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A History of the World Since 9/11
Dominic Streatfeild
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A History of the World Since 9/11
Dominic Streatfeild
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About This Book
In A History of the World Since 9/11 Dominic Streatfeild expertly combines history, biography and investigative journalism to show how a massacre on a clear September day in 2001 has touched the lives of millions of people around the world. In a series of brilliantly interlinked chapters he shows how an Afghani wedding party; and a gas station proprietor in Texas; and a planespotter in Mallorca have been affected, sometimes devastatingly, by the American response to the attacks on the Twin Towers.
Streatfeild shows how the sleep of reason and good sense in successive US administrations post-9/11 has brought forth the monsters of extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo Bay, extrajudicial execution and wholesale contravention of international law. This is a work that informs as it entertains and induces outrage as it inspires.
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1
Rage
I donāt care what the international lawyers say. We are going to kick some ass.
George W. Bush, September 2001
Stromanās madder than hell, but heās not insane. He certainly isnāt fixing to get himself shot. The moment the attendant reaches under the cash register for his .22, itās time to act. And heās quick! If Stroman hadnāt come prepared, heād be in real trouble. His gun recoils violently, upwards and to the left. A flame a foot long shoots from the barrel.
The bullet, a copper-coated .44, strikes the attendant just above the left collarbone. Coming as it does from a range of just two feet, the vast majority of the muzzle velocity remains intact. The collarbone fractures and the slug moves on, breaking the first three ribs, penetrating the left lung, then shattering three more. It travels 8[1/2] inches through the victimās torso, coming to a rest just beneath the skin of his lower back. The attendant collapses.
Stroman will later state that he was somewhere else when all this takes place. Not that he will deny the crime (he admits this immediately), rather that the adrenaline, the shooting and the flame that leaps from the revolverās barrel affects him in some way. Time neither slows nor accelerates, but rather does both simultaneously, so that, while the flame emerges from the barrel in slow motion, like in a movie, everything else appears to take place instantaneously.
āItās like I was floating above the room,ā he says. āLike someone else was doing it.ā
This dissociation may account for Stromanās inability to recall what happens next. But thatās clear. Itās all on CCTV. He shoves the revolver back in to his waistband and shouts at the attendant: āOpen the register!ā
Reaching over the counter he scrabbles about frantically apparently trying to get to the cash, failing and knocking the keyboard on to the floor. āOpen the register now or Iām gonna kill you! open it! open it!ā
Nothing happens.
Stromanās desperation is now palpable. He reaches for the revolver again.
āI see that gun down there! Open the register or Iām gonna blow your brains out!ā
A glance at the window ā is someone coming? ā apparently persuades him not to make good on his threat. Instead, he turns, disappears through the door, climbs into a silver Ford Thunderbird and accelerates across the garage forecourt. As he does so, a regular customer, Sam Bradley, pulling in to the station, is forced to swerve to avoid a collision. Stroman brakes sharply, turns around, eyeballs Bradley and then, incongruously, waves a thank you. He pulls out into the traffic and heads south, towards Interstate 30.
What thoughts are going through Stromanās mind at this point? Elation? Probably. Exhilaration? Certainly.
āYe-es!ā he says. āGod bless America!ā
The Shell station is now silent apart from the attendantās radio, which is broadcasting an interminable weather forecast. The attendant is going into shock. Worse, he is bleeding into his own chest cavity; his left lung is filling up with blood. Although nothing can be seen on the CCTV tape, we can hear him rasping, struggling for breath. Occasionally, there is a scuffling sound behind the counter. Whatās he doing back there?
It seems reasonable to assume the attendant is not aware of ā is certainly no longer listening to ā the weather forecast. Crime-scene photographs of the stationās checkout area, in no particular order, reveal a state of unimaginable carnage. There is blood, of course, seeping through the rubber matting. There is the .22 on the floor, its magazine partially ejected ā presumably a result of the fall. On the counter there is the cash register, its drawer still tightly shut; beside it, a carton of Texas Lotto tickets. Then, back on the floor, there is the telephone, off the hook. It is clear from the state of the phone that the attendant has tried to place a call.
We can make a fair guess as to the destination of that call. Some of the numeric keys have blood on them. Thereās a distinct fingerprint on the number 1, a bloody smear to the bottom right of the keypad, below the 9. The attendant has dialled 9-1-1.
Polunsky Unit Death Row Inmate #999409ās correspondence is plastered with US flags. Occasionally, it comes on stars-and-stripes writing paper. Elaborately courteous, the letters are couched in biblical imagery, topped and tailed with little prayers. Guardian Angel, Beacon of Hope, runs one, Empower me to endure and cope. Sometimes there are attachments: True Americans, American Me, ruminations on patriotism. Other times, press cuttings and photographs: himself, his children, a wedding. Occasionally, however, there are little indiscretions, slips, that hint at something less polished.
āIf you are not happy with the way our country and beliefs are,ā #999409 writes in February 2008, āthen you should pack up and get the hell out.ā Later, he continues: āMy uncles and forefathers shouldnāt have had to die in vain so that you can leave the country you were born in to come here and disrespect ours and make us bend to your will.ā Four months after this, an aside on my plans to visit Iraq: āWhy the hell would you want to go to sand land and interview them ragheads is beyond me.ā
On the face of it, this is a simple story. On 4 October 2001, Mark Stroman, a convicted felon, killed Vasudev Patel, a gas-station proprietor. The full ramifications of the Patel/Stroman incident have yet to be played out, but when they are two wives will be widowed, six children orphaned. Itās a tragedy, certainly, but hardly a complicated one. Like so much of what follows, however, the truth is harder to pin down.
Is Stroman a patriot or a racist? āEvilā or misguided? Was his crime very American or very un-American?
āI did what every other American wanted to do,ā he told KDFW-TV shortly after his arrest, ābut didnāt have the nerve.ā
Is that true?
āIām very, very sorry.ā How about that? Scratching the surface of this story reveals a seething mass of contradictions, an orgy of serpents ā and all draped in the American flag.
Many, including Stroman himself, would later argue that Patelās death was the result of events that took place in Washington and New York on 11 September 2001. To an extent, they were right. But there was more to it than that. All of the elements necessary for the murder, bar one, were in place well before 9/11. The roots of Vasudev Patelās murder, and the various tragedies that would follow it, lay further back in time.
From the moment he was born on 13 October 1969, it was clear that Mark Anthony Bakerās mother was ill prepared for parenthood. Sandra Baker was a high-school dropout; the pregnancy had been unplanned. She was just fifteen years old. Things never improved. When Mark was a toddler, she ran away from home. A year later, a call from the local hospital alerted the family to the fact that she had been found, pregnant with twins, inebriated in a gutter. That her husband Doyle Baker was not the twinsā father (they were later given up for adoption) was no great surprise: he wasnāt Markās father, either. Nor was he the father of Markās two half-sisters. What he was, was a bully.
Doyle Baker maintained a not-so-secret predilection for beating Mark, slapping him around the head and, on occasion, hitting him in the face with a cowboy boot. He frequently berated the boy for his misdeeds, both real and perceived. If Mark got into a fight at school and lost, Doyle would beat him up as a punishment. When Mark was naughty, he was locked in his bedroom for days at a time. Even outside his room, he was not allowed to use the furniture in the house in case it got dirty. Sandraās sister Sue would later testify that Markās parents lived āin their own worldā to the extent that ānothing is important to them except themā.
Then there was the alcohol. Sandra and Doyle drank heavily, often as a precursor to fighting. One Christmas Day Markās grandfather Robert came for dinner to find no sign of the children. Doyle informed him they had been locked in their rooms for the day and would eat their dinner there.
Markās grandfather ācame ungluedā. āIām sorry, Doyle,ā Robert told him, ābut itās Christmas. You are not going to do this to these children.ā
But the Bakers were going to do this to these children. Sandra repeatedly told Mark that he was worthless and she wished she had got a dog rather than had a child. On one occasion, she sat him down and informed him that she had been $50 away from having an abortion while pregnant with him. She should, she told the thirteen-year-old, have borrowed the money.
Unsurprisingly, Mark followed his motherās example and took to running away from home. After climbing out of his bedroom window, he cycled to the house of the only relative he felt actually cared for him: his grandfather. The journey took thirty minutes by car, but far longer by bicycle. Mark was eight when he first made it. Other forms of escape followed. In 1980, aged eleven, he was excluded from school. He got into drugs, smoking marijuana from the age of eleven or twelve, messing with harder drugs shortly after.
He cut classes repeatedly and was made to resit grades so many times that, when he reached the eighth grade, he was four years older than his classmates. By now he was uncontrollable, a hazard to those around him. Teachers characterized him as āacting outā. There was nothing he would not do to attract attention. The more appalling the behaviour, the more of it he received. He provoked strangers into fights, had a swastika tattooed on his chest, and told friends that Hitler had had the right idea. Here, it seemed, was a young man with a unique talent for breaking things.
When Mark was sixteen, he again emulated his motherās example, dropping out of school and becoming a parent himself. On his wedding day, Sandra refused to sign the marriage certificate, revealing for the first time that his real father was not Doyle Baker but Eddie Stroman, a friend of his grandfatherās.
In 1990, Mark (now Stroman) was finally convicted of theft and sent to jail for two years. By the time he emerged, his wife had left him, his grandfather had died, he had a criminal record, no job and an eighth-grade education.
Stromanās attorneys wouldnāt bother denying in court that their client was a racist. Evidence to the contrary ā presented with some glee by his prosecutors ā was overwhelming. There were the Southern Nazi T-shirt transfers, and the āIf I Had Known This, I would have picked my own cottonā sticker on the back of his Thunderbird. There were the unprocessed 35 mm negatives from the glove compartment (preschool children saluting a Nazi flag) and the photographs of Stroman and a friend, one pretending to choke a black man, the other holding an AK-47 to his head. Jesus, the guy had a swastika tattooed on his chest!
From the look of it, racism was something Stroman appeared to have spent the best part of his life advertising. At one point, even his own lawyer described him as a āracist dogā.
The attorneys probably made the right call, figures Kevin āBearā Hartline, Stromanās best friend. Stroman, he tells me when we meet in Dallas in June 2008, is a ā100 per cent hardcore racistā. Virtually all of his friends agree.
āYeah, he was pretty much prejudiced. He didnāt like niggers,ā says one. āBut, I mean, who does?ā
Through the bulletproof glass of the Polunsky Unitās death-row visiting centre, Stroman himself is expansive on the subject, his views pretty much in tune with the common-sense rhetoric of right-wing nationalists the world over.
There are the assumptions that, somehow, racial minorities are not āproperā Americans; that non-Caucasians are flooding into the country and outnumber Caucasians, or soon will; that ātheā immigrants are ātaking advantageā of American charity. Behind these beliefs, unmentioned, lurks the heady notion of racial purity, coupled with a fear of contamination not a million miles removed from the domain of the closet eugenicist.
Perhaps naively, I tell Stroman I find it ironic to hear these views in the United States, a land of immigrants established with the sole purpose of eliminating intolerance. Wasnāt it, after all, American tolerance that allowed him to emblazon his own curious brand of nihilism on his T-shirts (Fuck you, you fucking fuck was one presented at his trial)? Wasnāt it American tolerance that allowed him to demonstrate his own intolerance ā in the form of the black doll hanging by its neck from the rear-view mirror of his Thunderbird? The tolerance only seems to work in one direction.
Pushed on the subject, Stroman agrees that, if there had been no Italians in America, there would be no pizza; if there were no Mexicans, there would be no tacos; and that without the Germans there would be no hamburgers. And without the Chinese . . . ?ā I venture.
Stroman shakes his head. āI donāt like Chinese food,ā he says.
If Stromanās attitudes towards blacks were harsh, they were considerably more lenient than his feelings towards other ethnic minorities. At least blacks were American. The bottom of the food chain was reserved for those who werenāt. The only thing worse than a nigger was a sand nigger.
This attitude is common among his friends, a number of whom tell tales of purported injustices regarding recent immigrants. The Asians come over here, they say, and receive government grants for cars, apartments and businesses. They buy up all the convenience stores and gas stations and motels. They drive Americans out of business. Then they invite their relatives over and multiply like rabbits ā or more appropriately if you hold this world view viruses.
Initially, these opinions are expressed in a jokey fashion.
āYou just want them to speak clear English when youāre asking for a pack of cigarettes!ā explains one of Stromanās friends. āRepeat yourself fifty times and they still donāt understand! Everybody thinks that way: come over here and speak English!ā
Attitude is another bugbear.
āThese people,ā says Ronnie āShyā Galloway, āthey come from other countries, and they come here ā especially the sand niggers ā they donāt know how to treat people. They talk to you real bad.ā Shy shakes his head. āI done come across people in Texas: Taliban, whatever you wanna call it. Same way! They donāt know how to treat people. So I have a problem with āem myself
Itās a surprising admission, coming from a black man like Shy.
Traditionally, Americaās most recent immigrants are supposed to disappear into the community and pay their dues for a generation or two, or at least until theyāve learned to speak the language properly. Asians, however, tend not to play by these rules. They invest; they work; they buy up corner stores and gas stations where they are highly visible. Most of all, they succeed. They jump the queue. How do these guys make so much money so fast? They must have some unfair advantage, some kind of winning lottery ticket.
āThey let too many people in here,ā complains Shy. āGive āem loans, build āem houses. Man! I been here all my life! I got to save my money get it myself! Thatās the problem with the United States!ā
For Shy and his friends, the issue is not simply that immigrants are successful, itās that their very presence constitutes a dilution, a corrosion of the values that make the United States a great nation: a strike at the heart of America itself.
āLook at the hotels!ā explains another former employer. āAll the hotels, the motels, the convenience stores. They own them! From India, whatever!ā
Through the glass at Polunsky Stroman agrees. āWhat...