LETTER: Has the US learnt nothing from the chaos after 9/11?

Has the US learnt nothing from the chaos it deliberately inflicted upon humanity after 9/11?  This is illustrated by the disaster in Afghanistan which is historically described as “the graveyard of empires”.  The disaster was, however, a phenomenal success for the five main US war business contractors — Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing and Northrop Grumman — which during 2001-2021 fleeced US taxpayers by over $2-trillion.

The Carter administration during the 1970s thought it was a brilliant strategy to support the mujahideen against the Soviet Union. Given the opportunity to proselytise their extremist and perverted version of Islam, the Saudi Arabian royal family/gangsters happily funded the mujahideen and Osama bin Laden.

Yet Afghanistan had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack on New York, which was planned in Germany and Florida and undertaken by Saudi citizens.  Nor was Iraq’s Saddam Hussein involved. The Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden for trial if the Americans could provide evidence he was involved, an offer the US immediately rejected. 

No matter, the Neocon 1997-1998 Project for the New American Century (PNAC) leapt into action. Its manifesto stated: “American leadership is good both for America and the world,” and its purpose was to impose global US military and financial hegemony.  The PNAC agenda was successive US wars over five years against Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and was intended to culminate against Iran.

Half of the PNAC’s original 25 signatories were dual US-Israeli citizens. Christian Zionists including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were prominent, among others. The same lies trotted out against Iraq are now trotted out against Iran. The upside of the Afghan debacle is that the US is now unlikely to risk a war with Iran.

Terry Crawford-Browne, World Beyond War SA

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