We begin the publication of the last part of Thierry Meyssan’s book, “Before Our Very Eyes”. He rereads the history of the American Empire. In this episode he comes back to the attacks of September 11 as the seizure of Power by the direct descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers against the descendants of the authors of the Bill of Rights.

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The “Arab Springs” organised by Washington and London

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the US elite believed that a period of commerce and prosperity would follow the Cold War. However, a section of the military-industrial complex imposed rearmament in 1995, followed by a very aggressive imperialist policy in 2001. This faction, which identifies itself with the “Continuity of Government” group, stood ready to take over power in case of the destruction of elected institutions. It prepared the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in advance, although they were not launched until after September 11, 2001. Faced with its military failure in Iraq and the impossibility of attacking Iran, this group changed its strategy. It adopted the British project of overthrowing the secular régimes of the Greater Middle East and remodeling the region into small states administered by the Muslim Brotherhood. Progressively, it took control of NATO, the European Union and the UNO. It was only several millions of deaths and trillions of dollars later that it was challenged in the United States by the election of Donald Trump, and in France by François Fillon.

US Supremacy

When the Second World War ended, the United States was the only victorious nation that had not experienced war on its own soil. Profiting from its advantage, Washington chose to succeed London in the control of its Empire, and to enter into conflict with Moscow. Over the next 44 years, a Cold War followed the real war. When the Soviet Union began to fall apart, President George H. Bush Sr. decided that it was time to do business. He began to scale down his armies, and ordered a revision of foreign policy and military doctrine.

Washington then claimed, in its publication “National Security Strategy of the United States”, (1991) that “The United States remains the only state with genuinely global strength, range and influence in all dimensions - political, economic and military. There is no substitute for American leadership”.

This is why they reorganised the world during operation “Desert Storm” - they pressured their Kuwaiti ally to steal Iraqi oil, and at the same time, to demand arrears on the reimbursement of Iraq’s allegedly free aid against Iran. Next they encouraged their Iraqi ally to resolve the problem by annexing Kuwait, which had been arbitrarily carved out by the British 30 years earlier. Finally, they invited every state on the planet to support them - instead of the United Nations - in the reaffirmation of international law.

But since the two empires were propped up one against the other, the disappearance of the USSR ought logically to have brought about the fall of the other super-power, the United States. In order to prevent its collapse, the US parliamentarians forced President Bill Clinton to rearm in 1995. The armed forces, which had just demobilized a million men, began to rearm, although at that time they had no enemy who could equal them. The dream of Bush Sr. of a unipolar world led by United States business gave way to an insane chase to hold onto the imperial project.

Since the dissolution of the USSR, US domination of the world has been imposed through four wars which were waged without the approval of the United Nations - in Yugoslavia (1995 and 1999), in Afghanistan (2002), in Iraq (2003) and in Libya (2011). This period came to an end with the ten Chinese and 16 Russian vetoes at the UN Security Council, which explicitly forbade open conflict with Syria.

The Gulf War had hardly ended when Republican George H. Bush Sr. asked his defence secretary, Dick Cheney who relayed the order to Paul Wolfowitz, to write the Defense Policy Guidance [1] (this was a classified document, but extracts were published by the New York Times and the Washington Post [2]). This militant Trotskyist and future Assistant Secretary for Defense, presented therein his theory concerning US supremacy.

“Our first objective” he wrote, “is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, whether on the territory of the former Soviet Union or anywhere, that could pose a threat similar to that formerly posed by the Soviet Union. This is the predominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy, and requires that we endeavour to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Europe, the Far East, the territories of the ex-Soviet Union, and South-East Asia”.

There are three additional aspects to this objective:

-        “Firstly, the US must show the leadership necessary for establishing and protecting a new world order capable of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.

-        Secondly, in non-defense areas, we must represent the interests of the advanced industrial nations efficiently enough to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order.

-        Finally, we must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from aspiring to a larger regional or global role”.

The “Wolfowitz Doctrine” was supposed to prevent a new Cold War and guarantee the United States its place as the “world policeman”. President Bush Sr. massively demobilised his armies, because they were no longer to be anything more than a police force.

And yet what we saw was the opposite of that – first of all with the four wars mentioned above, as well as the war against Syria, then the war in Ukraine against Russia.

-        It was in order to demonstrate the “necessary leadership” that Washington decided, in 2001, to take control of all the hydrocarbon reserves in the “Greater Middle East” - a decision that launched the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

-        It was in order to “dissuade [their allies] from challenging [their] leadership”, that it modified its plan in 2004 and decided to apply the British suggestions (1) to annex the non-recognised Russian states - starting with South Ossetia - and (2) to overthrow the secular Arab governments for the benefit of the Muslim Brotherhood – the Arab Springs”.

-        Finally, it is in order to dissuade Russia from playing “a global role” that it is currently using the jihadists and ex-jihadists in Syria, in the Ukraine and in the Crimea.

To be implemented, the Wolfowitz Doctrine thus required not only financial and human means, but also a powerful hegemonic will. A group of political and military officials hoped to find their man by promoting the candidacy of the son of George Bush Sr. - George Bush Jr. This group asked the Kagan family to create a lobbying group within the American Enterprise Institute - the Project for a New American Century. They were obliged to falsify the Presidential election in Florida - with the help of Governor Jeb Bush, Jr.’s brother - in order to allow W to clamber into the White House. But well before that, the group was actively militant for the preparation of new wars of invasion, particularly in Iraq.

But the new President was not particularly obedient, which forced his supporters to organise a shock for public opinion, which they compared to a “New Pearl Harbor”, on September 11, 2001.

The crash of September 11

Everyone thinks that they know about 9/11, and can quote from memory about the planes that hit the Twin Towers and the destruction of part of the Pentagon. But behind these events and their interpretation by the Bush administration, something quite different happened.

When two planes smashed into the World Trade Center, when the offices of the Vice-President were devastated by flames, and explosions were heard in the Pentagon, the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Richard Clarke, launched the procedure for “Continuity of Government” (CoG) [3]. Developed during the Cold War, in case of a nuclear confrontation and the decapitation of the centres of Executive and Legislative Power, this procedure was devised to save the country by handing over all responsibility to a provisional authority which had been secretly designated beforehand.

But on that day, none of the elected leaders died.

Nevertheless, by 10 a.m., George W. Bush was no longer President of the United States of America. The Executive Power was transferred from the White House in Washington to site “R”, the Raven Rock Mountain bunker [4]. Units of the army and the Secret Services circulated in the capital, to collect and “protect” the members of Congress and their teams. Almost all of them were taken, “for their safety”, to another mega-bunker close to the capital, the Greenbrier Complex.

The alternative government, whose composition had not changed for at least nine years, included – as if by a miraculous coincidence – several personalities who had been in politics for a long time, including Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary for Defense Donald Rumsfeld and ex-Director of the CIA, James Woolsey.

During the afternoon, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon interfered in the crisis and addressed the citizens of the United States, while no one knew anything about the implementation of the Continuity of Government plan, and there was no news of George W. Bush. He declared the solidarity of his people, who had also been long a victim of terrorism. He spoke as if he was convinced that the attacks were over, but without indicating his sources, and as if he represented the American state.

Finally, at the end of the afternoon, the provisional government handed back executive power to President Bush, who made a televised speech, and the Congressional representatives were freed.

These are proven facts, and not the outlandish tales that the Bush administration concocted, with kamikaze warriors hatching a plot in an Afghani cave to destroy the greatest military power in the world.

In a book published thirty years earlier, destined to become the Republicans’ bedside book during the electoral campaign of 2000, Coup d’état - A Practical Handbook, historian Edward Luttwak explained that a coup d’état is all the more effective when no one realizes that it has happened, and therefore do not oppose it [5] . He should also have added that in order for the legal government to obey the conspirators, it is necessary not only to maintain the illusion that the same team is in “Power”, but for the conspirators to be part of it.

The decisions imposed by the provisional government on September 11 were approved by President Bush during the days that followed. Concerning the interior, the Bill of Rights - the first ten amendments of the Constitution - was suspended by the USA Patriot Act for all affairs of terrorism. Concerning exterior affairs, régime changes and wars were planned, both to hinder the development of China and to destroy all the state structures of the Greater Middle East.

President Bush held the Islamists responsible for the attacks of 9/11, and declared the “War on Terrorism” - an expression which sounds macho enough, but is nonetheless nonsensical. Indeed, terrorism is not a world power, but a method of action. Within a few years, the terrorism that Washington claimed to be fighting had increased 20-fold throughout the world. George W. Bush qualified this new conflict as an “Endless War”.

Four days later, President Bush presided an implausible meeting at Camp David, during which the principle was adopted for a long series of wars aimed at destroying all the as yet uncontrolled states in the “Greater Middle East”, as well as a plan for political assassinations throughout the world. This project was named by the Director of the CIA, George Tenet - he called it the “Worldwide Attack Matrix”. This meeting was first mentioned by the Washington Post [6], then denied by the ex-Supreme Commander of NATO, General Wesley Clark. By “Matrix”, it is important to understand that this was only the initial phase of a much more far-reaching strategy

Who governs the United States?

In order to understand the institutional crisis which was brewing, we have to take a step back. The founding myth of the United States claims that a few Puritans, convinced of the impossibility of reforming the British Church and monarchy, decided to build a “New Jerusalem” in the Americas. In 1620, they sailed to the New World on board the Mayflower, where they gave thanks to God for having allowed them to cross the Red Sea (in fact, the Atlantic Ocean) and to escape the dictatorship of Pharaoh (the King of England). This is the origin of the feast of Thanksgiving.

The Puritans claimed to obey God by respecting both the teaching of Christ and the Jewish Law. They did not venerate the Gospels in particular, but the whole of the Bible. For them, the Old Testament was as important as the New. They practised an austere form of morality - they were persuaded that they had been chosen by God, and thus blessed by Him by means of their wealth. Consequently, they considered that no man can improve himself, whatever he does, and that Money is a gift reserved by God for His faithful.

This ideology has many consequences. For example, their refusal to organise a form of national solidarity (Social Security), replacing it with individual charity. Or again, in penal matters, by the belief that some people are born criminals, which led the Manhattan Institute to promote laws which in many states punished repeat offenders with very heavy prison terms, even for minor infractions, like not having paid for a subway ticket.

Even though the national myth has by now mostly buried the fanaticism of the “Pilgrim Fathers”, the truth remains that they set up a sectarian community, established corporal punishment, and obliged their women to wear veils. In fact, there are clearly many similarities between their way of life and that of contemporary Islamists.

The War of Independence unfolded at a time when the populations of the colonies had been profoundly modified. They no longer came exclusively from the British Isles, but now included Europeans from all over. The patriots who fought the King of England hoped to become masters of their own destiny, and create institutions which were both Republican and Democratic. It was for them that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776, inspired by the Lumières movement in general and the philosopher John Locke in particular.

However, after victory was won, it was a very different source which inspired the Constitution. This was founded on the Mayflower Pact, that is to say the Puritan ideology, and the wish to create institutions comparable to those of Great Britain, but without the element of hereditary nobility. This is why, rejecting popular sovereignty, it instituted the sovereignty of the governors of federal states. As such a system is absolutely unacceptable, it was immediately “balanced” by 10 constitutional amendments which form the Bill of Rights. The final text therefore reserves political responsibility for the elites of the federal states and gives citizens the right to defend themselves in court against the “Reason of State”.

By suspending the Bill of Rights in all affairs which may be connected to terrorism, the USA Patriot Act has dragged the Constitution two centuries in reverse. By depriving citizens of their legal rights, it has once again destabilized institutions. It has submitted Power to Puritan ideology and guaranteed only the rights of the elites of federal states.

The coup d’état of September 11 split these elites into two groups, depending on whether they supported it or pretended to ignore it. The few personalities opposed to it, like Senator Paul Wellstone, have been physically eliminated. A few citizens chose to speak out nonetheless, notably two real estate billionaires. Thus, on the evening of September 11, Donald Trump contested what was becoming the official version on Channel 9 in New York.

After having reminded his listeners that the engineers who built the Twin Towers had since joined his company, he considered it impossible that the collapse of such massive towers was due to the impact of planes (and fires) alone. He concluded that there had to be other factors involved which were as yet unknown. Another entrepreneur, Jimmy Walter, spent his fortune buying pages of publicity in the newspapers and distributing DVD’s to analyze the true causes of these destructions.

Over the next fifteen years, these two groups - the conspirators and the passive accomplices - although they were pursuing the same objective of interior and exterior domination - were to confront one another regularly, until both were apparently overthrown by a popular movement led by Donald Trump.

(To be continued)

Notes

[1] The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of [W.] Bush’s War Cabinet, James Mann, Viking (2004).

[2] “US Strategy Plan Calls For Insuring No Rivals Develop”, Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, March 8, 1992. “Keeping the US First, Pentagon Would preclude a Rival Superpower” Barton Gellman, The Washington Post, March 11, 1992.

[3] Against All Enemies, Inside America’s War on Terror, Richard Clarke, Free Press, 2004.

[4] Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself—While the Rest of Us Die, Garrett M. Graff, Simon & Shuster (2017). A Pretext for War, James Bamford, Anchor Books, 2004.

[5] Coup d’État : A Practical Handbook, Edward Luttwak, Allen Lane, 1968. Luttwak formed with Richard Perle, Peter Wilson and Paul Wolfowitz Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s “Four Musketeers”.

[6] “Saturday, Septembrer 15, At Camp David, Advise and Dissent”, Bob Woodward & Dan Blaz, The Washington Post, January 31, 2002.

Courtesy Thierry Meyssan; Translation Roger Lagassé, Pete Kimberley

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