4-11-08, 11:06 am

A review of chapter 1, Blows against Empire, by Gerald Horne New York, International Publishers, 2008. Advanced price: $10

“War,” the progressive activist Randolph Bourne wrote during WWI, “is the health of the state.” It is also the “health” of military contractors, and the huge corporate side of the military industrial complex.

Gerald Horne begins his exploration into the connections between corporate capitalism and contemporary warfare with accounts of the CIA’s involvement with Osama bin Laden, not in the 1980s, but in Dubai in 2000. The sources he uses are international and conservative, from the distinguished French newspaper, Le Figaro, to the very undistinguished Washington Times, but the stories, whether accurately reported by these media outlets or not, show that there is a world of difference between what Americans know about the September 11 attacks and what most of the rest of the world knows, Horne shows. The CIA at best was much more interested in covering up its long-term relationship with bin Laden than in pursuing him in the events leading up to the 9/11 attacks .

That the Saudis and the Pakistanis supported the Taliban’s seizure of power in Afghanistan is well known. Reputable French media reports show that the Clinton administration supported these maneuvers in the expectation that a Taliban regime would provide greater security for a huge oil and natural gas pipeline that a U.S. led capitalist consortium was developing in the region. Their goal was to tap into resources of former Soviet Republics and other regional states are, if known, either denied or omitted in most U.S. sources. That this oil pipeline was much more important than the fact that the Taliban was led by bin Laden’s closest allies and that bin Laden himself had already declared his 'holy war” against the U.S. should be, but sadly isn’t common knowledge in the U.S.

What Horne documents brilliantly in this chapter is what many writers, myself included, have discussed in bits and pieces, that is, U.S. imperialism’s turning a blind eye at best and active continued collaboration at worst with its former allies from the war in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda.

What is most remarkable about this chapter is that Horne, like Karl Marx in his theoretical writings, and the great progressive journalist I.F. Stone, uses the establishment capitalist press and establishment sources generally, including the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, to link fragments of the whole picture together to get at the truth.

The truth is that U.S. imperialism’s loyalty is to the pursuit of profit for corporations, particularly the large oil companies. Under the Bush administration this has produced desperate interventionist tactics which have allowed states like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to play the U.S., to use a version of the “two track policy” that the U.S. long used in many countries, supporting a colonial power with one hand and a nationalist opposition that they wished to see in power with the other.

Thus, feudal reactionary Saudi Arabia remains an “ally” even though 15 of the 19, September 11th highjackers, bin Laden, himself, and much of the Al Qaeda leadership, are Saudis. With one hand the Saudi ruling class supports its U.S. ally, with the other Al Qaeda. With Pakistan, a poor “ally,” the same is true. In another example, the Pakistani regime loots billions from the U.S. to fight against Taliban forces on its soil that a significant part of the Pakistani ruling class, including its powerful intelligence force, the ISI, supports (along with using U.S. “anti-terrorist” aid to fund terrorist attacks in Kashmir against India).

Horne concludes this absorbing chapter with an account of the nefarious Carlyle Group, which has profited hugely from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and whose board includes George H.W. Bush, James Baker (whom Horne refers to as ”the Bush family consigliere,”) former British Prime Minister John Major, and of course, members of the large Bin Laden family, who have seen their family fortune increase significantly thanks to the attacks of their black sheep, Osama. This would really make a fine movie, the big capitalists, corrupt U.S. and international politicians, adventurers and terrorists—a much better and more accurate movie than “Charlie Wilson’s War.”

Horne also makes the sobering observation that there are now nearly as many private contractors and their employees in Iraq as U.S. soldiers.

In the next installment I will look at chapter 3, “China’s Peaceful Rise/U.S. Imperialism’s Inexorable Decline.” As they would say in commercials, those who can’t wait can run out and buy the book.

Place an advance order here.

--Norman Markowitz is a contributing editor of Political Affairs.