THE LAST FIG LEAF:
BUSH’S FAKE ANTITERRORIST PROPAGANDA EXPOSED

Many of the reasons the Bush administration gave for the invasion of Iraq have long been discredited. But the last and final lynchpin, the raison d’etre, so to speak, for not only the Iraq mission, but also the entire homeland security agenda, is finally dissolving before our very eyes..

This is all due to a watershed article in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs, the preeminent journal of the foreign policy establishment. Written by John Mueller, an author and professor of political science at Ohio State University, it takes the seemingly radical position that the basis upon which the current administration has crafted its “War on Terrorism” is no more than a chimera.

In “Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?: The Myth of the Omnipresent Enemy,” Mueller asks why there have been no terrorist incidents in the United States during the past several years since 9/11. “One reasonable explanation,” Mueller says, “is that almost no terrorists exist in the United States and few have the means or the inclination to strike from abroad.”

“A fully credible explanation for the fact that the United States has suffered no terrorist attacks since 9/11,” Mueller continues,” is that the threat posed by homegrown or imported terrorists . . . has been massively exaggerated.”

Of course, Mueller is not the first to recognize that there is little substance to the so-called terrorist threat. But revelations such as these have until now been restricted to the alternative press, off-the-beaten-track web sites or far-left-of-center radio programming. I have to number my own web site (www.petersnewyork.com) among these. In late February of this year, in reaction to the prosecution of increasing numbers of Moslems on terrorism charges, I wrote:“There are few terrorists outside of those created by the American government, so to show that they are ‘doing their job,’ the prosecutors need to create more. These government stooges would have been better off pursuing careers at Disney Studios where their fertile imaginations would have been deployed more productively, or less destructively, as the case may be.. Not, mind you, that they could get a real job anywhere outside the Bush Administration.”

The other day, I was at a coffee bar in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, and a distraught woman sat near me at the counter. I was introduced to her by the barista, and she then unburdened herself about how distraught she had become after hearing that there were plots to bring down several airliners using liquid explosives sneaked onto airplanes in carry-on baggage. I quickly calmed her down and explained that it was all a sham, that there was no real terrorist threat, and that the entire affair was staged by the government. She thanked me, wondered why she had not thought of that herself, and went on her way a much happier person.

As another example of simmering discontent relating to the so-called "War on Terror, I would like to cite a column I came across on a recent visit to the Philippines.
“Many of us do not trust the government,” writes Ms. Johnna Gillaviray-Giolagon in the October 4, 2006 edition of the Manila Times. “We are relentlessly suspicious that the government will cheat and lie to us. We are convinced it will name anyone a terrorist–the jihadist, the communist, the secessionist, the activist, the military adventurist, the manicurist, the receptionist–so long as it suits government’s end. That’s why it’s doubly hard to protect us from the terrorist threat. We often see some in government as terrorists themselves.”

None of the above-cited examples are meant to upstage Mueller’s remarkable article, but just to say that to many, his conclusions are old news. His work is important, however, because he has deep roots within the foreign policy establishment.

The government has been perpetrating this fraud for decades. Those of us who are watchers of the way government has conducted its foreign policy, from Bush I through Clinton down to Bush II, are not surprised. The demonization of Osama bin Laden and his enlistment as the poster child for terrorist activity, for example, occurred at least as far back as the mid to late 1990s. In the mid 1990s, the jailing of the blind Islamic cleric, Omar Abdul Rahman, supposedly for plotting to blow up New York City landmarks, was laughable and fraudulent on its face. As criminals often return to the scene of the crime, the prosecutors of Rahmah did the same by charging Rahman's attorney, Lynne Stewart, with conspiracy to aid terrorism, a bogus case indeed. But with the 2001 destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, government fakery took on a more ominous tone.

Mueller clearly laments some of the developments since 9-11.

“In addition to massive eavesdropping and detention programs, every year some 30,000 ‘national security letters’ are issued without judicial review, forcing businesses and other institutions to disclose confidential information about their customers without telling anyone they have done so. That process has generated thousands of leads that, when pursued, have led nowhere.”

Mueller then touches upon the government’s massive interrogation and detention of Arabs and Muslims in this country since 9/11. “This activity, notes the Georgetown University law professor David Cole, has not resulted in a single conviction for a terrorist crime.”

It was all made up folks. Sorry to say. You were duped, at least most of you were. But were your senators and congressmen and women duped? How can they be that stupid?

Mueller concludes his riveting analysis on a rather dismal note. “Although it remains heretical to say so, the evidence so far suggests that fears of the omnipresent terrorist....may have been overblown, the threat presented within the United States greatly exaggerated. The massive and expensive homeland security apparatus erected since 9/11 may be persecuting some, spying on many, inconveniencing most, and taxing all to defend the United States against an enemy that scarcely exists.”

Expensive indeed! In fact, in a letter to U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in December of 2005, I recommended that "Homeland security and all items of legislation added in reaction to the tragedy of 9-11 should be repealed. Let me make this clear. Additional layers of bureaucracy are not a solution to bungling and irresponsibility."

Is it an accident that Mueller’s article gained top placement in a journal that prides itself as being at the forefront of public foreign policy discourse? Such may well be an indication that Foreign Affairs editor James F. Hoge had substantial support for its contents within the tight-knit foreign policy community he answers to. What is likely is that a substantial segment of the foreign policy community has finally committed itself to derailing the Bush Administration’s reckless campaign of war and pillage against the distressed nations of the Middle East.

There is more to be gleaned from this masterpiece. First of all, if we admit the truth of Mueller’s contention, one must say that the entire justification for Bush’s foreign and domestic policy relating to terrorism falls apart. We must then ask, what are the real reasons for mounting this fake “War on Terror”? Two come to mind. 1. Configure a Middle East that is friendly to the interests of those who are calling the shots on U.S. foreign policy. 2. Create a domestic program that would give the government the power and ability to squash any opposition to that program.

One more important point ought to be made, one Mueller seems unwilling to draw but that is a natural one. In the absence of a terrorist threat, how is one to suppose that 9-11 itself belongs to this category? Mueller’s contention would appear to lend indirect support the contention that the World Trade Center attacks were perpetrated, not by Islamic radicals, but by persons intimately linked to the defense and intelligence establishments. Perhaps his work will become a seed to crystalize a new investigation that will unmask the actual perpetrators of that fateful day.

POSTED 10/23/2006 by Peter Duveen