Questioning the War on Terror

Questioning the War on Terror

For the last five years and five months since September 11th, we have been told by our government that Terrorists threaten us on every side, that they ’hate our freedoms’, hate us, and want to kill us because they are mad with religious fervor.
Not a day goes by when we are not reminded of the ’growing and dangerous threat to our security’ by the President, the vice President, Rumsfeld, Rice, various F.B.I., C.I.A., NSA, ’spy guys’, all their spokespeople, and shamefully, members of Congress and the Media. What I haven’t heard is anyone asking ’why there were people who were angry at us enough to commit a terrorist act in the first place?’

The first thing I expected after the September 11 acts was an examination of our actions that may have fueled this kind of hatred. That would reveal the underlying cause of their anger and determine if our
government had any part in riling them up and provoking terrorist attacks. That information would then lead to an evaluation of .the situation and the identification of what changes we would need to make to insure the outcome of peace and stability.

We have to ask why a government that was supposed to be concerned for the security of our nation did not look at the facts but instead rushed us into war while telling us we should be afraid.

No doubt most of us have experienced overwhelming fear in childhood when confronted with invisible threats of goblins, ghosts or other assorted lurking monsters who could ’get’ us. As we grew older we learned to apply logic to these threats and seek out evidence of their existence.
It took a lot of courage to lower oneself over the side of the bed with flashlight in hand to see if there really was a ’monster under the bed’. Who knew for sure if it would grab us and pull us under?

Now, as adults we owe it to ourselves to have the courage to shine a light on the ’enemy’ and see for ourselves who they are and what it is they are fighting us for. We owe it to our children to do so as now Rumsfeld has renamed the "War of Terror’ as ’The Long War’. Surely with so much at risk we must make our own evaluation of the situation and determine if generations of bloodshed and billions of our national purse being used up in war are called for.

Who are these terrorists and why do they hate us?

Osama has been designated as the ’ Biggest Baddest Terrorist’.
Who will ever forget his ’targeted’ face all over the media after 9/11?
What did this man do?
He got 19 hijackers from his Al-Qaeda brood to take over our airplanes and crash them into the Trade Towers and the Pentagon!
He did this from his cave in Afghanistan.
But that’s not all!
He managed the amazing feats of getting our interception planes to stay out of the air, of bringing down the Towers and somehow causing the Pentagon’s protective missiles no to fire on the incoming plane.That just boggles my mind! How was he able to successfully pull all of this off?
Could he have connections?

He may have been helped by the confusing element of five military exercises taking place that very same morning. Yes, Vice President Cheney had ordered the exercises to practice ’air defense’ including one where a plane would crash into the C.I.A. building at Langley. I guess the extra fake blips that had been put on the radar that day could have caused some confusion among the controllers. As a matter of fact, when one controller was calling in to report the errant blip of one of the hijacked planes he was asked "Is this real-time or exercise?’
But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.
Perhaps bin Laden somehow knew that there would be exercises that day.

But how did he deactivate the missiles that protect the Pentagon airspace?
They are set to fire unless the aircraft has a ’friendly’ transponder. Only military aircraft transponders have the right signal to enable them to fly over Pentagon airspace.
Not only did the plane get into the airspace, it apparently disintegrated almost completely when it hit. But it must have shrunk a little too as the hole seemed awfully small for such a big plane.
Luckily the pilot was able to make a very complicated turn to crash into the West side that was under repair and almost empty. He could have hit the side Rumsfeld and all the brass were on with a much less complicated and dangerous turn.
I guess he was just showing off.
His instructor at the air base where he had taken flying lessons has scoffed that ’the guy couldn’t fly a Cessna’. I guess he had to eat his words!

Never before or after 9/11 has a steel frame building collapsed from fire. The terrorists probably put an additive into the jet fuel to make it burn hotter than it normally does(1000 degrees C). Hot enough to melt steel which is usually melts in a blast furnace at 1500 degrees C.
So with a budget of around $500,000 (we are told- how do they know these things?), 19 guys driven with fanaticism, and no plan on paper, bin Laden committed this act of Terrorism.
By the way, I don’t know if you saw it, but the F.B. I. admitted on April 30, 2002, that ’There was no evidence found to link the named hijackers to the 9/11 plan.’ I don’t think that made the front pages.
The White house promised the nation a full White paper report on how bin Laden planned and carried out the 9/11 attacks and all the evidence linking him to the crime but they still haven’t. I guess they felt it was just common knowledge.

There has never been an investrigation of 9/11 from the ground up. The offical 9/11 Comission started with the premise that we were attacked by Al-Qaeda as directed by Bin Laden. Does the evidence support this premise?
Immediately after 9/11 Bin Laden denied that he had a hand in 9/11. He said "Look to people in your own government." The so-called Bin Laden ’confession tape’ shows a man who our government claims is Bin Laden but he not only does not look like Bin Laden, the Dalle Molle Institute in Switzerland reported that their tests showed a 95% liklihood that the tape was faked.

No one in Congress or the media has questioned the evidence pointing to bin Laden and the hijackers, so we have to do this for ourselves.

Why do they hate us?

President Bush says ’they hate us for our freedoms’

Now please, imagine a bunch of people from other countries far from us, waking up one day and saying, "I really hate America’s freedoms! I think I’ll hijack one of their planes, crash it into something important to them and kill myself in the process."

This explanation seems childish to me. I think someone has had been out poking the wasp nest and is now blaming the wasps for stinging.

You may not have noticed this but in 1998 Bin Laden announced to the world that America was committing grievances in the middle East and should stop or he would consider himself and his fighters to be at war with the U.S.

What grievances did he mention?
What was our government up to while we tended the kids, our gardens, and our lives?

Bin Laden said that it was an affront to the people in the middle east that the U.S. was interfering in their politics and supporting repressive rulers with money and the threat of U.S. military force against internal resistance to those rulers.

He wanted the continuing presence of the military off their soil and out of their homelands, especially the base in Saudi Arabia which is considered holy by Muslims.

He felt the U.S. had been obstructionist in a fair settlement of the Israel/ Palestinian conflict and requested them to make a genuine attempt to settle it.

Do you remember our media alerting us to this? Or our government?
Did the President or members of Congress tell us that because of U.S. military presence in the middle east homelands, the people that lived there were getting upset enough to go to war with us?
No. Osama’s statements in 1998 were not national news and the only part of his statement that was reported was that he was going to war against us.

Now, first of all, do you think his complaints have any merit? Do these sound like the rants of a fanatic?

How would we feel if some powerful country put troops on our homeland or interfered with our voice in government ?
I think most of us would feel very upset. I think some of us might risk our lives to fight this invasion into our lives. What freedom or ease of being can one ever have if outsiders can control one’s life?
If we lacked a military, wouldn’t we use whatever weapons we could devise to fight back?

Now, let’s look at the roots and causes of terrorism as a tactic.

The following are the findings of Prof. Robert Pape of the University of Chicago who has the world’s largest database on suicide terrorism.

’Suicide terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland."

"Since 1990, the United States has stationed tens of thousands of ground troops on the Arabian Peninsula, and this is the mobilization appeal of Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda". The more we persist with military operations in their homelands, the more ’terrorists’ we will create.

"The operation in Iraq has stimulated suicide terrorism and given [it} a new lease on life."
Professor Pape’s studies have shown that in Iraq suicide terrorism has doubled every year since the invasion in 2003 and likely will result in blowback terrorist attacks in the U.S., U.K., and on other invading allies.

He also reports that ’Once invaders leave a country, the terror attacks tend to cease.’

His analysis is also supported by the findings from a study from the U.S. Department of Defense in 1997: "Historical data show a strong correlation between US involvement in international situations and an increase of terror attacks against the US"

Looking at the evidence, the specter of ’terrorism’ becomes more human. It is not driven by fanaticism but by the determination to get us our of the homelands. They do not ’hate our freedoms’ they just want the freedom of self determination we claim. In Iraq, 85% of the Iraqis want the US to leave.

A wise mother would counsel her child that poking sticks into a hornet’s nest will by nature result in a counter attack.
Unfortunately, our government has insisted on not only continuing to attack their ’nest’ but endangering all of us in the growing fray. By continuing and increasing US military actions they are rousing more and more fighters to fight back . Given time some may find their way here to hurt us as we have allowed our government to hurt them and their families.

The President gave as a reason to invade Iraq: "Imagine a terrorist network with Iraq as a training ground."
Iraq had never experienced suicide terrorism before the US invasion.
Now the President says: "Iraq is the central front in the War on Terror." He is right according to a January 2005 CIA Intelligence Council report which says, "Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training grounds for the next generation of ’professional’ terrorists." Doesn’t this seem counterproductive to increase and widen the terrorist training grounds?

Meanwhile, here at home, the stick wielders continue to call out warnings while they use the War on Terrorism as an excuse to gut our laws that protect us from an unconstitutional and Tyrannical government.
They tell us that by having a big very expensive military and submitting to government spying they will protect us from this dangerous enemy. Their failure to protect us on 9/11 is never mentioned as they scream more warnings first about Iraq now about Iran and Syria.
(Have you noticed they haven’t used the color coded ’threat-o-meter’ lately? That’s because there was a general awareness among the population that the meter went up when there was a crisis in the White House. It seemed to be functioning more as an administration blood pressure gauge than a real terrorism threat
warning and gave the late night comedians grist for humor.)

So much of our tax money used, so many lives lost or destroyed when they could end this war by stopping their interference in the Middle Eastern homelands.

Professor Pape suggests that the US identify its interests in the Persian Gulf oil and stop fueling the reasons for suicide terrorists by removing the presence of military forces from their homelands. He suggests making trade alliances with the nations who have oil and secure our interests with the off shore presence of the US Navy. Thus the US aims to obtain oil would be achieved and the main root cause for terrorist activities be eliminated.
We have to ask Why our government persists on actions that are increasing our danger and widening the war when solutions to end it are obvious?

Let me introduce to you our National Security Strategy which begins with the affirmation "The United States possesses unprecedented and unequalled strength and influence in the world’ and ends with ’Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in the hopes of surpassing or equaling the power of the United States.’
To this end it is proclaimed that
1.The US will use the policy of ’pre-emptive’ war to attack any country it sees as amassing to much power that could compete with US power.
2. International treaties and opinion will be ignored if they do not conform with US imperial goals.
3. New bases and stations will be needed within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia.
4. The US considers itself exempt from the International Criminal Court and it’s military protected from prosecution for war crimes.

It is the policy of the US to seek exclusive control of space for the use of communications and weapons to further their goals.

It is noted that the continuing conflicts to assert these goals world wide will result in war for generations.

I don’t remember being asked if I support this, were you?
Their object is clearly not a peaceful world but a world controlled by US military force.

They have clearly inflated the threat from middle east fighters even as they continue to increase their offences
against them.

Our government has betrayed us by abusing our trust in them to lead us with integrity and using lies to make us fearful while they pursue actions that increase our danger!
The money from our treasury has gone into the pockets of corrupt corporations and individuals who profit from war while the resources of Afghanistan and Iraq are now controlled by corporations who depend on our military to enforce that control.

From the new permanent military bases being built in Iraq, the US will be positioned to use force on the surrounding countries. With a policy of pre-emptive war powers claimed by the US, is it any wonder that Iran and North Korea are trying to mount a defense?

In closing, I would submit that this "War on Terror" and "Long War’ have been created and increased by our government for the purpose of gaining power and wealth for a few.The destruction of our Constitutional safeguards will unfetter them here at home from constraints by the people. The ’black box’ voting machines are like the Trojan Horse as they contain the seeds for our destruction in the manipulation of our votes.

The administration has attempted to gain our support by spreading the fear that we are fighting an enemy that is driven by ’radical Islamic fervor’ and that there is no way to stop them except to kill them all. When in truth they are people like ourselves who want their homeland to be free of foreign occupation and military forces.
The evidence indicates that we have been duped.

We must challenge our media and Congress to question this war and act on our behalf to end this ruthless plan of world US military domination. If we fail to do this we should be ready to suffer the horrible consequences for this generation and ’generations to come’.