Mushahid Hussain says 9/11 promoted 'Greater Israel' agenda, caused US decline

Argues that the US is weaker 25 years after 9/11, has conceded space to China, Muslim 'middle powers' in Middle East

ISLAMABAD:

Ex-senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed said on Tuesday that 25 years after 9/11, the United States had emerged weaker, conceding space to China and Muslim "middle powers" in the Middle East had become relevant in a transformed world.

The biggest change was that before 9/11, the US was the "sole superpower" but that was no longer the case at present.

Sayed delivered his remarks during a talk hosted by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), a local think tank in Islamabad. In his presentation, Sayed presented a fact sheet on ‘9/11 in 25, the date that changed the world’, which quoted a study conducted by Brown University stating that the US had squandered $8 trillion in 20 years after 9/11. The US response after 9/11 resulted in 38 million people being displaced and at least five million direct or indirect deaths, as well as 324,000 drones, bombs and missiles expended in battlefront countries like Afghanistan, the former FATA region in Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Lebanon.

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The senator cited American sources about how the Pentagon had decided just 9 days after 9/11 to launch wars against seven Muslim countries, including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan. He also quoted the prominent American journalist, Thomas Friedman, who wrote in The New York Times on May 8 2003, that “If 25 men working in the vicinity of the White House had been exiled to an island, there would have been no Iraq war”, implying that this war was pushed and promoted by a select and influential group of pro-Israel lobbyists and journalists.

Read: Dream of Greater Israel shattered: Mushahid

Sayed also cited a book, Lawless World, by British author Philippe Sands, which stated that before the American invasion of Iraq, US President Bush had shared with Prime Minister Tony Blair his plan to target Pakistan and Saudi Arabia on the ostensible plea of nuclear proliferation. He added that one of the biggest mistakes of 9/11 was that during a meeting in Bonn in December 2001, the opportunity of reconciliation with the defeated Afghan Taliban as well as the opportunity to restore the Afghan monarchy, which had been the centre of gravity of the modern Afghan state, was missed. Sayed compared the situation with Cambodia, where after the devastating civil war, the return of the monarchy had restored stability in that state, while in Afghanistan, there was a reverse process which led to the creation of a ‘republic’ that crumbled with the American military exit.

Discussing the implications of 9/11 on Pakistan, Sayed said that in comparison to other Muslim countries, Pakistan survived the American onslaught in Afghanistan next door, but also suffered tremendous destabilisation, especially in the former FATA, which led to the formation of TTP in 2007, the collapse of Pakistan’s Afghan policy and Pakistan’s inability to prevent Indian ingress into Afghanistan under the cover of the US military occupation.

Talking about the global consequences of 9/11, Sayed said that 9/11 was a major turning point in modern history and marked the beginning of American decline and the rise of China, both events being irreversible, leading to a multi-polar world marked by the resurgence of Russia, the rise of major Muslim "middle powers" like Pakistan and the formation of new regional organisations like SCO and BRICS.

Read More: Americans to mark 25 years since 9/11 attacks amid enduring grief, reflection

Another major consequence of 9/11, which Sayed termed "worrisome", was the rise of Islamophobia as well as right-wing racism in most Western countries, which resulted in the widening of the gulf between Islam and the West, a confrontation that had also expanded due to US support for "Greater Israel" through its "Israel First" foreign policy.