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Any minute, in any place, the terrorists could strike. We’re the only ones who can save you. Vote for us.
In this the fifteenth successful year of the War on Terror, it is fitting that the leaders of a crumbling empire report to their terrified citizens on the hard-won battles that have been prosecuted in their names. Yesterday, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, did just that, with a forthright report to the oxymoronic Senate Intelligence Committee. Allow me to set the stage:
- For 15 years, the military power of the largest, richest, most advanced armed forces in the world, in the history of the world, have been deployed against a force of musket-wielding, Toyota-truck-driving desperadoes whose aggregate numbers have probably never exceeded the population of Winchester, Virginia.
- The United States has spent approximately $14 million per hour on this war, for 15 years — nearly two trillion dollars and counting — on an enemy that has no air force, no navy, no heavy missiles, no armor, no artillery, and not much money.
- On 9/11/2001, Al Qaeda had about 20,000 fighters. To punish them for their attack on the World Trade Center, we invaded two countries, killed an estimated 1.3 million people (that’s just in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan) and suffered 10,000 American fatalities.
Now to the gist of Director Brennan’s report on the state of play, with just a tad of paraphrasing:
- Today, ISIS has more fighters and holds more territory than Al Qaeda (the organization from which ISIS sprang) ever did. “Despite all our progress against ISIL on the battlefield,” Brennan said, with a completely straight face, “our efforts have not reduced the group’s terrorism capability and global reach.”
- Given that level of success, Brennan indicated that we intend to continue the same efforts, and the same spending levels, until, and here I am paraphrasing just a bit, hell freezes over.
- Should we expect ISIS to fold anytime soon? No, said Brennan, we should expect that it “will intensify its global terror campaign to maintain its dominance of the global terrorism agenda.”
Meanwhile, back at home, the war on domestic terror is having similar success. In just two years, 90 Americans have been charged with having something to do with ISIS. This is not nearly as many Americans as claim to have been abducted by extraterrestrials, but is still a significant number.
The bad news is that in at least two thirds of the cases brought, undercover FBI agents have suggested the alleged plot, often aggressively; have facilitated the plot with cash, transportation, and suggestions to people not obviously adept at problem-solving; and have provided weapons and explosives to people who would have trouble buying and using cell phones.
Former FBI undercover agent Michael German told The New York Times this week that his former colleagues target people who, as German put it, “are five steps away from being a danger to the United States.” They are, he says bluntly, “manufacturing terrorism cases.”
The typical targets of the FBI stingers are poor, unstable misfits many of whom suffer from, even are under treatment for, mental illness. In one 2012 case, the FBI, after laboriously talking Sammi Osmakac into becoming a terrorist, provided a camera and crew so he could record his martyrdom video, a “suicide belt” for him to wear to the Irish bar that was his target, an AK-47 assault rifle, a pistol — oh, and cab fare to the scene of the crime. Then they arrested him and called a news conference. Another victory in the war on terror.
Which continues.
Writing from a purely personal point of view, I find it impossible to conclude that any of the actors mentioned in the above piece are in any way working for “the people”, that group which according to the popular song and dance, ” governs itself” here in the USA.
Perhaps I just don’t understand what is meant by government “by the people and for the people”, perhaps the definition of “people” only includes those who actively aid and abet corruption, lies, and a false paradigm to profit from.
Maybe, it means just an incestuous oligarchy which justifies whatever excesses it wishes to indulge in with the fantasy that they are, in someones’ imagination, our “representatives”.
Its interesting, though, that my own representative admitted that Congress never read the pat act before approving it, and ramming its provisions down everyone’s’ throat with an out of control, theatrically challenged police state. I assume that the point of being a representative is to never read what you force onto your constituents. This, apparently, qualifies as doing a good job. Never mind the question, a good job on whom?
Domestic terrorism is obviously nothing more than contrived theater, mass shootings sans evidence, incoherent narratives and sleazy pay offs. Since this is the factual evidence, exactly who thinks that foreign terrorism is any different?
Great post Mr. Lewis and I agree with Mike Kay’s comment above.
At this point, it’s practically common knowledge that included in our military budget are funds to keep ISIS alive and well to do “our bidding” in Syria and elsewhere. There are videos and photos of Senator John McCain sitting in a meeting with these “folks” easily found on the internet.
The government of the U.S. of A(mnesia) have very little to do with the actual citizenry and are basically put there to do the bidding of corporate America/Wall Street. It’s been so for quite a while (since WWII, if not at the very beginning of the new country). Big ‘playas’ like Monsanto can put their minions in positions in the ‘watchdog agencies’ like the EPA or the FDA to basically facilitate their agenda.
They don’t get regulated, they make regulations that meet their needs.
The bloated, wasteful and rotting military industrial complex gets a free ride every time a budget comes up. They get the first and lion’s share of the dollars, and “we the people” get new enemies, more terror, and military hardware delivered to “our” police forces (so they can use it on who, exactly, isn’t stated), and less for any and all public programs including infrastructure maintenance. We’ve seen where this leads as bridges collapse, water mains burst and sewage treatment plants as well as electrical infrastructure lives on borrowed time.
If this is the paradigm we’ve been more or less forced into by the powers that be, we can clearly see the end in sight as everything from our currency to jobs to safety and health concerns all go by the wayside on our way down and out. The most disconcerting of all this is the fact that when the electrical grid goes down for good, most of us will be glowing in radiation from a failed nuclear plant within 50 miles of where we live (and the wafting of said radiation to everyplace else). It’s gonna be one hell of a collapse when it happens.
Dear Mr. Lewis – I just wanted to say how much I … enjoy? No, how much I get out of your columns. New information. Different ways of looking at things. I missed your posts, during your hiatus. Glad your back. Lew
The irony is that the USA and other countries cannot possibly long continue their war games because those operations are irrevoably using up the vast number of limited natural resources, including crude oil. This stark reality will start to hit hard in the near future. Of course, rapid climate disruption and ocean acidification and warming is one emerging symptom of what industrialized civilization has done wrong. The activities of the military/industrial complexes only makes the coping by society with what is bound to happen in the future more difficult.