Middle East Affairs
columnist: Edu Montesanti Goldoni

Topic: War On Terror
9/11 and "War on Terror": Politicians Are Clever - People Are the Problem

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Taking into account the unsuccessful 9/11 Commission and the disastrous "War on Terror" aftermath, it is clear that there is a side totally wrong and isolated from the real debate on world terrorism. Far from us having the only answer and being able to close the debate, we analyze the reality inside Afghanistan and find two alternatives to understand what the world is witnessing on "fight on terror". Feel free to choose one option

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by Edu Montesanti Goldoni
(liberal)
Tuesday, September 15, 2009

As the world mourns remembering the infamous 9/11, politicians in the US "debate", yes, they "debate" and act in order to fulfill their so-called "fight against terror" commitments. Eight years after the attacks on US ground, we find two unavoidable points about this "War on Terror". Choose where you fit better, and be sure: any option is as full of terror as 9/11 itself. Let us see what then?

The main discussion on Afghanistan since Barack Obama came to power last January is sending there more US troops (according to him, an effective occupation in that country is vital to combat world terrorism). On the other hand, we have shown in this column not only the atrocities against civilians by the unsuccessful US/NATO coalition forces in the Middle East, especially in Afghanistan where they have about 60,000 troops, but also exposed the cry of local people and ex-MP Malalaï Joya's against occupation there who also presents timely and urgent alternatives to combat the Taliban and warlords.

From failure and bloodshed to failure and bloodshed, the essence of strategy in the Middle East does not change, and the debate beats about the mcbama, that is, beats about the bush (all amounts to the same thing). Last week increased the debate as to whether to send more troops to Afghanistan: Obama is delaying (to build coalitions for overhauling the health care system) to put into practice what he promised at the presidential campaign, that is increasing the troops in the country. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is willing to consider a request for more troops, as Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan requested long ago for more American combat troops there.

On the "other side", we have the leading Senate Democrat on military matters, Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, stating in the telephone interview last Thursday to The New York Times, that "I just think we should hold off on a commitment to send more combat troops until these additional steps to strengthen the Afghan security forces are put in motion".

Let us now see the Afghan reality (a hidden and suffering reality that world media strangely does not publish) and some numbers (to this kind of people, our politicians, these are just numbers of course, never put in discussion; and from the evidences below we will get a definitive conclusion, either one or another that will be pointed, you choose):

I. Most people in the Afghan capital Kabul live in illegal, unplanned and sub-standard houses that are prone to natural disasters, and lack water and sanitation facilities, according to government officials. "Of the [estimated] five million people living currently in Kabul, at least three million are residing in illegal and unplanned houses", said Abdul Wahab Sadaat, deputy director of city services at the Kabul Municipality. "These houses – which make up about 75 percent of the houses in Kabul – are also vulnerable to earthquake, floods and other natural disasters", said Sadaat. (Afghanistan: Unsafe Housing Puts Kabul Residents at Risk);

II. Over the past seven years some militia commanders and powerful groups have seized and sold public property and land, creating a crisis of unregulated urbanization in the capital, officials in the municipality and in the Ministry of Urban Development said. The population of Kabul has grown substantially, from about one million in 2001 to about five million in 2009, exhausting the city’s already limited natural resources, particularly underground water reserves, say government and independent specialists. Rapid population growth and urbanization, coupled with limited resources, have put a heavy burden on Kabul’s environment and air quality which, according to health officials, hastens the death of more than 3,000 people annually (from the same source above);

III. When foreign troops arrived in Afghanistan, there was little concern for Afghan public opinion. Since then, they’ve had seven years to win a war against a once-discredited Taliban (as Malalaï Joya observes, a bunch of illiterate medieval-minded people, who the superpower does not win because it is not serious in its fight on terror, and needs a pretext to stay in the Middle East defending its economic and regional interests - the Taliban is this pretext). Seven years to repair the Kajaki hydroelectric dam and win the hearts and minds of the restive, opium-producing sought. Seven years to disarm the militias and bring war criminals to justice, as promised in 2001. (The Afghan Industry)

IV. When the Taliban arrived in a village in Farah in May, the village elders approached them and asked them to leave. They told the Taliban that if the fighters stayed, the foreigners would bomb their village. The Taliban said: "We are fighting and dying for Islam, and so should you do. Why should you be spared death? Is your blood redder than ours?" And so the foreign planes came, dropped their bombs and, according to locals, killed more than 100 civilians. "What could we do?" said a local man to the BBC’s Afghan service. "The Talibs were young men with guns and grenades. We had no weapons to protect ourselves and no young men to help us". (from the same source above / more about the  massacre in Farah here);

V. US troops stormed a hospital and tied up medical staff, in breach of international law, a Swedish charity has claimed. (...) The soldiers tied up four guards and two relatives before turning patients out of beds and searching a womens ward, it is claimed. (...) Soldiers from the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division made an armed raid last Wednesday on the clinic, in eastern Afghanistan, to search for insurgents, Anders Fänge, the director of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, said. Troops demanded that the hospital staff in Wardak, south of Kabul, alert the military if insurgents came for treatment. The medics refused. "If the international military forces are not respecting the sanctity of health facilities, then there is no reason for the Taleban to do it either" Mr. Fänge added. "Then these clinics and hospitals would become military targets. This is a clear violation of internationally recognised rules and principles," (US Troops Accused of Carrying Out Armed Raid on Afghan Hospital);

VI. A US military report has since found that strikes by US B1 bombers in Farah violated orders already in place at the time. That report recommended ordering all US forces operating in Afghanistan undergo new training. The new directive calls for military commanders to "scrutinize" and "limit" the use of close air support against residential compounds and other areas likely to result in civilian casualties. Some 800 civilians were killed in Afghanistan between January and May this year, a 24 percent increase from the same period in 2008, according to UN figures released last month. More than half of those deaths were caused by insurgents and just over a third by international and Afghan forces, the UN said. The rest could not be attributed to either side (Airstrike Killed Six Civlilians and Wounded 14 Others in Afghanistan);

VII. Officers, quoting witness reports from the remote desert area, said the force of the blast ripped many of victims to pieces and that the death toll was calculated after pieces of flesh were collected from the site (Afghan Bombs Kill 11, Including Children);

VIII. Civilian casualties in Afghanistan rose by 40 percent last year, the highest level since the American-led invasion in late 2001;

IX. The UN report, compiled by a human rights unit, said the death toll among civilians rose to 2,118 from 1,523 in 2007, most in the south of the country where fighting is intense;

X. In Bagram prison, 600 people are illegally arrested, according to Human Right Watch;

XI. Afghan election workers loyal to President Hamid Karzai set up hundreds of fictitious polling sites where no one voted but still registered hundreds of thousands of ballots towards the President's re-election, according to senior Western and Afghan officials. (…) ''We think that about 15 percent of the polling sites never opened on election day,'' a senior Western diplomat said. ''But they still managed to report thousands of ballots for Karzai'' (Afghanistan Poll   ‘Fraud en Masse’).

Well, before all this, a very brief of the so painful Afghan facts, neither Mr. Obama nor his "strongest" opponents discuss anything else but military strategies. No, from failure and bloodshed to failure and bloodshed, neither our geniuses of politics nor world media accept for instance just listening to the Afghan people – they have a lot to tell, they have different ideas of how to defeat local enemies, they are the victims and theoretically the object of the invasion… aren’t they? The Afghan people heroically resisted against the United Kingdom (the greatest world power at the time) and Soviet Union Invasion (the greatest power at the time, beside the US), and could win the Taliban and warlords without occupation – with foreign help, they recexactly ognize they need it. They want democracy and freedom (is this exactly the problem for politicians, democracy and freedom?), they deserve to be listened, they are to be listened.

It is not difficult to realize why politicians impose upon us this kind of "debate" and such a routine of enforcing democracy and liberty to others through endless wars: no military means, no occupation and no imperialism and power, especially with regards to oil. Jake Towne has insisted on this point in his column here at the Chart, especially in Why Foreign Aid? - An Open Letter to Congressman Dent from Jake Towne, and in America's Military Empire. With richness of numbers and arguments, Mr. Towne questions the real intentions of the White House in military spending overseas.

As we remembered in Gasoline on Fire, " During the first half of 2001, CIA officials pleaded for serious security measures to be taken, and urgently so. According to their confirmations, there were imminent terrorist attacks to be committed by suicidal hijackers who would hijack commercial planes in the US territory. After being continuously left out in the cold by senior officers, they resigned from the CIA, to wash their hands concerning terrible and bloody acts against the nation that would soon take place (they declared afterwards on TV). (...) UN supervisors inspected Iraq throughout the 90's, destroying a great deal of weapons. Finally, on February 14, 2002, these supervisors assured that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. US Congress itself assured in 1999 that, 'Iraqi military arsenal is poor', and in 2002 before the invasion, the 'state of mind and battlefield efficiency are more fragile than they were in 1991'".

For one reason or another, maybe because we have been entertained in many ways by this Disney World of news, we also forget that this lack of seriousness in fighting terror is another attack against 9/11 victims and their families, who have never been taken seriously. Let us remember that mockery of a 9/11 Commission, that failed and was requested by the victim families to be brought up in an independent court, never created spectacles of our politicians and the media's.

Are we willing to pass all our lives, year-by-year, only promoting ceremonies for the Osama bin Laden’s victims on their anniversary, full of demagogy from many? Incredibly, The New York Times editorial on Sept. 11, wrote about Eight Years Later discussing what has been raised at the Ground Zero to family members, politicians and visitors. "Instead of the two memorial pools designed by the architect Michael Arad, visitors will see their barest outlines." Oh! Eight years after 9/11, 2001, NO ONE has seriously responded to nor has been charged on the attacks! Well, Osama bin Laden has not been arrested but at least lives hidden, differently from George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and mcbamas who freely travel all over the world, promoting "War on Drugs" in Colombia at the same time they place in the Afghan power and support for eight years drug traffickers of the Northern Alliance. Oh, Saddam Hussein, yes, he was killed and our bandits de luxe did not encountered weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, as the UN stated before the invasion that Iraq did not had, nor anything that linked him to Osama bin Laden. Enough of mockery against we the people!

These weeks on CNN, there is an advertizing of a program in which the reporter Christiane Amanpour asks to an Afghan man (probably an Islamic teacher of the madrassas): "How doy you teach them not to hate?" Dear Ms. Amanpour, the world is asking you: What do US politicians do not be hated? Anything at all, on the contrary, they do ALL the possible exactly to be hated, incite local people to anger and in order to justify more agression and westerner occupation, as the Plan P2OG made it clearer remembered by us here at the 'Chart: "What about P2OG (Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group), orchestrated directly by George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld (ex-Secretary of Defense) to carry out secret missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups in Iraq, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to 'counterattack' by US forces?" (Read the article about this subject, written by Chrys Floyd in the Counterpunch Magazine; see one of P2OG documents (in English) at our journalistic blog).

At last, our two conclusive and obvious alternatives: taking all this into account, either the lords of democracy and their watchdogs of the media are calling us fool with this clownery of "War on Terror", using to it the money of taxpayers, or we are really a bunch of fools who does not know anything. So, what side are you?

May God comfort the families of 9/11 victims, with the matchless touch of the Holy Spirit and Jesus our Friend and Savior, full of power and mercy to console and make everything new in their lives; as well as in the lives of Iraqi and Afghan victims, as Mrs. Joya is used to saying, "We Afghans face a 9/11 everyday".

Special thanks to

Gene DeNardo, who revised this article

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©2009 Edu Montesanti Goldoni, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Last modified: Tuesday, December 8, 2009

The views expressed in this article are those of Edu Montesanti Goldoni only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Edu Montesanti Goldoni is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.

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