arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Could you imagine this a year ago? It's September 2002. Under the pretext of a "war on terror," Washington is waging an aggressive war against any who resist its domination of the world from Afghanistan and Iraq to the guerrillas of Colombia and the progressive nationalist government in Venezuela? What made this possible was the Bush administration's exploitation of the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

John Catalinotto, Workers' World, New York
11-09-2002

Sometimes, looking downtown, I almost expect to still see the World Trade Center towers. On Sept. 10, 2001, I worked late on the 31st floor of Tower Number 1. I felt justified sleeping late the next morning. I was late enough to see the towers burning, and Tower 2 collapse, and lucky enough not to be inside.
Almost all my co-workers on the floors 18 and 31 made it out. Eleven died, including one in his wheelchair and one keeping him company. Everyone in the office that day was traumatized. They climbed down smoky staircases dripping with water from automatic sprinklers.

To escape falling debris, one co-worker out on Liberty Street had to leap over a woman killed by a wheel from the airplane that crashed into Tower 2.

Like the rest of the city's working class, about a third of my co-workers were immigrants. From China, Russia, South Asia, the Pacific islands, Latin America mainly.

The company survived. In a month everyone was back at work, everyone but the 11 who died and 10 percent of the company's work force that was downsized, a plan in the works long before the attacks as part of capitalist restructuring.

A year later, the families of those who died on Sept. 11 got substantial financial compensation. Many workers, like some who bussed and waited at the Windows of the World restaurant, have remained jobless. One finds himself wishing he had been caught in the rubble, where his compensation would have been more valuable to his family.

The World Trade Center towers were places where tens of thousands of people worked. That's the human side of the equation.

Symbols of U.S. domination

But the towers were also symbols of U.S. economic domination of the world, of so-called globalization that reduces hundreds of millions of people to starvation and which aroused a powerful worldwide movement to fight it.

The Pentagon, also hit that day, is the symbol of U.S. military domination, and of the bombs that dropped on Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Yugoslavia, killing many, many more than the 3,000 in the towers.

Together these buildings symbolized the grip that Washington, Wall Street and Hollywood have on the Middle East, sucking out the oil and money, and pumping in a foreign culture. Holding down the masses and stifling the educated middle classes. Propping up the intrusive Israeli settler state.

U.S. foreign policies and practices, especially throughout the Middle East, aroused a deep anger. But according to the official story, this anger found expression through organizations that Washington itself funded and aided for decades as part of its war against communism.

Those who killed themselves and 3,000 others may have intended a blow against U.S. domination. And the destruction of these symbols was indeed an insult to the perceived invulnerability of the U.S. state. But the slap in the face broke no teeth.

A propaganda weapon

On the contrary, the Sept. 11, 2001 attack put a propaganda weapon in the hands of the most right-wing, aggressive faction in the U.S. political establishment. It stunned much of the population into passivity, and made it possible for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and others in their grouping to exploit the pain and fear the attack inspired and push the country toward a permanent state of war abroad and repression at home.

Right now the threat for a major assault on Iraq seems the biggest danger. But along with this ­ or waiting in line behind it ­ is a war against all peoples and parts of the world that resist "globalization." Henry Kissinger, in his 1999 talk at Trinity College, admitted that "globalization" means the domination of U.S. financial and strategic interests.

U.S. advisers and weapons pour into Colombia, now openly to battle the FARC and ELN guerrillas. U.S. troops are back in the Philippines, allegedly to battle "Islamic terrorists" but really to intervene against a people's liberation army.

U.S. agents and money move against the progressive Hugo Chavez government in Venezuela, neighbor of Colombia and at the north end of a continent that is in a depression deeper than that of the 1930s.

Suffering Afghanistan is now permanently occupied by U.S. troops, ruled by a president that can't survive without a team of 70 U.S. bodyguards.

Meanwhile U.S. bases proliferate from Eastern Europe to Central Asia, setting up a modern version of the old Roman Empire, with its capital in Washington.

Those of us who worked in the towers can rightly ask themselves, "Will we let Bush and Company use our worries and sorrows as an excuse for the Pentagon to wage war on the world?"

I for one, say no, and I'll be demonstrating this decision in the weeks that come.