I have always felt that the ' War On Terror ' was auseful expression created by the Cheney/Bush administration to create a culture of FEAR ~ from which they could manipulate Congress and the American people. Zbigniew Brzezinski confirms that this three-word mantra has, in essence, undermined America's moral fabric: Allen L Roland
The War on Terror has become the rationale for so much blatant executive branch abuse of power that its very mention sends shivers of fear through most congressmen and continues to paralyze the majority of Americans.
Yet, as Zbigniew Brzezinskipoints out, " The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare ~ political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants. But the little secret here may be that the vagueness of the phrase was deliberately (or instinctively) calculated by its sponsors. Constant reference to a "war on terror" did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue."
And there you have it ~ FEAR indeed overrides reason, and even love, and has been the most effective tool in the Cheney/Bush administration's ongoing campaign to override the Constitution and build an all powerful executive branch which answers to no one including Congress.
As such, Bush's illegal war with Iraq has been transformed into the central front of The War On Terror ~ while in actuality it is an illegal occupation of a sovereign nation which we are in the process of economically raping.
Brzezinski brilliantly points out how this mantra has destroyed the moral fabric of our once great Republic ~ along with our standing in the world.
" The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world.
Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.
The damage these three words have done -- a classic self-inflicted wound -- is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves.
The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare -- political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants.
But the little secret here may be that the vagueness of the phrase was deliberately (or instinctively) calculated by its sponsors. Constant reference to a "war on terror" did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue.
The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it got without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Support for President Bush in the 2004 elections was also mobilized in part by the notion that "a nation at war" does not change its commander in chief in midstream. The sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger was thus channeled in a politically expedient direction by the mobilizing appeal of being "at war."
To justify the "war on terror," the administration has lately crafted a false historical narrative that could even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By claiming that its war is similar to earlier U.S. struggles against Nazism and then Stalinism (while ignoring the fact that both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were first-rate military powers, a status al-Qaeda neither has nor can achieve), the administration could be preparing the case for war with Iran. Such war would then plunge America into a protracted conflict spanning Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and perhaps also Pakistan.
The culture of fear is like a genie that has been let out of its bottle. It acquires a life of its own -- and can become demoralizing. America today is not the self-confident and determined nation that responded to Pearl Harbor; nor is it the America that heard from its leader, at another moment of crisis, the powerful words "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"; nor is it the calm America that waged the Cold War with quiet persistence despite the knowledge that a real war could be initiated abruptly within minutes and prompt the death of 100 million Americans within just a few hours. We are now divided, uncertain and potentially very susceptible to panic in the event of another terrorist act in the United States itself. "
Freelance Online columnist and recognized therapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )
Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net
Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on Conscious talk radio www.conscioustalk.net
The words "war on terror" do not have any power. They are nonsense words and are intended as such, but certain mechanisms that carry the words do have power.
When you hold hegemony over television media coming into one hundred million homes, and radio media coming onto fifty million car radios, 24 hours a day, you can exercise a lot of power.
Repeating nonsense words can have a hypnotizing effect. Phrases like "Jesus Saves" and "War On Terror" and even single words like "Democracy" can act as mechanisms of control when combined with the correct media.
by
Philosopher Jay (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 29 comments)
on Friday, March 7, 2008 at 12:57:38 PM
Repeating nonsense words can have a hypnotizing effect. Phrases like "Jesus Saves" and "War On Terror" and even single words like "Democracy" can act as mechanisms of control when combined with the correct media.
Good point, Jay ~ It's called framing ~ like No Child Left Behind where the perception of reality becomes more important than the actual truth.
Allen L Roland
by
Allen L Roland (907 articles, 7 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 355 comments)
on Friday, March 7, 2008 at 3:20:54 PM
Terror is an emotion. How do you declare war on an emotion?
Terrorists are another matter..they are the global power elite groups and their members..They are within our administration along with many among our elected. Our CIA, FBI, Blackwater, and others willing to do their bidding and terrorize and assassinate all over the globe to further their self serving goals.
Brezezinski, is a Trilateralist, the brother group of the Bilderbergs.
Pat Buchanan once said, "I don't know who Bilderberg is but I've know for a long time that our foreign policy is controlled by an international elite, including the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations".
Get the DVD "ENDGAME" filmed by Alex Jones. JUst google the word. It's not a conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elites own words. Things are even worse than they appear. But..Knowledge is power and it's time that we, the people, had some.
by
Rae (0 articles, 1 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 218 comments)
on Saturday, March 8, 2008 at 4:54:03 PM
Thanks Zbigniew, tell how you began the use of Muslim terror
Thanks Zbigniew, what would help more that anything is for you to go vocal on commercial war mongering TV and explain to the general public what internet readers know, namely, that it was your advice to President Carter to use fundamentalist Islamic terror against the socialist Kabul government, that culminated in the 9/11 blowback.
A photo of three men lying face down with their hands wired behind their backs – the caption reading “ teachers executed for having taught girls”, is remembered by this writer as being featured in major media during this period, (missing was that the killers were secretly armed on Brzezinski's watch)
It was Carter's advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who bragged to French news magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur, in Paris, 15 January 1998, of suckering in the Russians, by frightening them into believing the U.S. was threatening to create a hostile Muslim nation on its doorstep amid the Soviet Muslin republics, by our pouring in money to arm and train fundamentalists, fundamentalist tribes who would later receive much more, openly, from successive U.S. administrations, and which would include the funding, along with Saudi help, of tens of thousands of extreme Wahhabi sect madrasahs, schools that would eventually produce the Taliban, who along with Osama bin-Ladin, would eventually also receive U.S. aid.
Jimmy Carter enjoys prestige and respect for his work as a dedicated promoter of peaceful solutions. What a enormous contribution to peace Carter could make by enlightening us on the process of covert murderous intention during his presidency. If he would just 'fess up' about his now no longer secret orders funding, training and equipping the fundamentalist tribes of the mountains against the socialist (women liberating) government in Kabul, a full six months BEFORE the first units of the Soviet army entered Afghanistan. One would imagine that Carter himself would see the great value of an honest admission and welcome an opportunity to unburden himself of whatever feelings of anguish and self-recrimination he might be experiencing, for being the first to introduce fundamentalist Islamic terror against the teaching of women.
Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski U.S. President Carter's National Security Adviser
By Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76. Note: There are at least two editions of Le Nouvel Observateur. With the exception of the U.S. Library of Congress, the version sent to the United States did not include the Brzezinski interview.
Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [From the Shadows], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Zbigniew Brzezinski and Jimmy Carter by their murderous use of CIA funding, arming and training of Afghan terror eventually handed George Bush the theme ‘War on Terror’ once Brzezinski’s success backfired on to the U.S. and its allies. Below three OpEdNews articles on the subject:
September 13, 2007 Carter Funding Fundamentalists to Sucker Soviets into Afghanistan a History Channel No-No No mention of President Carter having secretly funded, armed and trained the fundamentalist hill tribes, attacking a modern women emancipating government in Kabul, in order to sucker the Soviets into entering Afghanistan SIX MONTHS LATER in History Channel special on fundamentalists in Afghanistan. Cover up of now documented presidential homicidal crime by conglomerate owned entertainment/news industry is our shame
February 25, 2008 In "Charlie Wilson's War" Carter's CIA Funding Islamic Terror to Sucker in the Soviets is Left Out Charlie Wilson's War could have won an Oscar in a category Best Public Deception. Film hides Carter's having secretly funded, armed and trained the fundamentalist hill tribes, attacking a modern women emancipating government in Kabul, to sucker the Soviets into entering Afghanistan SIX MONTHS LATER. Photo of men lying face down, hands wired behind their backs – the caption reading "Teachers executed for having taught girls."
June 12, 2007 Confessions: Cindy re Casey, Bill Moyer re Vietnam, Jimmy Carter re Funding Terrorism Cindy Sheehan, "I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy." Bill Moyer could stop media Vietnam War worship, by telling how the lies worked during dark days when he was Press Secretary to Johnson. Jimmy Carter please 'fess up' to secretly arming fundamentalist tribes against the socialist (women liberating) government in Kabul, six months BEFORE the Soviet entry.
Its not enough for the powerful manipulator of criminal covert actions of a secret presidential mafia to come forward to weakly criticize our conglomerate owned entertainment/news media having raised to jingoistic and patriotic levels a wild all engulfing slogan "War on Terror" that of course justifies terror of our own. Could Brzezinski openly confess to having started the whole show secretly. That we started the terror going could help those of us trying to dismantle what has been so firmly established.
Jay Janson
by
Jay Janson (83 articles, 0 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 93 comments)
on Saturday, March 8, 2008 at 8:06:56 PM
B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
At that time, a fair answer to a good question. On the world chessboard ~ Zbig sacrificed a Pawn to check the Russian king and force the Russians to do what we are doing right now in Iraq.
No wonder Brzezinski was so dead set against our illegal Iraq war and occupation of Iraq ~ he was watching history repeat itself.
Allen L Roland
by
Allen L Roland (907 articles, 7 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 355 comments)
on Saturday, March 8, 2008 at 9:19:04 PM
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