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May 21, 2013
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 Recognize That It’s OverPosted on Sep 8, 2011The war our enemies began on Sept. 11, 2001, is long over. Perhaps now, after 10 years of anxiety and self-doubt, we can acknowledge our victory and begin the postwar renewal and reconciliation that the nation so desperately needs. There never was a “war on terrorism.” It wasn’t “terrorism” that crashed airliners into buildings on that brilliant Tuesday morning. The attacks were carried out by a 19-member assault team from al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization then being sheltered by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. There most definitely was a war against al-Qaeda, and we won. Within four months, U.S. invasion forces had routed the Taliban and scattered what was left of al-Qaeda to the four winds. Maybe that was the moment we should have recognized our victory. Maybe it was March 1, 2003, when Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the man most responsible for designing and orchestrating the 9/11 attacks, was captured. Or maybe it was the moment in 2004 when Afghanistan’s fledgling democracy held its first presidential election. By the middle of the decade, we had accomplished every rational goal of the war that 9/11 began. Al-Qaeda’s leader and founder, Osama bin Laden, was still at large, but this meant we needed to conduct a continuing manhunt, not a continuing war. We should have recognized this distinction. We couldn’t, though, because George W. Bush and Dick Cheney plunged us into an unnecessary war in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was one of the most bloodthirsty, power-mad despots on the planet, but he had nothing to do with 9/11. He had no weapons of mass destruction. Even if he had possessed WMD, there was no reason to think he would target the United States. Advertisement The most painful cost, of course, is the more than 6,000 deaths and tens of thousands of grievous injuries that our armed forces have suffered. Other military families have endured multiple deployments and “stop-loss” extensions; returning veterans are at elevated risk for stress-related disorders, divorce, unemployment, even homelessness. The hundreds of billions of dollars that have been poured into the sinkhole of perpetual war contribute substantially to the nation’s enervating fiscal woes. But the problem isn’t the squandering of resources. It’s that we’re stuck in a dour, wartime mindset that in many ways resembles clinical depression. We can agree on what needs to be done to get the country back on a rising trajectory. We need to improve the schools. We need to refurbish the infrastructure. We need to jump-start the economy and also reduce our long-term debt. We need to agree on ways to accomplish this agenda through vigorous political debate—not grinding grudge matches in which the other party’s destruction is given priority over the nation’s well-being. Yet here we are—for all intents and purposes, paralyzed. Voters swing violently to the left, then two years later they swing violently to the right; if they could, one recent poll said, they’d kick out every single member of Congress and start over. I’m confident they wouldn’t like the replacements any better. It’s hard to overstate the extent to which the 9/11 attacks magnified the nation’s anxieties—not just about terrorism, but more generally about the future. Perpetual war produces a state of mind in which differences of opinion become questions of patriotism, adversaries become enemies, and ideological territory must be defended inch by inch. Now, after 10 long years, perhaps we can finally get unstuck. Bin Laden is dead, his terrorist organization in shreds. The al-Qaeda that attacked us on 9/11 is defeated. This does not mean there will never be another terrorist attack—or even that attacks might be attempted by miscreants who claim to fight under the al-Qaeda banner. For years to come, perhaps indefinitely, intelligence and military assets will have to be deployed to try to detect and prevent new atrocities. This activity doesn’t yet have a name—but whatever it is, it isn’t war. The state of war that the nation entered after 9/11 should have ended years ago. Let’s end it now. Remember the way this all started, look again at those horrific images from 9/11, and then remember: We won. Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com.  TAGS:
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Too Soon to Tell: The Case for Hope, Continued
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By Alan Lunn, September 21, 2011 at 4:47 pm Link to this comment
There never was a “war on terrorism.” What we had
Report thisinstead was a climate of fear in America while an
inverted totalitarianism by a managing elite steering
our “democracy” and our government over a cliff with a
cheering section of maybe 1/5 of Americans made up of
gullible fundamentalists while the wealthiest few were
slobbering over the spoils. You couldn’t have had any
more skillful ruination of democracy if it were an
actual conspiracy (and, in a way, it was—it was in
the Roger Ailes playbook all along).
By drbhelthi, September 15, 2011 at 3:18 am Link to this comment
“what r u smokin’ mate?” basho
Certainly not a natural cannabis product.
Must be cocaine from the Beka Valley, protected by the USMILITARY, and imported via US aircraft.
No special agents are required to stop such treason, the reason for the PanAmerican 747 blown out of the sky above Lockerbie by the C.I.A. Two U.S.Military officers or NCOs, would do the job nicely. However, careful selection of whom to reveal such information is required. We don´t want two fine US Army officers or NCOs to receive a 3-round burst to the forehead, similar to Corporal Pat Tillman. Revealing such plans to “buddies” can be deathly.
Report thisBy basho, September 15, 2011 at 12:32 am Link to this comment
‘There most definitely was a war against al-Qaeda, and we won.’
what r u smokin’ mate?
Report thisBy Birch, September 12, 2011 at 3:47 pm Link to this comment
Poor dear, Eugene, how confusing it must be to be imprisoned
Report thisinside the box provided by the US government and our economic
elites. “Terrorism” was just the replacement motif for
“communism.” When “terrorism” or al-qaeda run their course,
they will come up with some other threat to keep the good times
rolling along and the American public in a permanent state of
fear and paranoia. It doesn’t really matter what the theme is, as
long as it’s profitable for our economic masters. You remember?
Perpetual war for perpetual peace. Winning? Losing? East Asia?
West Asia? It really doesn’t matter as long as the game goes on.
By Anarcissie, September 12, 2011 at 7:11 am Link to this comment
Osama won even if he was a character from A Thousand And One Nights.
Report thisBy drbhelthi, September 12, 2011 at 12:53 am Link to this comment
“In any case, as many people commenting on this article have noted, the United States did not win; bin Laden won.” By Anarcissie, September 10 at 6:12 pm
Wrong.
Records are available to evidence that Osama bin Laden was hired by George H.W. Bush Sr. in the 1970s to act as a Muslim scapegoat. Which he did nicely for thirty plus years. At about the same time, Bush elevated the Saudi family to majestic status. Insider recordings are also available to prove that Osama bin Laden was on a dialysis machine and approaching
death on 11 Sep 2001. His death, reported by a C.I.A. M.D. physician was 19 Dec 2001. Osama bin Laden was listed as a C.I.A. operative. Much additional revealing information is in print and available, some of which is on-line.
It is a sad event in the history of the USNAVY and the SEAL that the Obama hollywood-falsification administration abused the history of the SEAL. All insiders and former insiders are aware of the approximate date of Osama bin Laden´s demise. That the Kenyan-born Brit, “Obama” would stoop to again mislead the world regarding bin Laden, further displays his
Report thisdishonesty, and the movement to bankrupt and dissolve the U.S.A. Which behavior is typical of the WWII NAZI element of the C.I.A., the sponsor of both sides of his parentage, and his employer since the age of twenty.
By David K. Sutton, September 12, 2011 at 12:26 am Link to this comment
It is so true that wars are much easier to start than
Report thisend. Whether they are fake wars like the war on
terrorism or war on drugs or real wars like Iraq or
Afghanistan.
By litlpeep, September 11, 2011 at 11:11 pm Link to this comment
“We’re a great and resilient country, and there’s no reason to react with fear or let that take us off our game plan.”
Really? The game plan seems to be working magnificently for the winners.
It is only the 95% who are losers that don’t see it as an other than resilient country, with an other than constitutional game plan.
What could the 5% who are the winners care about them?
Report thisBy litlpeep, September 11, 2011 at 11:07 pm Link to this comment
The war never was on terror, or terrorism, and the illiterate have had it for a decade. But the war on America has done one thing in spades.
It has revealed that Americanism is an evil culture, that the cult leaders get uglier with every election, and that those leaders come primarily from one party though they get lots of cooperation from the other party.
So we should be happy the cult is doing all it can to reveal its own evil character, and succeeding in spades as well as in dollars.
Report thisBy Basoflakes, September 11, 2011 at 1:37 pm Link to this comment
There are a lot of good articles on Truthdig today, but this one has a false premise - that we won.
Now, if we would have continued the initial Afghan attacks against al Qaeda started within weeks of 9/11, we could have found Bin Laden for less than $1 Billion, and have been out of there in a few years. But, of course, since the Downing Street memo, we know that al Qaeda was never the real objective.
But, with hundred of thousands of dead Muslims in our wake in Iraq and Afghanistan, millions refugeed, and no sign of real recovery there, it is clear that we have been breeding enemies in all Muslim countries since March of 2003.
We won? Not bloody likely.
Report thisBy Clash, September 11, 2011 at 12:00 pm Link to this comment
It is difficult to differentiate or recognize for some, to what is now myth, actually only social custom. Truth, justice and the American way, democratic constitutional republic, these are the myths stupidity holds tight to. They are unnecessary now to the ruling class. It is disturbing, but not unforeseeable when observing the culture that proliferated them.
No one won, I think no one would even recognize winning, but this is not due to the causes that many posit. These causes are yet to be known, and yes maybe never to be truly understood. Yet the war still rages, darkness apposes enlightenment. Stupidity reigns and even the humans can not agree to what page they should be on.
The word war is harsh, I don’t think it applies in an enlightened view, harsher yet is what I think is closer to the truth, as humans, surrounded by a culture that is at war with life have no recourse as they control no resources. Those that have given their humanness away for the industrial culture include violence, abuse, and murder in their ideal reality, a reality were everything must destroyed or dead. These creatures have no mercy as stupidity is their mantra. While humans are divided and inflicted by the paralysis of the poison of the culture they stand no chance of “winning”.
Report thisBy Anarcissie, September 10, 2011 at 6:12 pm Link to this comment
In any case, as many people commenting on this article have noted, the United States did not win; bin Laden won. Even as I’m writing this, after sixty years of imperialism and ten years of the ‘War On Terror’, New York City is in virtual lockdown mode; elsewhere, Americans are shaking in their boots, raging in taverns, or sitting home staring at the bills on the kitchen table and wondering when the unemployment will run out. The nation’s influence and wealth have slipped away. But it was ‘our’ own doing, that is, the work of our great leaders and their many eager servants and sycophants. As one of my friends said last night, ‘We built the toilet; Osama just pulled the chain.’
Report thisBy Clash, September 10, 2011 at 9:05 am Link to this comment
What did we win again? Robinson is one hell of a crappy propagandist for the emperor. Stupidity knows no bounds.
Report thisBy Archie1954, September 9, 2011 at 1:21 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Unfortunately the US did not win against al Queda and in fact because of US military attacks against al Queda and Afghanistan, that little band of extremist Muslims grew exponentially into an actual force to be reckoned with and has now morphed into a number of dangerous multi pronged terrorist units which maintain only sporadic communication with each other. The Taliban as I remember did not protect al Queda when the US came looking for them. That de facto but not de juris government of parts of Afghanistan asked the US for the evidence that al Queda was responsible for 911 before it would turn them over (if it could even find them) and Bush, not only didn’t send any evidence he simply attacked, invaded and occupied portions of the country. The US has been al Queda’s best friend from the early days when the CIA assisted with its formation to fight the Soviets to recently when American operations in the Middle East served as the best recruiting tool for that group of terrorists since the history of its founding.
Report thisBy gerard, September 9, 2011 at 10:20 am Link to this comment
Oh, please! Mr. Robinson, don’t you recognize that the language of “It’s over and we won!” is the language of war, not of reconciliation and peace of mind. Not of accurate analysis with a view toward
Report thisconstructive change. Not of wisdom and justice.
By EmileZ, September 9, 2011 at 10:12 am Link to this comment
knock knock
who’s there?
9/11
9/11 who?
Report thisBy felicity, September 9, 2011 at 10:00 am Link to this comment
It must be admitted that waging a ‘war’ against an
abstract noun, terrorism, defies all reason. Of
course, Mailer had it right when he said, “Fighting a
war to ‘fix’ something works about as well as going
to a whorehouse to get rid of the clap.”
Finally, the invasion of Iraq was the most evil
Report thiscalculation in American history. With Bush’s numbers
falling, with binLaden apparently not to be caught,
Bush needed a ‘proper’ war, a number raiser, an evil
doer. How sinister is this. Why was Iraq attacked
in March? Because you don’t launch a new product in
August.
By SoTexGuy, September 9, 2011 at 4:41 am Link to this comment
Tom Englehart said it best:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175437/tomgram:_engelhardt,_tear_down_the_freedom_tower/#more
Report thisBy Billy Pilgrim, September 9, 2011 at 4:08 am Link to this comment
“We won”. Yes, Eugene. The thousands of dead and
Report thismaimed, the millions of displaced; the crushed economy;
the homeless and jobless; the duped; the foreclosed; we
all won. We won. Just like the over 200 million souls
who perished in our prior century of imperialist wars
fought to uphold the capitalist takeover of the planet.
The stupid; the maimed; the blinded; the gassed; the
millions of soldiers lying in peaceful graves in
Northern France and Belgium, who went over the top to
stupid deaths; how brave they were.
By drbhelthi, September 9, 2011 at 2:58 am Link to this comment
Incorrect.
It is only approximately 7/8th over.
If the first four paragraphs of C.I.A. “Disinformation Program” info are omitted, the remainder is reasonably accurate. – although slanted in places. Obviously, a split-salary problem for comrade Robinson: 50% CIA, 50/% Truthdig.
“We couldn’t, though, because George W. Bush and Dick Cheney plunged us into an unnecessary war in Iraq.” This statement suggests that these two have been singled out of the GHWBushSr entourage to be scape goated with the Iraq debacle.
The Iraq debacle is falsely viewed as the precedent to the current “War on Terror”, which is a falsification of the “entourage” of GHWBushSr. All of which propaganda has been revewled by former C.I.A. Station Manager, John Stockwell, and designated to be false propaganda. Stockwell explains the history: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9VxnCBD9W4
Obama gave a fore warning to Congress, “Americans don´t have 14 months.”
Report thisIs there an insider honest enough to reveal the remaining 1/8 of the destruction plan? Perhaps a C.I.A. or N.S.A. asset who is a patriotic American at heart?
By drbhelthi, September 9, 2011 at 2:42 am Link to this comment
Incorrect.
It is only approximately 7/8th over.
If the first four paragraphs of C.I.A. “Disinformation Program” info are omitted, the remainder is reasonably accurate. – although slanted in places. Obviously, a split-salary problem for comrade Robinson: 50% CIA, 50/% Truthdig.
“We couldn’t, though, because George W. Bush and Dick Cheney plunged us into an unnecessary war in Iraq.” This statement suggests that these two have been singled out of the GHWBushSr entourage to be scape goated with the Iraq debacle. The Iraq debacle is falsely viewed as the precedent to the current “War on Terror”, which is a falsification of the “entourage” of GHWBushSr. All of which propaganda has been revewled by former C.I.A. Station Manager, John Stockwell, and designated to be false propaganda. Stockwell explains the history: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9VxnCBD9W4
Obama gave a fore warning to Congress, “Americans don´t have 14 months.”
Is there an insider honest enough to reveal the remaining 1/8 of the destruction plan? Perhaps a C.I.A. or N.S.A. asset who is a patriotic American at heart?
Report thisBy Robespierre115, September 9, 2011 at 2:29 am Link to this comment
Eugene again displays his low I.Q. and taste for grotesque nationalism. What did we “win” exactly in Afghanistan? We’ve installed a gangster regime in power which can barely keep control of the city blocks surrounding its offices. If anything we’ve only set the stage for even more blowback.
Report thisBy Marian Griffith, September 9, 2011 at 2:24 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
@Robinson
—This activity doesn’t yet have a name—but whatever it is, it isn’t war—
It does have a name. It is simply called counter-terrorism operations. The kind of thing that most countries already did long before that september morning.
You missed one important point in your summary: the american people learned, and were encouraged to learn, the wrong lesson. The real lesson should have been that complacency and feeling invulnerable had always been an illusion. Instead the lesson presented was that allowing the government to commit one more crime, one more attrocity or strip away one more civil right would finally lead to a state of absolute security for all eternity.
Ten years later the economy and democracy are in shreds and the populations resembles a flock of sheep hearing the wolves howl in the hill and running this way and that in blind panic. And absolute security is still every bit as much a delusion as it was before all of this started.
Report thisBy Observer, September 9, 2011 at 1:38 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
If there ever >most definitely< was a war against al-Qaeda - the war our enemies began on Sept. 11, 2001, is long over. . . or so it might be.
However,if there never was a “war on terrorism” as
pointed out here,one needs to take a closer look -
for instance - at this subject and its repeated perpetrator >
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14844902
and wonders logically why > there never was one !
Report thisBy FRTothus, September 9, 2011 at 1:23 am Link to this comment
Both al-Qaeda and bin Laden are CIA creations/fronts.
9/11 was an inside job, a false-flag operation
similar to many other home-grown false-flag
operations made in the USA. Arabs/Muslims had nothing
to do with it except to be the patsies. The Taliban
were the designated enemy because they were
eradicating the poppies that are part of the US drug
cartel, the financing for the US protection racket,
the cash that Wall Street launders for its liquidity.
What’s over is the Bill of Rights, the US
Constitution, Posse Comitatus, Habeas Corpus and the
Rule of Law.
The facts of US orchestration of the self-inflicted
controlled demolition of the WTC 1, 2, and 7, the
cruise missile hit at the Pentagon, the air-to-air
missile downing of the plane over Pennsylvania,
torture to extract confessions and indefinite
imprisonment and extra-judicial murder of “suspects”,
the expansion of the US Gestapo police state, are
clear to anyone who is not wearing the same doctrinal
blinders Robinson wears. Saddam was far less a
threat and far less blood-thirsty than the US War
Department and successive US administrations and
Congresses are, and was only a threat to US finance
hegemony (the same way that Cuba and Vietnam and
Haiti and Venezuela and Lybia are threats, the same
way that ANY country that seeks independence from
Western oligarchy is a threat) because it sought to
extradite itself from the domination that the West
demands of its serfs, colonies, and puppet states.
While he was murdering Iraq’s left (with crucial US
backing), attacking secular Iran, Saddam was a US
favorite, just as the US-backed, -armed and -funded
Taliban was when it was killing the Soviet troops in
Afghanistan. Saddam and bin Laden are among many,
many others who were our friends until they were our
enemies.
Contrary to what Robinson would have us believe, the
problem is precisely the squandering of resources,
the most painful cost is NOT the deaths of the 6,000
duped armed thugs this nation sends abroad to kill
women and children, to target hospitals and water
treatment plants and civilian infrastructure, but the
millions and millions of victims of US aggression and
sanctions who continue to pay for the crimes of
capitalist empire, crimes Robinson, in his psychotic
myopia, cannot perceive or admit.
For Robinson, pathetically, none of this is the
problem. The problem, according to the myopic
Robinson, is that Americans are sad, we are in a blue
funk. The problem isn’t that we are wholesale,
lawless murderers who kill for profit, but that the
economy is in bad shape!
As Upton Sinclair noted, it’s very hard to get a man
Report thisto understand something when his salary depends on
his not understanding it.
By expat, September 9, 2011 at 1:09 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
al quaida bogeyman…
bla bla bla…
how convenient al-CIA-da always pops up do do the US terrorist bidding…
90% of bombs going off are US actions.
al quaeda was created by US and has ALWAYS remained a US asset, to this day. Proof?
in Libya,in Syria… who do you think is shooting and killing Syrian troops? I mean al-cia-da is active all over.
Nice try saying it’s over and all that…
but fascism never goes away quietly on its own.
and the best weapon against fascism is truth (and asskicking).
So it’d be nice if you started by correctly identifying the problem.
Report thisand al-cia-da bogeyman BS ain’t it.