Driven by Dementia
William A. Cook

The atrocity of 9/11, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, of John F. Kennedy, and the disasters that befell the crews of the Challenger and Columbia electrify the mind, searing indelibly in the nerve system of our souls a moment in time that shocks us with the power of truth – we are one in our journey through this life of pain and suffering. That awareness, the visceral gut wrenching knowledge that we are not alone, that we respond to another’s plight, to pain and loss and fear, to a stranger who suffers what we might, that impulsive response yokes us together in one humanity regardless of age, or place, or time. That experience gives credence to morality: “Do unto others as ye would have them do unto you”; “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

But what of those who experience no such shock to the soul? What of those who expunge evil from their minds marking it as a sign of weakness? What of those who dismiss the lives of those driven to leap from the Towers, the firefighters and police trapped in the inferno, the deaths of leaders marked for assassination, the deaths of the astronauts whose spirit soared beyond the known world – what of those who dismiss these as unfortunates caught in circumstances that ended their lives tragically, but meaninglessly? What of those who know evil does not exist; it is a fabrication of weak minds, merely a tool to be used to gain an end? Real men cannot be concerned about morality; leaders are born to use powers that will ensure their ends are achieved, and hence will use what motivates the weak to ensure their strength. Death becomes but a tool to an end wielded by those who have reached a level of absolute arrogance that enables wanton slaughter without remorse. It is the mind that can sever the arms of inoculated children because, as Kurtz explains in “Apocalypse Now,” the righteous belief that drives the mind denies all that conflicts with the belief.

Such disturbing thoughts shatter the calm of a 9/11 morning five years after the atrocity. But more disturbing still is the abuse that has been made of that day by our government. A litany of such abuses echoes like a dirge, a lamentation of frightening proportions in this opening decade of this new century. Our most recent lamentation comes in the form of Disney’s distortions, as documented in “The Path to 9/11,” that drums into the American mind the failures that led to that day of death and thereby cements into our conscious minds the righteous path of the Neo-Cons absolute belief that their America has not only the right but the duty to impose its beliefs on the Mid-East.

The mini-series pits O’Neill, a hardnosed realist chasing down the evil-doers in al Qaeda, against the ineffective bureaucrats that hobble action in the Clinton administration, controlled as they are by legal and policy regulations. O’Neill’s frustrations and those in the trenches in the CIA and FBI demand the obstacles be removed so that their pre-determined beliefs might be accomplished. Hence the need for the Neo-Con agenda of pre-emptive war, secretive spying, secretive prisons, torture, absolute silence, unilateral decision making, unrestricted executive power, state coercion, control of communication media, absolute and unconditional obedience by the Republicans, destruction of opponents by whatever means necessary, and utilization of deceit to achieve administration goals. All of these strong and forceful measures must be undertaken for national security reasons, to ensure that the American standard of living can be maintained. Two primary distortions suffuse the pseudo-documentary: America’s pre-determined right to impose its will on nations in the mid-east not just through international bodies like NATO or the UN, but clandestinely through CIA manipulation of  operatives willing to cooperate for a price, and, secondly, the complete denial of concern for the principle reason for mid-east anger against America as enunciated by Osama Bin Laden and Ramzi Yousef, America’s unconditional support for Israel’s genocidal actions against the Palestinians. The principle message of the series rings loud and clear, America cannot afford to be encumbered by international law, international agreements, by the Geneva Conventions, by the UN Charter, by American law or congressional oversight if it is to wage war against its perceived enemies; the American government must use every means possible to achieve its ends – control trumps law.

That thinking allowed Bush and his Neo-Con cabal to use the events of 9/11 to impose the first of many deceits on the American people and the world community: America is at war, an unending war against unknown forces; America is under attack by those who hate our freedoms; all nations that support “terrorists” are enemies of America and are responsible for that support; America’s position is the justified one and all nations must decide that they are with America or with the enemy; and, finally, America reserves the right to impose its will unilaterally and with force as it deems necessary. Each of these is a fabrication, a deceit that masks the truth and hides the consequences of these deceits from the American people.

No state declared war on America; no state to date has declared war on America. Indeed, as the “Path to 9/11” shows, sundry groups in various locations around the globe, committed atrocities against America, but none were determined to be caused by a specific nation state. By connecting 9/11 to a person, Osama Bin Laden, and by yoking all previous attacks into ones committed by his organization, the Bush administration attempted to create a force that would be accepted in lieu of a state so that a “war” could be waged. By placing Bin Laden in Afghanistan and demanding that the Taliban government arrest him and turn him over to America, Bush could attack a nation regardless of the numbers of citizens in that country who knew of Bin Laden or accepted his methods of confronting American interests. That the innocent could do nothing to change the government now declared to be evil by America, that the innocent resided in a state that had already been devastated by decades of war, that Afghanistan had no military capable of defeating America much less an international force, that no one could distinguish an al Qaeda fighter from a citizen meant nothing to the administration that had determined the people guilty if their government would not turn over Bin Laden. The irony of this unilaterally imposed law that makes the citizen complicit in the crimes of a few parallels the logic used by Osama when he declared that American citizens are guilty of America’s crimes against the Arab people, especially since they elect their government.