Matinée: lecture and discussion

Tariq Ali: »9/11 - Ten Years After«

with Tariq Ali, author, historian and journalist;
Moderator: Brent Goff, American news anchor, Deutsche Welle TV.


Commemorating the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, Amerika Haus e.V. NRW and Fulbright Alumni e.V. invited to return to the former Amerika Haus – today’s Fritz Thyssen Stiftung – and reflect upon “9/11 – Ten Years After: From ‘New American Century’ to a Multipolar world?”. Renowned British author Tariq Ali gave his account about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as consequences of 9/11, as well as current and future challenges for the US and Europe.
Ali pointed out that terrorism had been known in Western societies before the 9/11 attacks. The difference 9/11 made, he explained, was both the scale of terror as well as the American reaction, which was shaped by its status and means as the only remaining superpower. He stressed that the Bush administration had quickly begun to use the attacks to enforce the American will on the world, even though the war in Afghanistan was originally intended to bring Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar to justice.
Ali was highly critical of US foreign policy in Afghanistan. Instead of building large scale social infrastructure to lay the foundation for lasting peace and prosperity, American policy had led to corruption and disappointment of a large part of the Afghan people, even those who opposed the Taliban. He criticized that the US had not learned from the Soviet failure in the country and had neither been able to include the insurgents nor neighboring powers like Pakistan, Russia or Iran in the creation of a political solution.

Ali sees the continuation of the Bush administration’s willingness to impose American interests on the world with the war in Iraq. The threat of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction had been fabricated in order to build up a reason for the invasion. As this argument had been constructed and the war had been decided upon long before, American involvement in Iraq had been “criminal and illegal”. Just like Afghanistan, the US had not been prepared for insurgent movements, and hence, the war’s results were disastrous. With millions of its citizens killed or injured and the destruction of most of its infrastructure, Iraq had been left with an ongoing lack of political stability while US foreign policy had simultaneously made Iran the most powerful country in the region.

From Ali’s point of view, hopes for significant changes in US foreign policy after the election of President Barack Obama had quickly evaporated. Not only had the new President increased the number of American troops in Afghanistan, but he also extended large-scale drone attacks on Afghan and Pakistani soil. Given this “gap between the stated ends and reality” in both Afghanistan and Iraq, it would be “natural” for people to be angry. Despite these tremendous failures on America’s part, European states would mainly act as “vassal states” of the US. As they would neither be economically stable nor able to act as a political entity, Ali stated that Charles de Gaulle’s idea of a “core Europe” would have been more beneficial than the European Union in its current state.

Looking back on 9/11’s consequences, Ali indicated that the most significant change from the last 10 years had, in fact, nothing to do with the attacks. For him, the global shift of power to the East - especially the economic rise of China has been the true, defining development of the past decade. Given the status of China as the biggest creditor of the US, Ali quoted General Mike Mullen, who described this development as “the biggest threat to US national security”. In face of severe problems, Ali demanded both the US and Europe should push for economic reforms via state intervention. Instead, right wing populist groups on both sides of the Atlantic used the economic and social disparities to campaign effectively for their causes.

According to Ali, Western democracies are in much worse shape than they were during the Cold War. He stated there was no more debate culture to foster critical examinations of the American government within the US. Simultaneously, Western foreign policy, especially with regards to US military involvements, would be based on double standards: “Humanitarian interventions” were not based on concerns about human rights, but rather on pure economic interests as the West had been backing dictatorships like Libya for decades before.

Reflecting on 9/11, Ali concluded that the enduring effect of the attacks was that while the world in general had not changed, the truth about its condition and the means of Western policy had been revealed more and more.

After his lecture, Ali discussed his views with Brent Goff of Deutsche Welle and answered questions from the audience.

A Video of Tariq Ali's speech was published on the Website of the Fulbright Alumni e.V.



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