leaders knew about the culture and country they were mired in.įor two decades, the United States has attempted to solve the problem of terrorism through military force, birthing instead more terrorists.
The testimony of the secretary of defense and America’s top generals - the country’s warlords - before Congress in September revealed how little U.S. The administration has added to Afghanistan’s suffering by freezing $9.5 billion belonging to the Afghan central bank.Īfter nearly bombing Afghanistan into the Stone Age, Washington now expresses concern about human rights and the entitlement of women. Drone attacks, bombing, torture and daily humiliation by American and Israeli occupiers have fueled hatred and stifled the development of civic culture in Middle Eastern countries.Īfter 20 years in Afghanistan, the United States left the country with an active terrorist network and a collapsing economy. Generations of Muslims have had to live with U.S.-Israeli terror. Significantly, the mindset and propaganda that created it continues solidly entrenched. troop presence in Afghanistan has ended, but the vast military, intelligence and information infrastructure designed to fight the war on terror remains inveterate. Because it is administered without meaningful oversight, little is known about how much evidence is required before an individual is identified as a terrorist and placed on the military kill list. Details about the executive branch program remain secret. Deprived of an Afghan base in Central Asia, the administration has turned to what it calls its “over-the-horizon” counterterrorism strategy, which consists of identifying and striking targets with drones launched from outside Afghanistan.īiden, like his predecessors, seems not to believe that drone strikes represent a significant challenge to the international rule of law or to the rules-based international order he touts.Ī public airing has yet to be had of Washington’s underreported “targeted-killing” drone program. President Joe Biden has stated his intent to continue the “war on terrorism” in Afghanistan. According to an estimate from Brown University’s Costs of War project, more than 363,000 civilians have been killed in America’s war on terror. The language of jingoism and public indifference have led to an ever-expanding military-security state and counterterrorism operations spread across the globe. O'Meara: Jesse Springer illustrates the Oregon story Like Bush, successive presidents have never leveled with the American people about their true motives and what the costs of war would be.įor local stories that matter, subscribe today.Ī 2004 federal advisory committee, the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication, tasked with advising the secretary of defense, concluded that “Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather, they hate our policies.” The committee also found that the overwhelming majority of Muslims objected to America’s support of Israel and Arab dictatorial regimes. They were not, as claimed, about defending freedom and human rights.
He and others in the Washington foreign policy establishment have used the word “terrorism” to stoke fear, to silence and to obscure failed policies.īush’s fairytale that the United States was attacked on 9/11 because “they hate our freedoms” persists, because to question that platitude has become equated with a lack of patriotism.īehnam: Rise of the Taliban and defeat of the U.S.Īmerica’s military missions in Afghanistan and Iraq were always about maintaining hegemony in Central Asia and protecting the interests of multinational corporations, arms manufacturers, a privatized military and the state of Israel. Bush constructed his war on terror on lies that have yet to be deconstructed. policies have caused tremendous anger and pain in the Middle East. Nor has there been much reflection on how U.S. Predictably, there has been no real examination of how the term has been used and of existing conditions that have allowed the United States to assume the singular role of terrorism arbiter, deciding who and what is a threat to the world.