There are only five times that Congress, the only constitutional authority to do so, declared war:
- War of 1812
- Mexican-American War 1846
- Spanish-American War 1898
- The War to End All Wars 1914
- World War II in 1941, two years after it began in 1939
Our presidents don’t have constitutional authority to start a war, so they simply go to war.
Naming just a sample from the significant officially undeclared but officially named wars, American has been involved in the
- Mexican Revolution of 1914
- Russian Civil War of 1918
- Korean War 1950 – 1953 among the most destructive conflicts of the modern era, with approximately 3 million war fatalities, a larger proportional civilian death toll than World War II or the Vietnam War, thousands of massacres by both sides, the destruction of virtually all of Korea’s major cities as one of the most heavily bombed countries in history.
- Vietnam War 1964-1973
- Persian Gulf War 1991
- War in Afghanistan 2001-2021
- Iraq War 2003-2011,
In the first decade of the 21st century, immigrant Muslims were still not fully integrated into Western societies, and many suffered various forms of discrimination. Controversies as the banning of the veil in public schools in France and the publication in Denmark of cartoons caricaturing the Islamic faith (and particularly the Prophet Muhammad) became instantly global. Western Moslems began questioning whether full participation in Western social and political life was even possible, let alone desirable. It was in this context of the Western degradation of Islam that 9/11 occurred, creating a world divided in a war between Muslims and “Crusaders and Zionists.”
As much of the nation was just starting the day on the morning of September 11, 2001 televisions across the world showed extraordinary phone camera footage of planes crashing into the Twin Towers and live video of their collapse, reporting that 19 Islamic terrorists hijacked four East Coast flights, crashing three of the airplanes into targets in New York and Washington, D.C., with the fourth plane slamming into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back.
President George W. Bush immediately declared a global “War on Terror” military campaign, in which he called on world leaders to join the U.S. in its response. “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.”
In this context, one must seriously consider the possibility that the Bush administration staged the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania airplane crash to justify a “defensive” rather than “first strike” position against what was becoming a more and more powerful and feared Islamic religion – no longer discrete individual nations. The resulting rallying of the American people behind their President’s declaration of war was so spectacular that any thinking person has to consider the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job just for this purpose.
A 2016 study from Chapman University in California, found more than half of Americans believe the government is concealing information about the 9/11 attacks.
Certainly the President of the United States was immediately handed unprecedented power after 9/11.
Graeme MacQueen is a former Director of the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University, a member of the 9/11 Consensus Panel, and a past co-editor of the Journal of 9/11 Studies.
The War on Terror is a master class in manufactured and managed war triggers. My own studies have concentrated on the two-part operation of the fall of 2001 – the September 11 airplane incidents and the immediately following anthrax letter attacks. These were manufactured war triggers, and they were successful in winning the support of both the US population and its representatives for foreign wars and restrictions on domestic civil rights.
The 33 Strategies of War includes in the Taking Offensive section: “Don’t trust people’s words. They will find moral justifications for their amoral behaviors.”
America’s historic involvement in the Middle is proof that America was following this strategy long before 9/11.
ISIL or ISIS (depending on the translation) – the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – was created in 1999 as the latest iteration of Pan-Arabism against Western interference into Islamic operations. It introduced itself by pledging allegiance to Al-Qaeda and participating in the Iraqi insurgency following the 2003 invasion of Iraq by Western forces. In 2014, the group proclaimed itself a worldwide caliphate by which it claimed religious, political, and military authority over all Muslims worldwide, changing its name to Islamic State. The United States-led international coalition intervened against ISIL in Syria and Iraq in 2014, with an airstrike campaign, followed by a smaller-scale Russian intervention exclusively in Syria with airstrikes and cruise missile attacks.
The War On Terror – following the September 11, 2001 collapse of the World Trade Center, on September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush demanded the Taliban deliver bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders to the United States, or “share in their fate.”
We are expected to believe that in one week America’s cadre of expert analysts – who had not seen any part of this coming – determined that the 9/11 catastrophe was caused when terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes, crashing two into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, one at the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., and one in a Pennsylvania field—were orchestrated by terrorists under the control of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and harboring Osama bin Laden, leader of another Islamic militant group al Qaeda.
This is as convoluted as any of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan action plots
On October 7, 2001, U.S. and British forces launched an airstrike campaign against al Qaeda and Taliban targets including Kandahar, Kabul and Jalalabad that lasted five days. Ground forces followed, and with the help of Northern Alliance forces, the United States with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) quickly overtook Taliban strongholds and Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were driven out of the country. After the formality of an election America’s proxy Hamid Karzai was sworn in as President.
Mission accomplished? Oh no.
Supporting Eisenhower’s warnings of the Military-Industrial Complex living a life of its own by feeding on corpses,
The Iraq War from 2003 to 2011 began when the U.S. administration began to link Saddam Hussein’s regime to terrorism, specifically al-Qaeda, despite no concrete evidence that Iraq had been involved in the 9/11 attacks. Increasingly fixated on regime change in Iraq – Finally! An admission of underlying motives! – the administration began to publicly assert that Saddam was harboring weapons of mass destruction. These claims became the core justification for the invasion, which quickly spiraled into a catastrophe with far-reaching consequences.
After Saddam Hussein’s overthrow and execution the new al-Maliki government enacted policies that alienated the country’s previously dominant Sunni minority and worsened sectarian tensions, changing the invasion to an occupation.
No stockpiles of WMDs or an active WMD program were ever found, and in 2004 the 9/11 Commission said there was no evidence of an operational relationship between the Saddam Hussein regime and al-Qaeda. The United Nations determined that under international law the invasion violated the UN Charter. A British inquiry into its decision to go to war published in 2016 concluded that the process of identifying the legal basis was “far from satisfactory”, and that the war was unnecessary. As the world reflects on the two decades of chaos and disruption, the question remains: why have those responsible for the war’s devastating outcomes not been held accountable?
The Iraq War caused at least one hundred thousand civilian deaths, as well as tens of thousands of military deaths, the majority of which occurred as a result of the insurgency and civil conflicts between 2004 and 2007. Subsequently, the War in Iraq of 2013 to 2017, which is considered a domino effect of the invasion and occupation, caused at least 155,000 deaths, in addition to the displacement more than 3.3 million people within the country.
The US population supported the Iraq War in 2003 because it believed the Bush administration’s case – i.e. lie – that Iraq was again actively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. By replacing Saddam’s regime with a more humane and peaceful successor, the U.S. could set the Arab Middle East on a path to a better future—contributing to America’s own security after 9/11.
Inside the Bush administration, we thought we were ready to remake Iraq for the better—but we were not. We were ignorant, arrogant, and unprepared, and we unleashed human suffering that did no good for anyone: not for Americans, not for Iraqis, not for the region. Almost two decades later, the damage to America’s standing in the world from the Iraq War has still not been repaired, let alone that war’s economic and human costs to the United States and the Middle East.
On May 2, 2011, Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed by US Special Forces during an early morning raid at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation. The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al Qaeda. Bin Laden’s body was buried at sea.
And we only have an announcement, no proof. Even an insurance company won’t accept that, yet the whole world is supposed to?
Are the inconsistencies beginning to add up to untrustworthy?
The Arab Spring in 2011, coincident with America’s exit from Iraq, erupted as a series of pro-democracy uprisings enveloping several largely Muslim countries, including Tunisia, Morocco, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Bahrain. In the United States, the Bush Administration claimed that 9/11 emanated from the Arab world, as the product of a widespread authoritarian culture fostering terrorism and extremism. This ideology led to US arguments that the war against terrorism would require social, political, and economic changes in
the region, manifested in the creation of a number of democracy-promotion projects in the region,
However, the democratization of the Arab world being given more emphasis in official rhetoric remained secondary to preserving the stability of any Arab authoritarian regimes that were pro-American. Consequently, many pro-democracy uprisings were not supported by the U.S. and launched instead violent civil wars.
The United States-led international coalition intervened against ISIL in Syria and Iraq in 2014, with an airstrike campaign, followed by a smaller-scale Russian intervention exclusively in Syria with airstrikes and cruise missile attacks.
In 2015, ISIL was estimated to have an annual budget of more than US $1 billion and more than 30,000 fighters. They were conducting ground attacks on both government forces and opposition factions, held an area extending from western Iraq to eastern Syria, and ruled over an estimated eight to twelve million people on whom it enforced its interpretation of sharia law. ISIL is believed to be operational in 18 countries, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In 2017 when President Donald Trump took office the number of civilian casualties reported in American-led strikes against ISIL / ISIS in Iraq and Syria increased, jumping to 3,471 from 1,782 in just one month, and the U.S. dropped its most powerful non-nuclear bomb, called the “mother of all bombs,” on what it said was an ISIS cave complex stronghold in Afghanistan. Mr. Trump met with emergency workers at the White House calling the bombing “another very, very successful mission.” The President of Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai wrote on Twitter, “This is not the war on terror but the inhuman and most brutal misuse of our country as testing ground for new and dangerous weapons. It is upon us, Afghans, to stop the USA.”
The fourth president in power during the war, President Joe Biden, in April 2021, set the symbolic deadline of September 11, 2021, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, as the date of full U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. But in two week beforehand, in a tremendous symbolic show of force, the Taliban blitzed across the country, forcing an undignified and embarrassing retreat. The insurgents stormed across the country, capturing all major cities in a matter of days, as Afghan security forces – trained and equipped by the U.S. and its allies – surrendered after brief battles, and Kabul and some nearby provinces fell without a fight. the Western-backed government that had run the country for 20 years collapsed, and U.S.-backed Afghani President fled the country, and the U.S. military was forced into a scrambled and humiliating public retreat broadcast across the world.
WHY DID THE AFGHAN SECURITY FORCES COLLAPSE?
The short answer? Corruption.
The U.S. and its NATO allies spent billions of dollars over two decades to train and equip Afghan security forces. But the Western-backed government was rife with corruption. Commanders exaggerated the number of soldiers to siphon off resources, and troops in the field often lacked ammunition, supplies or even food…As the Taliban rapidly advanced in recent days entire units surrendered after brief battles, and Kabul and some nearby provinces fell without a fight.
America’s War On Terror lasted two decades and was led by four U.S. presidents, becoming the longest war in American history. Analysts at prestigious Brown University. taking the time to review extensive records collected over nearly 20 years report that the United States’ global war on terror costs stands at $8 trillion and 900,000 deaths.
What thinking person cannot seriously consider that the U.S. had unannounced motives for this enormous military campaign beyond revenging 3,000 deaths and the loss of two buildings on 9/11?
There is widespread hatred, for good reason, of The Great Satan America.
Kingdom Come 