Bush and Obama and their war enablers have stressed repeatedly that the United States was attacked on 9/11 from Afghanistan, and thus do they justify our war there and our slaughter of civilians and destruction of the country.
Bush even convinced the usual gang of idiots (pretty much everyone working in government in Washington) that Iraq was part of the grand conspiracy to blow up New York and Washington and thus had to be crushed and its citizens slaughtered by American troops. Naturally he lied, being incompetent, inadequate, and Republican.
But now Mr. Obama has settled on Afghanistan as the culprit behind 9/11, saying the attacks came from there.
Well, no, they didn’t.
It could more accurately be said that the attacks came from Boston and New York.
That’s where the hijackers stole the airplanes and turned them into successfully lethal weapons.
In fact, had not the airline corporate officers been so concerned about protecting their profits that they refused to put legitimate security in place over the years, had they done something so simple as install reinforced doors to the pilots’ cabins, there would have been no 9/11 and the country could have gotten rid of Bush in 2004, tarring him as comically inept, not very bright, inarticulate, and apparently illiterate.
Instead we have a useless, brutally stupid war in Iraq that today is morphing into a useless, brutally stupid war in Afghanistan which may soon morph into a useless, brutally stupid insurrection and war in Pakistan. Obama’s presidency threatens to shatter on the mountains of Southwest Asia.
The tragedy of September 11, 2001 could as easily have been planned around a kitchen table anywhere in the world. It did not require a whole country or even a piece of one, even though that would have been handy. But the hijackers trained in the United States, they lived in the United States, and their bosses could have worked from anywhere.
And yet here goes the United States hurling more troops into Afghanistan, killing more civilians, driving more people into extremism as they seek to defend their countries against an American onslaught. All because New York and Boston, enabled by corporate boardrooms, blew up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon back in 2001.
Remember that the next time the United States drops a five hundred pound bomb on a four-year-old Afghan or Pakistani child and claims it as another successful mission that killed a terrorist.
Grumpy Lion 
We’re fucked, leave it at that. If Obama is as dumb as Bush on this count, then there’s no rescue coming. How clear must it be made that this is not a war in which conquering territory makes a bat’s ass of difference?
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I suspect they’re not even thinking territory, as such. The operational theory seems to be to kill everyone who doesn’t want to do things the American way and buy off the rest. The people who live there have never given in to anyone and I doubt they’re about to start just because the Americans have elected a non-pink-skinned President who gives a good speech.
Having said that, I have to say that I do think Obama is the country’s best chance of getting out of there before we cross the line into a major regional war. But he’s hedging – on Iraq and on Afghanistan – rather than committing. The Republicans have so poisoned the political process over the last couple of decades (at least) that I think we can’t be sure it’s possible to do the right thing anymore.
About the only certainty left is that if we leave troops in Iraq and if we continue the killing in Afghanistan and Pakistan we will most certainly be fucked.
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Why don’t we buy off the ones who want to kill us, declare ‘victory’, and go home?
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Have you written to Obama? If not, I think you should.
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girl –
He’s stopping by for lunch tomorrow. We’ll be having Roast Limbaugh.
() –
Because they’ll suddenly all decide they want to kill us?
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‘They’ wanting to kill us ? Would that be Bu$hCo private armies as were deployed with such humanitarian success ( satire ) at NOLA after Katrina ? The National Guard is on the wrong side of the world ‘securing oil assets’ against others possible use to defend themselves. Against whom ? Funny you should ask. Does precedent offer a suitable response ?
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html
http://www.motherjones.com/military-maps/
BTW Islamofascism is such a crock my first impulse was to laugh. What the hey ? Al Qaeda is such an overblown ‘threat’ that people accept as real – so there is precedent.
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Ok, then who should we have attacked for 9/11?
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We shouldn’t have attacked anyone. We should have mobilized an all-out international effort using diplomatic, police, and intelligence assets from around the world, and, when necessary, covert operations teams.
Going to war was a stupid answer that has cost far, far more than it ever could have gained. It was an answer devised by ideologues with limited intellect, devoid of conscience, ethics, and morality.
Had we taken the alternative, we would very likely have long ago killed or taken into custody the real perpetrators who planned and enabled the 9/11 operation, we would still have the respect of the world, and we would not have killed hundreds of thousands of people who had nothing to do with 9/11, we would not have destroyed two countries, we would not have thousands of innocent people locked up around the world, and we would not have created untold thousands more people willing to take action against us for the next few decades.
To think that we had to attack countries for acts of individuals is an idea that comes from adolescent minds disconnected from reality and awareness of consequence.
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I think we were attacked not just by individuals but by individuals working for their dictator. Are you saying the attackers were not Iraqis and Afgans? When we attacked VietNam, the Vietnamese saw it as America attacked them, not individuals. Get my drift? No matter what, there have been no more attacks on us and i would like to think it was because there was a fear of Bush. Saddam needed to be taken out for the greater good.
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The attackers on the planes included fifteen Saudi Arabians, two from UAE, one Lebanese and one Egyptian. They trained in the United States under the auspices of a terrorist organization, al-Qaeda, which had an at best uneasy relationship with the government of Afghanistan, but were not an agent of that government.
America, as a nation, did attack Vietnam. Al Qaeda was not and is not a nation or a state.
Saddam was no threat to the United States, had no part in 9/11, and was not even a threat to any nations in that region. If the greater good included destroying that country, turning over four million of its people into internal and external refugees, and being responsible for the deaths of several hundred thousands, not to mention the deleterious effects on the United States, then your concept of the greater good is badly flawed.
The 9/11 attacks happened on George Bush’s watch, and happened because he and his minions refused to take seriously the warnings about al-Qaeda and Bin Laden being given to them by the previous administration and by experts in the matter, for no other reason than that they were not Bush loyalists.
Your facts are wrong. Your thinking, such as it is, fails in ways that are typical of wingnut apologists and hawks. I’m not going to waste time arguing with you beyond what I’ve said here. Go read something besides right-wing drivel and listen to somebody besides Limbaugh and Coulter.
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And one more thing – your apparent admiration of the idea that foreign entities were afraid of Bush is off base. Any fear they might have had was of a kind with that of seeing an obviously deranged man shuffling down the street towards you as he mumbled to himself and cringed away from his hallucinations.
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I took a long time to accept the 9/11 crew as anything but idiots. What started me down the path to looking seriously at what they had to say were a couple of considerations. For the first, a rightwing blogger tried to give me the gears that 9/11 was unPatriotic. That was the wrong tack to take towards a guy who think people need to be encouraged to think for themselves and get out from under the umbrella of censorship.
Secondly – I realized that when comparing paid corporate liars/advertisers/psyops to almost anyone, their ability to stay ‘on message’ and promulgate a planned systemic deception would be inferior. In other words – not only could amateur intel be superior to ‘professional’ effort – it was reasonably well a given that it would be less deceptive.
If you’ve visited my reviews at all you will realize that Len Hart has made quite an impression just by himself : The Existentialist Cowboy. That’s one Texan who ‘lets it all hang out’ – and I respect his presentation as methodical and well thought out.
Isn’t the lack of analysis and reportage of Saudi politics and infrastructure remarkable ? By the time anyone gets to it, psyops will have taken over. Try grabbing the English translation button off my Utilities list and install it in Firefox ( it’s the Google tool ). I haven’t really used it that much – and translation from some languages is better than others – but it does open up a new world.
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*Highlight wars, (high death wars) of the last Hundred years *
1920-1950 WWI – WWII Millions of deaths
1950-1980 – North Korea over 50k deaths, millions of South Koreans were killed in order to make an example of North Korea’s power, and that they should never be opposed after we left (Wasn’t it great that we left?).
1980-2009 – Nothing even close to comparison. The fact that you say we destroyed Afghanastan as well as Iraq is ludicrous. We are in fact on the greatest path we have ever been, not the worst. America seems to be filled with Drama kings these days…Who want to ignore real and present threats until after they have been fufilled.
WWII was under democrat control…North Korea was the same. There’s a reason a Republican switch happened, the dems were known for their wars, weather by weapons or tactful methods of allowing death from lack of support with food and or money to nations that needed it (“we need to focus our energy at home!” is how they did it) Then we had George Bush Snr, less than 1,000 deaths (TOTAL) and the Berlin wall fell.
Then we had George W Bush, not quite as good as his father, but by comparison 5,000 U.S. deaths under his watch for Iraq, and the country will soon be free. Look up the term “Operation Iraqi Freedom” look up George W.’s speech when the war began. Look up the Iraq reaction. They praised his speech. He specifically said we were fighting to free them from Sadam. The WWMD’s were not why we went to war, and WWMD’s do not solely classify as nukes. We had pretty good intel that Osama was hiding there. Sadam refused us entry into the country. In a coincidence, we utilized some of the 17 UN sanctions put in place by Bill Clinton for Iraq (apparently putting into motion Clinton’s policies was montsrous), and asked to check his weapon arsenal, in case he was planning on aiding Osama. He also refused. We told him we have a right to do so, because of UN sanctions. He threatened us. We told him Osama was likely going to get away. He threatened us more. We’re talking about a guy that pretty much said that if we didn’t get our damn planes out of “his” sky he’d blow us all to hell. (likely a figure of speech but the threat was serious). Sadam had also single handedly resulted in a secret police, as well as massacred over 300,000 Iraqis. Believe me, they were happy to hear of our intervention.
These countries had lived threatening smaller nations, threatening their own people, and Bush told them that was going to stop.
He could have taken the Clinton route, and sent the same amount of troops to their death with no stable country to show of it.
No country has ever been rebuilt like Iraq, so Iraq took precedent, and was done well.
Bush vs Clinton…I could go into the effects, how many jobs went over seas during the dot.com boom due to the higher taxes, how Clinton said it was good because we were cutting costs. Or I could go into how he set up the sanctions which allowed the Iraq war to happen so smoothly. Or we could go into the fact that Clinton fined companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into giving the very loans that caused the current collapse.
People need to stop complaining about Bush. He was just an average joe president, and his father was legendary.
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“The WWMD’s were not why we went to war, and WWMD’s do not solely classify as nukes. We had pretty good intel that Osama was hiding there. Sadam refused us entry into the country.”
The WMD scam was a deliberate lie by Bush and his people to manipulate and deceive the country into war. That is established fact. Your hero committed a criminal act in taking this country to war in Iraq.
There was no legitimate intelligence that OBL was in Iraq. Saddam wanted no part of al Qaeda. That is established fact.
Investigative teams were in Iraq up until Bush announced that an American invasion was imminent. The teams were there with the cooperation of Hussein. That is established fact.
You need to study something besides the bullshit put out by the wingnuts and the neocon deadenders and Hannity and Limbaugh and the other spokesidiots of the right.
Bush was not an ‘average Joe president’. He was a criminal president and a war criminal by any definition of the term. His father was not legendary. He was a lightweight, up to his neck with the Saudis for his personal gain, and complicit in the Iran-Contra scandals. The fall of the Berlin wall had nothing to do with Bush Sr and everything to do with the internal politics and workings and failings of the communist governments.
And if you think the Bush years put the United States on the ‘greatest path’ ever, you are utterly delusional, ignorant, and just generally full of shit, and understand virtually nothing about America as a reality and as a concept.
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But Ric – according to one metric the US is on the greatest path. Making enemies out of people on the other side of the world wholesale is much easier when you mess around on their turf on a regular basis.
What does an arms supplier need more than market activity? So when you find Chinese or Iranian or South Bantustan arms in Iraq or Afghanistan …the ingrates are buying from the wrong supplier!
That is unAmerican activity if I ever heard of any.
Iran was such a bad example buying a reactor from Russia that Indians would rather have bought 4 from them than 1 from the U.S. with a bunch of conditions attached.
That’s how they are a nuclear threat when they might possibly – Well, Cheney says so – eventually manage to become weaponmakers although they are using certified tech for peaceful uses. I’m sure the Russians are real interested in having another nuke wild card in the area besides Israel : that’s why missiles in Europe are getting under their skin.
Time was they pulled the Cuban Missile Crisis over situations like that one.
Give them time. They’ve pulled a couple of tricks already…but the media doesn’t want to note that.
The Russian threat of retaliation if Iran was attacked wasn’t worth noting either. But of course they are : black ops by both the UK and US plus a UN blockade…and theft of their bank deposits!
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In a rare display of good sense, I’ve deleted some comments here for violating my comment policy.
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patriot news…
U. S. Attacked On 9/11 From Where? Definitely Not Afghanistan Or Iraq « Grumpy Lion…
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hardness of tap water…
[…]U. S. Attacked On 9/11 From Where? Definitely Not Afghanistan Or Iraq « Grumpy Lion[…]…
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