[Peace-discuss] There Is No War on Terror

[Morton K. Brussel]

An article discussing the phoniness of the war on terror by the  
estimable Ed Herman and David Peterson. Here are a few extracts from  
a fairly long essay  at http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/ 
viewArticle/16237
--mkb

…In short, the war on terror is an intellectual and propaganda cover,  
analogous—and in many ways a successor—to the departed “Cold War,”  
which in its time also served as a cover for imperial expansion.  
Guatemala, Vietnam, Chile, Indonesia, Zaire (and many others) were  
regularly subverted or attacked on the ground of an alleged Soviet  
menace that had to be combated. That menace was rarely applicable to  
the actual cases, and the strained connection was often laughable.  
With that cover gone, pursuing terrorists is proving to be an  
admirable substitute, as once again a gullible media will accept that  
any targeted rebels are actual or potential terrorists and may even  
have links to Al Qaeda. The FARC rebels in Colombia are terrorists,  
but the government-supported rightwing paramilitaries who kill many  
more civilians than FARC are not and are the beneficiaries of U.S.  
“counter-terrorism” aid.  Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, on the other hand,  
which does not kill civilians, is accused of  lack of cooperation in  
the U.S. “counter-terrorism” program, and is alleged to have “links”  
to U.S. targets such as Iran and Cuba, which allegedly support  
terrorists.[25] Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, and other torture- 
prone states are “with us” in the war on terror; states like  
Venezuela, Iran and Cuba are not with us and are easily situated as  
terrorist or “linked” to terrorist states.

  If Al Qaeda didn’t exist the United States would have had to create  
it, and of course it did create it back in the 1980s, as a means of   
destabilizing the Soviet Union. …

  While U.S. interventionism gave Al Qaeda a strong start, and while  
it continues today to facilitate Al Qaeda recruitment, it has also  
provoked resistance far beyond Al Qaeda, as in Iraq, where most of  
the resistance has nothing to do with Al Qaeda and in fact has widely  
turned against it. If as the United States projects power across the  
globe this produces resistance, and if this resistance can be labeled  
“terrorists,” then U.S. aggression and wholesale terror are home- 
free!  Any country that is willing to align with the United States  
can get its dissidents and resistance condemned as "terrorists," with  
or without links to Al Qaeda, and get U.S. military aid. The war on  
terror is a war of superpower power-projection, which is to say, an  
imperialist war on a global scale.…



…In sum, the war on terror is a political gambit and myth used to  
cover over a U.S. projection of power that needed rhetorical help  
with the disappearance of the Soviet Union and Cold War. It has been  
successful because U.S. leaders could hide behind the very real 9/11  
terrorist attack and pretend that their own wars, wholesale terrorist  
actions, and  enlarged support of  a string of countries—many  
authoritarian and engaged in state terrorism—were somehow linked to  
that attack and its Al Qaeda authors. But most U.S. military actions  
abroad since 9/11 have had little or  no connection with Al Qaeda;  
and you cannot war on a method of  struggle, especially when you,  
your allies and clients use those methods as well.

  It is widely argued now that the war on terror has been a failure.  
This also is a fallacy, resting on the imputation of  purpose to the  
war’s organizers contrary to their actual aims—they were looking for  
and found the new “Pearl Harbor” needed to justify a surge of  U.S.  
force projection across the globe. It appears that Al Qaeda is  
stronger now than it was on September 11, 2001; but Al Qaeda was  
never the main target of the Bush administration.  If Al Qaeda had  
been, the Bush administration would have tried much more seriously to  
apprehend bin Laden, by military or political action, and it would  
not have carried out policies in Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, Iran and  
elsewhere that have played so well into bin Laden’s hand—arguably,  
policy responses that bin Laden hoped to provoke. If Washington  
really had been worried at the post-9/11 terrorist threat it would  
have followed through on the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations for  
guarding U.S. territory (ports, chemical plants, nuclear facilities,  
airports and other transportation hubs, and the like).[45] The fact  
that it hasn’t done this, but instead has adopted a cynical and  
politicized system of terrorism alerts, is testimony to the  
administration's own private understanding of the contrived character  
of the war on terror and the alleged threats that we face.

Admittedly, the surge in power projection that 9/11 and the war on  
terror facilitated has not been a complete and unadulterated  
success.  But the “war on terror” gambit did enable this surge to  
come about, and it should be recognized that  the invasion-occupation  
of Iraq was not a diversion, its conquest was one of the intended  
objectives of this war. That conquest may be in jeopardy, but looked  
at from the standpoint of  its organizers, the war has achieved some  
of the real goals for which it was designed; and in this critical but  
seldom appreciated sense it has been a  success. It has facilitated  
two U.S. military invasions of foreign countries, served to line-up  
many other states behind the leader of the war, helped once again to  
push NATO into new, out-of-area operations,  permitted a further  
advance in the U.S. disregard of international law, helped bring  
about quasi-regime changes in some major European capitals, and was  
the basis for the huge growth in U.S. and foreign military budgets.  
While its destabilization of the Middle East has possibly benefited  
Iran, it has given Israel a free hand in accelerated ethnic  
cleansing, settlements, and more ruthless treatment of  the  
Palestinians, and the United States and Israel still continue to  
threaten and isolate Iran.

  Furthermore, with the cooperation of the Democrats and mass media,  
the “war on terror” gave the “decider” and his clique the political  
ability to impose an unconstitutional, rightwing agenda at home, at  
the expense of  the rule of law, economic equality, environmental and  
other regulation, and social solidarity.  The increased military  
budget and militarization of U.S. society, the explosive growth in  
corporate "counter-terrorism" and "homeland security" enterprises,  
the greater centralization of power in the executive branch, the  
enhanced inequality, the unimpeded growth of the prison-industrial  
complex, the more rightwing judiciary, and the failure of  the  
Democrats to do anything to counter these trends since the 2006  
election, suggests that the shift to the right and to a more  
militarized society and expansionist foreign policy may have become  
permanent features of life in the United States.  Is that not a war  
on terror success story, given the aims of  its creators?


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