My Opinion on the war on terror.

Did this for school. It wasn't ATS so it didn't have to be entirely accurate - I do thinks for the MARK, nothing else. BTW, anyone who goes to my school and uses this, **** OFF!!! Snuck some Jesse Ventura into there too.

This speech is about terrorism, more importantly, the giant crusade known as the ‘war on terror’. Definitions of what a terrorist is vary, and many people apparently, do not understand what one it… An accurate definition if a terrorist would be… “One who incites terror to further their agenda.” Obviously Al Qaeda did this on 9/11, they destroyed a couple of buildings to try and coerce the United States out of Saudi Arabia and the American involvement in the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem, one of the most holy places in the Koran. Lesser known, however, the United States government could also be regarded as terrorists.

Although much of what I’m talking about applies to the United States, it applies to Australia, also. We have fought in very war with them since the second world war, we, and New Zealand, have a close military ties with them, in the form of ANZUS, or, Australia, New Zealand, U.S, Security treaty. Furthermore, the U.S is one of Australia’s prime exporting nations. Simply put, if they do badly, we do badly, and obviously that means –

• You get paid less
• You may not get a job
• We may kill thousands of people in some country nobody has heard of.
• Rights of freedom get taken away.
Obviously, all of those are very important, and have in actuality have, and are, taking place.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost over 16 billion dollars a month. By the time you add up all the costs since about 2001, the grand total goes up to three trillion dollars, or about three thousand, thousand, million dollars, or about all the combined money flow in Australia, Russia, and India, for a whole year – this amount of money can support one and a half billion people. So far, over 5000 coalition soldiers have been killed, above a thousand more than 9/11. That would not include 4000 Afghan security forces, 11000 Iraqi security forces, or 1200 contractors. That is a total of 22000 good guys killed, or about 7 times 9/11. Estimates on civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, range from 650,000, to over a million killed. At the low end of the scale, that’s 216 times 9/11, or one person killed every four minutes, for five years.

As always, context is everything. Should we multiply cases of terrorism and do it on other countries? Countries nobody has heard of, which have never been a threat to us, and never will? Furthermore, the attackers on 9/11 were from many, different, countries, with training organizations in more than forty other countries – the majority from Saudi Arabia. Maybe in World War 2, we should have invaded Thailand? After all, they’re Asian too, right? Furthermore, Al Qaeda are not a conventional army, they live in civilian populations, how would invading and changing the government make a difference? If we invade one country, why couldn’t they just move to one of the other forty countries?

Most domestic security measures would do much either. With the ‘advent’ of increased strength cockpit doors, 9/11 is not possible. Yet we spend huge sums of money to make us ‘safer’. Airport checkpoints are still useless; they don’t catch anything more than the odd lighter. We have acts like the Patriot Act, which make it legal for the government to detain people, with no proof, and no warrant, torture is also legal. Yet in Britain, since 9/11, 664 people have been detained on suspicion, but only 17 have been proven guilty, most of them with no connection to any Islamist group, and none of which had any connection of Al Qaeda.

Even with all this money spent, all these people killed, it is still relatively easy to terrorize people. For example, Philippine Airlines 434 proved it was possible to down airliners. In this case, Ramzi Yousef hollowed out the bottom of his shoe, and placed some explosives inside. He assembled the bomb in the bathroom and placed it above what he thought was the central fuel tank. He left, some hours later the bomb exploded. Luckily, the seating configuration was different than usual, and the bomb was not over the central fuel tank. Still, these bombs are difficult to detect, because no airport security is designed for it, and this remains the case.

Another example was the Lockerbie Disaster, a.k.a, Pan American flight 103. Undetectable explosives blew the aircraft to bits. 270 people were killed. Yet the explosives are still possible to obtain and still possible to get on board. Why are we detaining all these innocent people? Why are we increasing airport security for nothing? Another example would be the Washington sniper. An ex-marine sniper cut out a hole out of the boot of his car, and shot people with a sniper rifle out of it. He killed 17 people, practically brining three states in North Eastern United States, to a halt.

On the ground, Ramzi Yousef, AGAIN, filled a van with explosives and drove it into the World Trade Centre underground parking lot, killing six, injuring 1042. He was finally caught money months later, in Indonesia while cooking up another bomb. Smoke was billowing out of the room. If one motivated individual can create multiple bombs, don’t you think if there was really an organization for it, they could do more? Would increased airport security, or patriot act, stop any of this? Would invading countries stop this? No, no, and no. Police in another country caught him. On the contrary, General Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry division in Iraq, said...“ The Iraq conflict made America less safe now than it was on September 11, 2001.” And this holds true, attacks on United States military in the Middle East have tripled since we arrived there.

But, how should we fight terror? On September 19, 2008, the RAND Corporation presented the results of a comprehensive study for "Defeating Terrorist Groups" before the United States House Armed Services Committees. RAND's testimony began with the thesis statement "the United States cannot continue conducting an effective counter-terrorism campaign against al Qaeda without understanding how terrorist groups end." Their conclusions included strong proposals for strategic policy changes. "The U.S. military should generally resist being drawn into combat operations in Muslim countries where its presence is likely to increase terrorist recruitment." and recommended, "ending the notion of a 'war' on terrorism" and "Moving away from military references would indicate that there was no battlefield solution to countering terrorism." In conclusion the RAND study advised: "By far the most effective strategy against religious groups has been the use of local police and intelligence services, which were responsible for the end of 73 percent of terrorist groups since 1968."


[edit on 23/10/2008 by C0bzz]

[edit on 23/10/2008 by C0bzz]

[edit on 23/10/2008 by C0bzz]

Would George Bush and his cronies be terrorists? My answer would be yes, they match the definition for a terrorist, “one who incites terror to further their agenda”. They did, infact, incite terror. They used 9/11 as a scapegoat, and claimed Iraq was connected with Al Qaeda and had weapons of mass destruction. Yet in 2001, two years before invading Iraq, Secretary General, Colin Powell said… “He, Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability to respect to weapons of mass destruction”. Later, Powell went further and said Saddam had not been able to “build his military back up, or develop weapons of mass destruction”. Tony Blair conceded two weeks before the Iraq war that Saddam did not have any usable weapons of mass destruction. Whether it be by British, Australian, or U.S. military forces, no such weapons of mass destruction have ever been found. Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld claimed on “Meet the Press”, in 2001, that Al Qaeda controlled massive high tech cave complexes in Afghanistan, despite once again, British, Australian, or U.S. military forces, never found any such thing? They were, required by law, to prove it, yet in the pretext it practically had written “See, I done proved it”, written in the margin in Crayon.

Clearly, the current administration must have an actual reason for his war. Money. In March, 2001, the Bush administration began to have secret meetings with oil company executives from Exxon, Shell, and BP, spreading maps of Iraq oil fields before them. The Bush family and Vice President, Dick Cheney, are both connected with some of the worlds largest oil companies. Cheney? Ex-CEO of one of the world’s largest oil companies, Halliburton. On July 13, 2002, the Halliburton Company sent out a press release. “The Halliburton company is benefiting very directly from the United States effort to fight terrorism”… So, from building cells for (illegal) detainees at Guantanamo bay ($300 million dollars worth), to feeding American troops in ‘Uzbekistan’, a country with some of the highest natural gas reserves on the planet, to building a $474 million dollar U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Halliburton has it all. Some years later, the times news said…”The Pentagon is increasingly reliant on Halliburton as an exclusive logistics supplier, for both the army and navy, providing services like cooking, construction, power generation, and fuel transportation”. According to financial disclosure forms, Dick, was paid from Halliburton…:
• $205,298 in 2001
• $162,392 in 2002
• $178,437 in 2003
• $194,852 in 2004

Why is Cheney, one who, chickened out of serving in the military, not once, or twice, but five times during Vietnam, now coming back and being a hawk, calling the shots? Put the words together and we get, Chicken hawk. Why is an ex-ceo of an oil company invading a country a country with some of the largest oil reserves? Co-incidence? Is someone who is getting paid by oil companies going to do what they’re paid to do, or what’s best for the world? Following another oil company, Texaco’s complete environmental destruction of Ecuador, I’m starting to doubt the latter.

President Bush used his connections to get out of flying in Vietnam; instead he flew fighter jets in his backyard for a living. Some years later, Bush created Bush Exploration, another oil company. Why is this man president? Bush now goes to his dad, Bush senior, at the Carlyle group for consulting - the Carlyle group is a bank that specializes in the buyout of defense and aerospace companies, who are obviously benefiting hugely from wars. Infact, the Bin Laden family could profit from the War on terror, as they too, have ties with the Carlyle group… In Sept. 27, 2001, the wall street journal reported…”Bin Laden family could profit from jump in defense spending due to ties with US bank”. We finance the Arabs three times as much as we finance the Israelis. Is this a cycle? Step one; create your enemies like how Al Qaeda was funded by the United States to force the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Step two, fund your enemies; or two enemies. Step three, create war. Step four…PROFIT? That’s EXACTLY what’s happening now – and the new anti-terror laws make this even easier, because they can just silence there opposers by ‘illegally’ detaining them. The corruption just keeps going on and on, to include more oil companies, more aerospace companies, and more banks. Former CEO of world’s largest ‘defense’ company, Lockheed Martin, is now in a head position of the Pentagon.

The future still doesn’t look so bright, with the Republican U.S nomination going to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, possible Alzheimer’s sufferer, 72 year old, John McCain, who, in fact sides, with George Bush on almost everything. The Vice president nomination is going to borderline retarded, 83 I.Q. Sarah Palin. And the democratic nomination is going to Barrack Hussein Obama, who, at the least is grossly inexperienced, and at the most, has ties with terrorist groups. It is likely to be four more years of this nonsense. No thanks.

Unless we get rid of these idiots, or at least stop voting for them, we’re all going to be bankrupt, and many more will be killed. Trillions of dollars have already been spent; perhaps a million have been killed. For what? A bunch of Aerospace, or oil, companies? So far, the United States is ten trillion dollars in debt, or over thirty thousand dollars for every person in the United States. Banks rate McDonald’s more credit worth than the United States. Is this to continue? The money spent could easily spent on other, more important issues, like ACTUAL improved domestic security, the fight against global warming, solving world hunger. Infact, none of these combined would come close to what we’re spending now. If we stopped spending the money on the war, it would in fact make us safer. Or are people to continue to believe in nonsensical infotainment, like Fox – a media company whose leader has openly admitted to an agenda? Enough, is enough!

[edit on 23/10/2008 by C0bzz]

Very good post.Thank you.

How did your school react to this?