The Blame Game

September 11, 2004 8:56 AM

9/11: Who do we blame? George W. Bush? Democrats? Bill Clinton? Ronald Reagan? The FBI? "The government"? Saddam Hussein? God? Maybe it was punishment for years of legal abortion. Maybe if we had destroyed the sodomites [pdf] those 3000 people would still be alive. Maybe. But with all these conflicting reports, will we ever really know who is truly responsible for the 9/11 attacks?
posted by punishinglemur (29 comments total)

9/11: Who do we blame? ....will we ever really know who is truly responsible for the 9/11 attacks?

Al Quaeda / 18 young Muslim men / The governments & organizations who directly funded them
posted by dhoyt at 9:03 AM on September 11, 2004

I personally blame Metafilter.
posted by Stan Chin at 9:16 AM on September 11, 2004

There might be lessons to learn, things to contemplate, but the only people directly responsible are those who flew the planes and were involved in planning the attacks.
posted by tomplus2 at 9:21 AM on September 11, 2004

a friend of mines mom just found out she has breast cancer ... how much are we spending on the "war on cancer" compared to the "war on terrah" ? fractions of pennies on the dollar. sickening.


19 murders should not have changed the world.
posted by specialk420 at 9:32 AM on September 11, 2004

Alternately, why did Finland produce Linux and Afghanistan produce Al Quaeda? What set these two countries on the edge of the former Soviet Empire on such different paths? What caused software developers to organize into autonomous cells and proceed to develop industrial-quality software for the unencumbered benefit of their fellow humans? What caused successful entrepreneurs to turn their talents towards the death and destruction of their fellow humans?

How can we ensure that the virtues of Open Source projects will continue and Al Quaeda's destructive ways not?
posted by b1tr0t at 9:36 AM on September 11, 2004

what's linux?
posted by mcsweetie at 9:40 AM on September 11, 2004

There's so much blame to go around for 9/11 that pretty much every body can have a nice big healthy serving.

But responsible? I thought that had already been pretty well established that Saddam Hussein forced Osama into planning and running the attacks, that's why we went into Iraq to rescue Big Bird and Mickey Mouse.

Anyway, I blame my mother and father for 9/11. If they hadn't been messing around 9 months before then it wouldn't have been my birthday.

b1tr0t, you raise a very, very interesting question. In all seriousness, I've read some theories that the differences can be traced to how much time they spent with their mothers as babies.
posted by fenriq at 9:42 AM on September 11, 2004

One might speculate that part of the answer is that Afghanistan has been an impoverished war zone for the last two decades and Finland, you know, hasn't been.
posted by mote at 9:44 AM on September 11, 2004

Uh, specialk, that's "19 murderers", and I hope to hell it was a typo.
posted by nicwolff at 9:52 AM on September 11, 2004

How can you leave al-Qa'ida off your list? Most evidence -- including statements by their leaders and members -- points very clearly to their responsibility for the September 11th attacks. The planes hitting those buildings was not an accident.

Perhaps you are asking who on "your" side is to blame for not stopping the attacks. Again, that seems reasonably clear: the whole system of national security, bureaucratic and political, failed. The biggest problem seems to have been a lack of effective knowledge sharing between international intelligence gathering and domestic law enforcement around matters of terrorism, and, perhaps, a failure to imagine that such an attack could take place by top policy makers.

At the political level, it becomes more difficult to point the finger. Terrorism was simply not an issue in the 2000 presidential campaign. My sense is that the Clinton people took it more seriously than the Bush people did, because the African embassy and the Cole bombings happened on their watch, but in the end, it didn't make much difference. In his second term Clinton was distracted and, in some ways, hamstrung by the politically-motivated Whitewater probe. There was much criticism from all sides after his "wag the dog" missile attacks in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998. In fact, he did not go far enough, but was criticized for it anyway.

Perhaps you mean who is to blame within some sort of geopolitical meta-narritive. That one is very much up for grabs.

One perspective goes like this: The US is the major world power and, as such, uses force (just as other nations do, but on a larger scale) to protect its economic and political interests outside its borders. Because American power is so great, nation states have little hope of challenging it directly. However, entities that are not geographically specific (i.e. non-state) can use asymmetrical warfare to attack the US. Therefore, in a unipolar world, non-state organizations that seek political power provide the greatest security threat to the US, and it was probably inevitable that a group such as al-Qa'ida would at some point attack the US successfully.

Another perspective: as an imperial power, the US has not applied its own basic notions of human rights or international law to many of its dealings with the world over the past century. This has caused resentment and anger at the US, which from the outside looks a bit like a self-interested, hypocritical, and sometime brutal empire. One result of this anger will be asymmetrical warfare from a variety of groups. As well, this moral relativism of US foreign policy has meant supporting and strengthening nations and groups that have become enemies of the US. Al-Qa'ida exists in large part because the US pragmatically supported Islamist rebels in Afghanistan during their war with the Soviets, even though the Islamists and Americans shared little other common ground.
posted by tranquileye at 9:56 AM on September 11, 2004

Funny, you know. There was this commission set up to find out the answers to these very questions! I heard they wrote some kind of report about it, too.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 10:17 AM on September 11, 2004

And while it is true that the Enemy always hates us for a reason -- it is his reason, and not ours.
-Lee Harris
posted by Mick at 10:19 AM on September 11, 2004

Texas Longhorns fans.
posted by bargle at 10:54 AM on September 11, 2004

Happy birthday, fenriq.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 11:14 AM on September 11, 2004

Why is it so important that someone be blamed?

There's so much blame to go around for 9/11 that pretty much every body can have a nice big healthy serving. fenriq happy birthday! makes a good point.

Also, there is that whole idea of removing the plank from your own eye before giving Clear Eyes™ to the dude with the mote in his.

/morality police
posted by sciurus at 12:24 PM on September 11, 2004

I blamed the terrorists. Period. Without them, none of this would have happened. They made their choices and 9/11 was the result. It's their fault.
posted by aacheson at 12:43 PM on September 11, 2004

Interesting list, oddly, you leave off the one group clearly responsible.
posted by cedar at 1:05 PM on September 11, 2004

Here's one man's opinion:

"Extending the war into Iraq would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Exceeding the U.N.'s mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land." —George H. W. Bush, 1998
posted by nofundy at 1:58 PM on September 11, 2004

Sorry, wrong thread. Meant for the Juan Cole thread.
posted by nofundy at 2:07 PM on September 11, 2004

I guess there's more then one SINGLE point/accumulator of blame for 9/11 and for all
the ensued.

It would be "nice" and somehow comforting to say "Mr.X did it" and therefore bring justice down on earth on him, appeasing and reassuring population that the supervillain no longer can harm. I think that many "single isolated" acts of criminal behavior are the conclusion of a chain reaction of different causes that we often overlook and forget to examine, because the supervillain was captured.

Now the supervillain of choice is Osama Bin Lande and he may as well be a complete lunatic, a religious zealot with tons of money and a deep understanding of terrorist operation and the world will be a safer place when he's dead or captured ; but it would be simplicistic to think that Osama is the -ONE- to blame for everything or that his organization is reponsible for everything.

That version will fill the airwaves to appease and reassure the simpletons while I think the chain of causes that ended into 9/11 attack is still not well known and probably will never be.We should ask ourself a number of question and pay attention not to jump to solutions that appease our urge to find a responsible, a single fault point from which everything started.

----
In the top of the post we read about Bush, Clinton, FBI, God etc etc. Interestingly somebody forgets corporations and their political and monetary interests ; expecially their culture which places money and economic interest above everything including human life.

I think economic interests (not only but also U.S. based ones) and their impersonifications definitely played a role in 9/11, most probably an indirect one. We shouldn't only look at the chain of causes that lead one person to "pull the trigger" but also to the chain of conditions that helped form the causes of the decision to pull the trigger.

To make an example : somebody decides to rob a bank, or to kill somebody to take his money, or for revenge because of a real or perceived as real tort. We quickly blame him for his actions and definitely some blame is with him for deciding to pull the trigger and commit crime ; but who armed him, who pushed him into a corner of no opportunity ?

Why did that group decide to commit suicide by killing thousands on the WTC ? Why are religious brainwashing groups still so effective at exploiting and creating lunatics, not only in Middle East but also in the West (and the memory runs to reverend Moon , the anti-porn-abortion zealots in U.S. and so on). What brings people to seek the guide of these religious organizations ?

These questions are, imho, as interesting or more interesting then questions about "who pulled the trigger" because they seek to prevent more insanity by seeking at the base conditions that, for instance, push people so much that they get a gun and shoot their coworker or jump on a plane and crash in a building.

At the end, today my sympathy goes to the victims, their families and to those who died tried to help them, regardless of the organizations to which they belonged.
posted by elpapacito at 2:38 PM on September 11, 2004

God?

"What did you understand, child?"
"Who killed Carasel. Or, at least, who was pulling the strings...."
"... Why should anyone have 'pulled the strings,' Raguel?"
"Because nothing occurs without reason; and all the reasons are Yours."

--God and the angel Raguel, "Murder Mysteries," by Neil Gaiman.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 2:50 PM on September 11, 2004

Ops should have been on preview

tranquileye:... resentment and anger at the US, which from the outside looks a bit like a self-interested, hypocritical, and sometime brutal empire.

I guess you nailed one cause that wins a lot of popular support to extremisms. Indeed in Europe I still hear a lot of criticism about the U.S. that is the symmetrical response to the attitude some group in U.S. have for Europe.

The "owner of the world" attitude some U.S. citizen holds still hits some nerve : combine that with the fact U.S. is still a military, capitalistic economic superpower with government openly in bed with " we don't give a fuck" corporations and it's no wonder they receive little sympathy.

Yet some well learned people still make the distinction between the U.S. govt, the U.S. corps and the U.S. everyday Joe ; the problem starts when hate is fostered (anti french fries ! frenchs are in bed with terrorist ! americans are all capitalist pigs, they would kill their mom for money, freedom for US not for us !) and reason is thrown out of the window.
posted by elpapacito at 2:57 PM on September 11, 2004

It was Saddam Hussein's fault. Iraq attacked us and we fought back.

Just offering a conservative counterpoint to dhoyt's liberal bias.
posted by eyeballkid at 3:13 PM on September 11, 2004

Iraq attacked us

can you provide a link for this one?



I hope to hell it was a typo.

murderers - yes. thank you for the correction.
posted by specialk420 at 5:52 PM on September 11, 2004

can you provide a link for this one?

Whooooosh.
posted by punishinglemur at 6:10 PM on September 11, 2004

You are rich, they are poor. Poverty leads to ignorance. Inequity leads to resentment. Fundamentalist religion provides a balm. The hopeless are given a cause, and hope. They kill you. You kill them. The situations that bred those who are so desperate that they resort to terror get worse. And so it goes.

How hard is that to understand?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:12 PM on September 11, 2004

can you provide a link for this one?

Sure.
posted by eyeballkid at 7:41 PM on September 11, 2004

I like what stavros said. It reminds me of why some American youth feel the need to join gangs. But I think I read that many of the 19 were from fairly well-to-do families. I'll have to check on that...
posted by jaronson at 9:09 PM on September 11, 2004

9-11 was more than an isolated incident. Lots of blame to go around.

I blame the CIA for setting up the Mujahedeen (taliban) in Afghanistan, teaching them to fund themselves, encouraging them to bring back the concept of Jihad, (only used 3 times since Muhammed started islam until the Soviet Afghan war) and then leaving them high and dry once the soviets pulled out.

I blame our foreign policy approach over the last 50 years that allows israel to do whatever the fuck it wants.

I blame our foreign policy approach that is all about the cheap flow of oil but could give a rats ass fuck about the people in the region (see our support of Saudi Arabia).

I blame Clinton for not being more aggressive in his pursuit of Bin Laden, giving up some golden opportunities to nail him.

I blame George Bush for ignoring Tennet and Clarke, and not making terrorism a priority for the first 9 months of his regime.

I blame the pitiful airport security that even after 9-11 is no better, we can't take tweezers on board an airplane, but we can take 4 books of matches and two butane lighters.

I blame wacked out psychos like Muhammed Atta and Osama bin laden who could concieve that such an act of barbarism is an acceptable response to the above.

There, happy?
posted by prodigalsun at 4:00 PM on September 12, 2004