{"id":194808,"date":"2021-09-13T12:00:32","date_gmt":"2021-09-13T11:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=194808"},"modified":"2021-09-12T06:19:17","modified_gmt":"2021-09-12T05:19:17","slug":"terrorism-a-false-threat-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/09\/terrorism-a-false-threat-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Terrorism: A False Threat"},"content":{"rendered":"

10 Sep 2021 – <\/em>Twenty years after the events of 9\/11 2001, and in the midst of the messy withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan, it seems appropriate to question the validity of the so-called \u201cWar on Terror\u201d.\u00a0 The Costs of War project estimates that America’s 20-years of wars,\u00a0 initiated with the supposed intention of fighting terrorism, have killed almost a million people, displaced 37 million, and have cost the US government 8 trillion dollars.<\/p>\n

If the intention of these wars was to reduce terrorism, they have failed, since every bomb dropped on civilian populations has produced more terrorists. If the intention was to enrich arms manufacturers, the \u201cWar on Terror\u201d has succeeded,<\/p>\n

But is the threat of terrorism real? Or is it like the barking of a dog driving a herd? The threat of catastrophic climate change is very real indeed. The threat to future global food security is real too.<\/p>\n

Already 11 million children die every year from malnutrition and poverty-related causes. The threat to human civilization and the biosphere posed by a possible Third World War is real. The threat of exhaustion of non-renewable resources and economic collapse is real. The dangers associated with our unstable fractional reserve banking system are also real. Beside these all too real threats to our future, the threat of terrorism is vanishingly small.<\/p>\n

Millions starve. Millions die yearly from preventable diseases. Millions die as a consequence of wars. Compared with these numbers, the total count of terrorist victims is vanishingly small. It is even invisible compared with the number of people killed yearly in automobile accidents.<\/p>\n

The Official Story of 9\/11 Is Untrue<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is strong evidence, available to everyone who is willing to look at it on the Internet, which shows that the official version of 9\/11 is untrue, and that the US government made the disaster worse than it otherwise would have been in order to justify not only an unending “War on Terror”, but also the abridgement of civil liberties within the United States. But very few people wish to challenge the official version of the attack on the World Trade Center. Those who accept the official version are. by definition, respectable citizens, while those who challenge it are \u201cleftists\u201d and \u201cprobably terrorist sympathizers\u201d.\u00a0 As George W. Bush said, \u201cYou are either for us, or you are against us\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bush’s response to the 9\/11 attacks seems to have been to inquire from his advisors whether he was now free to invade Iraq. According to former counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, Bush was \u201cobsessed\u201d with Iraq as his principal target after 9\/11.<\/p>\n

The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was a guest at a private White House dinner nine days after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Sir Christopher Meyer, former UK Ambassador to Washington, was also present at the dinner. According to Meyer, Blair said to Bush that they must not get distracted from their main goal – dealing with the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and Bush replied: \u201cI agree with you Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.\u201d Faced with the prospect of wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, Blair did not protest, according to Meyer.<\/p>\n

During the summer of 2002, Bush and Blair discussed Iraq by telephone. A senior official from Vice-President Dick Cheney’s office who read the transcript of the call is quoted by the magazine Vanity Fair as saying: \u201cThe way it read was that come what may, Saddam was going to go; they said that they were going forward, they were going to take out the regime, and they were doing the right thing. Blair did not need any convincing. There was no `Come on, Tony, we’ve got to get you on board’. I remember reading it and then thinking, `OK, now I know what we’re going to be doing for the next year.’\u201d<\/p>\n

On June 1, 2002, Bush announced a new US policy which not only totally violated all precedents in American foreign policy but also undermined the United Nations Charter and international law. Speaking at the graduation ceremony of the US Military Academy at West Point he asserted that the United States had the right to initiate a preemptive war against any country that might in the future become a danger to the United States. \u201cIf we wait for threats to fully materialize\u201d, he said, \u201cwe will have waited too long.\u201d He indicated that 60 countries might fall into this category, roughly a third of the nations of the world.<\/p>\n

The assertion that the United States, or any other country, has the right to initiate preemptive wars specifically violates Chapter 1, Articles 2.3 and 2.4, of the United Nations Charter. These require that \u201cAll members shall settle their disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace, security and justice are not endangered\u201d, and that \u201cAll members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.\u201d The UN Charter allows a nation that is actually under attack to defend itself, but only until the Security Council has had time to act.<\/p>\n

Murder and Torture in the Name of Fighting Terrorism<\/strong><\/p>\n

With the end of the Cold War, a new justification for the colossal US military budget had to be found. The answer was the \u201cWar on Terror\u201d. No matter that terrorism is a crime committed by individuals rather than by nations, and that police action rather than war is the appropriate answer. Whole nations were accused of \u201csponsoring terror\u201d, and invaded. Furthermore, individual terrorist suspects were extrajudicially murdered, for example through drone strikes. Large-scale torture programs were also initiated and justified by the excuse that any method can be used when \u201cfighting terror\u201d.<\/p>\n

Of course, the effect of innocent people killed in drone strikes, and the effect of torture programs, was not to reduce the number of terrorists, but to produce more of them and to strengthen their fanaticism. But that was fine with the government, since the real aim of the \u201cWar on Terror\u201d was not to end terrorism, but to justify obscenely bloated military budgets.<\/p>\n

Progressives Can Save America<\/strong><\/p>\n

This article has been unsparing in its criticism of America’s \u201cWar on Terror\u201d. But America is full of good people. Although an enormous river of money from the military-industrial complex (and other corporate oligarchies) controls many corrupt politicians, progressives are fighting back. We must unite behind progressives and combat militarism, not only in the United States but also throughout the world.<\/p>\n

A Freely Downloadable Book<\/strong><\/p>\n

My book, which examines the consequences of the \u201cWar on Terror\u201d in more detail, may be downloaded and circulated free of charge from the following link:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/eacpe.org\/app\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Terrorism-a-False-Threat-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Other books and articles about global problems are on these links:<\/strong><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.johnavery.info\/<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/eacpe.org\/about-john-scales-avery\/<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/wsimag.com\/authors\/716-john-scales-avery<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I hope that you will circulate the links in this article to friends and contacts who might be interested.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>John Scales Avery, Ph.D., who was part of a group that shared the 1995<\/strong><\/em> Nobel Peace Prize<\/strong> for their work in organizing the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network<\/a> and Associate Professor Emeritus at the H.C. \u00d8rsted Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is chairman of both the Danish National Pugwash Group and the Danish Peace Academy and<\/em> received his training in theoretical physics and theoretical chemistry at M.I.T., the University of Chicago and the University of London. He is the author of numerous books and articles both on scientific topics and on broader social questions. His most recent books are <\/em>Information Theory and Evolution and <\/em>Civilization’s Crisis in the 21st Century<\/a> (pdf). Website: https:\/\/www.johnavery.info\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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