The War on Terror: A Myth of Conflict Between Islam And The West

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By Saman Mohammad

On June 13, 2011, the Guardian reported from Afghanistan about secret U.S.-Afghanistan talks on the nature of America's presence in that country.

All signs are pointing towards permanent occupation and limitless resource extraction by the U.S. and NATO. Expect more blood and waste in the years to come. Expect hell to rain down on Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Expect thousands more of American and NATO soldiers to fight and die while politicians and think tank rats in Washington, London, Ottawa and Canberra maintain the lie and the illusion that Islamic terrorism threatens America and Western civilization.

Nothing will change for the better unless the real reasons for why there are U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan are publicly recognized and accepted.

The truth is that the war on terrorism is a myth of conflict, and one of the great illusions of history. Sane and rational people agree that the war should have never been waged. Trillions of dollars have been wasted and hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died. The people who still defend this war are either ignorant of the facts or they are blood-sucking war profiteers who work in the government/corporate terrorism industry and military-industrial complex.

When taken at face value, the official 9/11 story justifies a totalitarian conception of state security and endless militarization of the planet by governments and war corporations in the guise of combating terrorism. States are free to define terrorism and target political groups that resist their governing ideology. The governments of Iran, Russia, America, Israel, England and other countries are all guilty of manipulating language and branding political resistance as terrorism to persecute and destroy freedom fighters, and invade innocent countries.

"Something like a new world is created through language," said Goethe, (1). We witnessed this truth in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. There was a reason why President Bush gave three speeches in the days after 9/11, including two on the day of 9/11; one in the afternoon, and one in the evening. The words Bush used were carefully selected and arranged to exploit the American people's grief. The point was to bring out the emotions and make people feel the intense glory of going to war. There was no room given for people to think and have a debate about the consequences of meeting violence with violence.

On September 20, 2011, Bush told America and the world:

Tonight we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.

This is presidential rhetoric in the tradition of Jefferson, Lincoln, and Kennedy. But those men used the magic and power of rhetoric to convince men to do right. Bush and Obama are using that same power of rhetoric for dark purposes, to persuade people to believe what is not true, and what is not in their interest to believe. To me, the very definition of evil is when tyrants deceive the people and make men give their lives for a lie.

The publicly scripted 9/11 events can't be understood without acknowledging the power of language and the power of myth in human society to shape popular beliefs and guide social behavior. Martin S. Day, author of 'The Many Meanings of Myth,' writes, "force majeure, the ultimate imposition of new myth, may be employed in a coherent, rather advance, and rather docile society," (2).

Late 20th century/early 21st century America was the perfect place and time to impose new cultural and political myths. The power elite struck America because it could get away with it. They had both the media and the White House in their pocket. Also, the American people were well groomed sheep, ready to believe anything their government told them.

I doubt any writer or filmmaker in Hollywood will deny the mythic and dramatic effect of the 9/11 attacks on human consciousness, especially the American psyche. 9/11 made real for people the lingering and shadowy threat of Islamic extremism that up to that point had very little success in attacking America's biggest landmarks.

But if we dig a little deeper into the history of state terrorism before 9/11 and research the 9/11 events with a commitment to finding out the truth we will find that the official version was conceived by shadowy, authoritarian myth-makers. Off the top, the traitorous list includes Philip D. Zelikow, Paul Wolfowitz, Karl Rove, Richard Perle, and others who are connected to the U.S. national security crime syndicate as well as Israel.

We can't accept the official version of 9/11 as the truth of history, even though it sounds plausible and real, because it is a piece of fiction. There are many films that look, sound and feel real, but we never walk out of the theater believing that what we saw really happened in real life. There were script writers, actors, directors, producers, extras, and technicians who brought the drama to life.

The same thing can be said for the 9/11 events. It was a Hollywood scripted horror show, produced by the directors of war in the Bush administration, the U.S. national security crime syndicate, and Israel.

"The reality of a fictional story," writes Karen E. Dill, "is not whether it is a fantasy or a creation; it is whether it is believable and attractive," (3). Dill is the author of the 2009 book 'How Fantasy Becomes Reality: Seeing Through Media Influence.'

Samuel P. Huntington, author "The Clash of Civilizations, " was a key architect of the myth of conflict between the West and Islam. He "prophesied" a war between the forces of the West, including Israel, and the forces of Islam. Along with Bernard Lewis he generated and promoted a destructive myth that is not grounded in reality nor has any basis in history but rather serves the sinister interests of power.

Huntington was a destructive myth maker, not a historian. He wasn't interested in understanding reality to resolve political conflicts, but in selling mumbo-jumbo to help stir up an unnecessary war between nations and heighten mankind's misery. If there is a special place in hell for power-worshiping intellectuals then Huntington is there right now.

Huntington's grand theory of history and civilization is dismissed in the general population and academia but it is very popular in the highest ranks of economic, military and political power in the West and Israel because it justifies limitless U.S. expansion in the Middle East under the cover of civilizing the savages and bringing democracy to terrorists. Also, Israel is able to politically absolve itself of great sins like pillaging and murdering innocent people by saying to the Western world: "We are doing the dirty work for you, we are preventing the dark Muslims from taking over so they won't threaten you and your countries." But this is a psychological trick, and a big, monstrous lie.

There is no line between the "civilized" world and the "barbaric" world. All nations that conduct war to exploit resources or expand through war have elements of barbarity deep within them. America and the West have yet to be fully civilized, and Israel is still in a state of barbarity.

If we judge regimes solely by how they act towards their neighbors then the Israeli regime is much more barbaric and ruthless than Iran's Islamic regime. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is a crazy primate who should be jumping in between tree lines. He is very primitive in his thinking, and has more in common with angry Arabs who blow themselves up than with statesmen.

Huntington's intellectual wizardly and grand thesis also provided the ideological springboard that allowed the neoconservatives to stage the 9/11 attacks and frame Muslim extremists for the crime. The idea that a state of perpetual war exists between the West and Islam was implanted in Western thought in the decades preceding 2001, but the events of 9/11 brought that catastrophic theory to life.

When we look back now with new eyes we can see that Huntington and those of his ilk prepared the mental battlefield and then the Mossad, CIA, MI6, and neocons planned and executed the 9/11 attacks to make the theory of conflict between Islam and the West appear to be real in the Western public mind.

But the idea that war is inevitable and the present situation is irreversible is not true.

The mythic and ritualistic power of the 9/11 attacks is tough to explain. I was twelve years old when 9/11 happened, but I've seen enough Hollywood movies to know that there was a deliberate psychological and mental campaign to demonize Arabs and Muslims in the years before 9/11.

That now infamous false flag event was a culmination of a grand conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of American, British and Israeli politics to deceive the American people into fighting a fruitless and expensive war on terrorism. I have written before that Al-Qaeda is the Trojan Horse in the war on terror, and a CIA proxy.

It is significant that Edward Said challenged Huntington's destructive thesis and made progress in building new levels of understanding and trust so that both the West and Islam can profit positively from one another. He was a real intellectual hero.

I love both Western civilization, and Islam. Both cultures have a beautiful and a dark side within them. Those who only see division and conflict between the two civilizations want us to see phantoms and illusions so they can profit from war and domination. Deep down we all want to get along and live in peace.

It's time we all realize that the lunatic fringe and terrorists that we should be worrying about are the madmen in power in the U.S., Israel, England, and Iran, too.

Read more about Said's criticism of Huntington's theory of clash of civilisations in my article 'War on Terror: The Official Grand Narrative Vs. The Counter-Narrative.'


Sources:

1. Goethe. Scientific Studies . Edited and Translated by Douglas Miller. 1988. Suhrkamp Publishers: New York. Pg. 26.
2. Martin S. Day. The Many Meanings of Myth . 1984. University Press of America: Lanham, Maryland. Pg. 210.
3. Karen E. Dill. How Fantasy Becomes Reality: Seeing Through Media Influence . 2009. Oxford University Press: New York. Pg. 13.

Saman Mohammadi is a blogger and a full-time university student, currently living in Toronto, Canada. His blog is The Excavator - http://disquietreservations.blogspot.com.