[Peace-discuss] The "war of terror" decade

[C. G. Estabrook]

Here's a real conspiracy, David:

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/hallinan150911.html

And here's how it's presented today in the USG's semi-official journal:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/world/africa/three-terrorist-groups-in-africa-pose-threat-to-us-general-ham-says.html


On Sep 11, 2011, at 8:18 PM, David Johnson wrote:

> The neo-cons planned this YEARS before the Sept. 11 2001 attacks !
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: C. G. Estabrook
> To: Peace-discuss List
> Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2011 8:01 PM
> Subject: [Peace-discuss] The "war of terror" decade
>
> The "war of terror" decade
>
> Anthony Arnove, author of Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal and coauthor  
> with Howard Zinn of Voices of a People's History of the United  
> States, looks back at the 10 years since the September 11 attacks-- 
> and how politicians have used the tragedy.
>
> September 11, 2011
>
> TEN YEARS after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the world  
> is still reeling from the consequences of the terrorist attacks and  
> the geopolitical shifts that followed.
>
> Moments after the attack, President George W. Bush and his military  
> planners were discussing how to use people's anger and fear for  
> their political advantage.
>
> The Bush administration saw the horrific events of September 11 as a  
> rare chance to carry out plans that long predated the attacks and  
> package these as defensive rather than offensive measures. Bush and  
> his vice president, Dick Cheney, immediately set to work to target  
> Iraq, despite the fact that the country had no link at all to the  
> attacks.
>
> Leading members of the Bush administration were open about  
> describing the post-September 11 moment as an "opportunity." After  
> September 11, Condoleezza Rice, Bush's National Security Adviser and  
> later Secretary of State, asked senior national security staff to  
> think about how to "capitalize on these opportunities," which were  
> "shifting the tectonic plates in international politics" to U.S.  
> advantage.
>
> "I really think this period is analogous to 1945 to 1947," Rice told  
> one journalist. "And it's important to try to seize on that and  
> position American interests and institutions and all of that before  
> they harden again."
>
> Bush invoked al-Qaeda and the World Trade Center and Pentagon  
> attacks repeatedly in his public speeches on Iraq, as the  
> administration consciously set about selling the war, eventually  
> creating the false impression among a majority of the U.S.  
> population that Iraq was connected to September 11.
>
> The most immediate target, though, was Afghanistan. Bush and Co.  
> claimed that they were invading and occupying Afghanistan--still  
> occupied to this day, with no end in sight--because Afghanistan was  
> a base for the September 11 attacks.
>
> In reality, the Bush administration was simply looking for revenge  
> and an easy target to strike, despite the fact that the people who  
> would suffer the consequences were civilians of Afghanistan, who had  
> no responsibility whatsoever for September 11.
>
> With the Democrats safely in tow, the Bush administration intended  
> the invasion of Afghanistan to be a show of force that would have a  
> "demonstration effect," signaling to other states that the U.S.  
> government has the right--one which it may extend on a limited basis  
> to allies, such as Israel--to engage in "preemptive strikes" against  
> any country it chooses.
>
> While many sought to explain the aggressive policies of the Bush  
> administration as an aberration or a case of neoconservatives or  
> Republicans engineering a radical shift in U.S. principles, the  
> fundamental policies of the so-called "war on terror," whatever name  
> they go by, have been overwhelmingly bipartisan and have continued  
> in significant respects under President Barack Obama.
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
> ON OCTOBER 6, 2011, the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan will enter  
> its eleventh year. Even after Osama bin Laden was assassinated in  
> May 2011 in Pakistan, the occupation continues as before.
>
> The extrajudicial murder led to grisly celebrations of U.S. imperial  
> might and lawlessness, but almost none of the media commentators  
> cared to mention how the United States had cultivated bin Laden and  
> his allies as part of their sponsorship of the Jihadists fighting  
> against the Soviet Union--much as Washington had also supported  
> Saddam Hussein for years in Iraq as he carried out his worst crimes.
>
> Despite talk in the press of "withdrawal," ThinkProgress.com notes  
> that even if active-duty troop "reductions are carried out as  
> planned, the United States would still have far more troops in  
> Afghanistan than it did when Obama came into office and more than at  
> any point during former President George W. Bush's administration.  
> This means that the troop reduction would not put us much closer to  
> actually ending the war by the end of 2012."
>
> Civilian deaths in Afghanistan in the first half of 2011 were up 15  
> percent over the same period in 2010, according to a United Nations  
> study. As the Wall Street Journal reported, May 2011 "was the  
> deadliest month since the counting of civilian casualties started in  
> 2007, with 368 civilian deaths and 593 civilian injuries, according  
> to the report. June had the highest number of security incidents,  
> with 11,862 security incidents in the first half of 2011, compared  
> with 8,242 in the first half of 2010 and 5,095 in the same period in  
> 2009."
>
> Many of these deaths have come from the under-reported drone warfare  
> the U.S. military has been escalating in Afghanistan. As author Tom  
> Engelhardt writes in his forthcoming Haymarket book The United  
> States of Fear, "assassination-by-drone has become an ever more  
> central part of the Obama administration's foreign and war policy,  
> and yet the word assassination--with all its negative implications,  
> legal and otherwise--has been displaced by the far more anodyne,  
> bureaucratic term targeted killing."
>
> The Obama administration is seeking ways to continue its troop  
> presence in Iraq beyond a previously negotiated deadline of the end  
> of 2011.
>
> While the fate of active-duty troops is still uncertain, various  
> "advisers" and private contractors will certainly remain, and Iraq  
> is littered with installations and bases that the U.S. military does  
> not want to abandon. In Baghdad, the United States has built the  
> largest embassy that any government in the world has ever  
> constructed, and it will use every opportunity it can to extend its  
> control over Iraq's vital resources and to leverage its strategic  
> location in a region that is of immense importance to U.S.  
> projection of power.
>
> The U.S. global war on terror extends well beyond Afghanistan and  
> Iraq. The United States has used drone strikes against Pakistan,  
> Yemen and Somalia; led an air war against Libya without any  
> Congressional authorization; and cooperated with Israeli attacks on  
> Gaza, Lebanon and Syria based on the idea of "preventive" war. Other  
> countries, from Russia to India, have asserted that they, too, have  
> the right to invade and bomb countries to thwart terrorism.
>
> As Nick Turse observes, "Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of  
> the Washington Post reported that U.S. Special Operations forces  
> were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush  
> presidency. By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command  
> spokesman Col. Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120."
>
> The U.S. has taken part in global kidnapping and assassination  
> operations in multiple countries, set up torture centers from  
> Guantánamo Bay in Cuba to Bagram in Afghanistan and vastly expanded  
> the apparatus of both the military-industrial complex and a new  
> "national security" complex that increasingly is being used to  
> target dissent and curb civil liberties in the United States.
>
> In the process, President Obama has embraced many elements of the  
> expansion of executive power Bush and Co. engineered in the wake of  
> September 11. As Michael Ratner, president of the Center for  
> Constitutional Rights, noted in an interview with in International  
> Socialist Review, "[O]ften, Obama's policies are squarely consistent  
> with Bush policies--they are the same. Sometimes...Obama's actually  
> going beyond Bush."
>
> Literally trillions of dollars have been poured into the costs of  
> running these wars abroad and at home, draining funds from schools,  
> health care and other vital social needs.
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
> IN THE process, we have also experienced cultural shifts with far- 
> reaching and damaging consequences.
>
> The establishment media has played a vital role in selling the  
> occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the broader "war on  
> terror." The New York Times and other liberal journals such as the  
> New Yorker sold the invasion of Iraq in a way that Bush alone never  
> could have without their reporting lies and propaganda as truth.
>
> We have also seen the open targeting of Muslims, Arabs, immigrants  
> and people of color more broadly to shore up popular support for  
> war. This rhetoric, far more than justifying killing of civilians  
> abroad, has also legitimized racist attacks at home and had a  
> chilling effect in communities understandably fearful of what would  
> happen to them if they spoke out in public against U.S. actions.
>
> Rather than making the world a safer place or spreading democracy,  
> as Bush and Obama claim, U.S. policies have only destabilized the  
> world, fueled a number of reactionary movements at home and abroad,  
> contributed to the appeal and recruitment of the Taliban and al- 
> Qaeda, and made the United States more hated in the world--and in  
> the process made it more likely someone would seek to launch another  
> terrorist attack here.
>
> The balance sheet of the last 10 years is grim. It would have to  
> include the immense loss of life in Iraq and Afghanistan; the  
> millions displaced by the invasions and their aftermath; the deaths  
> of the working class youth, mostly from rural areas, sent to kill  
> and die in Afghanistan and Iraq for no reason; the impact on the  
> communities and families torn apart by these traumas; the erosions  
> of civil liberties; and much else.
>
> Some thought that the election of Barack Obama would close this  
> terrible chapter in our history. It has not. Instead, Obama has  
> mostly engineered refinements of Bush-era policies, a process that  
> Bush himself had already begun in his second term as his advisers  
> realized that the abusive and arrogant unilateralism of the initial  
> phase of their wars was needlessly alienating allies.
>
> Obama has repackaged and in fact given new legitimacy to policies  
> that were once seen by some as outlandish, but are now defended or  
> excused by those whose political horizons are defined by the  
> politics of a prowar Democratic Party.
>
> Not surprisingly, we have seen new setbacks for the antiwar movement  
> and a dwindling of activism since Obama's election, not the growth  
> of the left that some predicted when calling for a vote for Obama,  
> despite his clear intention of escalating the U.S. presence in  
> Afghanistan and his predictable embrace of numerous Bush-era policies.
>
> But the fact remains that an enormous gap exists between the views  
> and actions of Washington (and of its establishment media echo  
> chamber) and those of the majority of the country.
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
> THE 10 years since September 11 have demonstrated to millions that  
> we live in a topsy-turvy world. It has led millions more to oppose  
> war and occupation, despite the barrage of media and government  
> propaganda and the exclusion of antiwar voices from political  
> discussion and debate. Around the world, people have taken to the  
> streets and marched to demand change.
>
> Despite a continuing shift rightward at the top, most people came to  
> reject the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. People want less money  
> spent on the military and more on social security and health care.  
> And on a broad range of issues, people feel the government does not  
> serve their interests.
>
> There is still a crying need to close the gap between these popular  
> sentiments and the organization we need to turn that into effective  
> forms of protest.
>
> We need, first and foremost, to start by rebuilding an antiwar  
> movement that is independent of both the corporate pro-war parties.  
> That movement needs to be inclusive of Muslims and others targeted  
> as part of the ideological support for endless war. And it needs to  
> also involve the soldiers and veterans, and their families, being  
> asked to fight these wars.
>
> The tenth anniversary of 9/11 will be used by many to shore up  
> nationalism and militarism and justify continuation of the  
> disastrous wars fought in our name.
>
> But we can't let this barrage intimidate those of us who know that  
> the tragedy of the deaths of September 11 are only compounded by  
> each new death in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and beyond.
>
> On October 6, and in the days that follow, people will gather in  
> Washington, D.C., to protest the ongoing occupation of Afghanistan  
> and Iraq--with solidarity events taking place in other cities. A new  
> organization, the United National Antiwar Coalition, is trying to  
> fill the vacuum left by the collapse of other organizations and  
> coalitions that failed to effectively build an independent antiwar  
> movement in the last decade.
>
> These are still modest steps, but vital ones. It took years of many  
> ups and downs to build effective opposition to the U.S. war in  
> Vietnam, but in the end, the movement here and resistance in Vietnam  
> led to a defeat for the United States and a brief moment in which  
> more far-reaching changes could have been won.
>
> We should not be deterred by the setbacks and challenges of the last  
> decade. Far too much is at stake. The course our leaders have set us  
> down is one that leads to more wars and the very real possibility of  
> annihilation, through nuclear war or environmental devastation. It  
> is a path toward barbarism.
>
> We need to set down another path--toward a world without  
> occupations, a world rid of nuclear weapons, a world in which we  
> share rather than make war over the resources of the planet, a world  
> based on solidarity and cooperation...
>
> http://socialistworker.org/2011/09/11/war-of-terror-decade
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20110916/13366b72/attachment-0001.html>