The 'Why' Of The War On Terror
Joe QuinnSigns of the Times
13/03/2006
With American troops sinking ever further into the "Iraq quagmire", Bush's job approval ratings hitting new lows and a growing list of respectable officials using the word dictatorship in reference to the White House, the apparent plans for a U.S. attack on Iran can reasonably be taken as evidence that many members of the U.S. government have in fact gone literally, clinically insane. At the very least, anyone still in possession of the alleged human capacity for independent, critical thought is surely asking the big question:
Why?
How exactly has it served the Bush administration to bloody-mindedly continue to push forward, to this day, with a plan that over 2 years ago was already identifiable as containing the seeds of its own downfall and the trashing of America's previously good (if undeserved) image on the world stage? Is it perhaps the case that Colin Powell enjoyed being ridiculed at the U.N.? Does Donald Rumsfeld derive some satisfaction from the fact that he is considered the architect of the torture of innocent Iraqi detainees? (Actually, maybe we shouldn't go there).
Now, we all know that most governments engage in all sorts of illegal and scurillous activities, but generally they go to considerable lengths to conceal these from the general public and usually hide behind the cover of plausible excuses, for example, the 'Communist threat' that was used during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. But even in those wars, once the real goal had been achieved, the U.S. government withdrew. In the case of the 'war on terror' and the Iraq invasion, the plausible excuse of Saddam's WMDs was from the outset extremely weak, and it was always going to be just a matter of time before Bush et al were exposed as a bunch of liars. Despite this, there is not even a hint of a withdrawal from the endless 'war on terror' - quite the opposite in fact.
In looking deeply at the entire debacle then, we arrive at the tentative conclusion that there is something, some threat, that is driving the Bush administration to risk their political lives - the means to power and wealth that they live and breathe for - for very little in return.
So what is that "something"? Paradoxically, yet somehow very logically, that "something" is their political lives and the threat of a very dishonorable discharge from political life, the possibility of long jail terms and, depending on the circumstances, even execution.
To understand the why, we need to go back to that defining moment that, as we were told ad nauseum at the time, "changed the world forever".
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posted by ... @ 7:19 PM
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