By Paul Craig Roberts
February 3, 2009
According to US government propaganda, terrorist cells are
spread throughout America, making it necessary for the government
to spy on all Americans and violate most other constitutional
protections. Among President Bush’s last words as he
left office was the warning that America would soon be struck
again by Muslim terrorists.
If America were infected with terrorists, we would not need
the government to tell us. We would know it from events. As
there are no events, the US government substitutes warnings
in order to keep alive the fear that causes the public to accept
pointless wars, the infringement of civil liberty, national
ID cards, and inconveniences and harassments when they fly.
The most obvious indication that there are no terrorist cells
is that not a single neocon has been assassinated.
I do not approve of assassinations, and am ashamed of my country’s
government for engaging in political assassination. The US
and Israel have set a very bad example for al Qaeda to follow.
The US deals with al Qaeda and Taliban by assassinating their
leaders, and Israel deals with Hamas by assassinating its leaders.
It is reasonable to assume that al Qaeda would deal with the
instigators and leaders of America’s wars in the Middle
East in the same way.
Today every al Qaeda member is aware of the complicity of
neoconservatives in the death and devastation inflicted on
Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza. Moreover, neocons
are highly visible and are soft targets compared to Hamas and
Hezbollah leaders. Neocons have been identified in the media
for years, and as everyone knows, multiple listings of their
names are available online.
Neocons do not have Secret Service protection. Dreadful to
contemplate, but it would be child’s play for al Qaeda
to assassinate any and every neocon. Yet, neocons move around
freely, a good indication that the US does not have a terrorist
problem.
If, as neocons constantly allege, terrorists can smuggle nuclear
weapons or dirty bombs into the US with which to wreak havoc
upon our cities, terrorists can acquire weapons with which
to assassinate any neocon or former government official.
Yet, the neocons, who are the Americans most hated by Muslims,
remain unscathed.
The "war on terror" is a hoax that fronts for American
control of oil pipelines, the profits of the military-security
complex, the assault on civil liberty by fomenters of a police
state, and Israel’s territorial expansion.
There were no al Qaeda in Iraq until the Americans brought
them there by invading and overthrowing Saddam Hussein, who
kept al Qaeda out of Iraq. The Taliban is not a terrorist organization,
but a movement attempting to unify Afghanistan under Muslim
law. The only Americans threatened by the Taliban are the Americans
Bush sent to Afghanistan to kill Taliban and to impose a puppet
state on the Afghan people.
Hamas is the democratically elected government of Palestine,
or what little remains of Palestine after Israel’s illegal
annexations. Hamas is a terrorist organization in the same
sense that the Israeli government and the US government are
terrorist organizations. In an effort to bring Hamas under
Israeli hegemony, Israel employs terror bombing and assassinations
against Palestinians. Hamas replies to the Israeli terror with
homemade and ineffectual rockets.
Hezbollah represents the Shi’ites of southern Lebanon,
another area in the Middle East that Israel seeks for its territorial
expansion.
The US brands Hamas and Hezbollah "terrorist organizations" for
no other reason than the US is on Israel’s side of the
conflict. There is no objective basis for the US Department
of State’s "finding" that Hamas and Hezbollah
are terrorist organizations. It is merely a propagandistic
declaration.
Americans and Israelis do not call their bombings of civilians
terror. What Americans and Israelis call terror is the response
of oppressed people who are stateless because their countries
are ruled by puppets loyal to the oppressors. These people,
dispossessed of their own countries, have no State Departments,
Defense Departments, seats in the United Nations, or voices
in the mainstream media. They can submit to foreign hegemony
or resist by the limited means available to them.
The fact that Israel and the United States carry on endless
propaganda to prevent this fundamental truth from being realized
indicates that it is Israel and the US that are in the wrong
and the Palestinians, Lebanese, Iraqis, and Afghans who are
being wronged.
The retired American generals who serve as war propagandists
for Fox "News" are forever claiming that Iran arms
the Iraqi and Afghan insurgents and Hamas. But where are the
arms? To deal with American tanks, insurgents have to construct
homemade explosive devices out of artillery shells. After six
years of conflict the insurgents still have no weapon against
the American helicopter gunships. Contrast this "arming" with
the weaponry the US supplied to the Afghans three decades ago
when they were fighting to drive out the Soviets.
The films of Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza show
large numbers of Gazans fleeing from Israeli bombs or digging
out the dead and maimed, and none of these people are armed.
A person would think that by now every Palestinian would be
armed, every man, woman, and child. Yet, all the films of the
Israeli attack show an unarmed population. Hamas has to construct
homemade rockets that are little more than a sign of defiance.
If Hamas were armed by Iran, Israel’s assault on Gaza
would have cost Israel its helicopter gunships, its tanks,
and hundreds of lives of its soldiers.
Hamas is a small organization armed with small caliber rifles
incapable of penetrating body armor. Hamas is unable to stop
small bands of Israeli settlers from descending on West Bank
Palestinian villages, driving out the Palestinians, and appropriating
their land.
The great mystery is: why after 60 years of oppression are
the Palestinians still an unarmed people? Clearly, the Muslim
countries are complicit with Israel and the US in keeping the
Palestinians unarmed.
The unsupported assertion that Iran supplies sophisticated
arms to the Palestinians is like the unsupported assertion
that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. These
assertions are propagandistic justifications for killing Arab
civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure in order to
secure US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.
-----
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of
the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing
Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny
of Good
Intentions.
Paul Craig Roberts can be emailed
here
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