The Chicken or the Egg: Which came first, 9-11 or the Holocaust of the Palestinians?

One thing most Americans seldom trouble themselves about is the reason for 9-11 and the resulting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Why did the terrorists attack us? Were they madmen, or was there a reason for their mayhem?

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I am going to suggest, if you will bear with me for a few minutes, that in this case the egg clearly came first, and the egg was racism. It was American racism that led the United States to vastly favor the rights of the Chosen Few (i.e., Americans, Europeans and Jews) over Arabs, and particularly Palestinians. It was clearly the racism-fueled atrocities inflicted on the Palestinians by Britain (particularly under Churchill in 1921-1922), the United States (beginning with Truman in 1948) and Israel (virtually since the minute Zionists began to immigrate to Palestine with a vision of taking over and the "friends in high places" to make it happen).

I believe the evidence is clear and overwhelming, yet I don't remember ever hearing this idea expressed clearly in a major American newspaper, magazine or other publication. Is it possible that we haven't been able to deal with our all-too-obvious problems in the Middle East because we have never determined their root cause?

Is it possible to verify that American racism was a prime factor in the 9-11 attacks that led to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Yes, we can go "straight to the horse's mouth." Formerly secret CIA reports just released give us a glimpse into the inner workings of the brain of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of 9-11. Mohammed, known as KSM by the CIA, was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and shortly thereafter ended up in the now-infamous prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A brief CIA biography reveals that the time KSM spent studying engineering at North Carolina A&T University during the mid-1980s “almost certainly helped propel him on his path to become a terrorist.” NCA&T is one of the nation’s historically black schools. The just-declassified CIA report says KSM told his interrogators “that his contacts with Americans, while minimal, confirmed his view that the United States was a debauched and racist country.” But like many native-grown American religious fanatics (for instance, Jimmy Swaggart, who "repented" of consorting with prostitutes in tears, only to say in 2004 that he'd kill a gay man for looking at him the wrong way), KSM wasn't above the "debauchery" he professed to despise, as he lived the life of a jet-setter, frequenting four star hotels, bars and even go-go clubs full of wildly gyrating bikini-clad dancers. If you click on Swaggart's name above, you can see his chilling resemblance to KSM, as he talks about killing someone in cold blood, then telling God his victim "died," as if killing someone in cold blood isn't murder if the deed is done "in the name of God." Religious fanatics like Swaggart and KSM seem to think God's "rules" only apply to other people, so they can party with prostitutes and go-go dancers, as long as we don't call them to the carpet for their hypocrisy. But how can we believe that they are really opposed to "debauchery" when they're willing to risk their reputations for a roll in the hay? So clearly something else must be the motivating factor . . .

If we discount "debauchery" according to KSM's testimony we are left with racism. Is it possible that what motivated KSM is the same thing that motivated insurrectionists like John Brown during the heyday of American racism? John Brown opposed slavery violently. Is it possible that KSM violently opposed what he saw as the enslavement of the Palestinians by Israel and the United States, which colluded to deprive them of their self-evident human rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of justice? Is it possible that KSM's motives were purer than Swaggart's?

Of course I don't agree with what the 9-11 terrorists did. If a woman kills her husband I don't "agree" with what she did. But if her husband was abusing her, and told her that if she left him, he'd track her down and kill her, I can certainly understand her dilemma ... as long as he's alive and "kicking," her life, liberty and ability to pursue happiness are at risk. If laws and courts refuse to protect her, the danger as she perceives it is all too real, and how am I to judge her? Hell, I might do the same thing, in her predicament. And of course something very similar can happen on a much larger scale. During the Civil War, northerners killed southerners. I don't "agree" with the killings, but I do understand the root cause. I'm a southerner, but I acknowledge that southerners were responsible for the Civil War because there was something dreadfully wrong with southern culture: racism. The disease of racism had infected the south and, like any terminal disease, it had to be eradicated or the patient would die. The Civil War was, in effect, the terrible surgical blade that radically removed the tumor of slavery. But the infectious disease at the root, racism, continued to flourish in the form of Jim Crow laws and public lynchings, and so it took a second, fortunately less lethal antidote, the American Civil Rights Movement, to restore a degree of health to a previously intractable patient, who had to be held down, screaming racist epithets, while his life was being saved.

Is it possible that American racism is the "egg" that led to 9-11, just as American racism was the "egg" that led to the Civil War? Can it be that the patient is still kicking and screaming, intent on abusing women and children with slightly darker skin, now that he is no longer allowed to blatantly abuse women and children with much darker skin? Yes, unfortunately I believe this is the case. Before I present the facts to back up my case, let me ask you a simple question: If the 9-11 attack had been launched by white Irish terrorists based in London, do you think we would have invaded England, rounded up the Irishmen, shipped them off to Cuba, and started torturing them? If Princess Diana had been sympathetic to their cause, and was vacationing in the United States, would we have arrested her, stripped her naked, and paraded her around on all fours, degrading her before the eyes of an astonished world?

No, of course not. And herein lies the rub, because we have a clearly evident double standard. Israel, the United States and Britain have clearly colluded to deprive Palestinians of human rights for over sixty years. The "big three" trumpet cries of "Democracy!" and "Human Rights!" to the skies, like a herd of rampaging elephants. The defenseless mice unable to scurry from their paths to safety are labeled the cause of their panicked, hypocritical uproar. In this case, the vast majority of the mice are not "terrorists" but millions of defenseless, increasingly homeless and destitute women and children.

So which came first: the Chicken Littles who now fancy the sky to be falling on themselves, but who are in fact a herd of elephants raining down terror on helpless, defenseless mice . . . or was there an egg from which they all hatched, together?

I am not a fan of KSM or Osama bin Laden. I do not advocate physical violence and have always tried to avoid it myself. But having studied history, I realize that the Chicken Littles who cried "The sky is falling!" when they were savagely attacked by "terrorists" like John Brown, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and soon became a herd of stampeding elephants, were responsible for the fate that befell them. If they wanted to live in peace, they needed to change their attitudes, policies and actions. They needed to stop practicing racism and instead practice what they preached to the world: equal human rights and justice for everyone, not just the Chosen Few.

What is it that we despise about men like Jimmy Swaggart?

Hypocrisy.

What did Jesus Christ despise about the Pharisees?

Hypocrisy.

What is it that the world despises about the United States today?

Hypocrisy.

For whom did Jesus reserve virtually all his words of condemnation, saying the prostitutes would enter the kingdom of heaven before them?

Self-righteous hypocrites.

It seems self-evident to me that if we were at war with England we wouldn't parade Princess Diana or Prince Albert around on all fours like dogs. We wouldn't waterboard them, or deprive them of sleep for days at a time in an attempt to "break" them. Its seems, despite our claims to the contrary, that we are still respecters of titles, personages and skin colors; still racists; still self-righteous hypocrites. It seems to me that we still fail to believe in the self-evident human rights of people who are "too different" from us: Muslims, homosexuals, transvestites, and anyone who disagrees with us that we are the Chosen Few.

I call this attitude the "Chosen Few Sin-drome." Like the China Syndrome, it is a nuclear meltdown, albeit not a fictitious one. In this case, we are talking about a meltdown of the nucleus of the human family. Our DNA is virtually identical. We are essentially the same at the core, in our genes. Our major distinction is not genetic (i.e., racial) but cultural. We do share what seem to be instinctual aversions: for instance, to feces and snakes. I often feed the wildlife at a local pond, including a large tribe of turtles. Just recently a new turtle showed up; this one has a long, snakelike neck. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw it, and even though we're "friends" now, I still feel an eerie sensation whenever I look at it. And the geese seem to agree with me, because when they see the other turtles, they only peck at them if they're competing for a piece of bread, but when they see the "snakelike" turtle, they seem to be startled and peck at it instinctively. And yet the "normal" turtles seem to accept the "snakelike" turtle without a fuss. It seems my fear, and the fear of the geese, is irrational, because this newcomer is no danger to us. In the same way, the aversions some people have for other people is irrational because there is more more danger in our fear than in our "differences," which are very small in the great scheme of things.

The Palestinians are human beings. Like most Jews, most Palestinians are Semites. Like all human beings, their DNA is virtually identical to ours. It is self-evident that millions of Palestinians are not "terrorists" because they are babies, toddlers, children, women, grandmothers and grandfathers. The minority are men, and of those men very few are "terrorists." From what I've read Hamas has around 3,000 members. Condemning Palestinians for being "terrorists" is like condemning white Americans for being KKKers. There are more white members of the KKK in the United States than there are members of Hamas in Palestine.

Isn't it time for Americans to stop practicing racism, and to require Israel to stop practicing racism? As long as we act as if Americans are the Chosen Few and God's gift to the earth, we violate our own creed that all men (and women and children) are created equal.