There is a new show on Channel 4 being advertised on UK TV with a catchy tag line repeated ad nauseum:
"SPIES are MADE not BORN"http://www.channel4.com/programmes/spiesI think we all understand the point of the repetition..
However:
Hillary Clinton : We created Al-Qaeda https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqn0bm4E9yw"In this video Hilary Clinton admits that the US government created and funded Al-Qaeda in order to fight the soviet union, and she even considers that as a good thing. But she claims that the Americans are fighting Al-Qaeda nowadays. If you really fighting Al-Qaeda, then who are the scums and terrorists you used in order to topple the government of Qaddafi in Libya."
The Sting - How the FBI Created a Terroristhttps://theintercept.com/2015/03/16/howthefbicreatedaterrorist/It’s Time to Reconsider U.S. Policies That Create Terroristshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/mj-rosenberg/its-time-to-reconsider-us_b_3146845.htmlThere is one change that the United States could make in response to the terrorism threat that is never discussed. That is to consider the part U.S. policies have played in creating and sustaining it.
I understand that we are not supposed to say this, as if discussing why we are hated justifies the unjustifiable: the targeting of innocent Americans because of the perceived sins of their government.
But nothing justifies terrorism. Period. That does not mean that nothing causes it.
Acts of terror do not come at us out of the blue. Nor are they directed at us, as President George W. Bush famously said, because the terrorists “hate our freedom.” If that was the case, terrorists would be equally or more inclined to hit countries at least as free as the United States, those in northern Europe, for instance.
No, terrorists (in this case Muslim terrorists) target the United States because they perceive us as their enemy.
And with good reason.
We have been at war with the people of various Muslim countries for decades, since perhaps as early as 1953 when we engineered Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh’s overthrow in Iran after he nationalized the oil industry.
Since then the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, on a pretext that was shown to be phony, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. That war came after over a decade of U.S.-sponsored sanctions that resulted in the deaths of more than a million Iraqis, including more than a half million children due to malnutrition and diseases caused by the lack of clean water and medicine.
Then there are the current sanctions against Iran, ostensibly to deter its government from developing nuclear weapons but, in practice, punishing the Iranian people by degrading their quality of life as well as their health. (Just one example: the Iranian civilian airline has experienced a major spike in air crash deaths since sanctions have prevented it from purchasing parts needed to replace worn and outmoded machinery).
Then there are the drone attacks. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in February that, as of then, U.S. drone attacks had killed 4,700 men, women and children (including, he notes, “innocent people”) in Afghanistan, Yemen and Pakistan.
And, of course, our Israel policy is based on the premise, so often stated by Vice President Joe Biden, that there must be “no daylight, no daylight” between Israeli policies and our own. That statement has proven true on matters large and small — from Congressional promises to join Israel if it decides to attack Iran’s nuclear reactor, to supporting Israel’s policies on the West Bank and Gaza, to opposing any form of Palestinian representation at the United Nations. Muslims do not imagine that we view the Middle East almost entirely through Israeli eyes. We do.
In short, the aphorism often used to describe the effect of drone attacks can be applied to U.S. policy in the Muslim world in general: for every enemy we kill, we create dozens or hundreds more. And some of those enemies turn up here as terrorists.
So my question is this: Why can’t the likelihood of blow-back at home be part of the calculation when policymakers decide to take a particular action or make a particular statement relating to the Middle East or the Muslim world in general?
Obviously the United States is not going to consider this factor as it decides on policies unambiguously affecting the fundamental security of the American people. No one would argue that we should not take out a terrorist cell poised to attack American targets out of fear of inflaming its sympathizers.
But few of the actions that so enrage (and radicalize) people in the Middle East are directly connected to the security of Americans at all: not the excessive number of drone attacks or Iran sanctions or our backing of the post-1967 Israeli occupation. Looking back at the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, it is difficult to argue that they did more to enhance the security of Americans than they did to damage it.
This is not to say that the United States should not have responded with force to the heinous 9/11 attacks. The successful effort to degrade the capabilities of Al Qaeda has, no doubt, made us safer. And some of our enemies hate us not because of anything we do but because they are driven by religious or political zealotry. And some are just monsters. But not all, and not most.
Not every threat is Al Qaeda. In fact, not every group we deem as terrorist is an enemy of the United States at all. Some are engaged in local wars or insurgencies that have nothing to do with us, at least not before we jump in to assume the role 1960’s folk singer Phil Ochs referred to as “cops of the world.”
Because if this is what we are going to be, we are going to feel it here, not only in the form of terrorism but in the form of the loss of our own freedoms here at home. At the rate we are going, the restrictions we have become accustomed to when trying to board an airplane will become a metaphor for the loss of the freedom we once thought of as encapsulating the American way of life.
The next threat to that freedom looms as the Obama administration considers whether it will permit (or even back) an Israeli attack on Iran. During his trip to Israel this week, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel told the Israelis that the United States believes that “in dealing with Iran, every option must be on the table.” That “every option” formulation, of course, refers to the possibility of war.
Can anyone doubt that an Israeli attack on Iran backed by the United States would have terrible repercussions here at home and that they would continue for a long, long time? Is that what we want? Is that something we can even tolerate?
With the Boston Marathon horror still fresh in our memory, I think it is safe to say that we cannot. Nor should we. But it’s our decision. Pursuing policies that enrage much of the world endangers Americans here. In Boston, New York, Washington and, ultimately, elsewhere as well.
Is it too much to ask that policy makers keep that in mind when making their calculations about where next to show the flag? Their primary responsibility is to protect Americans. It is time for them to stop endangering them.
How the US Helped Create Al Qaeda and ISIShttp://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/19/how-the-us-helped-create-al-qaeda-and-isis/Much like Al Qaeda, the Islamic State (ISIS) is made-in-the-USA, an instrument of terror designed to divide and conquer the oil-rich Middle East and to counter Iran’s growing influence in the region.
The fact that the United States has a long and torrid history of backing terrorist groups will surprise only those who watch the news and ignore history.
The CIA first aligned itself with extremist Islam during the Cold War era. Back then, America saw the world in rather simple terms: on one side, the Soviet Union and Third World nationalism, which America regarded as a Soviet tool; on the other side, Western nations and militant political Islam, which America considered an ally in the struggle against the Soviet Union.
The director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan, General William Odom recently remarked, “by any measure the U.S. has long used terrorism. In 1978-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the U.S. would be in violation.”
During the 1970′s the CIA used the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as a barrier, both to thwart Soviet expansion and prevent the spread of Marxist ideology among the Arab masses. The United States also openly supported Sarekat Islam against Sukarno in Indonesia, and supported the Jamaat-e-Islami terror group against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan. Last but certainly not least, there is Al Qaeda.
Lest we forget, the CIA gave birth to Osama Bin Laden and breastfed his organization during the 1980′s. Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told the House of Commons that Al Qaeda was unquestionably a product of Western intelligence agencies. Mr. Cook explained that Al Qaeda, which literally means an abbreviation of “the database” in Arabic, was originally the computer database of the thousands of Islamist extremists, who were trained by the CIA and funded by the Saudis, in order to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan.
America’s relationship with Al Qaeda has always been a love-hate affair. Depending on whether a particular Al Qaeda terrorist group in a given region furthers American interests or not, the U.S. State Department either funds or aggressively targets that terrorist group. Even as American foreign policy makers claim to oppose Muslim extremism, they knowingly foment it as a weapon of foreign policy.
The Islamic State is its latest weapon that, much like Al Qaeda, is certainly backfiring. ISIS recently rose to international prominence after its thugs began beheading American journalists. Now the terrorist group controls an area the size of the United Kingdom.
In order to understand why the Islamic State has grown and flourished so quickly, one has to take a look at the organization’s American-backed roots. The 2003 American invasion and occupation of Iraq created the pre-conditions for radical Sunni groups, like ISIS, to take root. America, rather unwisely, destroyed Saddam Hussein’s secular state machinery and replaced it with a predominantly Shiite administration. The U.S. occupation caused vast unemployment in Sunni areas, by rejecting socialism and closing down factories in the naive hope that the magical hand of the free market would create jobs. Under the new U.S.-backed Shiite regime, working class Sunni’s lost hundreds of thousands of jobs. Unlike the white Afrikaners in South Africa, who were allowed to keep their wealth after regime change, upper class Sunni’s were systematically dispossessed of their assets and lost their political influence. Rather than promoting religious integration and unity, American policy in Iraq exacerbated sectarian divisions and created a fertile breading ground for Sunni discontent, from which Al Qaeda in Iraq took root.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) used to have a different name: Al Qaeda in Iraq. After 2010 the group rebranded and refocused its efforts on Syria.
There are essentially three wars being waged in Syria: one between the government and the rebels, another between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and yet another between America and Russia. It is this third, neo-Cold War battle that made U.S. foreign policy makers decide to take the risk of arming Islamist rebels in Syria, because Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, is a key Russian ally. Rather embarrassingly, many of these Syrian rebels have now turned out to be ISIS thugs, who are openly brandishing American-made M16 Assault rifles.
America’s Middle East policy revolves around oil and Israel. The invasion of Iraq has partially satisfied Washington’s thirst for oil, but ongoing air strikes in Syria and economic sanctions on Iran have everything to do with Israel. The goal is to deprive Israel’s neighboring enemies, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestine’s Hamas, of crucial Syrian and Iranian support.
ISIS is not merely an instrument of terror used by America to topple the Syrian government; it is also used to put pressure on Iran.
The last time Iran invaded another nation was in 1738. Since independence in 1776, the U.S. has been engaged in over 53 military invasions and expeditions. Despite what the Western media’s war cries would have you believe, Iran is clearly not the threat to regional security, Washington is. An Intelligence Report published in 2012, endorsed by all sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies, confirms that Iran ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Truth is, any Iranian nuclear ambition, real or imagined, is as a result of American hostility towards Iran, and not the other way around.
America is using ISIS in three ways: to attack its enemies in the Middle East, to serve as a pretext for U.S. military intervention abroad, and at home to foment a manufactured domestic threat, used to justify the unprecedented expansion of invasive domestic surveillance.
By rapidly increasing both government secrecy and surveillance, Mr. Obama’s government is increasing its power to watch its citizens, while diminishing its citizens’ power to watch their government. Terrorism is an excuse to justify mass surveillance, in preparation for mass revolt.
The so-called “War on Terror” should be seen for what it really is: a pretext for maintaining a dangerously oversized U.S. military. The two most powerful groups in the U.S. foreign policy establishment are the Israel lobby, which directs U.S. Middle East policy, and the Military-Industrial-Complex, which profits from the former group’s actions. Since George W. Bush declared the “War on Terror” in October 2001, it has cost the American taxpayer approximately 6.6 trillion dollars and thousands of fallen sons and daughters; but, the wars have also raked in billions of dollars for Washington’s military elite.
In fact, more than seventy American companies and individuals have won up to $27 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the last three years, according to a recent study by the Center for Public Integrity. According to the study, nearly 75 per cent of these private companies had employees or board members, who either served in, or had close ties to, the executive branch of the Republican and Democratic administrations, members of Congress, or the highest levels of the military.
In 1997, a U.S. Department of Defense report stated, “the data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement abroad and an increase in terrorist attacks against the U.S.” Truth is, the only way America can win the “War On Terror” is if it stops giving terrorists the motivation and the resources to attack America. Terrorism is the symptom; American imperialism in the Middle East is the cancer. Put simply, the War on Terror is terrorism; only, it is conducted on a much larger scale by people with jets and missiles.
In conclusion we can be sure of one thing: "TERRORISTS are MADE not BORN"
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Topic: 9/11 debate - enter at your own risk! (Read 975666 times)
