Obama’s Ground Zero remembrance left out two names tied intimately to the 9/11 atrocity and its deadlier aftermath: Gary Hart and Warren Rudman. Just two years before the attack on the World Trade Center, the two ex-senators had co-chaired a top-echelon ruling-class panel that envisioned terrorist attacks “galvanizing” the U.S. for imperialist war abroad and fascist measures at home. Launched by President Bill Clinton in 1998, the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (better known as the Hart-Rudman Commission) studied ways to ensure U.S. global dominance through the following 25 years.
Democrat Hart and Republican Rudman, along with other high-ranking politicians, generals and admirals, proposed a sweeping militarization of government and of society at large. At the time, the rulers’ media kept Hart-Rudman largely under wraps. CHALLENGE, however, repeatedly exposed its deadly schemes well before 9/11. Ten years on, Hart-Rudman’s shortcomings and successes for the bosses are worth assessing. They help us gauge our class enemies’ need and their ability to conduct mass slaughter.
In 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor turned mass U.S. opposition to “foreign wars” into mass support for U.S. entry into World War II. On September 11, 2001, terrorists struck New York and the Pentagon after the FBI and CIA apparently failed to connect the dots from existing intelligence. Ten years later, there is no shortage of theories to challenge the official narrative: Did U.S. rulers deliberately ignore warnings of the 9/11 strikes? Were they actively complicit in planning the attacks? We may never know the true story, but it’s clear that the bosses saw the usefulness of a 9/11-type incident to rally U.S. workers behind a drive for war and fascism:
[T]he United States should assume that it will be a target of terrorist attacks against its homeland....Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers....If the stakes rise in such a fashion, one thing is likely to become vividly clear: The American people will be ready to sacrifice blood and treasure, and come together to do so, if they believe that fundamental interests are imperiled (Hart-Rudman report, 1999).
The hijackers, who cloaked al Qaeda’s oil-profit motive in religion, represented only a few thousand sworn U.S. enemies. They hardly matched the 1941 menace of Nazi Germany and fascist Japan and Italy, an Axis of millions that waged world war across Europe and Asia. Within the U.S., this global assault spurred huge voluntary enlistments and acceptance of a military draft, resulting in an armed force of 14 million in a U.S. population just one-third of today’s total. By comparison, the flurry of post-9/11 flag-waving accomplished relatively little: the fascist Patriot Act, plus a series of racist attacks against Arab and South Asian immigrants. U.S. rulers continue to rely on an economic draft for their war machine, with unemployment impelling youth to enlist for the lack of jobs.
Recalling the fleeting wave of 9/11 patriotism, the rulers’ New York Times mouthpiece echoed Hart-Rudman in lamenting, “People wanted to be enlarged, to be called on to do more for country and community than ordinary life usually requires....to be absorbed in some greater good....But America has not been enlarged in the years that have passed” (9/10/11). In sum, the attack failed to generate the popular response that Hart-Rudman had anticipated.
Anti-Government Bosses’ Tea Partiers Hinder Obama’s Fascist Effort….
Opposition to new or restored taxes, hardened by the New Depression, has dashed the Hart-Rudman vision of capitalists gladly parting with their “treasure.” This reflects the battle between two factions within the U.S. ruling class: the Rockefeller-led wing that maps long-range strategy to keep U.S. imperialism on top through wars for the oil interests it represents; and its current adversary, domestic capitalists like the Koch brothers, who organized and funded the Tea Party and are driving the Republican Party away from any bipartisan strategy.
In opposition to Obama, the bosses who don’t profit directly from U.S. military action overseas are thwarting Hart-Rudman’s prescription for more centralized control over members of the ruling class. They are blocking government regulations to discipline capitalists and bankers who intensified the current economic crisis in their drive for short-term profits. They’re also resisting Obama’s bid to increase taxes on the wealthy to help pay for the enormous cost of imperialist wars.
….But As H-R Detailed, Potential Grows for U.S. Military Action in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia and China
On the other hand, Hart-Rudman has proved effective in helping to fabricate pretexts for invading Iraq in 2003, and possibly Iran in the near future:
U.S. policies could fail to prevent more serious threats from arising, and the United States might then increase its military presence either to support a beleaguered Israel, to contain the rise of a regional hegemon [Iran], or prevent certain countries [like Iraq] from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. From such a failure the United States would risk, or go to, war.
Ex-Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal was a major backer of Osama bin Laden during the latter’s U.S.-led anti-Soviet Afghan campaign in the 1980s. He now issues alarms against U.S. rejection of the Palestinians’ bid for statehood in the United Nations: “American influence will decline further, Israeli security will be undermined and Iran will be empowered, increasing the chances of another war in the region. Moreover, Saudi Arabia would no longer be able to cooperate with America in the same way it historically has” (New York Times, 9/12/11).
Hart-Rudman foresaw loss of leverage over Saudi Arabia as an intolerable catastrophe:
An anti-American regime in Saudi Arabia, one so antagonistic that it would refuse to sell its oil abroad, is not very likely. But were it to come to pass and be allowed to stand, it would represent a major blow to the liberal economic order brought into being after World War II.
From Afghanistan to Libya, subsequent U.S. invasions, backed by a shifting array of allies, reflect Hart-Rudman’s insistence on locking up hydrocarbon sources:
[U]ninterrupted supply of oil from the Persian Gulf, and the location of all key fossil fuels deposits will retain geopolitical significance....The United States will be called upon frequently to intervene militarily in a time of uncertain alliances.
Hart-Rudman’s prediction of likely World War III scenarios completes its picture of U.S. rulers’ looming concerns:
Interstate wars will not disappear over the next 25 years. Developed nations will be loath to fight each other, but as proven in 1914, neither the bonds of interdependence nor a taste for affluence can guarantee peace and stability indefinitely. Major powers—Russia and China are two obvious examples—may wish to extend their regional influence by force or the threat of force.
What Hart-Rudman Did Not Foresee
But Hart-Rudman neglected to consider the working-class backlash to the U.S. rulers’ wars. Workers at first seemed to support Bush’s “shock-and-awe” attack on Iraq, based on the fraudulent allegation that Saddam Hussein’s regime had developed “weapons of mass destruction,” including nuclear weapons. But as this became exposed as a lie, and U.S. and Iraqi civilian casualties mounted, a majority in the U.S. turned against the war. Initial support for the attack on Afghanistan also has fizzled after 10 years of grinding conflict with no end in sight.
Resistance to these wars has been heightened by the “Great Recession,” another factor Hart-Rudman didn’t account for. Workers now see trillions spent for imperialist wars while tens of millions of unemployed walk the streets and social programs are cut or scrapped altogether.
For the working class, meanwhile, all is not lost—not by a long shot. The main U.S. capitalists have yet to ensnare most workers in their ideology of militaristic imperialism. Restoring the draft remains extremely unpopular. Enlistments of young black workers have declined despite that group’s 46 percent unemployment rate. Meanwhile, racist police attacks continue to rage against black and Latino youth. This is the “democracy” they’re being asked to defend?
Communist Leadership Crucial
The most critical obstacle to Hart-Rudman’s fascist vision will be the fight-back of the working class, both in the U.S. and internationally. While workers have remained relatively passive in countering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or the fascist attacks on their jobs and living conditions, there are encouraging signs of renewed resistance. We can see this domestically in the Philadelphia hospital workers’ fight against racist firings (see page 1), or in the leadership given by Progressive Labor Party to the Stella d’Oro strikers last year in the Bronx, or in the militant defense of their jobs by West Coast longshoremen against the shipping bosses (see page 1).
Internationally, PL is spreading communist politics in a score of capitalist countries on five continents. The Party has been active in the mass strikes and demonstrations of workers in Pakistan (see page 4). In Haiti, PLPers are building the Party there to combat rulers’ ideas that divide the working class (see page 8). PL is also playing a role in workers’ struggles in Mexico and Israel/Palestine.
In the scheme of things, these are small glimmers of resistance in a dark night of mass racist unemployment, unchecked attacks on wages and healthcare, and genocidal imperialist wars. PL has a long way to go in building communist-led class struggle, but the potential exists for a true international communist party. Our job is to win workers worldwide to the opposite of Hart-Rudman: to the communist outlook that rulers fear most. Profit-driven terrorism, racism, unemployment and war will end only after our class—the working class—seizes power for itself and hoists the red flag of revolution