War on Terror

 War on Terror 

Date	7 October 2001 - Present
Type	front
Exposed by	Rod Thornton
Interest of	Active Change Foundation, Hilary Aked, Kevin Barrett, Josh Begley, George W. Bush, Peter Clarke, Dark Politricks, Francis Ghilès, François Heisbourg, David Hoffman, International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, Jeffrey Kaye, Norman Lamont, Le Cercle, Herbert Levine, Lowkey, Office of Strategic Influence, Operation Dark Winter, Steve Pieczenik, John Pilger, Daniel Pipes, Hanif Qadir, Quilliam Foundation, Russia/Deep state, SDS, The Truthseeker, UN/Office of Counter-Terrorism, Washington Conference on International Terrorism, Karel van Wolferen, Andy Worthington
Subpage	•War on Terror/Purposes
Description	The campaign, launched by the USA under the Presidency of George W. Bush with the support of the UK, and most NATO members (at least formally) and other Western-aligned countries. Nominally a response to the events of 11 September 2001, its stated objective is the elimination of so called 'terrorist organisations'.

Since "terror" and "terrorism" are not clearly defined, the term is so plastic as to be close to meaningless, but it continues as a slogan under which civil liberties are rolled back by politicians.

Official Narrative

In response to increasingly violent and radicalised opposition by a small but determined number who are ruthlessly using technology, national governments, especially those under the hegemony of the US/UK/NATO are increasingly being forced to resort to more ruthless counter measures to protect the welfare of the majority of their citizens.

Problems

Most obviously "terrorism" is never precisely defined, only vaguely alluded to, alongside stereotypical images of "Islamic extremists". Earlier terrorism episodes (such as IRA, for example) were treated differently and not exploited to promote fear amongst the population. The risk of death or injury from terrorism is tiny, in almost all (if not all) countries of the world, yet the commercially-controlled media continuously play it up.

Alternative view

The "War on Terror" dogma has been neatly adopted by the military-industrial-congressional complex as a pretext for their continued existence (and expansion) after the obvious (and to a certain extent real) dangers of the cold war have subsided. A lot of evidence points to the deliberate instigation of 'terrorist' attacks to promote the concept of the "war on terror" to achieve a number of aims, including the furtherance of a 'One-World governance' agenda.

Sir Ivor Roberts, former UK ambassador in Rome, noted in 2004 that George W Bush was "al-Qa'ida's best recruiting sergeant". In 2007, he gave a valedictory telegram which was "curtly dismissive" of the war on terror. The response from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office gave no reply about the substance of the telegram but banned the century-old practice of valedictory telegrams from British envoys.

Purposes

The war on terror serves many purposes. By promoting a state of low level fear amongst fear

Spreading terror

Most obviously, terrorising a population is a means of disabling them, rendering them mentally (and in the longer term, also physically) ill. This can be expected to hamper peoples efforts to uncover and publicise crimes such as those of the cabal.

Increasing censorship

Full article: Censorship

Governments involved in the "war on terror" are increasingly seeking to censor information rather than trying to explain the serious discrepancies between the official narrative and the observable (and now, with modern communication technology, also easily broadcastable) real world. For example, the UK government, is seeking to ban web content that - although legal - it deems to be "unsavoury". In USA, FOIA requests have become become more or less useless due to exemptions made for "national security".

Rolling back Civil Liberties

The "War on Terror" is serving as a pretext for rolling back civil liberties including habeus corpus, the freedom from unlawful search and seizure or the absolute ban on torture. Western governments have repeatedly drafted legislation in vague legal terms, presenting it in the context of Islamic terrorism and once it is passed, then applying it to so-called "domestic terrorists", abusing the deliberately plastic nature of the concept.

Mass surveillance

Full article: Mass surveillance

After the Edward Snowden Affair, widespread mass surveillance by the NSA and other government agencies is now widely known to have been carried out illegally for years. There is no serious discussion in the commercially-controlled media of legal proceedings against the perpetrators, and the discussion is framed in the context of the "war on terror".

Forced disappearance

Full article: Forced disappearance

In contravention of international human rights law, many national governments have been engaging (and also attempting to legalize) the forced disappearance of their own citizens, or other other "terrorist suspects" within (or particularly in the case of the US also outside) their borders. A variety of legal tactics are employed to muddy the waters, and the commercially-controlled media is generally complicit in its failure to clearly report such cases.

Extraordinary rendition

Full article: “Extraordinary rendition”

In fact far from extraordinary, what the commercially-controlled media refer to as "extraordinary rendition" is used increasingly commonly under the "War on Terror" rhetoric. It is basically the forced deportation of a victim from one legal jurisdiction into another, e.g. to circumvent legal obstacles to their torture.

Torture

Full article: Torture

The commercially-controlled media have repeatedly invoked the bogus 'ticking time bomb' scenario in an apparent effort to promote public acceptance of the re-legalisation of torture, irrespective of the unreasonableness of this situation. The fact that torture has other purposes (such as the creation of bogus intelligence and the terrorisation of subject populations) is seldom if ever mentioned by big media. in 2014 US President Barack Obama casually admitted "We tortured some folks", but did not go on to make the (legally obvious) point that this meant crimes had been broken and that people would be charged as a result.

Indefinite detention

Full article: Indefinite detention

Indefinite detention, another course of action which in the 20th century was widely understood to be off the agenda, is increasingly being used in the 21st century, particularly against "illegal immigrants" as well as "suspected terrorists". Australia was ahead of the curve in passing a 1994 which explicits permits this, while the UK passed legislation to the same effect in 2006. Indefinite detention was an aspect of the 2012 NDAA which Chris Hedges challenged, but which deemed legal by the US Supreme Court in April 2014.

Assassination

Full article: Assassination

Rebranded "targeted killing" just as torture was rebranded "extreme interrogation", regimes such as US under President Obama have claimed, since their murder of Anwar al-Awlaki came to light, that they have the legal right to kill anyone they deem as a "terrorist" suspect, with no judicial process needed.

Financial gain

The "anti-terrorism" industry has enjoyed burgeoning profits.

Cover for future crimes

The presence of fictional terrorists facilitates crimes such as bombings to kill people or destroy embarrassing evidence.

Perpetrators

The timing of the war on terror - just after the end of the cold war would suggest the involvement of the permanent war machine. The rollout seems to be widespread, but fastest in anglophone countries, perhaps suggesting leadership from UK or US, both of which have been agressive in the rolling back of civil liberties.

Deep State

The deep state may well have been key players in initiating the war on terror. They are responsible for maintaining it through false flag attacks, and are supported by commercially-controlled media. Many other groups have no doubt seen it for what it is, but have gone along with it for their own selfish purposes. Russia Today produced an interesting video about Operation Gladio and 9/11. Although still available elsewhere, it is interesting that in Summer 2014 it was removed with all other "Truthseeker" videos.

Controlled media

Full article: Corporate media

Never mind the fact that to wage a war on a tactic (such as "terrorism") is nonsensical, it is blatantly counterproductive to use terrorist methods such as assassination, torture and indefinite detention to do so. Such hypocricy would not be feasible if people were well informed and able to think clearly about the world around them. The commercially-controlled media, especially in the US, has long been complicit in an organised effort to keep people fearful and misinformed. The BBC' Adam Curtis produced a recommended video series The Power Of Nightmares, which suggested that Al Qaeda was a name created by the US government.

 

An example

Page name	Description
2015 Hawija bombing	A bombing of an IED plant that was ordered under suspicious circumstances went awry. Dutch Cabinet denied involvement, then denied any knowledge of the casualties until Dutch FOIA requests showed otherwise.

 

A “War on Terror” victim on Wikispooks

Title	Description
Rafil Dhafir	Us Muslim doctor persecuted by the US justice system for providing humanitarian aid to sanctioned Iraq.

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
"Islamophobia"	“"terrorism" in the post-9/11 American vernacular has become shorthand for "Islamic terrorism."”	Gregory Krieg	2 April 2017
"Racism"	“Chinese authorities, bolstered by technology, arbitrarily and indefinitely detaining Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang en masse for actions and behavior that are not crimes under Chinese law. And yet Chinese authorities continue to make wildly inaccurate claims that their “sophisticated” systems are keeping Xinjiang safe by “targeting” terrorists “with precision.””		1 May 2019
"Strike Hard Campaign"	“Credible estimates indicate that under this heightened repression, up to one million people are being held in “political education” camps. The government’s “Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism” (Strike Hard Campaign, 严厉打击暴力恐怖活动专项行动) has turned Xinjiang into one of China’s major centers for using innovative technologies for social control.”		1 May 2019
"Terrorism"	“Terrorism is not really an '-ism'. There's no connection between the Sandinistas who fought the Contras and Al Qaida or Colombia's FARC and fisherman turned pirates in Africa and Asia, yet they are all called "terrorists". That's just a convenient way for your government to convince the world that there is another enemy '-ism' out there, like communism used to be. It diverts attention from the very real problems. Our narrow-minded attitudes and the resultant policies foment violence, rebellion and wars. In the long run, almost noone benefits from attacking the people we label as "terrorists", with one, glaring exception:- the corporatocracy. Those who own and run the companies that build the ships, missiles and armoured vehicles, make guns, uniforms and bulletproof vests, distribute food, soft drinks and ammunition, provide insurance, medicines and toilet paper, constructions ports, airstrips and housing and reconstruct devastated villages, schools, factories and hospitals. They, and only they, are the big winners. The rest of us are hoodwinked by that one, loaded word "terrorist". The current economic collapse has awakened us to the importance of regulating and reining in the people who control the businesses that benefit from the misuse of words like "terrorism" and who perpetrate other scams. We recognize today that white collar executives are not a special, incorruptible breed.”	Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann
Black Lives Matter	“This country is built upon violence. What was the American Revolution, what's our diplomacy across the globe? We go in and we blow up countries and we replace their leaders with leaders who we like. So for any American to accuse us of being violent is extremely hypocritical”		2020
Robin Cook	“So long as the struggle against terrorism is perceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail. The more the West emphasises confrontation, the more it silences moderate voices in the Muslim world who want to speak up for cooperation.”	Robin Cook	8 July 2005
Corporate media/Islamophobia	“Terrorism cannot be defeated because it’s not an enemy, it’s a tactic. A war against Al Qaida is sensible and supportable, but a war against a tactic is ludicrous and hurtful... a propaganda ploy to swindle others into supporting one’s own terrorism ... and encourages prejudices against Muslims everywhere. What if we said “Catholic Christian IRA hitmen” ?”	William Odom	2006
Tom Cotton	“Waterboarding isn’t torture. We do waterboarding on our own soldiers in the military.”	Tom Cotton
Tom Cotton	“The only problem with Guantanamo Bay is that there are too many empty cells... as far as I’m concerned, every last one of them can rot in hell. But as long as they don’t do that, then they can rot in Guantanamo Bay.”	Tom Cotton
Document:The First 9-11 Sceptic	“We are going to see a great number of articles in the future from so-called experts and public officials. They will warn about more violence, more kidnappings, and more terrorists. Mass media, the armed forces, and intelligence agencies will saturate our lives with fascist scare tactics and 'predictions' that have already been planned to come true.”	Mae Brussell	1974
Tom Fuentes	“If you’re submitting budget proposals for a law enforcement agency, for an intelligence agency, you’re not going to submit the proposal that “We won the war on terror and everything’s great,” cuz the first thing that’s gonna happen is your budget’s gonna be cut in half. You know, it’s my opposite of Jesse Jackson’s ‘Keep Hope Alive’”	Tom Fuentes	2009
Francis Ghilès	“Fifteen years after 9/11 we are nowhere close to the end of the War on Terror... ISIS is a long-term threat to the region and the outside world.”	Francis Ghilès	26 June 2016
Internet/Censorship	“For some time to come, the delicate balance between freedom and security may have to shift”	Tony Abbott	September 2014
Fatima Lahnait	“Spain remains a target for Islamist extremists. Moreover, like other European countries, it is now facing an increasing radicalisation phenomenon that may lead to violent extremism and home-grown Islamist terrorism.”	Fatima Lahnait	2018
McCarthyism	“Just as the Palmer Raids turned up no actual bombers and the McCarthy era tactics identified few spies or saboteurs, so also the government's yield of actual terrorists from its current preventive detention program has been staggeringly small. According to Ashcroft, all of the detainees were "suspected terrorists." Yet of the approximately two thousand persons, only four have been charged with any crime relating to terrorism. None has been charged with involvement in the September 11 crimes, and the vast majority have been affirmatively cleared of any criminal charges by the FBI. As noted above, the government's policy has been to release and/or deport detainees only after the FBI has cleared them. Yet as of October 2002, Attorney General Ashcroft announced that the INS had deported 431 detainees, and in July 2002, the Justice Department reported that only eighty-one individuals remained in immigration detention. Thus, by the government's own account, virtually none of those detained as "suspected terrorists" turned out to be terrorists.”	David Cole	2003
Nice truck event	“Democracy must not be weak, nor simply commemorate. Democracy must say "We will win the war."”	Nicolas Sarkozy	July 2016
Perpetual war	“I am running out of villains. I am running out of demons. I’m down to Castro and Kim Il Sung.”	Colin Powell	9 April 1991
Mike Pompeo	“I was a cadet, what's the cadet motto at West Point? You will not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do. I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”	Mike Pompeo	April 2019
Vladimir Putin	“Western countries have been saying for centuries that they bring freedom and democracy to other nations. Nothing could be further from the truth. Instead of bringing democracy they suppressed and exploited, and instead of giving freedom they enslaved and oppressed. The unipolar world is inherently anti-democratic and unfree; it is false and hypocritical through and through. The United States is the only country in the world that has used nuclear weapons twice, destroying the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. And they created a precedent. Recall that during WWII the United States and Britain reduced Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne and many other German cities to rubble, without the least military necessity. It was done ostentatiously and, to repeat, without any military necessity. They had only one goal, as with the nuclear bombing of Japanese cities: to intimidate our country and the rest of the world. The United States left a deep scar in the memory of the people of Korea and Vietnam with their carpet bombings and use of napalm and chemical weapons. It actually continues to occupy Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea and other countries, which they cynically refer to as equals and allies. Look now, what kind of alliance is that? The whole world knows that the top officials in these countries are being spied on and that their offices and homes are bugged. It is a disgrace, a disgrace for those who do this and for those who, like slaves, silently and meekly swallow this arrogant behaviour. They call the orders and threats they make to their vassals Euro-Atlantic solidarity, and the creation of biological weapons and the use of human test subjects, including in Ukraine, noble medical research. It is their destructive policies, wars and plunder that have unleashed today’s massive wave of migrants. Millions of people endure hardships and humiliation or die by the thousands trying to reach Europe.”	Vladimir Putin	2022
Coleen Rowley	“I began a long time ago right after 9/11 being appalled by the fact that this cover-up was beginning, and then seeing this so-called war on terror began, and again had very little connection to what I knew what was behind that the terrorist attacks, and seeing "terrorism" grow. In the world right now if we wanted to be safer you do something, but you don’t do something that makes the problem worse.”	Coleen Rowley
Xinjiang	“Chinese authorities continue to make wildly inaccurate claims that their “sophisticated” systems are keeping Xinjiang safe by “targeting” terrorists “with precision.””		1 May 2019

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:A lesson from Brussels we refuse to learn	article	24 March 2016	Jonathan Cook	Commentary on the shortcomings of a Simon Jenkins article on the Mass murder in Brussels
Document:America's non-compliance	article	29 April 2010	Gareth Peirce
Document:Bloody US-Directed Raid Destabilizes Philippine Politics	article	1 March 2015	Walden Bello	American fingerprints are all over a botched commando raid in the southern Philippines that left dozens dead and shocked the country.
Document:How Al Qaeda men came to power in Libya	article	7 September 2011	Thierry Meyssan
Document:Sins of Statecraft - The War on Terror Exposed	paper	29 July 2006	Brian Bogart
Document:The 20-year war on Afghanistan was a mistake	Speech	18 August 2021	Zarah Sultana	Speaking outside Parliament on 18 August 2021, prior to the Afghanistan emergency debate, Zarah Sultana joined colleagues including Jeremy Corbyn to say: "The war on Afghanistan shows – once and for all – that the West cannot deliver liberal democracy at the barrel of a gun. This war – the first 'War on Terror' – must be Britain's last war of aggression."
Document:The First 9-11 Sceptic	article	12 September 2001	David McGowan	Written whilst the events of 11 September 2001 were still unfolding, posted on the author's web site the following morning, qualifying it as probably the first sceptic post to hit the internet.
Document:The International Terrorist Threat and the Dilemas in Countering it	speech	1 September 2005	Eliza Manningham-Buller	A promotion of The War On Terror from the head of UK's MI5. "The world has changed"... etc.
Document:The Politics of Terror	article	31 August 2010	Douglas Valentine
Document:The War on Conspiracy Realists Continues	article	24 July 2015	Brandon Martinez	A useful run-down on the Orwellian absurdity of recently announced UK government measures to 'combat extremism' which in practice mean to make life difficult for people who effectively question the Official Narrative on the War on Terror
Document:The War on Terror	article	16 October 2010	Paul Craig Roberts
Document:The bloody legacy of Bomber Blair	Article	1 January 2022	Alex Snowdon	"Petition for Tony Blair to have his 'Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter' rescinded" Such an honour rests upon expecting us to conveniently forget or ignore the enormous damage that Blair did. People are right to be angry.
Document:The political trial of a caring man and the end of justice in America	article	8 November 2012	John Pilger	The story of a particularly egregious example of the blind sanctimonious viciousness that the US judicial system reserves for Muslims deemed to have impeded US foreign policy objectives.
Document:The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means	article	8 July 2005	Robin Cook	Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west.
Document:US holds world record for the killing of innocent civilians	Interview transcript	29 July 2014	John McMurtry	A wide-ranging interview with Prof. John McMurtry that pulls no punches about the moral bankruptcy of the US globalising elite and its accomplices, allies and self-serving lackies. It covers the US War on Terror project, its military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the 9-11 attacks.
Document:United Nations Security Council and European Union blacklists	webpage	16 November 2007	Dick Marty
Document:Vladimir Putin Interview	interview	5 September 2013	Vladimir Putin	Press interview with Vladimir Putin ahead of the September 2013 G20 meeting in St Petersburg
Document:War and Peace - The Lost Principles of Science and Value	article	17 June 2015	John McMurtry	A wide-ranging critique of the techniques of globalisation and the way in which apparently otherwise well-meaning western NGOs frame the worlds problems in US war propaganda terms
Document:We Are The Bad Guys	blog post	12 August 2024	Craig Murray	In the United Kingdom it falls to the Celtic nations to try to break up the state which is a subordinate but important imperialist engine. The paths of resistance are various, depending where you are. But find one and take one.
Document:Wolfowitz Directive Gave Legal Cover to Detainee Experimentation Program	article	14 October 2010	Jason Leopold Jeffrey Kaye
File:A case to answer.pdf	report	2008	Amnesty International	An Amnesty International report on the 40 month long detention and rendition of Khaled al-Maqtari, a 25 year old Saudi national at the time of his arrest in Fallujah, Iraq in January 2004.
File:ICJ report 16-2-09.pdf	report	2009		This report of the Eminent Jurists Panel, based on one a comprehensive surveys on counter-terrorism and human rights, illustrates how 9-11 has influenced the rollback of civil liberties.
File:PSR Body Count.pdf	report	15 March 2015	IPPNW	Casualty figures for the 'War on Terror' after 10 years
File:The Politics of Fear and SCADs.pdf	paper	February 2010	Kym Thorne Alexander Kouzmin
The Power of Nightmares	film	2004	Adam Curtis	A some-holds-barred look at how fear has come to dominate politics in America, Britain and around the world — which observes that much of that fear is based on an illusion.

Rating

2 July 2016 Robin  Everyone should be familiar with this back story
The "War on Terror" is not a mistake, nor did it begin in 2001 in response to 9/11. This page clears up a number of misconceptions about this so-called "war" which like the "war on drugs" was designed to be endless.

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.

See Also

• Collection of radio shows on the 'War on Terror'