Tag Archives: War on Terror

The Legacy of George W. Bush and His Torturers, by Andrew Napolitano

Posted on February 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

It’s hard to find anything George W. Bush did that was a positive contribution that left a positive legacy. It goes the other way. From Andrew Napolitano at lewrockwell.com:

In the days and months following the attacks of 9/11, the government laid the blame for orchestrating the attacks on Osama bin Ladin. Then, after bin Ladin was murdered in his home in Pakistan in 2011, the government decided that the true mastermind of 9/11 was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

By the time of bin Ladin’s death, Mohammed had already been tortured by CIA agents for two years in Pakistan and charged with conspiracy to commit mass murder, to be tried before an American military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Throughout the entire existence of the U.S. military detention camp at Gitmo, no one has been tried for causing or carrying out the crimes of 9/11. The government only tried one person for crimes related to 9/11. That was Zacharias Moussaoui who pleaded guilty in federal court in Virginia to being the 20th hijacker and then was tried in a penalty phase trial where the issue was life in prison or death. The government spent millions in its death penalty case, which it lost. A civilian jury sentenced Moussaoui, who never harmed a hair on the head of anyone, to life in prison.

Mohammed, meanwhile, and four other alleged conspirators, have been awaiting trial since their arrivals at Gitmo in 2006. Since then, numerous government military and civilian prosecutors, as well as numerous military judges, have rotated into and out of the case.

The concept of military tribunals was born in the administration of President George W. Bush, who argued that 9/11, though conducted by civilians, was an attack of military magnitude and thus warranted a military response. This pathetic knee-jerk argument, of course, not only brought us the fruitless and destructive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; it also brought a host of legal problems unforeseen by Bush and his revenge-over-justice thirsty colleagues.

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The Unnecessary War on Terrorism, by Jacob G. Hornberger

Posted on September 16, 2022 | Leave a comment

What is victory in the war in terror? Nobody knows. If you can’t define victory, how can you achieve it? From Jacob G. Hornberger at fff.org:

After the 9/11 attacks, U.S. officials decided to invade Afghanistan.

Never mind that the federal government produced no evidence of complicity of the Taliban government in the attacks.

Never mind that there was no congressional declaration of war against Afghanistan, as the Constitution requires.

Never mind that Afghanistan had been legally justified in refusing President Bush’s unconditional extradition demand for Osama bin Laden to be turned over to the Pentagon and the CIA, given that there was no extradition treaty between Afghanistan and the United States.

Never mind all that. All that mattered, U.S. officials and interventionists claimed, was that the U.S. government had to display a “robust” response to the 9/11 attacks, which meant invading Afghanistan, wreaking massive amounts of death and destruction in that country, and then soon thereafter doing the same thing to the people of Iraq.

Was there another route to take?

Actually, there was. It was a route that would not have entailed killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Afghanistan and Iraq and destroying those two countries.

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The War on Terror Is a Success — for Terror, by Nick Turse

Posted on January 5, 2022 | Leave a comment

You’ll think you’ve died and gone to heaven if the federal government ever declares war on you. War on terror—more terror. War on poverty—more poverty. War on drugs—more drugs. Whatever the federal government declares war on thrives. From Nick Turse at tomdispatch.com:

It began more than two decades ago. On September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush declared a “war on terror” and told a joint session of Congress (and the American people) that “the course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain.” If he meant a 20-year slide to defeat in Afghanistan, a proliferation of militant groups across the Greater Middle East and Africa, and a never-ending, world-spanning war that, at a minimum, has killed about 300 times the number of people murdered in America on 9/11, then give him credit. He was absolutely right.

Days earlier, Congress had authorized Bush “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determine[d] planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001 or harbored such organizations or persons.” By then, it was already evident, as Bush said in his address, that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks. But it was equally clear that he had no intention of conducting a limited campaign. “Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there,” he announced. “It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.”

Congress had already assented to whatever the president saw fit to do. It had voted 420 to 1 in the House and 98 to 0 in the Senate to grant an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that would give him (and presidents to come) essentially a free hand to make war around the world.

“I believe that it’s broad enough for the president to have the authority to do all that he needs to do to deal with this terrorist attack and threat,” Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) said at the time. “I also think that it is tight enough that the constitutional requirements and limitations are protected.” That AUMF would, however, quickly become a blank check for boundless war.

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Second Stage Terror Wars, by Edward Curtin

Posted on May 14, 2021 | Leave a comment

The liberty-destroying measures enacted after 9/11 were billed as temporary emergency measures for the “War on Terror.” They’re still with us. The temporary emergency measures decreed for the “War on Germs” will be with us in perpetuity as well. From Edward Curtin at edwardcurtin.com:

 

“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” – William Casey, CIA Director, Feb. 1981

It is well known that the endless U.S. war on terror was overtly launched following the mass murders of September 11, 2001 and the linked anthrax attacks.   The invasion of Afghanistan and the Patriot Act were immediately justified by those insider murders, and subsequently the wars against Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc.  So too the terrorizing of the American people with constant fear-mongering about imminent Islamic terrorist attacks from abroad that never came.

It is less well known that the executive director of the U.S. cover story – the fictional 9/11 Commission Report – was Philip Zelikow, who controlled and shaped the report from start to finish.

It is even less well known that Zelikow, a professor at the University of Virginia, was closely associated with Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Dickey Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Brent Scowcroft, et al. and had served in various key intelligence positions in both the George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations. In 2011 President Obama named him to his President’s Intelligence Advisory Board as befits bi-partisan elite rule and coverup compensation across political parties.

Perhaps it’s unknown or just forgotten that The Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 Commission repeatedly called for Zelikow’s removal, claiming that his appointment made a farce of the claim that the Commission was independent.

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Shock and Awe Is a State of Mind: Millions of Deaths Have Not Made Americans Safer, by Philip Giraldi

Posted on April 17, 2021 | Leave a comment

How can invading foreign lands that pose no threat to the US make Americans safer? From Philip Giraldi at unz.com:

That the United States likes to use expressions like “shock and awe” or “maximum pressure” would rather suggest that there is a psychopath working in the White House basement whose full-time job is to come up with pithy one-liners to somehow euphemize government bad behavior. The expressions hardly mean anything in and of themselves apart from “tough talk” but they do serve as an alternative to having to admit in plain language to the killing of millions of people since the Global War on Terror began in 2001. “Millions?” one might skeptically ask. Yes, millions if one includes all those killed directly or indirectly as a result of the wars. Direct victims of the violence number at least 157,000 in Afghanistan, 182,000 in Iraq, 400,000 in Syria and 25,000 in Libya. And if you want to go back a few years three million Vietnamese died in 1964-1975 while 2.5 million civilians were killed in Korea. And even in the “Good War” World War 2 there were unnecessary incidents to include the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed 105,000, the firebombing of Tokyo adding another 97,000, and the firebombing of Hamburg and Dresden that together killed 45,000.

An estimated ten million more civilians have been displaced from their homes since 2001, creating refugee crises in both Europe and the Americas, while trillions of dollars have also been wasted or “misplaced” by the geniuses at the Pentagon and in Congress. And some might reasonably argue that the violence taking place all around the world has also been internalized in the U.S., with mass murders surfacing in the news media every few days. Some argue that the United States has nearly always been at war since its founding, which would be true, but it is also correct to note that the nature of America’s lethal engagement with the rest of the world has changed in the past twenty years. Old wars were fought to expand territory and trade or to acquire colonies for the same purpose, meaning they were intended to increase one’s power and wealth. Since 9/11, however, the wars are being fought seemingly without any real identifiable objective while also inflicting significant losses in relative wealth and power on the United States.

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Twenty Years of the War on Terror, by Hunter Derensis

Posted on April 9, 2021 | Leave a comment

The war on terror was designed to be a perma-war. From Hunter Derensis at theamericanconservative.com:

Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism, by Scott Horton (The Libertarian Institute: 2021), 330 pages.

We’re approaching the 20th anniversary of the Global War on Terror when the George W. Bush administration made the decision to ruin the 21st century. Trillions of dollars spent, a permanent and expanding war bureaucracy on our shores, upwards of a million civilians dead, tens of millions more displaced, entire regions of the globe destabilized, and the American people no safer than they were on September 10.

When the immensity of the nefariousness is laid bare, a normal man is tempted, in the words of satirical cynic H.L. Mencken, “to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” That is the conclusion when one finishes Scott Horton’s Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism, which stands as the most irrefutably argued and damning indictment of modern U.S. foreign policy yet written.

Published on the anniversary of Operation Desert Storm, its release date is a distressing reminder that, with a brief respite from 2011 to 2014, the United States has been bombing Iraq continuously for 30 years. Add Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and a dozen other countries, and the cascade of errors (and worse) can overwhelm the reader.

Indefatigable localist writer and TAC luminary Bill Kauffman once called the unasked question of American foreign policy, “What does this war mean for my block, my neighborhood, my town?” Horton’s answer, as biting as it is accurate, is that the American people have gained nothing from the War on Terrorism “beyond, perhaps, increasingly necessary technological advancements in the manufacture of prosthetic limbs.”

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The Iraq War Anniversary Should Remind Us the War on Terror Failed, by Julia Gledhill

Posted on March 20, 2021 | Leave a comment

The US foreign policy establishment, or Blob, is number one in the world at doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result (Einstein’s definition of insanity). From Julia Gledhill at defenseone.com:

We must start to correct course now by repealing the 2002 AUMF.

The Iraq War began 18 years ago on a quiet night in Washington: March 19, 2003.

Domestically, the Bush administration justified the Iraq invasion under the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq, which allowed the president to “defend U.S. national security against the continuing threat posed by Iraq” and to “enforce all relevant Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.”

The 2002 AUMF notwithstanding, many argue that the lengthy, bitterly fought war was illegal under international law. In any case, successive presidents have reinterpreted the 2002 legislation to justify military actions that Congress never authorized, let alone contemplated. Perhaps the most egregious of these was in January 2020 when the Trump administration cited it as authority for the targeted killing of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani. The drone strike killed nine other people as well as the general.

No matter who is in the Oval Office, the 2002 Iraq AUMF remains vulnerable to presidential abuse. Thankfully, Congress finally seems in a place to repeal it. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., recently promised to take up Rep. Barbara Lee’s, D-Calif., bill to repeal the authorization this month. In the Senate, Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Todd Young, R-Ind., recently introduced a repeal bill supported by a bipartisan group of senators.

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From 9/11 to the Great Reset By Pepe Escobar

Posted on September 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

From 9/11 to the Great Reset is a steep downhill ride for individual rights and freedom. From Pepe Escobar at lewrockwell.com:

The events of 9/11 were the foundation stone of the new millennium – ever as much indecipherable as the Mysteries of Eleusis. A year ago, for Asia Times, once again I raised a number of questions that still find no answer.

A lightning speed breakdown of the slings and arrows of outrageous (mis)fortune trespassing these two decades will certainly include the following:

The end of history. The short unipolar moment. The Pentagon’s Long War. Homeland security. The Patriot Act. Shock and Awe. The tragedy/debacle in Iraq. The 2008 financial crisis. The Arab Spring. Color revolutions. “Leading from behind.” Humanitarian imperialism.

Syria as the ultimate proxy war. The ISIS/Daesh farce. The JCPOA. Maidan. The Age of Psyops. The Age of the Algorithm. The Age of the 0.0001%.

Once again, we’re deep in Yeats territory: “the best lack all conviction/ while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

All along, the “War on Terror” – the actual decantation of the Long War – proceeded unabated, killing Muslim multitudes and displacing at least 37 million people.

WWII-derived geopolitics is over. Cold War 2.0 is in effect. It started as US against Russia, morphed into US against China and now, fully spelled out in the US National Security Strategy, and with bipartisan support, it’s the US against both. The ultimate Mackinder-Brzezinski nightmare is at hand: the much dread “peer competitor” in Eurasia slouched towards the Beltway to be born in the form of the Russia-China strategic partnership.

Something’s gotta give. And then, out of the blue, it did.

A drive by design towards ironclad concentration of power and geoconomic diktats was first conceptualized – under the deceptive cover of “sustainable development” – already in 2015 at the UN (here it is, in detail).

Now, this new operating system – or technocratic digital dystopia – is finally being codified, packaged and “sold” since mid summer via a lavish, concerted propaganda campaign.

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Tens Of Millions Of People Displaced By The ‘War On Terror’, The Greatest Scam Ever Invented, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on September 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

The War on Terror is the greatest scam ever invented…so far. Rest assured, they’re working on bigger ones, like the coranavirus hoax. From Caitlin Johnstone at medium.com:

A new report from Brown University’s Costs of War project has found that at least 37 million people have been displaced as a result of America’s so-called “war on terror” since 9/11, a conservative estimate of a number that may actually be somewhere between 48 million to 59 million.

That number, “at least 37 million”, happens by pure coincidence to be the exact same number of Americans reported to suffer from food insecurity because their government spends their wealth and resources killing and displacing people overseas.

This inconvenient revelation, which was actually reported on by The New York Times for once, is causing conniptions for all the right people, with The Washington Post’s neoconservative war propagandist Josh Rogin ejaculating, “The @nytimes should be ashamed for running this as ‘analysis.’ Blaming the U.S. for the displacement of 7 million Syrians is crazy and dishonest. Way to launder anti-American propaganda.”

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What’s the Point of NATO If You Are Not Prepared to Use It Against Iran? by Philip Giraldi

Posted on January 18, 2020 | 2 comments

Once the Soviet Union dissolved, NATO had to branch out if it was to survive, and it has, into things like the Global War on Terror. From Philip Giraldi at strategic-culture.org:

Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance commits all members to participate in the defense of any single member that is attacked. An attack on one is an attack on all. Forged in the early stages of the cold war, the alliance originally included most of the leading non-communist states in Western Europe, as well as Turkey. It was intended to deter any attacks orchestrated by the Soviet Union and was defensive in nature.

Currently NATO is an anachronism as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, but the desire to continue to play soldier on an international stage has granted it a measure of life support. Indeed, the alliance is regularly auditioning for new members. Its latest addition is Montenegro, which has a military consisting of 2,000 men and women, roughly one brigade. If Montenegro should be attacked, the United States is obligated to come to its assistance.

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