Remember the War on Terror? Remember how great and successful it’s been? How about Iraq; remember when we cleaned up all the WMD and passed the power of government back to the people? Or how about how easy it was to route al-Qaeda and the Taliban out of Afghanistan and install a non-corrupt regime?
No?
Instead you might remember the hundreds of thousands of civilians that have died with thousands of American soldiers along with them. You might instead remember the atrocious $948,119,305,594 dollars that have been spent in the name of these wars (check here to see what could have been provided with that same amount). You may recall that we have traded one corrupt regime for another because they promise to serve our current interests, but in all likelihood will be the excuse for whatever new war requires our invasion again. All of this waste to produce almost nothing except contractor’s profits, a false sense of security, and a reason to wave the flag in orgiastic nationalism.
Warmongers got their gift on Christmas day when Umar Farouk Abdul Mudallad tried to detonate explosives on a plane landing in Detroit. He was quickly subdued and taken into custody and has immediately been forthcoming about his intentions, his training, that other attacks are planned, and where he received his orders. This isn’t the often trotted out and never seen “time bomb” scenario that torture-lovers use to justify their most medieval fantasies. That hasn’t stopped white-supremacist Pat Buchanan from declaring that we should withhold burn medication from Mudallad and put him in a military tribunal. New York Representative Peter King also wants Mudallad in a military tribunal and has used as a defense for profiling of Muslims, “100% of the Islamic terrorists who are coming against us are Muslims.” I’ve already written about the outright panic that sets in with conservatives when thinking about using the civilian courts to find justice with regards to terrorism, forgetting that it has been successfully used hundreds of times; so these reactions should come as no surprise. The sooner trying someone declared an “enemy combatant” in military trials becomes an accepted norm, the sooner the label can be applied to anyone and no one can be assured a fair trial.
“War on Terror” fans can also use this situation to add another country to our world tour of destruction wish list: Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East. Conservative politicians can count on the public being ignorant of Yemen’s cooperation with the U.S. at the risk of domestic alienation. Conservatives Joe Lieberman and Arlen Specter have come out in favor of preemptive attacks against Yemen, which leads us to ask: What countries does Lieberman not want us to invade? “Iraq was yesterday’s war, Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war”, said Lieberman. Does this “deficit hawk” actually entertain fantasies that we can occupy Iraq, Afghanistan, drone-war Pakistan, and attack Yemen all at once? The man should be the last to speak of going to war after his ignorant cheer-leading of the Iraq war when he said, “Every day Saddam remains in power with chemical weapons, biological weapons, and the development of nuclear weapons is a day of danger for the United States.”
Do these conservatives understand anything about al-Qaeda’s intentions or plans? At the most basic level, they want to establish an anti-western theocracy enveloping all the Muslim world and the ultimate destruction of the united states. How does someone like Osama bin Laden get Muslims to willingly overthrow their governments and pledge loyalty to al-Qaeda? He stated his strategy pretty clearly in 2004 when he said:
All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.
This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.
Osama bin Laden had predicted U.S. invasion of Arab lands, then attacked us until we were stupid enough to fulfill his predictions for him. We destroy an entrenched government and prop up a weak, ineffectual puppet government that is often as corrupt or more so than the one preceding it. The people see this for what it is and after the terrors of war are more than willing to join bin Laden’s struggle. Bush and now Obama are only too willing to play exactly into bin Laden’s plans and are only helping him succeed. Bush was (or his handlers were) very much aware of this and created a symbiotic relationship with al-Qaeda where both benefited. Bush became the ultimate cowboy patriot and bin Laden became a prophet for Muslims.
This incident should bring into the public discourse more important questions than whether or not to invade another country. Why did Republicans vote against funding for the Transportation Security Administration? Why were two of the four leaders responsible for the attacks released by the Bush administration into an “art therapy rehabilitation program?” Why, Jim Demint(R-SC), is there no one currently running the TSA? Demint, it seems is more concerned with TSA workers organizing into a union. Remember these questions when you fly. The movement that takes action to make your death more likely will also be the one that uses your death as a battle cry for even more blood.
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