A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (113 page)

ENDNOTES

[
1
] Under Malaysian election law, anyone who has served a jail sentence is barred from political office for five years from the date of his or her release.
 

[
2
] It failed to do so at the 2004 elections, but succeeded finally in 2008 amidst a wave of discontent directed at the administration of Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
 

[
3
] She was defeated by then Deputy Health Minister Datin Paduka Siti Zaharah Suleiman in 1996.
 

[
4
] Datuk Sri Azalina Othman Said, who was Tourism Minister, was dropped from the Cabinet line-up of Malaysia’s sixth Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
 

[
5
] At the Pendang parliamentary and Anak Bukit state by-elections in July 2002, Wanita and Puteri campaigners were called 
jalang
(of loose morals) and
sundal
(prostitutes). In one instance a PAS supporter lifted his sarong and exposed himself to a Puteri campaigner.
 

I was having dinner before going to the airport to take a flight to London when two aeroplanes crashed into the World Trade Center buildings in New York on 11 September 2001. When my daughter-in-law Jane received a text message about what had happened, I first thought it was a minor accident. A small plane had once crashed into the Empire State building in New York. While there had been some damage to the building, it remained standing. But as more messages came in, we decided to turn on the TV to watch the news. To our horror, we saw the first tower building engulfed in smoke and flames. Then we saw the second plane crashing into the second tower. Like so many other people, we could hardly believe that what we were watching was really happening in faraway New York at that very moment. But it was real—we were watching a world-shattering event, an attack against the US which was to change everything that, until then, we had taken for granted.

I cancelled my London trip and we all stayed close to the TV, gripped by the disaster unfolding before our eyes. Suddenly, there was a gasp from the commentator. One tower fell straight down onto itself, then the other tower collapsed in the same way. I remember thinking how strange it was that the two towers collapsed vertically upon themselves in that way. When the dust clouds slowly cleared, there was nothing of the buildings left standing, just a total void—not even the steel girders remained. The TV commentators later explained that the construction of the 110-storey World Trade Center towers was unique. They were supported the whole way by their outer walls so when the walls collapsed, all 110 floors came down with them. So apparently did the internal lift shafts, which must have been built from strong and very thick concrete to support the weight of the 110-story-tall shaft walls above. Clearly, there was something strange in all of this.

Soon people could talk only about terrorists and the need for the whole world to fight them and stop their violent onslaughts. President George W. Bush appeared on TV screens everywhere, obviously very angry. He blamed the destruction of the towers on Muslim terrorists and called for a “crusade” against them. I was startled and distressed. Having read much about the Crusades, I thought that that reference was not altogether inappropriate. The Crusades had pitted the world of the European Christians against the world of Islam. To someone like Bush, fighting Muslims would really be another crusade, an echo and continuation of Europe’s mediaeval struggle against the civilisation of Islam. Yet I, together with hundreds of millions of other Muslims, did not regard Christians as our enemies. We did not like the US and its unquestioning support of Israel, and I had often enough pointed out that the war in Palestine was not a religious war. It was a territorial issue—the result of seizing the land of the Palestinian Arabs, many of whom were Christians, and creating a Jewish state out of it. But Bush had clearly concluded that the attack against New York was a Muslim attack against Christians.

Bush later corrected himself and never used the word “crusade” again, but it was too late—using it once was sufficient to lay bare the underlying assumptions of his thinking. After that, he placed the blame squarely not on Islam itself but on Muslim terrorists, specifically on the Al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden. I did not question his assertion at the time, assuming that he knew things that I did not. The CIA is a formidable intelligence agency and I was sure its people would have pinpointed the culprits.

I am not so certain now. In June 2006, several Americans came to see me in my office in Putrajaya. What they told me and the DVD they produced cast doubt on what I had been told about the attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. These people were not cranks. One of them was a janitor who had worked at the World Trade Center for more than 10 years. William Rodrigues, a Hispanic US citizen, was there when the attacks took place. He held the master key to the rooms there and helped in the rescue of nearly 300 people in the towers. He was acclaimed by the US Government and the President as a national hero. Yet he joined a number of other Americans in demanding that a new investigation be carried out to determine who or what really destroyed the World Trade Center. He did so because his statement to investigators had been excluded from the official report. He claimed he had heard explosions in the basement of the building, which could not have been due to the aircraft crashing into the towers high above. He believed explosives had been placed in the buildings, explosives which had detonated and were responsible for the collapse of the towers, or had at least contributed to their collapse.

I watched the three-hour video they brought with them, which featured a number of experts who gave their views regarding the collapse of the World Trade Center and the damage suffered by the Pentagon building in Washington, D.C. Accompanying the talk were video clips showing views, both of the towers and the Pentagon building at different times that morning during successive stages of the destruction of the buildings. Then I remembered thinking at the time of the attack that the way the towers collapsed had seemed strange. The video’s principal narrator pointed out that it was most unusual for buildings to collapse straight down, except when they are deliberately demolished by the detonation of a succession of explosive charges. The video also showed a third building, building No 57, which, though it was not hit by the aircraft, also collapsed in the same way. I do not remember the media reporting about this building. This was the first time I heard about that third building also collapsing, though it had not been struck by any aircraft.

My visitors insisted that all three buildings were brought down, in calculated fashion, by demolition charges. As for the Pentagon building, the picture taken apparently soon after the plane had crashed into it showed no aircraft or aircraft wreckage at all. Surely they could not have removed the debris so quickly. Besides, the hole in the wall of the Pentagon building was too small for even the nose of the aircraft. Again, unlike other serious accidents, I have not seen the kind of extensive reports on the incident which the American Press loves to make.

On the basis of this and similar evidence, I now have doubts whether terrorists really crashed those planes or if the whole thing was an elaborately staged drama to convince the world that a serious terrorist attack had been made on the US, requiring an all-out war to be waged. Even within the US, there are groups who question the official account of the attack and the US Government’s role in it, groups whose members include scientists, architects, engineers and scholars.

We now know that the excuse for invading Iraq was a blatant lie as there were no weapons of mass destruction. US intelligence agencies had told the President so, but he still went ahead to invade Iraq, to destroy the country and directly kill or cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. A US President and his cohorts, who would lie about the presence of weapons of mass destruction to get the war that they wanted, would have no qualms about staging a terrorist attack involving the killing of 3,000 innocent people—if that was what it would take to get the world to back a war against Muslim terrorists, Afghanistan and Iraq.

We are living through terrible times. We are seeing an endless war in what is recognised as the cradle of world civilisation. The massive “shock and awe” attack has not been as the aggressors have claimed: to reduce strife and suffering, and the threat of a weapons of mass destruction war by Iraq. It was in fact just the opposite: the actions taken by the civilised West, by the same people who boast of having fought two great wars to end all wars, have only helped spread and promote the very terror which the West claims it wishes to uproot, and which it insists the whole world must join it to fight. Their arrogance and folly have brought greater oppression and the killing of the very people they claim they want to save. Whatever Saddam Hussein may have been guilty of, it was nothing compared to the death and destruction wrought by the self-appointed “saviours” of Iraq.

As a child I was terrified of the idea of fighting in a war and being killed in one. I could not believe that people would voluntarily become soldiers and accept that idea. Being killed violently and probably needlessly seemed inhuman to me. In school I had read books about the glory of war, the victories of the British in Europe and then in the rest of the world as they built their great Empire. But these books told only one side of the story. It was the same with movies, like the old Westerns in which brave cowboys shot down the Native Americans. The bodies of these “savages” were scattered across the wide prairies and I—knowing no better and with a child’s easy enthusiasm—cheered the cowboys on, admiring their prowess with their six-shooters. I was always so happy that the beautiful heroines and all the pretty, fair-haired, white-skinned children were saved. My fear of war subsided somewhat and I came to think that it was glorious as only enemies were killed. I was on the side of the victors, which meant I would not be killed. It was a very reassuring thought. I too could become a soldier and go into battle against our enemies, and return a hero.

Then, in 1939, World War II broke out. At first it seemed to be confined to Europe with the Germans being the enemies, which meant they were the ones who would be killed and defeated. But, strangely, they seemed to be winning instead. On 7 December 1942, the war came to Malaya when the Japanese landed near Kota Baru and invaded the country from the north. To my horror, the British retreated. I saw them trudging in the mud and rain, totally unlike the proud Europeans I knew. All my fears of war and being killed returned.

I was overjoyed when the British and the Americans eventually won, but my fear and hatred of war did not go away. The killing that war entailed had become real to me. In earlier times it was mostly young men who were killed but today’s wars are total wars. Everyone and anyone—combatants and non-combatants, soldiers and civilians—are killed. Taking Palestinian land to give to the Jews and thereby precipitating war was bad enough. Now the US and Britain are deliberately waging war against countries which cannot fight back.

As Prime Minister of Malaysia I was initially in agreement with President Bush that we should all fight against terrorism. But when Bush invaded Afghanistan, I decided Malaysia would not support it. Osama might well be there and he may have been responsible for the 9/11 attacks, but I was certain that invading Afghanistan would not end terror attacks but only increase their number, whether Bush and his allies won or lost. Of course, he could only imagine winning. He believed that the American will was unstoppable. Perhaps he did not know that Afghanistan had never been defeated by imperialist forces. I expected the Afghans to give the Americans a thrashing but Kabul fell and Hamid Karzai, a former employee of an American oil company, was installed by the US as the Prime Minister. The Americans were jubilant and it became evident that they were spoiling for another war and another easy victory.

To modify an old saying, “Those whom God wishes to destroy, they first make arrogant”. The Americans had been hurt by 9/11. They did not want to appear weak and defenceless so like a cowboy posse they had to go after someone and teach them a lesson. If they could not strike at Osama, they would strike at Afghanistan and in that way send him and all his sympathisers and wavering Muslims a clear message: we are big, we are strong and we are angry, so don’t mess around with us and don’t resist us.

I was very worried by this turn of events. Malaysia would not be dragged in but that would not stop people from being killed. Iraq was openly named as the next target for American military action. It was weak enough for the Americans to bully and most importantly it had oil. After a short campaign a tame, compliant government would be installed and Iraq’s oil would be available to the US. Even though Iraq was not hiding Osama and it could not be implicated in any way in the New York attacks, this posed no obstacle. Iraq was accused of having nuclear capability, of having chemical and other weapons of mass destruction. Possession of these WMDs provided sufficient excuse for the country to be invaded, its leader deposed, and its oil wealth made available to the world.

To me it was clear that what the Americans were planning to do in Iraq was similar to daylight robbery. A new concept was being introduced—that of a pre-emptive war to be waged on the mere suspicion that an enemy or a country might be planning to attack one’s country. This made no sense in a world where every nation’s Ministry of Defence had to draw up and keep updating contingency plans for all kinds of unlikely scenarios and improbable eventualities. War based on suspicion and pre-emption is a frightening concept. Anyone may have suspicions, but only a country with overwhelming military strength can initiate a pre-emptive war. A weak country, even one facing the real possibility of enemy invasion, would not have that option of striking first. Justifying a doctrine of pre-emptive war simply means authorising the most powerful to threaten and conduct war against whoever it pleases at any time. That is the blueprint for a world in which no country is safe, not even Malaysia.