ISIS And The National Security Scam: Only In American Dreams - The Military Establishment And The CIA
28 February 2015By Jacob G.
Hornberger
U.S. national-security officials are scratching their heads over the decision
by young people from around the world to join ISIS. Totally befuddled, U.S.
officials just don’t understand why anyone would do such a thing.
At the same time, of course, hardly any American is traveling to Iraq to
fight on the other side — the anti-ISIS side — by joining up with the Iraqi
army, notwithstanding the fact that U.S. officials continue to loudly
proclaim that ISIS poses a grave threat to “national security.”
Meanwhile, U.S. officials are putting out new scare alerts about how ISIS
terrorists are planning to attack shopping malls in the United States.
Let’s put this all together.
The reason that young people are joining up with ISIS is that they are sick
and tired of the death and destruction that the U.S. Empire has wrought on
people in the Middle East, most of whom are Muslims. They’ve seen the
bombings, the shootings, the night raids, the round-ups, the detentions, the
torture, the brutality, the destruction of homes and businesses, and the
massive number of deaths, injuries, and maiming at the hands of the Empire.
In sum, they want to rid the Middle East of the U.S. Empire. They want the
Empire to exit the Middle East and return to the United States.
That’s why they are joining up with ISIS — to help send the U.S. Empire back
home.
Not surprisingly, the U.S. national-security state — i.e., the military
establishment and the CIA — will not permit such a thing to happen. In their
minds, they have brought freedom, order, and stability to Iraq. After all,
the invasion and occupation of Iraq was called Operation Iraqi Freedom,
right? Well, if that’s what it’s called, then that’s what it must be, right?
And after all, that’s what the Empire is all about — freedom, right?
Since the invasion and occupation of Iraq were about bringing freedom to
Iraq, U.S. officials maintain, the Iraqi people had no right to resist the
Empire. Every Iraqi should have immediately succumbed to the invasion,
deferred to the authority of the Empire, and knelt down in praise and
gratitude for the sacrifices that U.S. troops were making for Iraq. As far as
the Empire is concerned, the U.S. government could have chosen any number of
other countries for a freedom regime change — e.g., North Korea, Burma, Cuba,
Venezuela, Bolivia, and more. Therefore, Iraq should have been honored to
have been chosen to be the recipient of U.S. imperial goodness.
But that’s just not the way the world works sometimes. There are people in
the world who hate empires and will do everything they can to rid their
countries of foreign imperial occupation.
Indeed, think of the British colonists living in America in 1776. They didn’t
think too much of empires either, including the British Empire, which they
were living under as British citizens when they decided to rid the New World
of that empire. Not surprisingly, their government considered them to be
terrorists because they were killing British troops with the aim of ousting
the British Empire from America.
So, that’s what the fight with ISIS is all about: It’s not over whether
Muslims or the Koran are good or bad, but rather over the authority of the
U.S. Empire to bring death and destruction to Middle Eastern countries in the
name of bringing them “freedom.” Those on the other side are saying: Stop
your death and destruction and get out of our part of the world and go home.
What about those terrorist threats to American shopping malls? Anyone who has
been reading our perspectives here at FFF knows that such a threat should
come as no surprise. We have long been telling Americans to get prepared for
retaliation for what the Empire is doing in the Middle East. What surprises
me is that so many Americans are surprised that victims of U.S. imperialism
over there might not limit their retaliation to U.S. troops over there and
instead choose to retaliate over here.
After all, let’s not forget that the 9/11 attacks were done in retaliation
for what the Empire had been doing before that, including the deadly
sanctions that destroyed Iraq’s economy and, more important, contributed to
the deaths of hundreds of thousands of (innocent) Iraqi children. Recall also
the statement by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright
that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions was
“worth it.” There were also the blowback from U.S. foreign policy that came
in the form of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the attack on the
USS Cole, and the attacks on the U.S. Embassies in East Africa. And there are
all the terrorists and would-be terrorists who have been prosecuted since
9/11, all of whom have cited the death, destruction, and mayhem that the
Empire has brought to the Middle East as their motivation for retaliation.
As I have long written, if you’re going to have an Empire that is engaged in
killing, torturing, and maiming people in the name of bringing them
“freedom,” just be prepared for retaliation. It’s a cost of doing empire.
Moreover, the notion that the troops were over there killing everyone before
they could come over here and retaliate was foolish from the beginning.
Imperial troops are not a magnet and people seeking revenge for imperial
wrongdoing are not iron filings. People seeking revenge can choose to inflict
that revenge in any way they choose, including on U.S. shopping malls, which
the troops are obviously unable to defend. Don’t be surprised if it happens,
just like it did on 9/11. Again, just consider retaliation a cost of living
under a national-security state empire.
Finally, there is the interesting question as to why American citizens are
not traveling to Iraq to join the Iraqi army to fight ISIS. After all, U.S.
national-security state officials are very clear: ISIS poses a grave threat
to U.S. “national security.” And since they are obviously lots of people
traveling over there to join ISIS, why are there hardly any Americans
traveling over there to fight ISIS? Don’t Americans care about national
security? Don’t they love their country? Why are they sitting here at home?
I suppose part of the reason is that Americans look at the Empire as their
daddy or, even worse, their god. They say, “Let the troops protect national
security. I have better things to do.”
But I’d like to think there is another reason — that Americans are finally
figuring out, even if on a subconscious level, what a racket the entire
national-security state is.
After all, consider all the NSA records that Edward Snowden released
detailing the NSA’s secret surveillance scheme on the American people. U.S.
officials steadfastly maintained that the release of all those records
threatened “national security.”
Really? How? The records were released and the United States is still
standing. Nothing happened. And the same is true on every single
national-security state secret that has ever been disclosed.
Maybe people are finally figuring out that the entire concept of “national
security” is all just a crock, a way to keep what the Empire is doing secret
from the American people in order to keep the racket going, a racket that
necessarily depends on continuous, perpetual warfare in order to keep the
national-security state and its vast army of “defense” contractors busy
producing new war plans and new bombs, missiles, bullets, tanks, planes, etc.
After all, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, if all that armament isn’t
used up on a constant, ongoing basis, it will be difficult to keep all those
“defense” contractors as well as their employees and sub-contractors busy.
If a sufficient number of Americans finally realize what a racket all this
is, the days of the Cold War-era national-security establishment might well
be numbered. Just think how everyone except the national-security
establishment will be so much better off without a U.S. national-security
state apparatus.
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