate into a civil war. The main culprits seem to be the circles that have come into huge fortunes from war, destruction and suffering and are using them for power politics.
The “digital-financial complex”
The military-industrial complex (MIK), which Dwight D. Eisenhower once warned against, has now been joined by the “digital-financial complex”, a pool of the largest IT companies and the biggest asset managers. Business journalist Ernst Wolff sees this as the biggest profiteer and at the same time the most important mastermind behind the scenes of the current crisis. The largest IT companies include Apple, Google parent company Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook; the big asset managers are Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street and Fidelty.
The five IT companies currently register the inconceivable stock market value of 9.1 trillion dollars. In contrast, the gross domestic product of Germany, France and Italy is only 8.6 trillion dollars. The four asset managers, all of whom also hold significant stakes in all IT companies, currently manage a total of 22.6 trillion dollars. By comparison, the combined gross domestic product of all 28 states of the European Union was 15.7 trillion dollars in 2020. The concentrated market power of the IT and financial companies is reinforced by the fact that they also control hundreds of thousands of other companies because they organise their digitalisation and thus have insight into their data flow. Ernst Wolff sees the IT industry as a tumour that has metastasised into all sectors of the economy in the course of the last few years and now dominates them completely.28 In his opinion, in view of these facts, one does not need much imagination “to come to the conclusion that the ‘digital-financial complex’ is the global power centre around which everything revolves.”29
WEF – the pivotal element of global control
And the pivotal element of global control appears to be the Swiss-based World Economic Forum (WEF), a global network that annually brings together representatives of the world’s biggest companies with key politicians, scientists and news media representatives in Davos. At the end of March 2020, when the world (with the exception of China) was largely aghast and initially perplexed by the virus, the pandemic was responded to with a “shut down” of the economy and far-reaching consequences for civil rights – not infrequently with contradictory measures. While the middle class suffered and continues to suffer from these measures, corporate capitalism, with broad public acceptance, was able to reap unimagined profits in the course of the controlled destruction of large parts of the global economy.
Since the beginning of June 2020, the WEF has been “selling” a technocratic-digital utopia as the solution to all problems with an elaborate, international propaganda campaign under the name “The Great Reset”. But already in 2015, under the guise of "sustainable development”, the 2030 Agenda was conceived at the UN and adopted by the member states. On 13 June 2019, WEF founder Klaus Schwab and UN Secretary-General António Guterres signed a partnership between the two organisations. The first item of this agreement regulates – unsurprisingly – the funding of the UN 2030 Agenda by the WEF.
Transforming global economy
The 46 pages of the agenda proclaim paradise on earth – unspoiled life in unspoiled nature, prosperity, peace and economic growth – and includes a commitment to make it all possible by 2030. To this end, Klaus Schwab – a convinced capitalist, eugenicist, transhumanist, technocrat and economist of a neo-classical bent – has described in his book31 the “fourth industrial revolution” that has been “developed” and longed for since 2015. In it, man as such only appears as decision-maker, manager, service provider, consumer, employee, worker, unemployed, activist, insurgent, etc., above all as isolated individual to be protected and as a being to be overcome in an evolutionary way.32
The transformation of the global economy envisaged by Schwab – in the shape of a paradoxical barrage of euphemisms – reflects the interests of the leading large corporations, the IT, the digitalisation and surveillance industries, the financial sector and the pharmaceutical industry. The capital elite would thus have reached their goal after half a century in the face of an impending ecological and economic catastrophe.
Now all that remains is to lever out the last democratic processes that stand in the way of the total empowerment of the capital elite. What remains are pseudo-republics in which democratically non-legitimised structures dominate.
This is not only the deregulated financial sector (IMF, World Bank, various central banks and private financial giants like BlackRock and others).
“Today, strong influences also come from other private sector initiatives such as various foundations (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Bertelsmann Foundation and others) with alleged humanitarian intentions and a claim to non-profit status.”33
Rethinking as a prerequisite for a future worth living in peace, freedom and truth
It is very difficult to see through these connections in a media landscape dependent on money. Therefore, hope lies with the free media and with the people who do not voluntarily submit to their deprivation of rights.
In view of the current state of the world, however, a “reset” of society as a whole is inevitable, but in the sense of rethinking as a prerequisite for a future worth living in peace, freedom and truth. This “reset” must, however, be placed on a democratic foundation.
It is time that the people themselves defend their democratically constituted society, promote love of peace internally and externally and affirm peoples and countries in their sovereignty, instead of unthinkingly and willingly participating with the USA and NATO in wars or regime changes that violate international law, the exploitation and destruction of natural resources and the engineering of interpersonal processes.
Finally, I would like to thank all those who made efforts to clarify the situation immediately after the events of 9/11, especially Daniele Ganser, Thierry Meyssan and Matthias Bröckers, who enriched me through friendly personal exchange.
| * Wolfgang Effenberger, born 1946, is a journalist and author of numerous books. He publishes in German. Here are three of his latest books: “Wiederkehr der Hasardeure, Schattenstrategen, Kriegstreiber, stille Profiteure 1914 und heute”; “Geo-Imperialismus: Die Zerstörung der Welt”, 2016. Most recently, the following was published "Schwarzbuch EU & NATO", 2021 https://zeitgeist-online.de/2013-11-30-00-57-32/1097-wolfgang-effenberger-schwarzbuch-eu-nato.html |
1 See also Wolfgang Effenberger: Neue Kriege um Rohstoffe. Friedensfestival on 25 July 2009 in front of the Brandenburg Gate at http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/media/14075/Berlin-Rede-Effenberger-23-07-09.pdf (5.9.21) as well as the article „Versuch einer Analyse nach acht Jahren Krieg in Afghanistan“ from 26 August 2009 unter http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=14162&css=print (4 September 21)
2 https://www.ipg-journal.de/ipg/was-ist-ipg/ (4 September 21)
5 Ibid
6 Herbert Krüger, former district leader of the IGBCE trade union, mail from 3 September 2021
7 Manlio Dinucci: From 1945 until today – 20 to 30 million people killed by USA, from 20 November 2018 at https://www.voltairenet.org/article204021.html (4 September 21)
8 Ibid
9 Quoted by Hans Schmidt: Maverick Marine. General Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History. United Press of Kentucky 1998, p. 231
10 https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Globale-US-Militaerpraesenz-und-die-Rolle-Deutschlands-6121113.html?seite=all (4 September 21)
11 Garrett M. Graff: Behind the 9/11 White House Order to Shoot Down U.S. Airliners: ‹It Had to be Done› Sep 9, 2019 https://www.history.com/news/september-11-attacks-shootdown-order-cheney-bush (5 September 21)
12 Wolfgang Effenberger/Konrad Löw: Pax americana. Munich 2004, p. 546f.
Wolfgang Effenberger had begun immediately with George W. Bush’s cryptic swearing-in speech on 20 January 2001 to critically analyse Bush's statements “We will deal with weapons of mass destruction, ... we will counter aggression and bad faith with determination and strength” (working title at the time Imperium USAnum). In view of the bursting towers, a book critical of the US seemed to have no future. But when after only a few hours the manipulative double image Osama bin Laden – burning tower went around the world, it was clear: now more than ever. In this book, the events of 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan are critically examined on pp 540–570.
13 http://www.911-archiv.net/Personalakten/ex-mitarbeiter-von-terrorismusabwehr-und-geheimdiensten-bezweifeln-offizielle-version-des-11-september.html (5 September 21)
14 Video recording of question and answer session with Raymond McGovern und Maj. Scott Ritter 22 July 2006 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwu0bNaUcOU
15 Video documentary One Nation Under Siege – Gen. Albert Stubblebine‘s statement http://www.undersiegemovie.com/media/stubblebine.wmv
16 Thierry Meyssan: 20th Anniversary of the September 11 Attacks 20. Everything points to Thierry Meyssan being right today from 3 September 2021 at https://www.voltairenet.org/article213935.html (4 September 21)
17 https://at.ert.wiki/wiki/United_States_government_operations_and_exercises_on_September_11,_2001 (4 September 2021)
18 Wolfgang Effenberger: Schwarzbuch EU & NATO Warum die Welt keinen Frieden findet. Höhr-Grenzhausen 2020, p. 257f.
19 https://www.help4you.info/pdf/19940801_TRADOC_Pamphlet_525-5.pdf (4 September 21)
20 Thierry Meyssan: 20th Anniversary of the September 11 Attacks. Everything points to Thierry Meyssan being right today from 3 September 2021 at https://www.voltairenet.org/article213881.html (4 September 21)
21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5UhQ-gqVkg from March 2007
22 USA PATRIOT Act: stands as a backronym for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001
23 Wolfgang Effenberger: Schwarzbuch EU & NATO Warum die Welt keinen Frieden findet. Höhr-Grenzhausen 2020, p. 264.
24 Thierry Meyssan: 20th Anniversary of the September 11 Attacks. Everything points to Thierry Meyssan being right today from 3 September 2021 at https://www.voltairenet.org/article213935.html (4 September 21)
25 See also Thierry Meyssan: The Rumsfeld/Cebrowski doctrin from 25 May 2021 at https://www.voltairenet.org/article213164.html (4 September 21)
26 Quoted as Thierry Meyssan: 20th Anniversary of the September 11 Attacks Everything points to Thierry Meyssan being right from 3 September2021 at https://www.voltairenet.org/article213935.html (4 September 21)
27 Ibid
28 Ernst Wolff in his speech to Ärzten für Aufklärung (doctors for enlightenment) (minutes 8–12) at https://t.me/aerztefueraufklaerungoffiziell
29 Ibid
30 https://unric.org/de/17ziele/
31 Klaus Schwab: “Covid 19 – The Great Reset” (2020) and “Shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution” (2018)
32 Zurück in die Zukunft (Back to the future) 10 December 2020. https://www.freitag.de/autoren/idog/zurueck-in-die-zukunft (5 September 21)
33 Ibid