In a couple of days it will be the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, a day that brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center. But what have we learned from the events that unfolded soon after? That it was the ingenuity of a band of cave-dwelling guerrillas flung far away in the mountains of Afghanistan.
Or was it perhaps the impetus that was so desperately sought by members of a government who had penned some of the subsequent war designs as far back as the mid-1990s? As more and more details filter out, there is an adequate amount of evidence to support the latter.
Afghanistan was the first to fall under fire. The president of the United States avowed then that he would weed out the terrorists whose complicity in the events of Sept. 11 was assuredly genuine as he kept telling his shell-shocked constituents. Civilians were captured, hooded and then whisked to an island concentration camp many of us had not heard of before: Guantanamo.
Denied due process of law, and abused in every form known to man for nearly five years, many are gradually being released today, as there has been no proof of their participation in the events. Five years on Afghanistan remains much of the same today with no end to the indiscriminate killings of civilians or the death of foreign troops stationed there. This was the beginning of Bush’s war of terror.
Iraq, one of the three “Axis of Evil” countries, then came to the fore. Weapons of mass destruction flashed across domestic media screens, or plastered across headlines of their tabloids with their messages of impending doom. America was under threat of another imminent attack. Anthrax was another tool of terror that was propped up upon the people of the United States, and succeeded in paralyzing the thinking process of many in the legislature. Bridges were to be blown up, and water supplies contaminated with poison. Five years on, we are still waiting for those WMDs or the crafty authors of the anthrax hoax among others to materialize.
In a sham to duplicate his father’s legitimate coalition of nations against the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait a decade or so earlier, Bush Junior drafts his key ally, Tony Blair to blow the trumpet, and throws in a smattering of countries to pursue the second chapter of his war of terror. This went against the will of the United Nations.
Pumped up by the adrenalin overflowing through the veins of his Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld and others in his administration, who promised the world fireworks worthy of shock and awe, and assuring his constituents of the garlands of flowers and the dancing on the streets that they would soon witness upon their occupation of Iraq, it has been anything but since then.
The death toll as a result of Bush’s Afghanistan/Iraq adventure overwhelms the numbers brought down on Sept. 11, or by Saddam Hussein during his brutal reign. And the majority of the victims were no less innocent than those who perished in New York City.
The number of American boys in uniform who are no longer with us will soon surpass the number of Sept 11 victims.
And while Bush was riding high on his adventures, undoubtedly helped by the glowing columns of print and screen accounts by media personnel we later came to find out were discreetly being paid by his government to project a positive picture, the butcher of Sabra and Shatilla was busy pursuing his own agenda of ethnic cleansing against the citizens of the occupied territories of Palestine.
Ariel Sharon, whose IDF carried out a series of savage and brutal attacks on innocent civilians and primarily toward women and children to carry forth his message of terror was rewarded by several visits to the White House by Bush for his statesmanship and efforts to take the heat out of growing opposition to the occupation of Iraq. Today, he remains in a vegetative state, awaiting his judgment and just deserts in the hereafter.
And while the rest of the world was vocally opposing the rising death toll in Lebanon, Israel, not a stranger to violating UN Security Council resolutions, continued its rain of death against a helpless Lebanese civilian population until it was finally reined in. Lebanon has now become a chapter in this continuing war of terror in Bush’s handbook. And right in the midst of the continuing carnage in Lebanon, threats of airline bombings were suddenly engineered in London to divert further attention. What had really happened? Had Blair ably mastered Bush’s handbook as well?
And with the upcoming elections in November, would we also hear of another crafty threat to the people of the United States — a scenario that would allow him to start another chapter in his war of terror and further manipulate his public?
Five years on, and then what? Iran, Syria, North Korea or the rest of the world? Is this a diabolical arrangement that will make the world any safer? Have an empire and an emperor suddenly come into being in the 21st century, one whose thirst for blood will undoubtedly hurry Armageddon on its way?
And commandeered by no less than a man who has claimed sweeping powers that no president before him had ever done, a president not beyond monitoring the e-mails and phone calls of his constituents, or threatening to prosecute journalists for disclosing facts that may not be favorable under the banner of “national security”.
Or ordering indefinite detention of American citizens with impunity and full disregard of due course of law? A president under whose leadership, secret military tribunals, concentration camps, and the torture of those who fought his troops were readily authorized? Only time will tell, but rest assured, history has not looked kindly on such people in power.
