The War of Terror

Who can argue with these facts?

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What War on Terror?



But talk of the "failure" of the war on terror rests on the false premise that there really is such a war. This we reject on a number of grounds. First, in all serious definitions of the term,[17] terror is a means of pursuing political ends, an instrument of struggle, and it makes little sense to talk about war against a means and instrument. Furthermore, if the means consists of modes of political intimidation and publicity-seeking that use or threaten force against civilians, a major problem with the alleged “war” is that the United States and Israel also clearly use terror and support allies and agents who do the same. The “shock and awe” strategy that opened the 2002 invasion-occupation of Iraq was openly and explicitly designed to terrorize the Iraq population and armed forces. Much of the bombing and torture, and the attack that destroyed Falluja, have been designed to instill fear and intimidate the general population and resistance. Israel’s repeated bombing attacks, ground assaults, and targeted assassinations of Palestinians are also designed to create fear and apathy, that is, terrorize. As longtime Labour Party official Abba Eban admitted years ago, Israel’s bombing of Lebanon civilians was based on “the rational prospect, ultimately fulfilled, that afflicted populations [i.e., civilians deliberately targeted] would exert pressure for the cessation of hostilities.”[18] This was a precise admission of the use of terrorism, and surely fits Israeli policy in the years of the alleged “war on terror.” Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has also acknowledged an intent to attack civilians, declaring in March 2002 that "The Palestinians must be hit and it must be very painful: we must cause them losses, victims, so that they feel the heavy price."[19]



The United States and Israel actually engage in big-time terror, like strategic bombing, helicopter attacks, torture on a continuing basis, and large-scale invasions and invasion threats, not lower-casualty-inflicting actions like occasional plane hijackings and suicide bombings. This has long been characterized as the difference between wholesale and retail terror, the former carried out by states and on a large scale, the latter implemented by individuals and small groups, much smaller in scale, and causing fewer civilian victims than its wholesale counterpart.[20] Retail terrorists don’t maintain multiple detention centers in which they employ torture (at the height of its state terror activities in the 1970s the Argentinian military maintained an estimated 60 such centers, according to Amnesty International;[21] the United States today, on land bases and naval vessels and in client state operated facilities, uses dozens of such centers).



Furthermore, retail terror is often sponsored by the wholesale terrorists—notoriously, the Cuban refugee network operating out of the United States for decades, the U.S.-supported Nicaraguan contras, Savimbi’s UNITA in Angola in the 1980s, backed by both South Africa and the United States, the South Lebanon Army supported by Israel for years, and the Colombian rightwing death squads still in operation, with U.S. support. Thus, a meaningful war on terror would surely involve attacks on the United States and Israel as premier wholesale terrorists and sponsors, a notion we have yet to find expounded by a single one of the current war-on-terror proponents.



In short, one secret of the widespread belief that the United States and Israel are fighting—not carrying out—terror is the remarkable capacity of the Western media and intellectual class to ignore the standard definitions of terror and the reality of who does the most terrorizing, and thus to allow the Western political establishments to use the invidious word to apply to their targets. We only retaliate and engage in “counter-terror”—our targets started it and their lesser violence is terrorism.



A second and closely related secret of the swallowing of war-on-terror propaganda is the ability of the swallowers to ignore the U.S. purposes and program. They never ask: Is the United States simply responding to the 9/11 attack or do its leaders have a larger agenda for which they can use 9/11 terrorism as a cover? But this obvious question almost answers itself: Documents of the prior decade show clearly that the Bush team was openly hoping for another "Pearl Harbor" that would allow them to go on the offensive and project power in the Middle East and across the globe. In the rightfully infamous words of the Project for the New American Century (2000), "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor."[22] The huge military forces that have been built up in this country conveniently permit this power-projection by threat and use of force, and their buildup and use has had bipartisan support, reflecting in large measure the power and objectives of the military establishment, military contractors, and transnational corporations. The military buildup was not for defensive purposes in any meaningful sense; it was for power-projection, which is to say, for offense.



In this connection we should point out that at the time of 9/11 in the year 2001, Al Qaeda was considered by most experts to be a small non-state operation, possibly centered in Afghanistan and/or Pakistan, but loosely sprawled across the globe, and with at most only a few thousand operatives.[23] It is clear that such a small and diffuse operation called for an anti-crime and intelligence response, not a war. Of course a war could be carried out against the country which was their principal home, but given the lags involved and the threat that a war, with its civilian casualties and imperialist overtones, would possibly strengthen Al Qaeda, the quick resort to war in the post-9/11 period suggests covert motives, including vengeance and taking advantage of 9/11 for power-projection. And while a war could be launched against Afghanistan and an attack made on Al Qaeda headquarters, this was hardly a war on terror. Nor could the huge military buildup that ensued have been based on a fight in Afghanistan or against tiny Al Qaeda.[24]



It is also notable that there has been no attempt by the organizers of the war on terror to try to stop terrorism at its source by addressing the problems that have produced the terrorists and provided their recruiting base. In fact, for the organizers and their supporters in the "war on terror," raising the question of “why” is regarded as a form of apologetics for terror, and they are uninterested in the question, satisfied with clichés about the terrorists envy, hatred of freedom, and genetic or religious proclivities. This is consistent with the view that getting rid of terror is not their aim, and that in fact they need the steady flow of resisters-terrorists which their actions produce to justify their real purpose of power projection virtually without limit. Failure to end terrorism is not a failure of the “war on terror,” it is a necessary part of its machinery of operation.



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. Al Qaeda’s more recent role is a classic case of “blowback.” It is also a case of resistance to power-projection, as Al Qaeda's terrorist activities switched from combating a Soviet occupation, to combating U.S. intervention in Saudi Arabia, Palestine and elsewhere. It was also spurred by lagged resentment at being used by the United States for its Soviet destabilization purposes and then abandoned.[26]


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19117.htm

 

Anyone who is not a moonbat and does not suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Hey TT2, aside from your civil liberties being trampled on a daily basis by The Man, i.e. , having vans and minidrones following you everywhere you go and you being picked up by the domestic arm of Blackwater and waterboarded because you're an idiot, is there anything you like about living in the West? Is it the unprecedented media coverage to the slaughter of innocent Iraqis by the evil American conquerors that living in North America affords you? Is it your freedom and opportunity to rail about the manufactured War on Terror by the US and Israel? Or do you stay because you know that is Toronto just a great big cesspool of capitalist oppression that will, someday, be brought into the warm healing embrace of the coming Caliphate?

Your stupidity o Akbar!
Your stupidity o Akbar!
Your stupidity o Akbar!

 

How Did Western Civilization Get A Monopoly On "Moral [ Post 296024328 ]


Category: News & Opinion (General) Topic: Government
Synopsis: Conscience" When It Has No Morality?
Source: VDARE.COM
Published: January 22, 2008 Author: Paul Craig Roberts
For Education and Discussion Only. Not for Commercial Use.


"The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction."

Five Western military leaders.

I read the statement three times trying to figure out the typo. Then it hit me, the West has now out-Orwelled Orwell: The West must nuke other countries in order to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction! In Westernspeak, the West nuking other countries does not qualify as the use of weapons of mass destruction.

The astounding statement comes from a paper prepared for a Nato summit in April by five top military leaders--an American, a German, a Dutchman, a Frenchman, and a Brit. It can be found here: [Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key option, Nato told, By Ian Traynor, The Guardian, January 22, 2008 ]

The paper, prepared by men regarded as distinguished leaders and not as escapees from insane asylums, argues that "the West’s values and way of life are under threat, but the West is struggling to summon the will to defend them." The leaders find that the UN is in the way of the West’s will, as is the European Union which is obstructing NATO and "NATO’s credibility is at stake in Afghanistan."

And that’s a serious matter. If NATO loses its credibility in Afghanistan, Western civilization will collapse just like the Soviet Union. The West just doesn’t realize how weak it is. To strengthen itself, it needs to drop more and larger bombs.

The German military leader blames the Merkel government for contributing to the West’s inability to defend its values by standing in the way of a revival of German militarism. How can Germany be "a reliable partner" for America, he asks, if the German government insists on "special rules" limiting the combat use of its forces in Afghanistan?

Ron Asmus, head of the German Marshall Fund and a former US State Department official, welcomed the paper as "a wake-up call." Asmus means a call to wake-up to the threats from the brutal world, not to the lunacy of Western leaders.

Who, what is threatening the West’s values and way of life? Political fanaticism, religious fundamentalism, and the imminent spread of nuclear weapons, answer the five asylum escapees.

By political fanaticism, do they mean the neoconservatives who believe that the future of humanity depends on the US establishing its hegemony over the world? By religious fundamentalism, do they mean "rapture evangelicals" agitating for Armageddon or Christian and Israeli Zionists demanding a nuclear attack on Iran? By spread of nuclear weapons, do they mean Israel’s undeclared and illegal possession of several hundred nuclear weapons?

No. The paranoid military leaders see all the fanaticism, religious and otherwise, and all the threats to humanity as residing outside Western civilization (Israel is inside). The "increasingly brutal world," of which the leaders warn, is "over there." Only Muslims are fanatics. All us white guys are rational and sane.

There is nothing brutal about the US/Nato bombing of Serbia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, or the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, or the Israeli ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, or the genocide Israel hopes to commit against Palestinians in Gaza.

All of this, as well as America’s bombing of Somalia, America’s torture dungeons, show trials of "detainees," and overthrow of elected governments and installation of puppet rulers, is the West’s necessary response to keep the brutal world at bay.

Brutal things happen in the "brutal world" and are entirely the fault of those in the brutal world. None of this would happen if the inhabitants of the brutal world would just do as they are told. How can the civilized world with its monopoly on morality allow people in the brutal world to behave independently? I mean, really! God forbid, they might attack some innocent country.

The "brutal world" consists of those immoral fanatics who object to being marginalized by the West and who reply to mass bombings from the air and to the death and destruction inflicted on them through myriad ways by strapping on a suicide bomb.

Unable to impose its will on countries it has invaded with conventional arms, the West’s military leaders are now prepared to force compliance with the moral world’s will by threatening to nuke those who resist. You see, since the West has the monopoly on morality, truth, and justice, those in the outside world are obviously evil, wicked and brutal. Therefore, as President Bush tells us, it is a simple choice between good and evil, and there’s no better candidate than evil for being nuked. The sooner we can get rid of the brutal world, the sooner we will have "freedom and democracy" everywhere that’s left.

Meanwhile, the United States, the great moral light unto the world, has just prevented the United Nations from censuring Israel, the world’s other great moral light, for cutting off food supplies, medical supplies, and electric power to Gaza. You see, Gaza is in the outside world and is a home of the bad guys. Moreover, the wicked Palestinians there tricked the US when the US allowed them to hold a free election. Instead of electing the US candidate, the wicked voters elected a government that would represent them. The US and Israel overturned the Palestinian election in the West Bank, but those in Gaza clung to the government that they had elected. Now they are going to suffer and die until they elect the government that the US and Israel wants. I mean, how can we expect people in the brutal world to know what’s best for them?

The fact that the UN tried to stop Israel’s just punishment of the Gazans shows how right the five leaders’ report is about the UN being a threat to Western values and way of life. The UN is really against us. This puts the UN in the outside world and makes it a candidate for being nuked if not an outright terrorist organization. As our president said, "you are with us or against us."

The US and Israel need a puppet government in Palestine so that a ghettoized remnant of Palestine can be turned into a "two state solution." The two states will be Israel incorporating the stolen West Bank and a Palestinian ghetto without an economy, water, or contiguous borders.

This is necessary in order to protect Israel from the brutal outside world.

Inhabitants of the brutal world are confused about the "self-determination" advocated by Western leaders. It doesn’t mean that those outside Western civilization and Israel should decide for themselves. "Self" means American. The term, so familiar to us, means "American-determination." The US determines and others obey.

It is the brutal world that causes all the trouble by not obeying.

 

I can copy and paste articles all day, but I don't.

Why do you?

 

What about that content made you post? Is it too much truth, or do you consider it lies?

Does it threaten you that I am posting about the very real evil and destruction that goes on in our world?

This is reality bud. People are suffering needlessly and our media refuses to address it.

Imagine if an area of your city was blockaded, the water and power shut off, food trucked stopped, no one allowed to leave. Why? Because drug dealers and suspected drug dealers had nests in the area. does that make sense? Make 99.9% of the population suffer for a few criminal scum?

My question is this: if Israel is a humane democracy, then why don't we apply their tactics to our cities?

Comments?

 

Maybe I should cut and paste articls about the latest Brittney Spears or Paris Hilton antics, that's a real crowd pleaser. Back to sleep everyone, we are the supreme godly moral authority, slaying ruthless barbarians everywhere. god says it's ok. ZZZZZ.

 

I can search goggle and find very powerful articles on both sides of every issue under the sun. Then I can cut and paste only those that take the side I prefer.

Your doing nothing more then book reports. Really, very similar to Al Gore's book report "An inconvenient truth" in which he just copies other published data and reposts it.

 

your problem is, you only see evil on one side, and ignore the horrendous evils perpetrated by Islam against the world. What other world religion is against everyone else? They are fighting the Hindues (Kashmir, elsewhere), the Jews ("Palestine"), the Russians, the Christians (Philippines, and elsewhere), the Chinese, and many others.

 

Afghan Clerics Demand Death of Man Who Converted to Christianity, Warn He'd Be Killed if Set Free

By DANIEL COONEY
The Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan - Senior Muslim clerics demanded Thursday that an Afghan man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity be executed, warning that if the government caves in to Western pressure and frees him, they will incite people to "pull him into pieces."

In an unusual move, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned President Hamid Karzai on Thursday seeking a "favorable resolution" of the case of Abdul Rahman. The 41-year-old former medical aid worker faces the death penalty under Afghanistan's Islamic laws for becoming a Christian.

His trial has fired passions in this conservative Muslim nation and highlighted a conflict of values between Afghanistan and its Western backers.

"Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die," said cleric Abdul Raoulf, who is considered a moderate and was jailed three times for opposing the Taliban before the hard-line regime was ousted in 2001.

The trial, which began last week, has caused an international outcry. President Bush has said he is "deeply troubled" by the case and expects the country to "honor the universal principle of freedom."

Rice spokesman Sean McCormack said she told Karzai it is important for the Afghan people to know that freedom of religion is observed in their country. But in deference to the country's sovereignty, Rice evidently did not demand specifically that the trial be halted and the defendant released.

"This is clearly an Afghan decision," McCormack said. "They are a sovereign country."

Still, Rice's direct appeal to a foreign leader in a judicial proceeding in their own country is an unusual move.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters she had received assurances from Karzai in a telephone call that Rahman would not be sentenced to death.

"I have the impression that he (Karzai) has a firm willingness" to abide by the human rights requirements, Merkel said going into pre-European Union summit talks. "I hope we will be able to resolve this."

Diplomats have said the Afghan government is searching for a way to drop the case. On Wednesday, authorities said Rahman is suspected of being mentally ill and would undergo psychological examinations to see whether he is fit to stand trial.

But three Sunni preachers and a Shiite one interviewed by The Associated Press in four of Kabul's most popular mosques said they do not believe Rahman is insane.

"He is not crazy. He went in front of the media and confessed to being a Christian," said Hamidullah, chief cleric at Haji Yacob Mosque.

"The government is scared of the international community. But the people will kill him if he is freed."

Raoulf, who is a member of the country's main Islamic organization, the Afghan Ulama Council, agreed. "The government is playing games. The people will not be fooled."

"Cut off his head!" he exclaimed, sitting in a courtyard outside Herati Mosque. "We will call on the people to pull him into pieces so there's nothing left."

He said the only way for Rahman to survive would be for him to go into exile.

But Said Mirhossain Nasri, the top cleric at Hossainia Mosque, one of the largest Shiite places of worship in Kabul, said Rahman must not be allowed to leave the country.

"If he is allowed to live in the West, then others will claim to be Christian so they can too," he said. "We must set an example. … He must be hanged."

The clerics said they were angry with the United States and other countries for pushing for Rahman's freedom.

"We are a small country and we welcome the help the outside world is giving us. But please don't interfere in this issue," Nasri said. "We are Muslims and these are our beliefs. This is much more important to us than all the aid the world has given us."

Afghanistan's constitution is based on Shariah law, which is interpreted by many Muslims to require that any Muslim who rejects Islam be sentenced to death.

Hamidullah warned that if the government frees Rahman, "there will be an uprising" like one against Soviet occupying forces in the 1980s.

"The government will lose the support of the people," he said. "What sort of democracy would it be if the government ignored the will of all the people."

Meanwhile, human rights group Amnesty International said if Rahman has been detained solely for his religious beliefs, he would be a "prisoner of conscience."

"The charges against him should be dropped and if necessary he should be protected against any abuses within the community," the London-based group said in a statement.

Rahman is believed to have lived in Germany for nine years after converting to Christianity while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan. He returned to Kabul in 2002.

It was not immediately clear when Rahman's trial will resume. Authorities have barred attempts by the AP to see him and he is not believed to have a lawyer.

 

Saudi women can now stay in hotels alone

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Women in Saudi Arabia can now stay in a hotel or a furnished apartment without a male guardian according to decision by the Ministry of Trade, reported the local press Monday.

The daily Al-Watan, which is deemed close to the Saudi government, said the ministry issued a circular to the hotels asking them to accept women in their rooms even if they were alone provided that all their information immediately be to a police station in the area.

The decision was adopted after a study conducted by the Interior Ministry, the Supreme Commission of Tourism and the religious police authority known as the Commission for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

Saudi women, under strict Islamic law, suffer severe restrictions on daily life as they are not allowed to be anywhere with an unrelated man, cannot drive, appear before a judge without a male representative, or travel abroad without a male guardian’s permission…

Did the religious police go around knocking on hotel doors asking, “do you have a man in your room?”