Riding Old 9/11

It is September 11, 2001. Al Qaeda hijacks four commercial airliners two of which are crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, a third is crashed into the Pentagon, and the fourth crashed in Pennsylvania as it headed for Washington D.C.. While the U.S. has been no slouch when it comes to using State Terror in the form of air bombings and the like from the American point of view it is insufferable that Americans be subjected to the same type of horrible deaths that the U.S. has been dealing out for many, many years. It was a gift from heaven, or bin Laden, for George W. Bush who had already been eying Iraq for invasion.

After investigation by the intelligence community the most that could be said was that the idea originated in Afghanistan but the actual plotting was carried out in Germany and the United Arab Emirates. The Taliban on October 4th had offered to turn bin Laden over to Pakistan for trial but Pakistan refused the offer. Next on October 7 the Taliban offered to try bin Laden in Afghanistan which was rejected by the United States. Thus we see that bin Laden could have been easily had very early on but getting bin Laden was never the goal. It was on that same day, the seventh of October that Bush’s war dubbed Operation Enduring Freedom was begun though it wasn’t long before Iraq became the main target for the War on Terror. Today Obama is reanimating the Afghan War even as Iraq explodes into more violence.

Some felt it made sense to send the military into Afghanistan to root out the Taliban despite that the Taliban likely had nothing to do with the attack on the WTC. Attacking Afghanistan was likely meant more as a show for the rubes here in the States for it was Iraq that held the real prize, all that oil. Still, Afghanistan has strategic importance for the United States but when you look at the troop numbers clearly Iraq is deemed by far the more important of the two. There are still roughly twice as many troops in Iraq then are now in Afghanistan even though Afghanistan is supposedly the new center for the War on Terror, the “Right War” as it were.

So it was make a feint to Afghanistan and then a thrust into the heart of Iraq. The fact is the United States has been taking advantage of the collapse of the old Soviet Union and has been doing so for years. What better time to consolidate an American stranglehold on the Middle East with all of its glittering oil? If you recall in those first days of the Iraq invasion the U.S. military secured the Iraq oil fields even while looters pillaged one of the most important museums in the world containing treasures from the very cradle of civilization as we know it. Of course that was nothing compared to the horrors that were to come but it certainly showed where the priorities lay.

Ideology had nothing to do with the Iraq invasion. The neocons are totally overrated in their influence. This whole thing has more to do with Russia and China and keeping them from having any control over the oil fields in the Middle East. So these neocons with their new found ideology were likely no more than convenient tools or allies. That oil is the reason for our presence in the Middle East is what we should keep in mind. Ideology is only useful to throw up a smoke screen for disguising the real motives for waging war. Likewise, ideology has nothing to do with escalating a war in Afghanistan. Some believe that it is a planned oil pipe line to bypass Russia others dismiss the oil line and insist that it is Afghanistan’s strategic location that is of value to the U.S. in a much bigger game in the U.S. bid to control as much of the world’s oil as possible. Whatever you may believe one thing is clear we are riding the same rails that helped get us there in first place. Obama insists that the war in Afghanistan is necessary to protect Americans which no doubt his masters in the corporate world would love to have us believe. Yet if al Qaeda is the true target then all that has been accomplished is that they have merely gone elsewhere to fester and grow untroubled by bombs falling in Afghanistan.

In the end 9/11 wasn’t all that important despite that Obama and others still invoke the 9/11 ghost train and ride it for all it’s worth. The whole premise for the Afghan War, as we are given to understand it, that we are being protected from terrorists is completely absurd. Al Qaeda has had eight years to make a get-away. And why on earth would they stay? I don’t think there is much doubt that we were headed for the Iraq invasion sooner or later and 9/11, whether fortuitous calamity, or allowed to happen, or even caused to happen by our own government, will be used to grease the wheels of imperialism on into an unforeseeable future if Obama is any example.

At the beginning of the Afghan campaign Bush bombed the supply route for food that fed from 5 to 7.5 million Afghans in a deliberate attempt to starve the civilian population, punishment for not having the type of government the U.S. approved of or perhaps for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And despite recent vows by general McChrystal to “protect” the Afghan civilian population we see the recent dropping of 500 pound bombs on stolen tankers in the middle of an Afghan village killing as many as 75 innocent civilians. Clearly there is a huge difference between what is said and what is actually occurring on a daily basis.

Just as clearly 9/11 should have been an abject lesson for Americans which is that it is absolutely wrong to interfere with the lives of other peoples in other nations even if we have strong interests in doing so. Naturally the opposite occurred and here we are today. It’s one thing for a war to become unpopular because it isn’t going well and another to be against a war because it wrong. To date the Afghan War has cost 150 billion dollars I believe. And as someone pointed out that is what health care reform is going to cost if you trust the figures. So this is the choice the government faces. Continue with the imperial wars or pay for health care reform because you cannot do both and it looks to me they are choosing war. No doubt this is one of the “hard choices” I heard so much of during the last presidential election.

Today, eight years later we see that Obama is not only escalating the war in Afghanistan but is also escalating the war in Iraq by increasing the number of mercanary murderers and thugs there. Oh and you thought we were removing the troops well guess again.

Link

Nearly eight months into his administration President Obama has not significantly reduced the number of troops in the nation since taking office, and what was roughly 135,000 when he arrived is now still 131,000 or so, and this number is not expected to change until at least 60 days after the January election. So indeed, these thousands of new contractors are “replacing” troops that haven’t actually gone anywhere, and amount to a covert escalation of the overall force operating in the nation.

So much for that transparency in government we heard so much about. Got your ticket ready? Then it’s all aboard old 9/11 the ghost train from hell.