Deconstructing The War on Terror

BY JASON LAURITZEN

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine
the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a
fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people
can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them
they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the
country to greater danger." - Herman Goring, one of the main leaders of the Nazi party at the
Nuremberg Trials.

Terrorism—boiled down to its fundamental roots—is an effort to influence administrative

policies of governments and the will of the people. A scared populace is often willfully ignorant
and prone to unite under a flag of nationalism, which shields them from unpleasant truths.

“Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every
terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated,” said President Bush at a
Joint Session of Congress in September 2001.

In those two sentences President Bush outlined an unattainable road map—defeating the broad
concept of terrorism. Since Sept. 11, 2001, war has been waged against Afghanistan and Iraq and
there still remains potential for military action against Iran.

Germany Ablaze

Understanding the past is always an important component of deconstructing the present. On Feb.
27, 1933, a fire started in the Reichstag building—the assembly location of the German
Parliament.

The fire was quickly blamed on communist Marinus van der Lubbe, who delivered a confession
under torture. At his trial, van der Lubbe claimed responsibility for several other arson acts, but
failed to give details on how he started the Reichstag fire.

However, there were problems with the story, according to a History Channel documentary on
the Reichstag fire. The main one being that van der Lubbe was over 75 percent blind.

“It would have been nearly impossible for just one man to carry out the arson,” said the
documentary. “Van der Lubbe did not have the mind or body to do it. The police were ordered to
look the other way.”

The History Channel documentary concluded that much new evidence uncovered points to the
Nazi party and not a lone communist. Historians continue to debate who started the fire, but what
is clear to many is that the Nazi party capitalized on the fire to consolidate their power.
Consolidation of power was made possible through an official decree entitled “Order of the
Reich President for the Protection of People and State.”

The decree—the people were told—was enacted to protect them from “Communist state-
endangering acts of violence.” However, it only hurt the people because it made it “permissible
to restrict the rights of personal freedom” such as freedom of opinion, freedom of the press, the
freedom to organize and assemble, the privacy of communications and confiscations of private
property.

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither
liberty nor safety,” said Benjamin Franklin.

The people had been fooled. They thought of their rights as a commodity that could be traded
and exchanged at a later date when they were safe, but were gravely mistaken.

Creating The Need For Security

Germany was not the only country to fall victim to a plot to consolidate government power. In
1991, Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti revealed Operation Gladio, which was a “decades-
long covert campaign of terrorism and deceit directed by the intelligence services of the West,”
according to the Moscow Times.

“You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far
removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force ... the public to turn to
the state to ask for greater security," said Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra.

The operation—founded by the CIA and MI6—had one objective: To create what Gladio’s
operators called “the strategy of tension.” Intelligence agencies carried out attacks on
populations, blamed terrorists groups and in return those populations turned to their leaders to
protect them from the ever-constant threat of the enemy.

The Parallel History Project—a collection of twenty partner institutes—has collected thousands
of pages of documents on security issues of the Cold War and maintains a page on Operation
Gladio.

Danile Ganser, author of a book on Operation Gladio, wrote in The Whitehead Journal of
Diplomacy and International Relations: “In this age of global concern about terrorism, in which
secret services are thought of as part of the solution and not as part of the problem, it is greatly
upsetting to discover that Western Europe and the United States collaborated in establishing
secret armed networks which in the majority of the countries are suspected of having had links to
acts of terrorism.”

Bringing The Tactics Home

In 1962, Lyman L. Lemnitzer presented President Kennedy with “Operation Northwoods.” The
plan encouraged “harassment plus deceptive actions” to justify an invasion of Cuba.
Pretexts are important in coercing people to go to war. The document outlined several incidents
that would provoke a war between Cuba and the United States.

Encouraged incidents included starting riots near Guantanamo military base, starting fires within
the base and lobbing mortar shells.

“We could blow up a US warship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,” said the memorandum.
The memorandum suggested conducting a “mock funeral” for the victims.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of the plan was outlined in the Baltimore Sun: “We could
develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even
in Washington," said the memorandum. "Casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful
wave of indignation."

“We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated),” said the
memorandum.

These horrendous tactics were never employed because President Kennedy turned down the
plan. However, what the never enacted “Operation Northwoods” reveals is that the government
considered faking terror and blaming another nation as a pretext for a war.

The Means To An End Approach: Indirect Responsibility

All these historical examples are leading up to the day that marked the start of the “War on
Terror”—Sept. 11, 2001. However, there is one government-funded incident that must be
examined: The U.S. role in the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.

In July 1979 President Jimmy Carter approved covert aid for anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan,
according to non-profit investigative news site Cooperative Research.

Covert aid was provided to anti-Soviet forces—which were predominantly Muslim—to make the
Soviets believe that the United States was intervening in Afghanistan and destabilizing a pro-
Soviet government, according to Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.

In an interview with France’s Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski outlined the rationale for
intervening: “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of
the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims [sic] or the liberation of Central Europe and the end
of the Cold War?”

Brzezinski was treating the Afghan freedom fighters as a means to an end. He knew the United
States was shaking hands with a potential future enemy but justified the decision because the
alliance helped destabilize the current enemy—the Soviet Union.

However, the repercussions of funding and training potential militants in Afghanistan were felt
before Sept. 11.
On Feb. 26, 1993, a bomb exploded in the basement of the World Trade Center and killed six
people. Peter Dale Scott, in an article for Pacific News Service detailed the role of one of the
plotters, Ali Mohamed: “A British newspaper, the London Independent, has charged that he was
on the U.S. payroll at the time he was training the Arab Afghans, and that the CIA, reviewing the
case five years after the 1993 WTC bombing, concluded in an internal document that it was
‘partly culpable’ for the World Trade Center bomb.”

The Pretext: Sept. 11, 2001

The attacks of Sept. 11 sunk that nation into a deep state of fear in which they quickly turned to
their leaders for support. The Yale Herald reported that President Bush’s approval rating rose
from 51 percent before the attacks to a high of 86 percent.

People were turning to their government for protection. The government responded. Congress
quickly passed the Patriot Act in the following months. “Operation Enduring Freedom” or the
invasion of the Afghanistan took place in October. President Bush declared that the War on
Terror would be begin in Afghanistan and start with the overthrow of Taliban and the targeting
of al-Qaeda military sites.

However, the Bush administration had plans to invade Afghanistan two days before the Sept. 11
attacks, according to MSNBC. These plans were revealed in a National Security Presidential
Directive.

The document was a “game plan to remove al-Qaida from the face of the earth,” said one of
MSNBC’s sources.

BBC News reported that “senior American officials” told Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign
Secretary, in mid-July 2001 that military action against Afghanistan was imminent.

The plans were in place by the summer of 2001 but the catalyst was not. However, Sept. 11
provided that catalyst. Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted that if Sept. 11 had not happened, the
War on Terror would not have got off the ground.

“To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly
launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11,” said Blair in the
July 17 issue of London’s Times.

Akin to Afghanistan, plans for the invasion of Iraq were circulating well before the March 2003
invasion of the country.

The Downing Street memo, which was leaked to the press in May 2005, described a July 23,
2002 meeting between Tony Blair and his top security advisors on a visit to Washington.

“The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy,” said the memo. “Bush wanted to
remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD …
But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was
less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.”

Blueprints For U.S. Dominance

Michael Meacher, a member of British Parliament who was fired in 2003, wrote an column for
London’s The Guardian in which he said the “’war on terrorism’ is being used largely as bogus
cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives.”

Meacher pointed to the Project For a New American Century, a right-wing think tank made up of
now famous neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld.

A 2000 report by the group entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” can be summarized in the
report’s introduction: “At present the United States faces no global rival. America’s grand
strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as
possible.”

The authors of “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” knew that convincing the citizens of the United
States should dictate global policy would be hard unless “absent some catastrophic and
catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor” presented itself.

“The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the "global war on terrorism" has the
hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda—the US
goal of world hegemony,” said Meacher.

The War Profiteers

Citizens are told the fight against terrorism is for their protection and benefit, but the only thing
that is certain about the broad war against terror is that it ensures the population is saddled with
debt and big corporations with political ties get rich.

"Osama (bin Laden) doesn't have to win; he will just bleed us to death," said Michael Scheuer, a
former counterterrorism official at the CIA who led the pursuit of bin Laden. “He’s well on his
way to doing it.”

In July 2005 it was estimated that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had already cost U.S.
taxpayers $314 billion, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The article states that wars
could end up costing taxpayers $700 billion.

Where does the all the money go? The Center For Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan
investigative journalism organization, has followed the trail of money closely over the years.

It should not be surprising that the Center for Public Integrity found close ties between those
currently in government and big business. In 2003, it was revealed that “nine of the 30 members
of the Defense Policy Board had ties to defense companies with $76 billion in Pentagon
contracts” in just two years.
In the report, “Windfalls of War” the Center for Public Integrity said, “More than 70 American
companies and individuals have won up to $8 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and
Afghanistan over the last two years. Those companies contributed more money to the
presidential campaigns of George W. Bush—more than $500,000—than to any other politician
over the last dozen years.”

The report also described how Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton—which Vice
President led prior to the 2000 election—received more than $2.3 billion.

The corruption that extends between business and political parties is not limited to just
republicans.

“Nearly 60 percent of the companies had employees or board members who either served in or
had close ties to the executive branch for Republican and Democratic administrations, for
members of Congress of both parties, or at the highest levels of the military,” said the report.

Central to most claims about big spending on the wars is Vice President Dick Cheney’s former
company Halliburton. The Associated Press reported that Halliburton overcharged up to $61
million on gasoline and submitted a proposal for cafeteria services that was $67 million too high.

A large chunk of the deals between the government and corporations come in the form of no-bid
contracts. A no-bid contract is deal made directly between a corporation and the government that
bypasses the standard process of bidding for a competitive price.

Another project by the Center for Public Integrity tracked money flowing from the Pentagon out
to corporations. The project is entitled “Outsourcing the Pentagon.”

“No-bid contracts have accounted for more than 40 percent of Pentagon contracting since 1998,”
said a summary of the report. “Fully half the Defense Department budget—some $900 billion
since 1998—has gone out the door to contractors rather than paying for direct costs such as
payrolls for the uniformed armed services.”

Just as in “Windfalls of War” report, the Center discovered that campaign contributions played a
major role. The 10 biggest defense contractors spent $35.7 million on campaign contributions
and $414.6 million on lobbying. These may seem like staggering amounts, but the financial
return is the real motive: These companies were awarded $340 billion in contracts.

The rationale behind giving these corporations huge contracts is that they are best suited to do
the job and provide the military with what it needs. However, this is far from the truth. At the
beginning of the Iraq war many troops were without protective gear such as body armor.

"We'll be upfront and recognize that at the start of the conflict there were some soldiers that
didn't have the levels of protection that we wanted,” said Col. Thomas Spoehr, director of
material for the Army in an Associated Press article.
In response, many soldier’s families bought body armor from private companies. The Army’s
response has been to ban protective gear not bought through companies that have contracts with
the U.S. government such as DHB Industries, Inc.

“We know of no reason the Army may have to justify this action,” said Murray Neal, chief
executive officer of Pinnacle Armor. "On the surface this looks to be another of many attempts
by the Army to cover up the billions of dollars spent on ineffective body armor systems which
they continue to try quick fixes on to no avail."

For The Devoted, Where’s The Payoff?

Even though the administration had wars in Afghanistan and Iraq planned before Sept. 11 and
exploited the tragedy as a pretext for a broad War on Terror, supporters of the War on Terror
argue it’s worth it because it keeps citizens safe.

Unfortunately, this is not true. Knight Ridder reported in April 2005 that the U.S. State
Department decided to not publish an annual report on international terrorism because it
concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985.

"Instead of dealing with the facts and dealing with them in an intelligent fashion, they try to hide
their facts from the American public," said Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State
Department terrorism expert.

Johnson and other U.S. officials said that the State Department reported 625 “significant”
terrorist attacks in 2004. For comparison, there were 175 incidents in 2003. That is a 257 percent
increase in attacks in a year and does not include attacks on American troops in Iraq, even
though President Bush has called Iraq "a central front in the war on terror."

Looking Back At 1930s Germany

The Reichstag Fire Decree of 1933 limited, among many liberties, the freedom of opinion,
freedom of the press, the freedom to organize and assemble and the privacy of communications
—all in the name of protecting the people from an external threat. Are there parallels that can be
drawn today?

Repression of freedom of opinion:

• Three Denver residents were “forcibly removed” from one of President Bush’s town hall
meetings on Social Security because of bumper sticker that condemned the administrations
foreign policy, according to the Washington Post.
• A nurse at Virginia Medical Center had her computer seized by administrators at her place of
work because she wrote a letter critical of the government response to Hurricane Katrina. The
Progressive reported that she was accused of “sedition.”

Chipping away at freedom of the press:

• Bill Moyers, a veteran reporter for CBS and PBS said in an interview of the Bush
administration: “I do sense that there is a desire to silence any dissent in this country by the
administration. They practice extraordinary media manipulation. They're the most secretive
administration in my 70 years. And this whole attack on me is indicative of how when anyone
rises up to speak an alternative truth, an alternative vision of reality, they try to discredit them.”
• The New York Times reported that the Bush administration spent millions of dollars on
prepackaged news segments to promote administration policies on local TV stations without
identifying the pieces as produced by entities such as the State Department.
• The Lincoln Group was paid more than $100 million by the United States to plant unbalanced,
positive stories about the United States occupation of Iraq, according to London’s The
Independent.

Repression of the freedom to organize and assemble:

• Police arrested around 600 people at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York
City. Democracy Now! reported that large groups of protesters were hauled off to Pier 57—a
condemned building contaminated with asbestos—and held there for more than 24 hours without
being charged with a crime.
• According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Secret Service agents visit locations ahead of time
before President Bush arrives and setup “free speech zones” which usually consist of a chain
linked fence.

Threats against the privacy of communication:

• President Bush “personally authorized’ a secret eavesdropping program in the United States
that allowed the National Security Agency to monitor U.S. citizen’s phone calls without warrants
more than three dozen times since October 2001, according to the Associated Press.

The War on Terror—a war people are told is meant to protect them from an external force—
terrorism—has had the opposite effect. Terrorist attacks have gone up, the government is
involved in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the public is being crippled with debt. It is an un-
winnable and naive war that will continue to strip the populace of its liberties.

Even President Bush knows this and said in an interview with NBC-TV’s “Today” show, “I
don’t think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that the—those who use
terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world.”

The President is right—using terror as a tool is unacceptable and it should be stopped at one of
its vital sources—his own administration.