War and Globalization: The Truth Behind September 11

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

This book tries to prove too much. According to the blurb on the back
cover, “key members of the Bush Administration [were guilty of]
cover-up and complicity ... [in] the September 11 attacks. ... [It is
an] illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $30
billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. ... September 11, 2001
was the moment the Bush Administration had been waiting for: the
so-called ‘useful crisis’ which provided a pretext for waging a war
without borders.”

The opening paragraph labels the U.S. reaction to “the tragic events
of September 11” as “the largest display of military might since the
Second World War.” Those who recall the Korean and Vietnam Wars may
disagree. On pages 2 and 3, Chossudovsky argues that the Bush
administration needed a war to find Osama bin Laden more than it needed
Osama bin Laden, whom it could easily have seized prior to September 11.
“A totalitarian state” governed by “elite war criminals,” the
author says, will arise out of the Bush administration’s plans for war
against Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. The Bush administration is relying
on Israeli support for this war, which it wants so that it can control
even more of the world’s oil reserves and make profits for Vice
President Cheney’s former company, Halliburton. “The mainstream
media,” according to the cover blurb, “put up ... the smokescreen
... that 9-11 was an ‘intelligence failure’”; but “through
meticulous research,” the author tries to prove otherwise. The
meticulous research consists largely of reports from what could be
called “the mainstream media.”

Not everything in this book is dubious or counterfactual. The Bush
administration has been cavalier towards the constitutional rights of
Americans. Previous U.S. governments did work with Osama bin Laden to
undermine Soviet control of Afghanistan. The Reagan administration did
support terrorism, contrary to international law, in Nicaragua. The
United States is gaining influence in the former republics of the Soviet
Union. The war against Iraq may well be “a blatant violation of
international law.” Access to oil really is a high priority for the
U.S. government.