The War on Terror is a Hoax
Paul Craig Roberts
According to US government propaganda, terrorist cells are spread throughout
America, making it necessary for the government to spy on all Americans and
violate most other constitutional protections. Among President Bush’s
last words as he left office was the warning that America would soon be struck
again by Muslim terrorists.
If America were infected with terrorists, we would not need the government to
tell us. We would know it from events. As there are no events, the US
government substitutes warnings in order to keep alive the fear that causes the
public to accept pointless wars, the infringement of civil liberty, national ID
cards, and inconveniences and harassments when they fly.
The most obvious indication that there are no terrorist cells is that not a
single neocon has been assassinated.
I do not approve of assassinations, and am ashamed of my country’s
government for engaging in political assassination. The US and Israel have set
a very bad example for al Qaeda to follow.
The US deals with al Qaeda and Taliban by assassinating their leaders, and
Israel deals with Hamas by assassinating its leaders. It is reasonable to
assume that al Qaeda would deal with the instigators and leaders of
America’s wars in the Middle East in the same way.
Today every al Qaeda member is aware of the complicity of neoconservatives in
the death and devastation inflicted on Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon
and Gaza. Moreover, neocons are highly visible and are soft targets compared to
Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. Neocons have been identified in the media for
years, and as everyone knows, multiple listings of their names are available online.
Neocons do not have Secret Service protection. Dreadful to contemplate, but it
would be child’s play for al Qaeda to assassinate any and every neocon.
Yet, neocons move around freely, a good indication that the US does not have a
terrorist problem.
If, as neocons constantly allege, terrorists can smuggle nuclear weapons or
dirty bombs into the US with which to wreak havoc upon our cities, terrorists
can acquire weapons with which to assassinate any neocon or former government
official.
Yet, the neocons, who are the Americans most hated by Muslims, remain
unscathed.
The “war on terror” is a hoax that fronts for American control of
oil pipelines, the profits of the military-security complex, the assault on
civil liberty by fomenters of a police state, and Israel’s territorial
expansion.
There were no al Qaeda in Iraq until the Americans brought them there by
invading and overthrowing Saddam Hussein, who kept al Qaeda out of Iraq. The
Taliban is not a terrorist organization, but a movement attempting to unify
Afghanistan under Muslim law. The only Americans threatened by the Taliban are
the Americans Bush sent to Afghanistan to kill Taliban and to impose a puppet
state on the Afghan people.
Hamas is the democratically elected government of Palestine, or what little
remains of Palestine after Israel’s illegal annexations. Hamas is a
terrorist organization in the same sense that the Israeli government and the US
government are terrorist organizations. In an effort to bring Hamas under Israeli
hegemony, Israel employs terror bombing and assassinations against
Palestinians. Hamas replies to the Israeli terror with homemade and ineffectual
rockets.
Hezbollah represents the Shi’ites of southern Lebanon, another area in
the Middle East that Israel seeks for its territorial expansion.
The US brands Hamas and Hezbollah “terrorist organizations” for no
other reason than the US is on Israel’s side of the conflict. There is no
objective basis for the US Department of State’s “finding”
that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations. It is merely a
propagandistic declaration.
Americans and Israelis do not call their bombings of civilians terror. What
Americans and Israelis call terror is the response of oppressed people who are
stateless because their countries are ruled by puppets loyal to the oppressors.
These people, dispossessed of their own countries, have no State Departments,
Defense Departments, seats in the United Nations, or voices in the mainstream
media. They can submit to foreign hegemony or resist by the limited means
available to them.
The fact that Israel and the United States carry on endless propaganda to
prevent this fundamental truth from being realized indicates that it is Israel
and the US that are in the wrong and the Palestinians, Lebanese, Iraqis, and
Afghans who are being wronged.
The retired American generals who serve as war propagandists for Fox
“News” are forever claiming that Iran arms the Iraqi and Afghan
insurgents and Hamas. But where are the arms? To deal with American tanks,
insurgents have to construct homemade explosive devices out of artillery
shells. After six years of conflict the insurgents still have no weapon against
the American helicopter gunships. Contrast this “arming” with the
weaponry the US supplied to the Afghans three decades ago when they were
fighting to drive out the Soviets.
The films of Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza show large numbers of
Gazans fleeing from Israeli bombs or digging out the dead and maimed, and none
of these people are armed. A person would think that by now every Palestinian
would be armed, every man, woman, and child. Yet, all the films of the Israeli
attack show an unarmed population. Hamas has to construct homemade rockets that
are little more than a sign of defiance. If Hamas were armed by Iran,
Israel’s assault on Gaza would have cost Israel its helicopter gunships,
its tanks, and hundreds of lives of its soldiers.
Hamas is a small organization armed with small caliber rifles incapable of
penetrating body armor. Hamas is unable to stop small bands of Israeli settlers
from descending on West Bank Palestinian villages, driving out the
Palestinians, and appropriating their land.
The great mystery is: why after 60 years of oppression are the Palestinians
still an unarmed people? Clearly, the Muslim countries are complicit with
Israel and the US in keeping the Palestinians unarmed.
The unsupported assertion that Iran supplies sophisticated arms to the
Palestinians is like the unsupported assertion that Saddam Hussein had weapons
of mass destruction. These assertions are propagandistic justifications for
killing Arab civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure in order to
secure US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.
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