* Juan Santos: “There is No War On Terror” *

2006-09-25

Richard Moore

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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