{"id":1208357,"date":"2023-09-11T10:37:16","date_gmt":"2023-09-11T10:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2023\/09\/911-war-on-terror-afghanistan-iraq-bush-deaths\/"},"modified":"2023-09-12T00:26:42","modified_gmt":"2023-09-12T00:26:42","slug":"washington-used-9-11-as-an-excuse-to-unleash-a-campaign-of-global-devastation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/09\/11\/washington-used-9-11-as-an-excuse-to-unleash-a-campaign-of-global-devastation\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington Used 9\/11 as an Excuse to Unleash a Campaign of Global Devastation"},"content":{"rendered":"

US politicians used the attacks of September 11, 2001, as a pretext to launch their own campaign of terror, from Afghanistan to Iraq to dozens of \u201ccounterterrorism\u201d operations in Africa. Though less visible now, the murderous \u201cwar on terror\u201d continues.<\/h3>\n\n
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\n Then Texas governor George W. Bush sits in a sea of flags during a press conference in Austin, Texas, on March 12, 1999. (David Woo \/ Corbis via Getty Images)
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This excerpt is adapted from War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine<\/em> by Norman Solomon (The New Press, 2023).<\/p>\n

The day after the US government began routinely bombing faraway places, the lead editorial in the New York Times<\/em> expressed some gratification. Nearly four weeks had passed since 9\/11, the newspaper noted, and America had finally stepped up its \u201ccounterattack against terrorism\u201d by launching air strikes on al-Qaeda training camps and Taliban military targets in Afghanistan. \u201cIt was a moment we have expected ever since September 11,\u201d the\u00a0editorial<\/a> said. \u201cThe American people, despite their grief and anger, have been patient as they waited for action. Now that it has begun, they will support whatever efforts it takes to carry out this mission properly.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the United States continued to drop bombs in Afghanistan, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld\u2019s daily briefings catapulted him into a stratosphere of national adulation<\/a>. As the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s media reporter\u00a0put it<\/a>: \u201cEveryone is genuflecting before the Pentagon powerhouse . . . America\u2019s new rock star.\u201d That winter, the host of NBC\u2019s Meet the Press<\/em>, Tim Russert,\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0Rumsfeld: \u201cSixty-nine years old and you\u2019re America\u2019s stud.\u201d<\/p>\n

The televised briefings that brought such adoration included claims of deep-seated decency in what was by then already known as the global “war on terror.” \u201cThe targeting capabilities, and the care that goes into targeting, to see that the precise targets are struck, and that other targets are not struck, is as impressive as anything anyone could see,\u201d Rumsfeld asserted<\/a>. And he added, \u201cThe weapons that are being used today have a degree of precision that no one ever dreamt of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever their degree of precision, American weapons were, in fact, killing a lot of Afghan civilians. The Project on Defense Alternatives\u00a0concluded<\/a> that American air strikes had killed more than a thousand civilians during the last three months of 2001. By mid-spring 2002, the Guardian<\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a>, \u201cas many as 20,000 Afghans may have lost their lives as an indirect consequence of the U. S. intervention.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eight weeks after the intensive bombing had begun, however, Rumsfeld\u00a0dismissed<\/a>\u00a0any concerns about casualties: \u201cWe did not start this war. So understand, responsibility for every single casualty in this war, whether they\u2019re innocent Afghans or innocent Americans, rests at the feet of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.\u201d In the aftermath of 9\/11, the process was fueling a kind of perpetual emotion machine without an off switch.<\/p>\n

Under the war on terror rubric, open-ended warfare was well underway \u2014 \u201cas if terror were a state and not a technique,\u201d as Joan Didion wrote<\/a> in 2003 (two months before the US invasion of Iraq). \u201cWe had seen, most importantly, the insistent use of September 11 to justify the reconception of America\u2019s correct role in the world as one of initiating and waging virtually perpetual war.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a single sentence, Didion had captured the essence of a quickly calcified set of assumptions that few mainstream journalists were willing to question. Those assumptions were catnip for the lions of the military-industrial-intelligence complex. After all, the budgets at \u201cnational security\u201d agencies (both long-standing and newly created) had begun to soar with similar vast outlays going to military contractors. Worse yet, there was no end in sight as mission creep accelerated into a dash for cash.<\/p>\n

For the White House, the Pentagon, and Congress, the war on terror offered a political license to kill and displace people on a large scale in at least\u00a0eight countries<\/a>. The resulting carnage often\u00a0included civilians<\/a>. The dead and maimed had no names or faces that reached those who signed the orders and appropriated the funds. And as the years went by, the point seemed to be not winning that multicontinental war but continuing to wage it, a means with no plausible end. Stopping, in fact, became essentially unthinkable. No wonder Americans couldn\u2019t be heard wondering aloud when the war on terror would end. It wasn\u2019t supposed to.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cI Mourn the Death of My Uncle. . . .\u201d<\/h2>\n

The first days after 9\/11 foreshadowed what was to come. Media outlets kept amplifying rationales for an aggressive military response, while the traumatic events of September 11 were assumed to be just cause. When the voices of shock and anguish from those who had lost loved ones endorsed going to war, the message could be moving and motivating.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, President George W. Bush \u2014 with only a\u00a0single congressional negative vote<\/a> \u2014 fervently drove that war train, using religious symbolism to grease its wheels. On September 14, declaring that \u201cwe come before God to pray for the missing and the dead, and for those who love them,\u201d Bush delivered a speech<\/a> at the Washington National Cathedral, claiming that<\/p>\n

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our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil. War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder. This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour, of our choosing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n