September 11th was an important date in history before 2001. It was, before 2001, a date of infamy. In 1973, it was, for Chile, a day of many deaths:
democracy died that day
Salvador Allende, and many of his followers died
many, many hopes for the future died.
The date, of course, is coincidental, but it can be argued that the events of september 11th 1973 illustrate the causes for the events of september 11th 2001. In essence, the USA had it coming. This is, of course, not a popular position but I hope you will give me the chance to argue it out. Please follow me below the fold...
Salvador Allende was the first democratically elected marxist president ever. In free and fair elections, the people of Chile elected him and his openly socialist program.
Although Allende was in contact with the Soviet Union, he was by no means a tool of that superpower and never used their methods. According to the KGB, Allende's mistake was his reluctance to use force against his opponents:
http://en.wikipedia.org/... (see: "Cuban/soviet involvement")
He had great plans for Chile. He had hired famous cyberneticist Stafford Beer to come up with viable models for a new society, open and descentralized (again, in opposition to the style of the USSR). The moment he took office, he was thoroughly sabotaged by the rightist sectors of his country as well by the USA, through diplomatic and trade measures.
In 1973, with US complicity, Allende was killed in a coup de etat that put Augusto Pinochet in charge of the country.
It was not the first or last time that the US would aid brutal authoritatians to advance their national interests. A few years later, Operation Condor would be in full swing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Rightist goverments in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Brasil and Uruguay cooperated with each other in the task of oppressing latinamerican people. They traded intelligence information and torture techniques and were complicit in hiding illegal acts made by each state of the alliance, including state terrorism ( see article above). The US helped communicate and coordinate participating countries from Panama. With articles that have surfaced recently, knowledge and participation from the US is quite indisputable.
I would never say that the US DESERVED the attacks of 2001. Nobody there deserved to die. I will argue here that the US CAUSED the attacks it received. Not directly, but somewhat in the way that a bad husband causes his wife to cheat on him.
Off the top of my head, I can think of four tyrants who, after being aided by the US, became it's enemies: Mussolini, Noriega, Hussein, Bin Laden (for Mussolini, see Chomsky's "Deterring Democracy"). In each case, the reason why a violent tyrants was supported was that putting him in power would protect the US from a greater evil (Iran in the case of Hussein, communism in the case of Bin Laden and Mussolini). Promoting violence and inequity around the world has been part of the modus operandi of the US since at least the begining of the 20th century.
Isn't it reasonable to ask wether the violence the US caused would someday bite it in the back? Violence creates violence, just as peace creates peace. Think about your family or workplace life, think of how violence works and tell me this isn't true. Now think about how interconected and interdependent the world has become. Violence reverbarates all around the system; it was just a matter of time before it reached the US.
To me, democracy means any system of goverment where people have a say in how society works. Allende's government was democratic, so were the tribal peoples of the amazon studied by Pierre Clastres. I wholeheartedly approve the idea of the US supporting democracy (in this sense) around the globe, as much as I disapprove of it's imposing a way of life on other countries.
Democracy means talking things out and reaching a compromise between interested parties: within a countrie, between nations, in a famuly or in a classroom. The alternative to democracy is violence. Nobody WANTS to be a terrorist or to fight wars, people become violent when there are no peaceful ways to achieve a solution. If you want cheap labour from oppressed countries, you need to deterr democracy and thus, you have to live with violence.
Of course, the US could make this choice: let's force the world into doing our will and live with terrorism. The alternative is to truly promote peace and democracy, never aiding undemocratic or violent forces.
You need a violent world in order to have the sort of capitalism we have in the early XXIst century: when corporations write laws and the business of goverment is to facilitate the accumulation of power and wealth by their corporate owners, you need to use violence and thus, to create it.
Perhaps the future lies with corporate facism: China would rise because by virtue of being less democratic than the EU or USA, in a world where the only value would be production, and the job of the government to aid corporations in the opression of people.
The US coud still have a bright future in the XXI century, by changing it's way of life and becoming a new kind of superpower. It is possible, a US where people lived purposeful lifes, aware of their power to change the world for the better. A US goverment that would make it it's task to rid Africa of aids; a US goverment that would only help goverments and organizations who achieved the highest standards of human rights and labour rigths (instead of, say, giving missilies to Husseins); a goverment and a people that would make it their task to create a world where all sorts of ways of life (not just the American Way of Life) were possible. There would not be terrorism in this world, because no person who has a chance of a truly free life would be a terrorist.
Is this idealistic? Sure. But there are only two choices: to become an altruistic society, or to alternate between Bush and Bush light in the type of societies they foster.
altruism or a world of constant violence.