9/11 as False Flag: Why International Law Must Dare to Care
| DOI | 10.3366/ajicl.2017.0200 |
| Published date | 01 August 2017 |
| Date | 01 August 2017 |
| Pages | 371-392 |
| Author | Amy Baker Benjamin |
No matter what one may think about the nature of the attacks that took place in the United States on September 11, 2001, one thing is beyond dispute: Those attacks have provided the legal, political and moral justification for 16 years of international war. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that, with a few notable exceptions, all use-of-force roads laid since the beginning of this century lead back to the Rome of 9/11. These would include the 2001 invasion and occupation of Afghanistan; the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq; the series of drone strikes here
Each one of these military campaigns and/or thrusts is based on the legal authorisation and moral dispensation granted by domestic and international authorities in the days following 9/11 to respond to the attacks of that day. Ask today for the legal basis of fighting a global ‘War On Terror’ against groups that were not even in existence in 2001 and you will be handed a copy of the law passed just seven days after 9/11 authorising the President to use force against the perpetrators and abettors of 9/11 (i.e. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban).
We would do well to remind ourselves, however, that this shouldering is only as strong and effective as the claim of self-defence on which it is based. The War on Terror is, after all, a war that is claimed to be fought in self-defence.
Precisely because so much is at stake, one might expect international institutions such as the United Nations to seek to satisfy themselves that the American claim of self-defence is a valid one. Yet remarkably enough they have never shown an interest in doing so. In the days and weeks following 9/11, the UN accepted without hesitation the American claim to have been attacked by elements of international terrorism.
The reluctance to ask hard questions in the halls of international institutions charged with the duty to vet claims of national self-defence has been matched by the silence of scholars, who have almost uniformly shied away from the 9/11 controversy swirling outside their halls.
Recent developments suggest that the public at large is beginning to back away from this assumption, and that it may be time for scholars to do so as well. Bowing to public pressure, the Obama Administration declassified a 28-page excerpt from a 2002 Congressional report on the 9/11 attacks that strongly indicates that officials and operatives of the government of Saudi Arabia funded and logistically choreographed the hijackers involved in the attacks.
This belated and still-fledgling American movement toward transparency regarding 9/11 is unquestionably laudable. It is also, however, insufficient. The main contention of this Article is that
But is it possible? Can the UN finally, after all these years, muster the will to pass judgment on the US claim to have been the victim of international terrorism on 9/11? They certainly can, but they obviously need some help: the case of 9/11-as-false-flag is so fraught with anger and ignorance as to be almost paralysing. Whether we passively listen or actively turn away, all that many of us hear are disturbing sounds and cries claiming to have evidence of unspeakable acts. Historical events that lie more deeply in the past, however, are less threatening and therefore more instructive. And so I will suggest that the first step in trying to break the 9/11 paralysis is to recognise that international law and political institutions have long been concerned with the danger of nation states committing false flags in order to both gain domestic political advantage and/or to justify (or prepare for) international war. To portions of this unsavoury history I now turn.
The continent of Africa regrettably needs no lessons in the reality of the false-flag tactic and of its use in the pursuit of illegitimate political aims. There is, to begin with, the unfortunate example of the Apartheid regime in South Africa, under which South African security services stealthily carried out attacks against government officials and installations for the purpose of blaming the African National Congress and thereby discrediting the anti-Apartheid movement as a whole. The routine nature of these attacks is attested to by the sheer number of times the post-Apartheid South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission had to use the term ‘false flag’ in the course of deciding the amnesty applications of white South African former officials. Consider the Commission's ruling...
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