This is an important article, well worth reading.
Among other things, we learn that telling the truth on the Internet is being
viewed by Washington as a form of terrorism...
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made it clear; the new
target is those who "are radicalized over the Internet."
Citing the "threat" of "home grown terrorists" FBI director
Robert Mueller said the FBI is focused on understanding the
"radicalization" process.
In other words, if you¹re reading this essay -- or writing
essays like this one -- you¹re a potential target; you may
be engaged in a process of self-radicalization. If so, the
FBI wants to "understand" you. They want to know what makes
the thought criminal tick.
Unless we take matters into our own hands, the way the
people of Oaxaca, Chiapas and Mexico City are taking fate in
their own hands.
It¹s up to us. The Democrats won¹t do it. Only a mass
movement of determined opposition can do it, an opposition
that aims to stop US fascism and its plan for war dead in
its tracks. Now.
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Original source URL:
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept06/Santos17.htm
There is No War On Terror:
Oil, the New Reich and the Coming War on Iran
by Juan Santos
www.dissidentvoice.org
September 17, 2006
Beneath all the hype about 9-1-1, and beneath the posturing as the US moves
toward new "elections," the Bush regime is laying the groundwork for a
blitzkrieg style, go-for-broke move toward reshaping the world.
There is No War on Terror. It has nothing to do with a "war on terror."
There is no war on terror, just like there was never a "war on drugs" only a war
on Black and Brown people. Consider this.
There is an Islamic nation, an Islamic nation with nuclear weapons; one that is
said to be harboring the arch terrorist, "former" CIA asset Osama Bin Laden.
No, it¹s not Afghanistan. It¹s not Iran. It¹s Pakistan.
The U.S. invaded Afghanistan, alleging the Taliban was supporting and sheltering
Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and alleging that these were the forces that had
attacked the US on the day of the great emergency, 9-1-1.
But there is no call to attack Pakistan, even with its nuclear weapons, even as
it allegedly shelters Bin Laden, with the Pakistani government openly declaring
Bin Laden "would not be taken into custody." Intelligence analysts are all but
certain that bin Laden is somewhere on the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The Pakistani military recently withdrew from its northern province of
Waziristan in a truce with Taliban and Al Qaeda militants. Under the deal,
Pakistani forces will withdraw from the region, release prisoners, return arms
seized from the guerillas, pay reparations to them, and offer no obstruction as
the militants come and go across the border to wage war in Afghanistan. The
agreement refers to the region as "The Islamic Emirate of Waziristan."
Some analysts say the truce has weakened General Musharraf¹s tenuous hold on
power, and deeply emboldened Islamist forces that would like to be rid of him.
President Bush has attempted to justify the move, despite his recent claim that
the US is "determined to deny terrorist networks control of any nation, or
territory within a nation," and despite Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld¹s
recent condemnation of the "appeasers of fascism" who would "negotiate a
separate peace with terrorists."
Obviously, the "war on terror" is not about nuclear weapons in Islamic hands --
hands that might, like Pakistan¹s, turn nuclear weapons over to the "terrorists"
it openly harbors.
Pakistan is a military-mullah alliance -- a state that operates as a military
dictatorship under control of its army in an alliance with a right wing Islamic
fundamentalism that has fostered a wide array of Taliban style extremist groups,
groups which both collude and contend with General Musharraf¹s government.
Stan Goff writes:
Musharraf has lived in political purgatory ever since 9-11. On the one hand,
Pakistan has a substantial population of Pashtuns who are sympathetic to the
Taliban who remain hostile to Musharraf for his acquiescence to the US. His own
security and intelligence apparatuses are full of political Islamists, and the
two attempts on his life in December, 2003 were almost certainly inside jobs. .
. .
The government is highly unstable: Musharraff by now has survived three
assassination attempts. Riots and mass demonstrations by Islamic fundamentalists
are held in check only at the point of a gun.
The recent murder of tribal leader Nawab Akbar Bugti by the Pakistani military
set off waves of unrest all across Pakistan that some believe could lead to a
broader uprising. Every political party in the nation including Musharraf¹s
political allies, has condemned the killing. "Musharraf," William S. Lind tells
us, "is often called Busharraf," in mockery of his deep ties to the US regime.
According to one poll, 51% of Pakistanis support Bin Laden. They call Bin Laden
their "Robin Hood" because, as the Qatar Gulf Times has noted, he "has
flamboyantly defied a superpower they see as a threat to their religion and way
of life." Elections are scheduled for next year.
If Musharraf¹s government falls, real -- not potential -- nuclear weapons will
be in the hands of the forces the US claims are its greatest threat.
William S. Lind looks at the matter from the standpoint of the Empire¹s
strategic interests:
The fall of Pakistan to militant Islam will be a strategic disaster greater than
anything possible in Iraq, even losing an army. It will be a greater disaster
than a war with Iran that costs us our army in Iraq. Osama and Co. will have
nukes, missiles to deliver them, the best conventional armed forces in the
Moslem world and an impregnable base for operations anywhere else.
But the Bush regime does nothing, says nothing of substance, and certainly
sounds no alarm.
From the standpoint of the supposed "war on terror" the danger presented in
Pakistan is "real" -- not the kind of concocted excuse used to invade and occupy
Iraq -- not the "potential" for nuclear weapons that may exist in Iran, a
potential that is the source of deadly saber rattling on the part of the Bush
regime.
In Pakistan, there is an actual and immediate likelihood of weapons of mass
destruction falling into the hands of Islamists profoundly opposed to the Empire
-- including their fall directly into the hands of the US¹s supposed
arch-enemies, Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
If the war on "terror" were about "Islamic" "terror," if Al Qaeda were the real
"enemy" which posed an actual threat of strategic dimension to real imperialist
designs, Pakistan would be an instant target.
The Bush regime would demand an immediate scrapping of Pakistan¹s nuclear might.
It would have attacked Pakistan in the first place -- not Iraq, which had no
weapons of mass destruction, and no ties to "terrorism" at all.
But unlike Iraq and Iran, Pakistan is not a major player in the global oil
market, and the control of Pakistan isn¹t immediately relevant to the control of
world oil and the consolidation of unilateral global power. It¹s on the
sidelines of a war that has nothing to do with "terror" at all.
Nor is this "terror war" about possible Iranian "aggression."
US Congress member Ron Paul cautions that, "Iran has never in modern times
invaded her neighbors, yet we worry obsessively that she may develop a nuclear
weapon someday. Never mind that a radicalized Pakistan has nuclear weapons; our
friend Musharraf won't lift a finger against Bin Laden, who most likely is
hiding there."
The Project for a New American Century says plainly that Iran is "rushing to
develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons as a deterrent to American
intervention..." (emphasis added.)
In other words, if in fact Iran is developing a nuclear weapons capability, even
the criminals who run the White House admit it¹s for Iran¹s own self defense.
After all, the US has invaded and occupied Afghanistan on Iran¹s eastern flank,
and Iraq to its immediate west. The US also assisted Israel -- directed it --
according to reliable sources, in the recent leveling of Lebanon, an action
widely believed to have been a dry run for an attack on Iran, itself.
Gaining control of Iran means gaining control of world oil supplies. It is,
therefore, the main target of the day in the "war on terror."
And the supposed "war on terror" is not about protecting you -- unless it¹s in
the style of a protection racket, wherein the protection of gasoline for your
SUV is paid for in Muslim blood. In fact you¹re in more danger than ever before.
The Empire¹s aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq has caused incidents of Third
World retaliation against Western powers to triple. No one is concerned about
you or your safety.
The so-called war on terror is actually a struggle to establish a new style of
fascism in the US and an excuse to wage war for global dominance and the control
of oil.
In a recent opinion piece in the Washington Post, Henry Kissinger put it
succinctly, saying the US and Europe face "the imperative of building a new
world order or potential global catastrophe." The catastrophe they face is the
collapse of their global power if they don¹t seize control of a rapidly
diminishing global supply of oil and that means seizing control, by any means
necessary, of Middle East oil fields.
The Bush regime is moving quickly to legalize elements of an emerging fascist
state, while laying the groundwork for war -- nuclear war -- against Iran, in a
bid to permanently consolidate US hegemony and world power. Bush insider William
Kristol and outsider Seymour Hersh both predict war on Iran in early 2007.
It could come sooner.
Seizing the Initiative for Fascism
The Bush regime wants Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and their secret torture prisons
written into law. They want to bring The Dark Side, as Vice President Dick
Cheney so aptly put it, into the light of day for open, official approval. Under
the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and in violation of the Geneva Conventions
and the current provisions of the War Crimes Act, they¹re seeking to enshrine
torture as their legal right -- if not for the Army, then for the CIA; the
regime is willing to embrace legislation that bans "torture, murder and rape" in
interrogations - as long as these crimes remain so ill defined as to make
enforcement impossible. And they want to retroactively limit the circumstances
under which a government "interrogator" -- read that torturer- could be
prosecuted for "mistreating" a suspect.
They want their secret gulags and indefinite detention. They want to try
"terrorists" -- you, me, or anyone they ultimately say is a terrorist -- in
military courts and without the benefit of the right of the accused to examine
or refute the evidence against them. They want to be free to use so-called
"coerced testimony" against such defendants, and allow the use of hearsay
evidence. A suspect could even be put to death based on evidence obtained
through torture and coercion.
The only "break" in the US tradition these maneuvers represent lies in bringing
long standing practices out of the shadows and into the light, as Edward S.
Herman make clear:
In addition to preeminence in aggression, the U.S.-Israel axis has long been
important in sponsoring and using torture. The U.S. use of water-boarding goes
back to the war against Philippine "niggers" in 1900; its use of electronic
methods of torture was extensive during the Vietnam war, along with "Tiger
Cages;" and this country was the principal sponsor of regimes of torture in the
1960s and 1970s as U.S. leaders struggled against nationalist-populist upheavals
in the Third World. Many premier torturers learned their lessons in the School
of the Americas in those years. Abu Ghraib, Bagram and the rendition gulag are
not a break from the past or contrary to "American values," they are built on a
solid tradition.
The White House says it is trying to "clarify" the Geneva Conventions. They¹ve
made it clear, in any case, that they have no intention of abiding by them.
Meanwhile, under the National Security Surveillance Act of 2006 (S.2453) they
want to give the president and attorney general a blank check to spy on whomever
they please whenever they please, and to do so with only an "optional" review by
the courts, according to the ACLU, which calls the legislation "worse than the
Patriot Act." The bill would also expand warrantless searches of private
residences.
The Bush regime is directly challenging and seeking, step by step, to eliminate
the right to a fair and speedy trial, to an impartial jury, the right to
privacy, the right to protection from unwarranted search and seizure, and the
right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment.
Their drums are thundering with accusations that anyone who opposes their regime
is a fascist or a fascist sympathizer.
The Web and the New "Enemy Within"
As part of its drive toward a fascistic state, the regime has found a new "Enemy
Within" -- and it¹s not just the Muslim Americans targeted for arrest, the
Mexicans targeted for round ups and deportations, or the Blacks, Native
Americans and "gang members" targeted for prison.
It¹s what they now call the "homegrown terrorist" -- apparently a most dangerous
kind of terrorist, according to The Los Angeles Times; one almost impossible to
track; one with no formal ties to known "networks"; one with no particular
religion; a self-radicalizing "terrorist" whose "terrorist breeding ground" is
the Internet and whose piper is not just "Osama Bin Laden," but the radical
writer, the blogger, and the so-called "conspiracy theorist."
The BBC, in the opening line of a piece entitled US plans to 'fight the net',
states it plainly: "Bloggers Beware."
The LA Times reports -- with a straight face -- "US officials said the enemy
from within was posing a new challenge and a new danger."
The self-radicalized new "threat" doesn¹t fit previous "profiles," and the Feds
are working overtime to build a new profile for these misfits. The Times says
that according to one "terrorism expert" it¹s "very difficult to find someone
like that, someone not from the Middle East, not converted to any religion."
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made it clear; the new target is those who
"are radicalized over the Internet." Citing the "threat" of "home grown
terrorists" FBI director Robert Mueller said the FBI is focused on understanding
the "radicalization" process.
L.A. police chief William Bratton plans to build a new national anti-terrorism
training academy for cops to reinforce the idea of "getting the bastards before
they get us." The Attorney General backed Bratton, framing it this way, "We know
local police departments are in the best position to identify home grown
radicals, so our network will be led by them."
In other words, if you¹re reading this essay -- or writing essays like this one
-- you¹re a potential target; you may be engaged in a process of
self-radicalization. If so, the FBI wants to "understand" you. They want to know
what makes the thought criminal tick.
Make no mistake; thought crime, much of it bred by the relatively free flow of
information on the Net, is costing the neo-fascists dearly and creating a hell
of a "breeding ground" for "home grown terrorists" -- which is to say it is
helping to create a social base for mass resistance to the emergence of home
grown fascism and imperial war. A recent Zogby poll shows that 52% of Americans
now question the "official story" of the 9/11 attacks, even as an overwhelming
majority oppose the military occupation and colonization of Iraq.
This free flow of information is what the Bush regime calls "Subcultures of
conspiracy and misinformation."
"Terrorists," they say in their National Strategy For Combating Terrorism,
"recruit more effectively from populations whose information about the world is
contaminated by falsehoods and corrupted by conspiracy theories. The distortions
keep alive grievances and filter out facts that would challenge popular
prejudices and self-serving propaganda."
Here¹s a feel for what they mean: noted journalist Greg Palast and television
producer Matt Pascarella were recently charged by Homeland Security with
"unauthorized filming of a Œcritical national security structure¹" in Louisiana.
Palast writes, "we videotaped the thousands of Katrina evacuees still held
behind a barbed wire in a trailer park encampment a hundred miles from New
Orleans." There was an Exxon Oil refinery -- the nation¹s second largest, in the
background. A criminal complaint was filed by Exxon. Palast writes, "Detective
Frank Pananepinto of Homeland Security told us, "This is a ŒCritical
Infrastructure¹ -- and they get nervous about unauthorized filming of their
property."
According to the BBC, The Pentagon plans to "'fight the net' as it would an
enemy weapons system," as it¹s put in the National Strategy.
The document recommends that "the United States should seek the ability to
"provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum," including the
disruption and destruction of the Web.
Not content, of course, with unearthing alleged "enemies at home," or on the
Internet, the Christian Fascists of the Bush regime have now declared their
theocratic evil twins in the Islamic world "Islamo-fascists," and, in case
anyone failed to notice, they¹ve couched the rhetoric around "Islamo-fascism" in
terms evoking not only past World Wars, but the MAD (Mutually Assured
Destruction) standoff between the former Soviet Union and the US Empire.
For their homegrown Christian Fascist social base they¹re billing their coming
assault against Iran as World War Three and the Countdown to Armageddon: in
their first strike fantasies that¹s exactly what they¹re willing to risk in
order to dominate the globe.
The Loyal "Opposition"
Bush, Rumsfeld and other leaders of the volk are no doubt correct when they call
the Democrats appeasers of fascism. But the fascism the Dems are appeasing is
not "Islamo-fascism," it¹s fascism right here in the US.
If you feel -- as Harlan Ellison once put it -- that "I have no mouth and I must
scream," it¹s most likely because you¹ve been counting on the Democrats to end
the war and stop fascism. That¹s the moral equivalent of counting on Hannibal
Lector for a vegan lunch: it¹s not on the menu and it¹s not in his nature.
Ironically, the Bush regime¹s National Strategy For Combating Terrorism sets the
standard that should be applied to Republicans and Democrats alike: "Terrorists
Exploit An Ideology That Justifies Murder," it reads. "Democracy offers a
respect for human dignity and rejects the targeting of innocents."
In case you¹ve forgotten, it¹s Clinton, not GW, who¹s responsible for the deaths
of a half million innocent Iraqi children and another half million civilian
adults through the "sanctions" imposed on Iraq in the 90s. Then US Ambassador to
the UN Madeleine Albright said the goal of gaining control of Iraq made the
children¹s mass death "worth it."
If terrorists target innocents and "justify" it, then these are terrorists,
plain and simple -- not "democrats."
Like the Republicans, the Democrats are a party of genocide and global
domination.
As Edward S. Herman writes in Z Magazine, "the United States was the main driver
of the "sanctions of mass destruction" against Iraq throughout the 1990s which
resulted in the deaths of perhaps a million Iraqi civilians, possibly the
greatest genocide of the post-World War II era (with only the Congo and Rwanda
serious rivals)."
Ask the Vietnamese with their 1 to 7 million dead, if you won¹t believe the
Iraqis, Lebanese, Native Americans, the descendants of enslaved Africans, or the
survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Democrats are the oldest political
party in the world, and their legacy is the record of every crime the white
colonial settler empire has committed since 1794.
True to form, the Dems are backing the preparations for war against Iran -- just
as they went along with the full spectrum of lies used to justify the invasion
of Iraq. Their criticism of the war in Iraq, even today, boils down to the
notion that Democrats make slicker diplomats and more efficient killers.
Maybe they¹re right.
Clinton, after all, attacked more countries than Bush has. He rang up a much
higher body count, and was slick enough to pose as if he weren¹t to the right of
Richard Nixon and Atilla the Hun while he did so.
Under Clinton, NATO bombed the civilians of Yugoslavia for 78 solid days;
Clinton continued a policy of genocidal sanctions against Iraq while launching
endless air and rocket attacks against the Iraqi people, and he carried out
illegal bombings of Somalia, Bosnia, Sudan, and Afghanistan.
Clinton and the Democrats are war criminals and imperialists, no less than Bush
and the Republicans. What planet did you think you were on? Why do you think the
Democrats remain silent on fascism and war?
It¹s because they¹re silent partners, co-conspirators with the Republicans in
imperial crime. Name one, even one prominent Democrat who has named what we all
know ? that the US is veering toward fascism at breakneck speed. Name one
prominent Democrat who is openly calling for even the impeachment of the
fascists -- much less total, mass opposition to them.
The Dems remain silent not because they¹re "spineless," but because it¹s their
system on the line -- and they know it -- just like the Republicans and the
plutocrats who run the communications media know it.
Bush, Rush, O¹Reilly and the rest of the fascists have a voice. Otherwise the
mainstream media is silent. For the same reason. Their job, like that of the
Dems, is to keep hope alive, to keep you hoping for "change" -- through them --
even as they rope you into going along with an imperialist and fascistic agenda.
But, like the Republicans, the Democrats will only "withdraw" from Iraq when the
rape is over, when the oil fields are firmly under US control. Not a moment
before.
The Democrats gave their full backing to Israel¹s recent war crimes against the
children of Lebanon, just as they justified the mass murder of children in Iraq.
Is that who you¹re counting on to "save" us?
Planning Armageddon in Iran
The bombing of Lebanon, of course, was a dry run for an attack on Iran.
All options, according to Bush, are on the table for striking Iran. And there is
no one in Washington D.C. to stop him.
Any plan to strike Iran¹s nuclear energy research facilities would necessarily
entail the use of nuclear weapons -- nothing else can penetrate 75 feet
underground and take out reinforced concrete. Of necessity, then, any plan for a
war against Iran is a plan for first strike nuclear war.
Were the US to gain control of Iranian oil, the Chinese would be at the US¹s
mercy for the largest single bloc of their oil imports. Iran is China's biggest
oil supplier. There is no reason to think the US would allow itself to meet such
a fate, and there is no reason to think the Chinese would do so, either. The
Russians would also suffer important economic setbacks in the exportation of
high technology and weapons systems.
Both nations are US competitors for influence and power in Central Asia and the
Caucasus. Beijing has recently signed huge energy deals with Iran, deals that
place Iran in China's security web. Both Russia and China have stepped up the
transfer of missile technology to Iran and are selling the nation increasingly
sophisticated military equipment. A China-Russia-Iran Alliance is widely
discussed.
In other words, all the braggadocio from the neo-cons about starting World War 3
in the Middle East is the furthest thing from empty talk. The psychosis of it,
the "dream" of a "New American Century," the newest incarnation of Manifest
Destiny -- an inevitable Euro-American Reich under the iron will of "god," is
real to these people.
What¹s "unthinkable" to them is not nuclear war; they¹ve put the US on a first
strike footing and adopted and exercised a policy of pre-emptive warfare. What¹s
"unthinkable" to them is that Iran might have the Bomb and with it the capacity
to defend their own oil. That Israel would no longer be able to freely carry
mass death to Palestinians and Lebanese, and that the US would no longer be free
to invent enemies in the region and invade them at will.
So, the US is preparing a new Hiroshima and a new Nagasaki in Iran, and courting
the destruction of the very Earth in so doing.
There have been no Hiroshimas, Beiruts or Dresdens in the US, of course, but if
Bush carries through with his planned war crimes against the Iranian people,
there will be. If by some stroke of fate he fails to trigger Armageddon, the
entire Muslim world and the vast majority of the rest of the planet, including
nuclear armed states like Pakistan, will turn against the Empire -- their
peoples, in their outrage, will force them to do so.
In that case it will only be a matter of time until a vengeance seeking
counterstrike -- a Hiroshima in a briefcase -- finds its way to a major US port,
an LA, NY, Houston or New Orleans. A counterstrike no fascist clampdown could
ever prevent.
Unless
Unless we take matters into our own hands, the way the people of Oaxaca, Chiapas
and Mexico City are taking fate in their own hands.
It¹s up to us. The Democrats won¹t do it. Only a mass movement of determined
opposition can do it, an opposition that aims to stop US fascism and its plan
for war dead in its tracks. Now.
In one of the most under-emphasized stories of recent weeks, Bush¹s partner in
bloodshed, Britain¹s Tony Blair, has been forced to offer his resignation, and
although he¹s stalling for time, his exit by next Spring is all but certain.
This is a result of nothing more than electoral, political pressure. His own
party is demanding that he step aside. The occupation of Iran has become too
costly. Were there a mass movement in the streets demanding that he go, he would
be gone today.
It won¹t be so simple here. But we can¹t wait. The window of opportunity is
slamming shut.
If Kristol and Hersh are right, we have until early 2007. Maybe less time than
that.
Juan Santos is a writer and editor in Los Angeles California. His essays from
2006 are collected at: http://the-fourth-world.blogspot.com/. He can be reached
at: •••@••.•••.
Other Articles by Juan Santos
* Apocalypse No!: An Indigenist Perspective
* Race, Class and the Battle for the South Central Farm with Leslie Radford
* Minutemen Target Children: Hate Radio and the Attack on Academia Semillas del
Pueblo
* Our Lives On the Line: The Border War Comes Home
* Immigration Endgame: May 1st and America¹s New Race War
* The Hidden Terror of HR4437
* Immigration: A Nation of Colonists and Race Laws
* The Ghost of George Wallace: Immigration and White Racism
* Brown Skin/Yellow Star: Turning the Corner Toward Fascism
--
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