Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Gareth Porter: Ignoring Post-9/11 Deaths of Innocents

On Sunday, amid tearful remembrances of 9/11, the U.S. news media avoided any serious criticism of how the U.S. government responded to the attacks with 10 years of slaughter that has left hundreds of thousands dead, the vast majority having had nothing to do with al-Qaeda. Gareth Porter looks at the reasons for this oversight. 
 
By Gareth Porter, Consortium News, Sept. 12, 2011

In the commentary on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the news and infotainment media predictably framed the discussion by the question of how successful the CIA and the military have been in destroying al Qaeda.

Absent from the torrent of opinion and analysis was any mention of how the U.S. military occupation of Muslim lands and wars which continue to kill Muslim civilians fuel jihadist sentiment that will keep the threat of terrorism high for many years to come.

The failure to have that discussion is not an accident. In December 2007, at a conference in Washington, D.C. on al Qaeda, former State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism Daniel Benjamin offered a laundry list of things the United States could do to reduce the threat from al Qaeda.

But he said nothing about the most important thing to be done: pledging to the Islamic world that the United States would pull its military forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq and end its warfare against those in Islamic countries resisting U.S. military presence.

Continues >>

2 comments:

Rupen Savoulian said...

I think that Porter correctly points out that countless civilians have died at the hands of US attacks on Middle Eastern populations in the decade since Sept 11. Numerous US soldiers have returned from combat traumatised by their experiences, and are neglected by the military authorities that sent them into combat duties.

However, another point that needs making is that Sept 11 has been exploited by the US ruling class to carry out its predatory policies of military and commercial expansion. Sept 11 has become a kind of blank cheque for the US military-industrial complex, a banner under which the most grievous human rights violations have been committed and various expansionist wars launched. And this is on top of the open-ended, blanket 'war on terror' that has eroded civil liberties and seen the deployment of US troops, unmanned drone strikes and the accompanying ideological barrage in countries around the world.

It is time to stop using the Sept 11 tragedy as the excuse to commit war crimes, and carry out terroristic policies, in the pursuit of geopolitical objectives. While the common image of a terrorist is a head-bobbing, bomb-throwing fanatic, there are the terrorists in suits, sitting behind their desks in political office, making decisions to use the latest military technology that results in devastating damage and scores of civilian lives lost. It is the terrorists in suits, the main beneficiaries of the last decade of endless war, that need to be prosecuted for their crimes.

Nasir Khan said...

Thank you Rupen for your comment which sums up brilliantly what the rulers of the United States have done since Sept. 11, 2001. Their wars of aggression and terror and their inhumanity towards the people they victimised is almost beyond belief.

I totally agree with what you say. It seems we have the same political outlook in matters of war and peace and human rights.