ARCHIVE: Book Review: War and Globalisation: The Truth Behind September 11

War and Globalisation: The Truth Behind September 11
By Michel Chossudovsky
Global Outlook ISBN: 0-9731109-0-2
158 Pages. List Price US $14.95

Reviewed by Kéllia Ramares
Online Journal Associate Editor

What were Rep. Porter Goss and Senator Bob Graham and other members of the Senate and House intelligence committees doing, together with the alleged money-man behind 9-11, at breakfast on Capitol Hill on the morning of September 11? –Michel Chossudovsky

June 7, 2004—Last Thursday, George Tenet resigned as director of Central Intelligence. Rep. Porter Goss is one of the favorites to succeed Tenet. If he is nominated, will any of the senators at his confirmation hearing have the guts to ask the above question? And if he is not nominated, will it be because of what the answer to that question is?

This reviewer knows from personal experience that many Americans reflexively enter a state of denial when confronted with questions such as the one above, which Prof. Michel Chossudovsky posed on page 151 of his book “War and Globalisation: The Truth Behind September 11.” Certain Americans, including prominent leftist analysts, are quick to denounce as “conspiracy theorists” anyone who says, as Chossudovsky, I and others have done, that the United States government was complicit in the September 11 attacks. They prefer to think that simultaneous multi-agency incompetence and failure ruled the day. In other words, they prefer to adopt the government’s position rather than to accept the fact that the same government that supports all manner of assassinations, death squads, wars, and coups abroad is behind mass murder at home.

The United States government foments terrorism against its own people. Prof. Chossudovsky’s book, “War and Globalisation: The Truth Behind September 11,” deftly tells how and why.
In a mere 158 well-referenced pages, Chossudovsky, a University of Ottawa (Canada) economics professor who studies globalization, explains how Washington has supported Islamic terrorism since the Carter administration. He links Osama bin Laden to the CIA and shows that the Pakistani intelligence agency—the ISI—has close ties to both the CIA and al Q’aeda. Chossudovsky dispatches “The Blowback Thesis,” i.e. the notion that Osama and his allies have turned against the United States, and he shows how Islamic terrorism actually benefits Washington’s agenda.

“War and Globalisation” draws on official government papers, political statements, reports from major national and international press, and important independent research, including some of Chossudovsky’s own, to document many reasons why the U.S. government supports Islamic terrorism. Internationally, there’s the conquest of oil, control of the drug trade, and continued antagonism toward and competition with Russia and China. Domestically, there’s the suppression of dissent and the militarization of U.S. politics and economics.

Ultimately, Chossudovsky’s book presents its readers with a harsh reality: terrorism is a tool used to maintain and expand the growth of corporate capitalism, led by the U.S. dollar and backed by U.S. military might; true democracy, and the Rule of Law, domestic and international, be damned.
“War and Globalisation: The Truth Behind September 11,” is one of those “connect-the-dots” works that should be required reading, especially for media-misled, history-starved Americans.

Anti-globalization activists of all nations will find Chapter IX “Disarming the New World Order” of particular interest. Its first sentence is the bedrock on which dissent against the New World Order must rest: “The war on terrorism is a lie.” But, in this chapter, Chossudovsky also critiques the methods of the dissenters. He states that “Labour leaders and leftist politicians have been co-opted… Demands, petitions and declarations are formulated to little avail…The organization of counter-summits cannot constitute the basis of this struggle.“

In light of the fact that 15 million people worldwide marched against the invasion of Iraq only to see it happen about a month later, political activists would do well to read Chossudovsky’s critiques of social protest before embarking on their next effort. In fact, a more thorough treatment of the challenge of creating effective dissent would be a worthy subject for another Chossudovsky book.

Michel Chossudovsky is director of the Centre for Research on Globalisation.
“War and Globalisation: The Truth Behind September 11,” which has been translated into 10 languages, is available from the centre’s website. A companion video is also available.