Book summary “9-11”: summary

Introduction

You live in a world where global conflicts and state violence shape your daily safety and civil liberties. When catastrophic events such as the September 11 attacks occur, you face a wave of official rhetoric that demands unconditional support for military retaliation. You may struggle to find an objective analysis of why such violence happens and how your government's own foreign policy contributes to the cycle of terror.

The September 11 attacks represent a major escalation in global violence, exposing the hypocrisy of state terrorism, the failure of military retaliation, and the urgent necessity of applying universal moral standards to foreign policy.

Noam Chomsky examines the historical context of these events, analyzing the double standards of international law and the consequences of imperial intervention. You will explore how powerful states manufacture consent for endless war and why violent retaliation breeds further tragedy.

• How do the historical actions of dominant powers generate blowback from oppressed populations?
• Why do governments apply different moral standards to their own actions than to the acts of official enemies?
• What alternative paths exist for pursuing genuine security through international law rather than military force?

1. Not Since the War of 1812

Home Soil and Imperial Power

The September 11 attacks mark the first time in modern history that the national territory of the United States has been attacked by foreign forces since the War of 1812. You must recognize how this event contrasts with historical patterns of violence.

The September 11 attacks brought foreign violence directly to the American domestic mainland for the first time since the War of 1812, contrasting sharply with historical projections of global military power.

Pearl Harbor involved attacks on military bases in a U.S. territory on December 7, 1941. In contrast, 9/11 brought foreign violence directly to the American mainland. This violence struck a global power that has historically projected military force and annihilated indigenous populations across the world.

The Historical Roots of Blowback

The terrorist network responsible for the September 11 attacks grew out of mercenary armies. Intelligence agencies recruited, armed, and trained these forces during the 1980s.

The CIA and its allies originally recruited, trained, and armed radical Islamic extremists during the 1980s to fight Soviet forces in Afghanistan, directly laying the groundwork for the al-Qaeda network.

U.S. intelligence agencies collaborated with Pakistani intelligence and other allies. They gathered the most extreme fundamentalists available for a proxy holy war against the Soviet occupation. They showed total disregard for long-term consequences after the Mujahidin took control.

John Cooley documented in his book Unholy Wars how the CIA joined Pakistani intelligence, Saudi Arabia, and Britain. They recruited and armed extreme fundamentalists against Russian invaders.

Zbigniew Brzezinski instigated secret support for the Afghan Mujahidin in 1979 specifically to draw the Soviet Union into an Afghan trap. This created a massive mercenary force of approximately 100,000 radical Islamists from around the world.

Osama bin Laden and his network were born out of this anti-Soviet Holy War. They subsequently targeted the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, murdered tourists in Egypt, and carried out global attacks.

2. Crimes of State and Double Standards

Powerful states routinely practice terrorism and establish hypocritical alliances with brutal regimes while maintaining strict legal mechanisms and denying the principle of universality.

Noam Chomsky argues that the United States is itself a leading terrorist state and is building a coalition with countries like Russia, China, Indonesia, Egypt, and Algeria. These unsavory characters welcome U.S. sponsorship to carry out domestic atrocities against separatists and insurgents under the banner of counter-terrorism.

Russia sought backing for its war in Chechnya, Indonesia sought support for massacres in Aceh, and China fought separatist forces in its western provinces.

The Coalition of the Unsavory

The international coalition formed by the United States to fight terrorism includes prominent state actors and regimes that utilize terrorism and violence to suppress their own internal conflicts. You can see this coalition of the just welcoming state-sponsored violence when geopolitical interests align.

Justice Robert Jackson established at Nuremberg that criminal conduct rules must apply universally, stating that acts are crimes whether committed by Germany or the United States. Under these definitions, launching unprovoked invasions and aggressive wars constitutes the supreme international crime. Prosecuting Nazi leaders while excusing American presidents of aggressive military interventions demonstrates a rejection of the principle of universality.

State Terrorism and Legal Frameworks

The U.S. Department of State maintains a formal bureaucratic and legal mechanism under the Immigration and Nationality Act to designate and periodically review Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Designations require an exhaustive interagency review process involving the State Department, Justice Department, Treasury Department, and intelligence community to compile a classified administrative record establishing that an organization engages in terrorist acts threatening U.S. national security.

In October 1997, Madeleine Albright designated the first 30 groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, a list updated by subsequent secretaries like Colin Powell and transitioned over time into annual Country Reports on Terrorism.

The Secretary of State consults with the Attorney General and the Secretary of the Treasury to identify potential terrorist targets. An exhaustive interagency review compiles a classified administrative record documenting the group's terrorist activities. The Department of State provides classified notification to Congress seven days before publishing the designation in the Federal Register.

The 1998 U.S. cruise missile strike on the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan resulted in a massive, silent civilian death toll from preventable diseases, comparable in proportional impact to the 9-11 attacks. Chomsky demonstrates that the destruction of the plant eliminated the primary local source of affordable medicines for malaria, tuberculosis, and veterinary needs. Citing estimates from diplomats, aid workers, and journalists, he explains how tens of thousands of people suffered and died as a consequence, while Washington blocked UN inquiries.

The plant produced 90 percent of Sudan's major pharmaceutical products, and its destruction left the country with zero supplies of chloroquine for malaria and eliminated the sole producer of TB drugs for over 100,000 patients. There were 80 killed and 250 wounded in a 1985 Beirut truck bombing, 1.5 million dead in Sudan's civil war since 1981, and 2.4 million people at risk of starvation in southern Sudan during these periods of low-intensity warfare and memory hole tactics.

3. Choice of Action and Counterproductive War

Unilateral military retaliation against impoverished nations is a catastrophic error that fulfills terrorist strategies, whereas law-abiding states should pursue judicial accountability.

The Trap of Military Retaliation

A massive military assault on impoverished foreign populations will backfire by killing innocent civilians, validating fanaticism, and elevating terrorist leaders into powerful martyrs. Chomsky emphasizes that military retaliation serves as the exact catalyst terrorists want above all. Slaughtering innocents deepens desperation and anger, increases the recruitment pool for extremist networks, and destabilizes fragile regions further.

Foreign leaders and British analysts warned from the outset that military strikes would devalue moderation, idolize bin Laden, and spark a wider conflict between the West and the Arab world. By launching massive military assaults in Muslim nations, the United States directly fulfilled Osama bin Laden's strategy of bleeding the American economy through protracted wars.

Bin Laden's stated goal was to draw the United States into expensive wars that would bankrupt the country and radicalize the Islamic world. Commentators and intelligence analysts noted that Washington eagerly rushed into this trap, resulting in bloated military budgets and mounting national debt.

CIA analyst Michael Scheuer and writer Eric Margolis observed that U.S. policies successfully completed the radicalization of the Islamic world exactly as bin Laden intended. You can recognize this response as criminal idiocy that ignores the actual roots of political violence.

Legal Alternatives to Violence

When confronting international or domestic terrorist crimes, lawful states have historical precedents to pursue judicial accountability rather than unleashing massive military violence that kills innocents. Chomsky contrasts destructive military responses with sensible alternatives rooted in the rule of law.

When Britain faced IRA terrorism, it did not bomb Boston or Belfast but sought to apprehend criminals and address grievances. When the Oklahoma City bombing occurred, the perpetrator was brought to a court of law. Similarly, when Nicaragua suffered a destructive U.S.-backed terrorist war, it sought recourse through the World Court and the United Nations Security Council.

Nicaragua took the United States to the World Court and won a ruling ordering the U.S. to desist and pay reparations, demonstrating the legal recourse available to sovereign states. This case spanned a timeframe related to international terrorism condemnations by the World Court lasting 15 years.

When the Oklahoma City federal building bombing occurred, authorities did not obliterate entire states with military force; instead, they hunted down the individual perpetrator, brought him to court, and examined the motivating grievances. You face a stark choice between coercive diplomacy paired with military violence and a rational approach that targets specific perpetrators through courts while investigating underlying political grievances.

4. Civilizations and the Ideological Campaign

Mainstream explanations attribute the attacks to a hatred of Western freedom and democracy. This comforting myth ignores documented local grievances regarding U.S. support for repressive Middle Eastern regimes.

The clash of civilizations narrative serves as a propaganda tool that masks pragmatic alliances with extremism while suppressing local grievances and independent media.

Intellectual culture and media avoid confronting the historical record of U.S. foreign policy. Surveys of wealthy, pro-American Muslims and the general Arab public reveal intense anger over Washington's backing of corrupt authoritarian governments, economic barriers to development, and specific policies concerning Iraq and Israel/Palestine.

The Wall Street Journal surveyed wealthy westernized Muslims and found deep dismay over U.S. support for harsh authoritarian states and its policies regarding Israel/Palestine and Iraq. Forty-five years ago, President Eisenhower discussed the Arab campaign of hatred against the U.S. due to its support of corrupt governments for near east oil.

Propaganda and Definitions

The term terrorism is used in two ways: literally as the calculated use of violence for political ends, and propagandistically to refer exclusively to acts committed by enemies against the West and its allies. Official U.S. documents define terrorism accurately as the use of violence to attain political, religious, or ideological goals through fear and coercion. Powerful states routinely apply the label only to adversaries while renaming their own state violence or their clients' atrocities as counter-terrorism or freedom fighting.

The KLA in Kosovo were condemned as terrorists by the U.S. in 1998, but instantly became freedom fighters when NATO decided to attack Serbia. They then reverted to being thugs when they carried out similar actions in Macedonia.

The popular notion of a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West is a superficial narrative that ignores the deep pragmatic alliances between Western powers and various extreme fundamentalist or brutal regimes. The U.S. and its allies have consistently supported radical Islamic fundamentalists, military dictators, and repressive regimes when it served their geopolitical and economic interests, exposing the emptiness of the civilization clash theory.

The U.S. strongly supported Indonesia's Suharto during massacres of hundreds of thousands after he took power with Western assistance in 1965. Washington also backed the Taliban's predecessors in Afghanistan and maintained a close alliance with Saudi Arabia, the most extreme fundamentalist state besides the Taliban. These actions generated 200,000 tortured and mutilated corpses left by the U.S. war in Central America in the 1980s.

The Role of Activists

Social activists must reject calls to curb their criticisms and instead intensify their efforts to examine the background factors behind terrorism and promote human rights and peace. If the goal is to reduce the likelihood of further atrocities, you must refuse intimidation and inquire honestly into the historical policies that generate anger and desperation in the region.

The bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas urged North Americans to reflect on why they are so hated after generating so much violence to protect economic interests. You must address the crisis through specific actions:

• do not curb analysis and criticisms or accept demands for silent obedience;
• intensify efforts to inquire into the background factors that lie behind crimes;
• devote energy to just causes and keep close to the course of truth, honesty, and human consequences.

Conclusion

True security emerges from adhering to universal legal standards, addressing legitimate political grievances, and rejecting the false comfort of nationalist retaliation.

You now see how powerful states perpetuate cycles of violence through double standards, state terror, and ideological propaganda. The events of September 11 demand that you look beyond official rhetoric and examine the root causes of global conflict. You must reject military escalations that only breed further atrocities and suffering.

1. Demand that your government apply the same international legal standards to itself that it imposes on adversaries.
2. Question official state narratives and media frameworks that rely on the clash of civilizations myth to justify military intervention.
3. Support human rights organizations and legal mechanisms that seek to prosecute war crimes through international courts rather than unilateral violence.
4. Focus your activism on addressing the socioeconomic and political grievances that foster extremist recruitment across the globe.

10 Key Ideas

1. The September 11 attacks brought foreign violence directly to the American domestic mainland for the first time since the War of 1812, contrasting sharply with historical projections of global military power.
2. The CIA and its allies originally recruited, trained, and armed radical Islamic extremists during the 1980s to fight Soviet forces in Afghanistan, directly laying the groundwork for the al-Qaeda network.
3. Powerful states routinely practice terrorism and establish hypocritical alliances with brutal regimes while maintaining strict legal mechanisms and denying the principle of universality.
4. The 1998 U.S. cruise missile strike on the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan resulted in a massive, silent civilian death toll from preventable diseases, comparable in proportional impact to the 9-11 attacks.
5. Unilateral military retaliation against impoverished nations is a catastrophic error that fulfills terrorist strategies, whereas law-abiding states should pursue judicial accountability.
6. When confronting international or domestic terrorist crimes, lawful states have historical precedents to pursue judicial accountability rather than unleashing massive military violence that kills innocents.
7. The clash of civilizations narrative serves as a propaganda tool that masks pragmatic alliances with extremism while suppressing local grievances and independent media.
8. Official U.S. documents define terrorism accurately as the use of violence to attain political, religious, or ideological goals through fear and coercion while powerful states apply the label selectively.
9. Social activists must reject calls to curb their criticisms and instead intensify their efforts to examine the background factors behind terrorism and promote human rights and peace.
10. True security emerges from adhering to universal legal standards, addressing legitimate political grievances, and rejecting the false comfort of nationalist retaliation.