X-cellent editorial in Balt. Sun by UPENN Professor on bogus 'War on Terror'

[Jcrowley]

An all-consuming 'war on terror'
By Ian S. Lustick

December 31, 2006

PHILADELPHIA -- The official mantra is that we fight in Iraq because it is the "central front in the War on Terror." The exact opposite is the case.

We are trapped in fighting an unwinnable - even nonsensical - "war on terror" because its invention was required in order to fight in Iraq. After years of slaughter in Iraq, the neoconservative fantasy of a series of cheap, fast, neo-imperial victories is dead. But the war on terror lives on, stronger than ever.

How did the war on terror take on a life of its own and trap the entire political class, and most Americans, into public beliefs about the need to fight a global war on terror as our first priority, even when there's little or no evidence of an enemy present in the United States? What accounts for $650 billion worth of expenditures, along with baseless cycles of "sleeper cell" hysteria and McCarthyist policies of surveillance and "pre-emptive prosecution" not seen in this country since the early 1950s?

Consider how Congress responded to the war on terror. In summer 2003, a list of 160 potential targets for terrorists was drawn up, triggering intense efforts by members of Congress and their constituents to find funding-generating targets in their districts. The result? Widening definitions of potential targets and mushrooming increases in the number of assets deemed worthy of protection: up to 1,849 in late 2003; 28,364 in 2004; 77,069 in 2005; and an estimated 300,000 in 2006 (including the Sears Tower in Chicago but also the Indiana Apple and Pork Festival).

Across the country, virtually every lobby and interest group recast its traditional objectives and funding proposals as more important than ever given the imperatives of the war on terror. The National Rifle Association declared that it means that more Americans should own and carry firearms to defend the country and themselves against terrorists. On the other hand, according to the gun control lobby, fighting the war on terror means passing strict gun-control laws to keep assault weapons out of the hands of terrorists.

http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/baltsun09.html

[lyonn]

1. Intelligent article

Who would have thought that just because we had an idiot for a president that the whole U.S. would go insane too? Now we know, we as a nation are sheep. Can all this dumbass be turned around? Will the Dems. do their job? I have hope. Truly do....well, holding breath anyway.

[dave_p]

5. Yes

It shows how Democrats have to destroy the myth. Saying they're as tough on defence is no use: why not just stick with the asshole who came up with the idea? Congress needs to look at the whole history of policy formulation leading to this, including the decades of neocon falsification that betrayed US interests by crippling effective policy response and painting the country into a dead-end corner of paranoid aggression and hysteria.

[truth2power]

2. The BBC series "The Power of Nightmares"

shows how the people are kept terrified of an enemy that doesn't really exist. I recommend anyone who can find a fast internet connection to view the entire series. Puts a whole new face on the GWOT bullsh*t!

[dave_p]

3. PoN link

It's available here, btw, and well worth it.

[truth2power]

9. Thanks for posting the link. n/t

[Batgirl]

4. thanks for the link

I hadn't really thought of how many money-making opportunities stemmed from that thar war on terra, besides the obvious ones like Halliburton and similar war profiteers.

"Aside from swarms of consulting firms and huge corporate investments in counter-terrorism activities, universities across the country created graduate programs in homeland security, institutes on terrorism and counter-terrorism, all raising huge catcher's mitts into the air for the billions of dollars of grants and contracts just blowing in the wind.

The same imperative - translate your agenda into war on terror requirements or be starved of funds - and its spiraling consequences surged across the government, affecting virtually all agencies. Bureaucrats unable to describe their activities in "war on terror" terms were virtually disqualified from budget increases and probably doomed to cuts. With billions of dollars a year in state and local funding, the Department of Homeland Security devised a list of 15 National Planning Scenarios to help guide its allocations. To qualify for Homeland Security funding, state and local governments had to describe how they would use allocated funds to meet one of those chosen scenarios.

snip

The dimensions of the war on terror are still expanding rapidly in the face of a small - if not entirely absent - domestic terrorist threat. But politicians, forced into playing Chicken Little to avoid seeming to suffer from a "pre-9/11 mentality," can offer no break on spending or war-on-terror rhetoric. Neither have universities and the press. While universities rush to the counter-terror trough, it's as good as it gets for the press. "Hurricane Osama," the real storm of the century, is always just about to hit - and never goes away. Every false alarm of another 9/11 attack on the way sends the news media into paroxysms of sensationally foreboding, emergency-mode coverage, helping enliven the credibility of hundreds of TV episodes, films and potboiler novels with the same plot: maniacal, brilliant Middle Eastern terrorists poised to strike but for the heroics of a few bold souls operating within a generally incompetent government.

Americans have learned that the Iraq war was a disastrous mistake. But they have yet to be able even to imagine the truth about the war on terror more generally. As long as politicians and pundits justify alternatives to the present course in Iraq by invoking the need to fight the war on terror more effectively, the United States will remain, as Osama bin Laden observed in his November 2004 videotape, trapped in a maelstrom of waste, worry, and witch hunt that "bleeds America to the point of bankruptcy."

[starroute]

6. The war on terror was deliberately invented c. 1979

I've posted on this before, so I'm not going to go into details, but it was basically a quite deliberate concoction on the part of the Neocons and the military-industrial complex types -- the two groups associated with George H.W. Bush's Team B when he was CIA director -- to come up with a substitute for the fading Cold War.

In the 80's, the newborn war on terror was dominated by a theory that the Soviet Union was the real force behind Islamic and other terrorists, of which Claire Sterling and Michael Ledeen were the leading exponents. Qaddafi and the Palestinians were the main boogeymen at that point. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the focus shifted more to Iran, then in the later 90's to Osama bin Laden.

This shifting focus is a reflection of the fact that terrorism is not and never has been a coherent ideological movement -- though rhetorical devices like Bush's "axis of evil" represent some sort of attempt to portray it as such. The real aim is to create the illusion of something that resembles a single, conspiratorial enemy, both to justify those pumped-up military budgets and to be able to discredit anybody you don't like (like Iranians or eco-activists) with a simple kneejerk label. That is, to be what communism was for the right a generation ago.

The pity of it is that even people who ought to know better tend to go along with the game, even to the extent of criticizing the Iraq War as being a distraction from the "real" war.

[mike_c]

7. good gawd we've been saying this since 2001-- the WOT is a scam....

Always has been, always will be. The media have shamelessly pimped it from the beginning and virtually every political leader in Washington or in state capitals all across the country trampled one another in their stampede to join the emperor's naked parade. A solid majority of American citizens dutifully drank the Koolaid with them.

But not all of us were that blind. The "global war on terror" is a marketing jingle for neo-imperialism and permanent war for permanent profits. That is all it is. It contains a real crusading fundamentalist component, but that is simply a convenient hook to hang the rhetoric on.

Anyone who believes that such a "war" exists in any coherent or meaningful form-- not to mention anyone who believe such a conflict could be won-- watches too much television, IMO.

[mhatrw]

8. Digby on the "GWOT."

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_digbysblog_archive.html#114902553871278226

[GuvWurld]

10. This is another angle on the birth of what I've called the Manchurian Nation

In October 2005 I first read about the national planning scenarios referenced in the OP. Michel Chossudovsky wrote an article about it earlier that year for the Center For Research on Globalization. He cited this leaked document describing the scenarios. The OP above focuses on funding but Chossudovsky wrote more about how every day existence is leading the groupthink among first responders, local government leaders, and even teachers and librarians. Essentially, we are surrounded by people who give the appearance of "doing the right thing," in a system that even provides positive reinforcement for actions that are in reality harmful to society. This led me to write We Are Being Set Up: The Manchurian Nation.

[GuvWurld]

11. Kick (eom)

[JudyM]

12. Excellent and a rarity: too short. He makes one great point, inparticular:

<snip>
Americans have learned that the Iraq war was a disastrous mistake. But they have yet to be able even to imagine the truth about the war on terror more generally. As long as politicians and pundits justify alternatives to the present course in Iraq by invoking the need to fight the war on terror more effectively, the United States will remain, as Osama bin Laden observed in his November 2004 videotape, trapped in a maelstrom of waste, worry, and witch hunt that "bleeds America to the point of bankruptcy."

Wow. We are being bled dry in a witch hunt.