Iran - search results
‘War criminal Bush persona non grata’
Is Bush Losing Control Of The Military?
‘Bush violates Palestinians’ rights’
List of Bush Administration Scandals
Criminals In The Bush Administration
Syrian MP threatens Dimona
Bush to make first trip to Israel, West Bank
British Investigator Is Subject of Probe
Britain bows out of a war it could never have won
Congressmen urge impeachment
Ron Paul: Bush no authority to rule world
In London, the world gathers against war
Afghanistan: The Dollar Line
Britain’s breach of honour over Iraq interpreters
Pat Tillman Soldier Death In Afganistan War By M16
NIE report final nail in Bush coffin
8 Senior Republican Appointees Challenge 9/11 Story
The CIA Destroyed Torture Tapes & 9/11 Connection
The Star of the Magi: Old Story, New Gifts
Petroleum and terrorism
US Roman Catholic Bishop: 9/11 was inside job
China tells Bush to Sling his Hook
US signs deal for long-term occupation of Iraq
The Neoconservative Agenda to Sacrifice the Fifth Fleet
The Bush Family Gets Away with Crimes
Halliburton Concentration Camps Already Constructed
Time to break free
One Million Dead in Iraq: Our Own Holocaust Denial
Coup D’Etat Rumblings in Venezuela
Saudi minister warns of dollar collapse
Dems Stay Silent on Bush White House Crimes
Bush Stands by His Dictator
Blowback, Pakistan-style
Administration officials see few options for U.S.
My enemy’s enemy shouldn’t always be my friend
The Spy Who Wants Israel to Talk
Gangster Giuliani: The GOP’s Worst
Our Man in Islamabad
Deadliest Year for US Troops in Iraq
A Toxic Mix of Neoliberal & Neocon
Momentum built for Cheney impeachment
Bush defense spending highest since WWII
Congressional Shame and Duplicity
Ex-MI6 chief: Too much weight on Iraq intelligence
Expert blows the cover on 9/11 inside job
Ruling By Decree
Neocon Tells Audience To ‘Shut Up’
Torture, Paramilitarism, Occupation and Genocide
Nobel Hypocrisy
Will George W. Bush Stay in Power after 2008?
Straitjacket Bush
How deceitful is the BROWN Government? How about 350 tonnes worth?
Nukes Over America: All a Stupid Mistake. Sure It Was
The War on Afghanistan Was Wrong, Too
Open Letter to the Government from an AWOL Soldier
Bush World War III rant shows he’s really lost it now
History will see us all as Bush’s “Good Germans”
UN document confirms Israel hit Syrian nuclear reactor?
Russian Press Blasts Anglo-Saxon Terrorist Controllers
Who Watches the CIA Watchers?
A Nuclear Nightmare — The Portland Plot
Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008
Jimmy Carter: U.S. Tortures Prisoners
Reviewing James Petras’ “Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire”
PETER HITCHENS: North Korea, the last great Marxist bastion, is a real-life Truman show
Ultimate Video WMD Lies From Bush
Britain ‘no longer closest Bush ally’
Seven CIA Veterans Challenge 9/11 Commission Report
A Culture of Violence
Hizbullah: If Israel attacks Syria, we’ll respond
Revealed: script for Bush’s mangled words
Hypocrite Bush hits out at tyrants and human rights abuse
The BBC – How Did It Get So Bad?
Israel Says Tension with Syria Subsiding
Sanity in Tiny Nibbles
Syrian official: Damascus eager to respond to Israel flyover
Arabs push through nuclear vote against Israel
Reviewing Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”
Calls grow for Bush war crimes trial
“Unrecognized” Palestinians
US agrees further British withdrawal from Iraq
Bush calls for permanent US military occupation of Iraq
PUT BUSH ON TRIAL
Syria says Israel aims to torpedo peace
The Coincidence Theorist’s Guide to 9/11
US confirms Israeli air strike on Syria
Guantanamo: “Ghost” Prisoners Speak At Last
US troops who criticised Iraq war strategy killed in Baghdad
From Dallas to 9/11 to Iraq: The War on the Truth
Author under gag order assails producer, ABC for ‘Path to 9/11’
US ‘delayed UK pull-out from Basra’
Has anyone lost any Plutonium?â€
Age of the cyber spy
Middle East Madness
Cheney, the survivor without challengers
War and the ‘New World Order’
Marines Ordered To Execute Civilians In Nazi-Like Slaughter
Long List of 9/11 Criminal Coconspirators
Pot Growers Are New Target in “War on Terror”
Bush’s brand-new poodle
The state Theft of Children – So called British Justice – Even a murderer...
The CIA’s open secrets
US intelligence report points to Iraqi government’s removal
A new intelligence report paints a bleak picture of Iraq
Robert Fisk: Even I question the ‘truth’ about 9/11
Market Efficiency Hokum
America and Venezuela – Constitutional Worlds Apart
Why Rove and Cheney Really Are That Bad
Ian Brown – Illegal Attacks
BUSH TERROR weapons – Murders untold civilians, many children – states Doctor
Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army
Military commanders tell Brown to withdraw from Iraq without delay
Wikipedia ‘shows CIA page edits’
The Anti-Empire Report
A scary assault on civil liberties
Bush Wants Microchipped Society
Myths of Mideast Arms Sales
Iraqi government on brink of collapse following cabinet walkouts
Gitmo closure not easy says Bush
Rudy Giuliani’s Five Big Lies About 9/11
Red Cross confirms Bush administration, CIA used torture in interrogations
Weapons Given to Iraq Are Missing
Protests at UK embassy in Tehran
Fake Maritime Boundaries
American raid and arrests set scene for capture of marines
Democrats pass “anti-war” bill that funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
The War Against Strawmen
by Harry Browne
by Harry Browne
The Bush Administration continues to maintain that its war in Iraq, and its adventures anywhere else, are aimed at ending worldwide terrorism.
But such a feat is not only impossible, it is absurd.
Terrorism is a crime, not a war. Terrorism is committed by gangs of criminals — not soldiers representing a sovereign government. And no one in his right mind can believe that our government can eliminate every criminal gang in the world.
If our government could do that, why wouldn’t it start with the drug gangs that terrorize areas of Washington, D.C.? What a perfect opportunity for the politicians to demonstrate their crime-fighting abilities.
On October 4, 2001, I wrote:
Because the September attacks were a crime, the government's job is to locate and bring to trial any perpetrators who didn't die in the attacks. If some of them are located in foreign countries, our government should request extradition — not threaten to bomb the foreign country if we don't get our way.
I was criticized by some people, who asked, "But what if all the ‘criminals’ aren’t caught"
And yet, here we are four years later, tens of thousands of people have died, and still not all the criminals have been caught regardless. Osama Bin Laden not only hasn’t been apprehended, he isn’t even talked about anymore. As I said in 2001:
If not all the criminals are found and brought to trial, it doesn't mean that bombing innocent people would have brought the criminals to justice.
So why do the politicians talk about a War on Terrorism that makes no sense?
Because it opens the door to all sorts of aggressions against foreigners and Americans.
And it allows the politicians — most notably the leading members of the Bush administration — to pose as noble warriors against enemies that are really only Strawmen.
Charley Reese, in a recent LewRockwell.com article, quoted Dick Cheney as claiming a U.S. pullout from Iraq would leave it in the hands of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Osama Bin Laden, and/or Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Charley points out that "Zarqawi is a Jordanian, not an Iraqi; he has been denounced by his tribe and his family; and he has killed more Iraqis than Americans. It is just a matter of time before some Iraqi drops a dime on him and he’s packed off to Islamic hell."
But he’s a worthy Strawman, a bogey man, whose name is worth a hundred million dollars or more in Congressional appropriations.
Charley goes on, "As for bin Laden and his Egyptian adviser, they are — assuming they’re still alive — hiding out in some cave or rat-infested village in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They could not control a small town, much less a country of 25 million people of which neither of them is a native."
As we all know, the U.S. government has since World War II been financing and arming various foreign dictators — such as Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, the Shah of Iran, and others — only to denounce and attack them once they become wealthy and aggressive enough to be worthy Strawmen.
It’s also true that the U.S. government has financed and armed various opposition groups that supposedly represent the opportunity to topple the mean old dictators. Often these groups oppose each other, and engage in violence against one another. But no matter, the object of our government is to be doing something to fight a Strawman.
Robert Dreyfuss, in another excellent LewRockwell.com article, catalogs a number of the groups that opposed Saddam Hussein and are now battling for control of Iraq. There is far more than the Iraqi National Congress. The strongest groups are SCIRI (the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution), Al Dawa (The Islamic Call), SCIRI’s paramilitary arm, the Badr Brigade, the Muslim Brotherhood , represented by IIP (the Iraqi Islamic Party) — not to mention Al-Qaeda. The first three originated and are based in — guess where — Iran. In fact, SCIRI was founded in 1982 by Ayatollah Khomeini.
Today these groups are fighting each other as much as they’re fighting Iraqi insurgents, Americans, or Iraqi civilians. They regularly practice torture, assassinations, and other dastardly deeds upon one another. They are fighting to become the rulers of the new Iraq — the "democracy" that George Bush claims to be creating.
Is this what 2,000 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis have died for? Is this what $200 billion dollars has financed? Is this why we have given up so much of our freedom?
And whoever wins the battle to rule Iraq will eventually become Strawmen against whom the Bush administration can get on its horses and ride off to protect us.
There is no War on Terrorism. There is only a War on Strawmen, a War on Shadows, a War on Fantasies — allowing George Bush to do whatever he, or his advisors, choose to do.
It is time to quit pretending that the War in Iraq serves any purpose relating to world peace, democracy in the Middle East, the first line against terrorism, or any other salutary goal.
It is simply part of the War on Strawmen.
December 14 , 2005
Harry Browne [send him mail], the author of Why Government Doesn't Work and many other books, was the Libertarian presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000. See his website.
Copyright © 2005 Harry Browne
