World Trade Center
In Perspective #1
September
15, 2001
Gary Hunt,
Outpost
of Freedom
Tuesday, September 11,
will be remembered in history – of this, there is little doubt. The doubt will be
more likely to evolve from an honest consideration of the events and the determination of
what effect this events will/did have on the United States of America , and the entire
world.
The initial
reaction, by most Americans – and other shallow thinkers, around the world, was one
of outrage. This has happened! And, it wasn’t supposed to happen!
Or, was what
happened in New York City something that should have been anticipated? And, something
that was anticipated?
Every since Pan Am
Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerby, Scotland, the United States government has
acknowledged – and announced – that the Continental United States was subject to
terrorist attacks.
Just six years
ago, the government’s (and press’) first reaction was that the bombing of the
Alfred E. Murrah Building was an act carried out by foreign terrorists. Only after a
few days of investigation did the fact that it was an American Patriot who had brought
this horror on to Oklahoma City finally come out.
Why was it that
the first accusations were against “Middle-Easterners”? Was it simply that the
government (and the press) were well aware of the potential for such an action? They had,
you will recall, explained that we would be subject to attack – at home – after
Flight 103.
To understand this
very serious concern that the government (and press) had, we need only look back at the
past few decades. Our observation can begin with Panama , though this is not,
necessarily, the beginning. Operation Just Cause was conducted with the singular purpose
of making an arrest. Though the body count was only in the dozens, this invasion of
Panama , a sovereign nation, without the consent of its government, is indicative of the
assumption of worldly (godly?) authority the United States government as assumed to be
its right.
Not to many years
afterward, and even though President Bush’s delegate to Iraq, April Glaspie, said to
Saddam Hussein, “But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border
disagreement with Kuwait,” we found ourselves at “Police Action” with Iraq
just a few months later. Though Glaspie’s words may sound like an invitation for
Iraq to find its own solution to the deep water port location, which had, historically,
been where the present state of Kuwait exists.
Through the course
of this contradictory incursion into the Middle-East, many new concepts of “war”
were developed, and a new terminology evolved. One of these new terms was “collateral
damage.” This term was used to excuse the deaths of non-combatant, particularly women
and children, who were caught in the destructive path of the ‘smart bombs’,
which proved to be almost as indiscriminate as the bombs of previous wars. In fact, it
appears that a reliance on the ability to precisely guide these missiles of
mass-destruction to an exact target led to thousands of deaths when minor miscalculations
sent these bombs only slightly of course, destroying schools, churches and hospitals.
In a single, intentional,
incident, based upon erroneous intelligence, 313 women and children were incinerated when
a smart bomb dropped down the ventilation stack of the Amiriya bomb shelter in western
Baghdad . Similarly, water and sanitation facilities were declared “military
targets”, though the Iraqi Army was self sufficient in terms of water and sanitation,
resulted in subsequent deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents.
Since the United
States government had assumed the character of “Mistress of the World”, the
arrogance of this function gave us our first insight into the diplomatic charade that has
become so well known to us, today.
For instance,
towards the end of the war, when questioned about the high civilian casualty rate that
Desert Storm had imposed on the Iraqi population, then military Chief of Staff Colin
Powell remarked: "That is really not a matter I am terribly interested in."
When
then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked about the hundreds of thousands of
civilian deaths that resulted from the effect of the damage to the infrastructure, she did
not dispute the figure, but remarked: "We think the price is worth it."
This
“war”, however, was not viewed by the American people. What we were given was
not the out-takes, which were left on the cutting room floor, but the carefully selected
footage which demonstrated both are power and humanity – which we learned to accept
as truth.
Bill Clinton, not
to be outdone, selected the Christian population of a region that had been in conflict
with its Muslim counter-part for centuries. Yugoslavia became a new testing ground for
the strategies and equipment of the up and coming, self-proclaimed “police force of
the world.” Once again, the cutting room floor was denied us, but the editors had
even more leeway. Speeded up footage was given us to justify the inability (or,
unwillingness) of a pilot to redirect a smart bomb from a civilian passenger train to
divert the bomb before its destroyed the train, killing most of those on board.
In this newer
version of war (since the Internet had become a source for honest footage of the death and
destruction), the masters of cover-up developed a new style. They learned that arrogant
lies, if yelled often and loud, would replace truth – and camouflage the hideous acts
of war in a shroud of perceived necessity.
Though we have
worked so very hard for the reputation that is best represented by the bully-type actions
demonstrated above, this is not the only reason that we should not have been surprised by
what occurred at the World Trade Center, we should also be concerned about what our
government does not tell us.
Amidst this talk
of war that has begun to permeate both Washington, D.C. and the nation, we fail to realize
that this would be an after the fact declaration – if, in fact, Congress ever saw fit
to declare the first war since World War II (as is required by the Constitution). The
government (and, very likely, the press) knows quite well that war was declared on the
United States by Usamah bin Ladin, in 1995 (bin Ladin's Declaration of War).
The document is quite compelling, and explains, in very logical terms, why bin Laden
intends to fight this war on American soil.
So, understanding
both the reasoning behind their motives and that we have been warned; why should we now be
so surprised when we find that our past has finally come back to haunt us?