Talk: Gore Vidal on Bush

Observer Worldview

Terrorism crisis: Observer special

Sunder Katwala
Sunday October 27, 2002
Observer

America's most controversial writer Gore Vidal has launched
the most scathing attack to date on George W Bush's Presidency,
calling for an investigation into the events of 9/11 to discover
whether the Bush administration deliberately chose not to act
on warnings of Al-Qaeda's plans.

Vidal's highly controversial 7000 word polemic titled 'The Enemy
Within' - published in the print edition of The Observer today
- argues that what he calls a 'Bush junta' used the terrorist
attacks as a pretext to enact a pre-existing agenda to invade
Afghanistan and crack down on civil liberties at home.

Vidal writes: 'We still don't know by whom we were struck that
infamous Tuesday, or for what true purpose. But it is fairly
plain to many civil libertarians that 9/11 put paid not only to
much of our fragile Bill of Rights but also to our once-envied
system of government which had taken a mortal blow the previous
year when the Supreme Court did a little dance in 5/4 time and
replaced a popularly elected President with the oil and gas
Bush-Cheney junta.'

Vidal argues that the real motive for the Afghanistan war was
to control the gateway to Eurasia and Central Asia's energy
riches. He quotes extensively from a 1997 analysis of the region
by Zgibniew Brzezinski, formerly national security adviser to
President Carter, in support of this theory. But, Vidal argues,
US administrations, both Democrat and Republican, were aware
that the American public would resist any war in Afghanistan
without a truly massive and widely perceived external threat.

'Osama was chosen on aesthetic grounds to be the frightening logo
for our long-contemplated invasion and conquest of Afghanistan
... [because] the administration is convinced that Americans
are so simple-minded that they can deal with no scenario more
complex than the venerable, lone, crazed killer (this time with
zombie helpers) who does evil just for the fun of it 'cause he
hates us because we're rich 'n free 'n he's not.' Vidal also
attacks the American media's failure to discuss 11 September
and its consequences: 'Apparently, "conspiracy stuff" is now
shorthand for unspeakable truth.'

'It is an article of faith that there are no conspiracies in
American life. Yet, a year or so ago, who would have thought that
most of corporate America had been conspiring with accountants
to cook their books since - well, at least the bright dawn of
the era of Reagan and deregulation.'

At the heart of the essay are questions about the events of 9/11
itself and the two hours after the planes were hijacked. Vidal
writes that 'astonished military experts cannot fathom why the
government's "automatic standard order of procedure in the event
of a hijacking" was not followed'.

These procedures, says Vidal, determine that fighter planes
should automatically be sent aloft as soon as a plane has
deviated from its flight plan. Presidential authority is not
required until a plane is to be shot down. But, on 11 September,
no decision to start launching planes was taken until 9.40am,
eighty minutes after air controllers first knew that Flight 11
had been hijacked and fifty minutes after the first plane had
struck the North Tower.

'By law, the fighters should have been up at around 8.15. If
they had, all the hijacked planes might have been diverted and
shot down.'

Vidal asks why Bush, as Commander-in-Chief, stayed in a Florida
classroom as news of the attacks broke: 'The behaviour of
President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not
unnatural suspicions.' He also attacks the 'nonchalance' of
General Richard B Myers, acting Joint Chief of Staff, in failing
to respond until the planes had crashed into the twin towers.

Asking whether these failures to act expeditiously were down to
conspiracy, coincidence or error, Vidal notes that incompetence
would usually lead to reprimands for those responsible, writing
that 'It is interesting how often in our history, when disaster
strikes, incompetence is considered a better alibi than .... Well,
yes, there are worse things.'

Vidal draws comparisons with another 'day of infamy' in American
history, writing that 'The truth about Pearl Harbour is obscured
to this day. But it has been much studied. 11 September, it is
plain, is never going to be investigated if Bush has anything
to say about it.' He quotes CNN reports that Bush personally
asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to limit Congressional
investigation of the day itself, ostensibly on grounds of not
diverting resources from the anti-terror campaign.

Vidal calls bin Laden an 'Islamic zealot' and 'evil doer'
but argues that 'war' cannot be waged on the abstraction of
'terrorism'. He says that 'Every nation knows how - if it has
the means and will - to protect itself from thugs of the sort
that brought us 9/11 ... You put a price on their heads and hunt
them down. In recent years, Italy has been doing that with the
Sicilian Mafia; and no-one has suggested bombing Palermo.'

Vidal also highlights the role of American and Pakistani
intelligence in creating the fundamentalist terrorist threat:
'Apparently, Pakistan did do it - or some of it' but with American
support. "From 1979, the largest covert operation in the history
of the CIA was launched in response to the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan ... the CIA covertly trained and sponsored these
warriors.'

Vidal also quotes the highly respected defence journal Jane's
Defence Weekly on how this support for Islamic fundamentalism
continued after the emergence of bin Laden: 'In 1988, with US
knowledge, bin Laden created Al-Qaeda (The Base); a conglomerate
of quasi-independent Islamic terrorist cells spread across 26
or so countries. Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda.'

Vidal, 77, and internationally renowned for his award-winning
novels and plays, has long been a ferocious, and often isolated,
critic of the Bush administration at home and abroad. He now
lives in Italy. In Vidal's most recent book, The Last Empire,
he argued that 'Americans have no idea of the extent of their
government's mischief ... the number of military strikes we
have made unprovoked, against other countries, since 1947 is
more than 250.'