11 September after 20 adventure-filled years for the US

Today is 11 September, the 20th anniversary of the attack on and collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the symbol of the US and of capitalism. From the very first moment it was felt that, in its scale, its symbolic weight, and the deaths and damage it caused, this attack had struck not only the US but a whole world at its heart. Since that attack we have watched nothing but the death throes of the so-called unipolar world with the US at its center. These death throes are still continuing, and they are not being lived out at a level where it merely burns its own sin; it is making the whole world suffer.

The US's response to this attack was not a response commensurate with its magnitude. Perhaps this was because of the searing nature of the attack. The US, robbed of its senses, responded to the searing attack not with reason but with the reactions that pain gives. It rose in fury and set out to show its greatness against the attack on its greatness not through intelligent conduct but through its volume, its physical power, and to take revenge.

Yet the perpetrators of the attack were in no way comparable to itself. It designated a more comparable, visible target and invaded first Afghanistan, and right after it, Iraq. That these invasions came immediately after the attack naturally created a suitable ground for every kind of conspiracy thinking between the attack and the invasions: the attacks were the work of the US itself, and their aim was to set the US in motion to reshape the Middle East.

For the US itself to reach such a goal, first striking itself so tragically, disgracing itself before the whole world, flattening its image, and razing its own sacred things to the ground was, truly, far too great a price. It must also have been an unnecessary price, because the US had never been accustomed to paying such great prices to reach the goals it wanted. It was powerful and capable enough to produce the means and pretexts that would get everything done at the cheapest, even for free. It would have been very hard for a US that had been subjected to these attacks to restore and sustain its prestige, respectability, awe and image in the world as before, and that is just how it turned out.

Of course, the idea that other forces inside the US ventured into such an adventure in order to persuade the US into such a war was not at all one to be dismissed. However, no sufficiently convincing evidence has been presented to date for any of the scenarios put forward. For now this is not that important. After all, one must look at what the US did following this attack, what kinds of inferences it drew from it and how it steered its policy.

The occupation of Afghanistan that the US undertook at the first moment turned, from its very first years, into an adventure full of regrets for it. It was an adventure that cost the US very dearly. The US's colossal military, intelligence and scientific institutions alike could bring no success here. More than a trillion dollars was spent. Some say it got more than the equivalent of this back through certain minerals or the drug trade. I would not wish to shatter their conspiratorial dreams, but the geography of Afghanistan is in no way one that could produce so much material value in so short a time. Of course, this does not mean that serious drug trafficking and other kinds of trade have not been carried out by the hand of the US, but those alone would not have made this adventure worthwhile. And because it was not worthwhile, on the 20th anniversary of 11 September it withdrew from Afghanistan in haste, as if fleeing, on the thinking that turning back from whatever part of the loss is a gain.

The US had earlier brought to an end the occupation of Iraq, whose excuse was likewise produced in the atmosphere of 11 September. Although the same scenarios apply to its presence there, its fate was no different. In addition, it had loaded onto itself a mission such as taking democracy to Iraq. Because it had described the 11 September attacks as an attack on US values, on democracy, and had declared that the Iraqi people needed democracy and that carrying US values there was the best answer to this attack. Thus democracy was taken to Iraq as if taking revenge on the attackers. The irony comes from reality itself. Democracy like revenge, democracy functioning like punishment, naturally turned into a torment inflicted on the Iraqi people in a way that was not democratic at all. What is even more ironic is that in the end the US too got its share of this torment, and continues to get it. Like the Afghanistan adventure, the Iraq adventure virtually melted away and consumed the legend of the US within 20 years.

Starting from the point reached today and the harvest gathered, after looking at who gained what and who lost what, and then looking back again, how can anyone dwell on the possibility that the US did the 11 September attack to itself?

In his first reaction to the attack, Bush Jr. asked "why do they hate us so much?" Until then the US had been trying to explain that it wanted nothing but good for the world. Perhaps, in his view, that really was its intention, but because all the interventions it carried out with this intention conformed to our Kemalists' understanding of "for the people despite the people," it could not possibly arouse sympathy. The US's unconditional support for Israel against Palestine, for example, was reason enough to earn the hatred of peoples throughout the Islamic world and to keep feeding it continuously. Add to this its support for autocratic-despotic regimes in the Islamic world in particular.

Even so, the measures taken starting from that day with this question, the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the continuing unlimited support for Israel have caused people everywhere in the world to hate America much more.

On the 20th anniversary of 11 September we are at the point where a more sober assessment needs to be made of what the US has gained and lost for itself and for the world.