I rarely reproduce whole chunks of linked articles but I will with this one because the writer talks more sense about the absurd and murderous ‘war on terror’ than I’ve heard from any American or UK politician. These are things that need to be said and understood.
He observes :-
“The great Jewish-American entertainer Tom Lehrer said he gave up writing satirical songs when he realised that nothing he wrote could compete with the reality of U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after authorising the bombing of neutral Cambodia during the Vietnam War.
I wonder what Lehrer would say about President Barack Obama, who ordered two Cruise missile attacks on targets in Yemen a week before Christmas, allegedly killing 49 civilians, including 17 women and 23 children.
The old Lehrer joke wasn’t lost on the Iranians. An official Tehran news website noted: ‘U.S. Nobel Peace Prize laureate President Barack Obama has signed the order for a recent military strike on Yemen in which scores of civilians, including children, have been killed.’
Do you find yourself beginning to doubt our own propaganda, which says that while we innocently go about our business in the world, international terrorists are bent on destroying our way of life for no other reason than to gain dominion over our Christian culture?
So it’s necessary to bring the ‘war on terror’ to them, even when this so often means killing innocent people?
An American commentator writing on Slate, the internet news organisation, asks: ‘When it comes to undermining Al Qaeda, both in Yemen and generally, isn’t it painfully obvious that the images of dead Muslim women and children which we constantly create - and which we have again just created in Yemen - will fuel that movement better than anything else we can do?’
He continues: ‘Whatever else is true, and even if one believes it’s justified to lob Cruise missiles into more countries where we claim suspected Al Qaeda sites are located, one thing seems clear: all of the causes widely recognised as having led to 9/11 - excessive American interference in the Muslim world, our alliance with their most oppressive leaders, our responsibility for Israel’s military conflicts with its Muslim neighbours and our own military attacks on Muslims - seem stronger than ever.
‘As we take more actions of this sort, we will create more terrorists, which will, in turn, cause us to take more actions of this sort in a never-ending, self-perpetuating cycle.
‘The U.S.military, and the intelligence community and its partners in the private contractor world, will certainly remain busy, empowered and well-funded in the extreme.’
America has now lost almost twice the number killed in 9/11 while bringing death to hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The U.S.’s private military contractors are authorised to kill and are seemingly immune from prosecution.
They have earned the festering, undying hatred of millions. So have we (the UK), as their poodle.
There has to be a more intelligent way of proceeding. Campaigning for the presidency, Barack Obama led millions to believe he’d seek a new approach to the wars started so recklessly by his predecessor, George W. Bush.
But he’s becoming more hawkish by the day, under pressure from falling poll ratings and Right-wingers spreading lies about him being ‘soft on terror’.
The Al Qaeda attack on New York and Washington in 2001 was a spectacular success, causing the most powerful nation on earth to lose its mind and go on a mad killing spree which ultimately undermined itself and its allies.
As for Tom Lehrer, he’s now 81 but his cheerfully cynical songs about his country - recorded 57 years ago, at a cost of only $15 - are still selling briskly on Amazon.”He’s 100% right. There has to be a more intelligent way of proceeding. If only our politicians had the balls to discuss the madness of the bloody and totally counter-productive ‘war on terror’ with the same honesty and insight.
The article is here .. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1240383/PETER-MCKAY-This-war-terror-joke.html
