The war in Afghanistan was over on November 27, 2001. That’s it. War over. No more war.
All bellicose, warlike activities cease as of November 26, 2001.
Or do they?
And in 2006, the president of Pakistan, Musharraf, completed the deal by releasing all Taliban prisoners held in Pakistani jails. The Taliban are once again poised to take over Afghanistan, yet the world is amazingly quiet about the whole affair.
Although Afghanistan is about to succumb to Taliban rule once again, the world in unison refuses to acknowledge this fact. It’s as if the dead and suffering in Afghanistan are not worth the ink of a New York Times, or a Washington Post article. It’s as if the only mention of an eventual and inevitable retake of Afghanistan by the Taliban will rate nothing more than a page seven blurb to denote the demise of Karzai and NATO forces.
Iraq is far worse.
On March 19, 2003, President Bush announces that the US has launched aggressive maneuvers against Iraq. On that date, we initiated a war with a sovereign nation in a region known as the Middle East. We forcibly attacked a nation that was fully and completely recognized by the world community, unlike Afghanistan. On March 19, 2003, the United States entered the netherworld where only dictators and supreme beings dwell. On March 19, 2003, the United States decided to attack a sovereign nation that had no bellicose desire against the US. The United States voluntarily invaded a separate nation for personal reasons and it dragged with it, often kicking and screaming, only thirty other countries, most of whom were nothing more than island nations lost in the vast Pacific Ocean.
On March 19, 2003, the US violated all the important doctrines that former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt helped install at the end of WWII. On March 19, 2003, the US attacked the sovereign nation of Iraq. By Wednesday, April 9, 2003, CNN had this to say about the war, “The toppling of a giant bronze statue in Baghdad -- despite battles raging elsewhere and some anarchy on the streets -- is being greeted as the symbolic crumbling of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's regime. While the U.S. White House warns that there will be days of fighting ahead, Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations has conceded the inevitable. "The game is over. I hope the peace will prevail and the Iraqi people at the end of the day will have a peaceful life," Mohammed Aldouri said Wednesday in New York, adding that he had lost contact with Saddam Hussein's regime.”
On May 2, 2003, CNN reported this about the Iraq War, “ABOARD USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN (CNN) -- From the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, President Bush announced in a nationally televised address that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." "In this battle, we have fought for the cause of liberty, and for the peace of the world. Our nation and our coalition are proud of this accomplishment," Bush told the Navy men and women aboard the warship Thursday. Bush also made a direct connection between the war in Iraq and the continuing war on terrorism. "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September 11, 2001, and still goes on," Bush said. He then highlighted successes in Afghanistan, citing the construction of roads, hospitals and schools.”
Again, on May 2, 2003, Bush said, “The battle of Iraq is one victory.” Notice he skirted the word, “War,” but used the word, “Battle.” The elements of future denial were already in place. He counted the Iraq War as a victory in 2003, not 2006, but he used the words “Battle of Iraq,” in an attempt to avoid calling it what it really was. Iraq was already hailed as an American military victory in 2003. What most Americans have conveniently forgotten is that Bush already hailed Iraq a finished war in 2003. So this means that the US military is out of Iraq by 2004 latest, right?? Surely if Bush declared victory in 2003, the US military would be out no later than the following year, right?? I mean, it stands to reason that once major combat operations have ended, there would be no reason to keep military forces in the country, right?
Welcome to Occupation 101. Today’s lesson will be on perpetuating the impossible. How to convince the world that a war is being waged, when only occupation exists in reality.
The first thing to do is to give the appearance that a war is still being waged. In the first months after Bush’s famous victory speech on the Abraham Lincoln, the insurgency was truly in its infancy. They could muster no more than occasional IEDs or improvised explosive devices and casualties were relatively low. Most incidents came through US forces attacking civilians for no reason at checkpoints and in their homes. Casualty rates and overall incidents needed to rise considerably if the appearance of a continuing war was to be projected out to the world. But how to do it? This is easily effected through a series of planted car bombs that disrupt daily activity throughout the country. The question is, how to get these car bombs into the general population?
There was only one solution. The US military brought in people from their checkpoints and interrogated them. The US military confiscated their car and their driver’s license and told them to return in the morning to retrieve both. During the evening, the US military would plant explosives underneath their car. The following day, the unsuspecting Iraqi citizen would return for his papers and was told that he could retrieve his car from the military, but his license was of Iraqi jurisdiction, and he would have to retrieve it from the local police station. He would be given a name of a person at the police station and told that he’d better hurry up because that person was to leave for home soon. Upon arrival at the police station, the bomb would be detonated by remote control, and the world press would promptly display the event as a suicide bomber.
But things weren’t all hunky-dory for the Bush admin. Even with their scare tactics to keep the Iraqi people in a perpetual state of war, things began calming down around springtime 2004. Attacks against American forces were at an all-time low in February and March of 2004, and the US government was desperate for a new scandal to incite local violence. Enter Abu Ghraib. Abu Ghraib was very important because it not only divided the US, thus giving the neocons their wedge factor to divide and conquer, but it entrenched the worldwide opinion against the US, thus giving the neocons their second victory, that which pits the US against the world. By playing Abu Ghraib as an “Us vs them” scenario, the US admin effectively squashed any criticism of Abu Ghraib as being anti-American. In other words, if you were for human rights and against torture, you were anti-American. This was the premise that the Bush administration portrayed to the American people.
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