Let's Make "Terrorists"

Sometimes policies seem stupid and counterproductive. One steps back and asks "why did they do that?". Such is the case with the US invasion of Iraq. One might argue that "regime change" planners had their heads in the clouds (or someplace else) in thinking the US could march into Iraq, overthrow the government, put their plans in play and march out. Nobody could be that stupid - or short sighted - particularly those with the brains that have maneuvered similar strategies over and over again. Therefore, the "consequences" of invading Iraq were known and intended.

Let's go back in history just a bit to the Reagan administration and the Afghanistan - Soviet Union struggle. The US decided to use Afghanistan in a power grab with the Soviet Union. The underlying reasons for US involvement were to grab access to oil and gas in south Asian Soviet controlled states, and to undermine Soviet power. Rather than backing democratic forces in Afghanistan, the US decided to back extremists. What ensued was the US training and arming of a transnational group of extremists to fight the Soviet Union. They succeeded.

The Soviets lost, and ultimately the Soviet Union collapsed. Islamists gained power in Afghanistan and ultimately came to official headship under the Taliban. The "foreign fighters" drawn into Afghanistan took their war-honed skills home, and Afghanistan remained a base of international Islamist extremism. Afghanistan, in effect, became a "terrorist magnet." With the US invasion of Afghanistan on the pretext of capturing Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan could have re-ignited as a "terrorist magnet;" however, instead the US build's a house of lies case against Iraq and illegally invades that country.

The invasion totally destabilizes the power structure in Iraq and creates a vacuum. The Iraqi Republican Guard is disbanded sending thousands of trained soldiers into the populace. Tribal leaders, religious leaders, and ethnic group interests vie for power within the vacuum. The Arab world sees the invasion as an affront and a threat. The invading forces become an occupying force and, like Afghanistan, "foreign fighters" enter the fray. Iraq, like Afghanistan, becomes a "magnet." The ongoing occupation and US atrocities "radicalize" moderates against a foreign invader who has framed the conflict as a "crusade."

The Bush administration has repeatedly stated that "We are safer" because "We are fighting them over there." But what the US is actually doing is creating "terrorists," giving them live fire skills and training, and loosing them on the world. I am not making this up.

The Christian Science Monitor reports on two different studies - one done by the Saudis and one by "an Israeli think tank" that shows that non-Iraqi's crossing the border to fight are not terrorists, but were "radicalized by the war itself." Britain's Joint Terrorist Analysis Centre has also issued the warning that "US-led involvement in Iraq" is directly linked "with terrorist activity in the UK."

In Afghanistan, USAID (acting as an tool of the CIA) funded the printing of children's textbooks which essentially created a war culture. Preparing for another generations-long war? Are similar things taking place in Iraq? I haven't a clue. However, the U.S. did not put a priority on securing munitions depots inside Iraq, and thousands of tons of explosives and munitions have gone "missing." The assumption is that they are being used by "terrorists" inside Iraq, but is it simple coincidence that the bombs used on the British subways and bus were made from materials of 'was of military origin'?

So people are being "radicalized" and gaining live-fire experience in Iraq, before spreading outward to strike at other targets "closer to home." Just as the mobilization of extremists to fight the Soviets turned into a sprawling umbrella organization called "al Qaeda" and went elsewhere to use those skills.

War is profitable - for some. Chaos is purportedly "bad for business" unless you are in businesses that can profit from chaos. The fear generated by expanding hatred can be utilized to exert stronger and stronger controls on internal populations - as the US is finding as rights erode piece by piece, and the Pentagon plans its deployment inside the United States (see National Defense Strategy of the United States - 2005), and Britain prepares to enact pre-crime and "indirect inducement" laws). It is a win-win situation for those who hope for total(itarian) power and control. A "new world order" indeed, soon with no need for covering its activities in the guise of "freedom", "democracy," or "aid." Nor in the guise of "safety."

The Merriam Webster Dictionary definition of "totalitarian" sound very familiar:"of or relating to a political regime based on subordination of the individual to the state and strict control of all aspects of the life and productive capacity of the nation especially by coercive measures (as censorship and terrorism)." Censorship and terrorism? Hmm. Might that be utilizing "terrorists" to further the "cause." Could be. It has happened before and could very well be happening now.

Posted by rowan at July 19, 2005 8:34 AM | TrackBack | [eMail this article!] |