Manuel Valenzuela: The War of Error

“September 11, 2001, Independence Day for all Oppressed Peoples”
-- Anonymous Graffiti sprayed on wall in Plaza Real, Barcelona, Spain, 2003

To understand the above mentioned quote in the context of the so-called “war on terror” one must rise above the incessant government/corporate media haze of all-encompassing propaganda that has permeated our society, causing us to become confused energies lost in the consuming darkness of ignorance.

If one truly wishes to understand the “war on terror” the mind must be resurrected from the tomb of conditioned fear and insecurity that grips our every emotion, making charades of our understanding of the world outside our comfort zones.

The indelible power of the mind must be opened, the myopic view spewed by both government and corporate media must be exorcised and a journey of self-reflection must be taken. Empathy must replace apathy, humanity must replace selfishness and knowledge must replace the ignorance purposefully ingrained into our collective conscious by those whose interests lie in keeping us as far away from truths and realities as is possible.

Utter blackness must be purged; the path of truth must be seen, and followed. Only then can we make sense of a world tearing itself apart.

The radiant lantern has been lit, let it guide our way.

Beginnings

The so-called “war on terror” was lost the moment George W. Bush was appointed to the presidency by the Supreme Court. Of course at the time nobody could foresee what the fraud in Florida would help set free. At that moment the clandestine inevitability of the invasion of Iraq became a certain reality whose consequences we will absorb for the next several decades. True, 9/11 had yet to happen, but already fixations with Saddam Hussein were metastasizing throughout the self-righteous Bush administration. 9/11, more than anything else, became, politically, the perfect excuse needed to drag America into a war that had already been preordained by those with axes to grind, scores to settle, empires to expand and profits to make.

The dubiously named “war on terror” was lost the moment the cabal of neoconservatives usurped power in Washington, descending like a flock of vultures from their warmongering flight. At that moment delusion morphed with ideology, ignorance fused with zealotry and the neoconartist dream of an Iraqi invasion, already having been trumpeted for years, was put in motion. Pushed forward by those wishing to fight Israel’s enemies using American financial and military might, the Iraq war was born in dogmatic democratic delusion, historical and cultural ignorance and in criminal apathy for the over 600 American soldiers sent to die for causes having nothing to do with fighting for freedom or democracy or for fighting terror.

Thus was born the War of Error, a war unlike all others, self-defeating and perpetual, that instead of solving problems has and will continue to exacerbate them. Thus was born a War of Proxy, of Greed, Deceit, Criminality and Stupidity. A war not of necessity but of choice; a war that only enraged an already burning world opinion resulting from America’s continual devastation of people’s life, health, opportunity, ability and freedom through the incessant mechanisms of oppression and exploitation arising out of the debilitating forays into global empire building.

A war of excuses, not principle, of vengeance, not morality, of unleashing death and destruction, not winning hearts and minds has only served to make the world a much more dangerous, sinister place.

Symptoms of the Disease

The War of Error is being waged by nefarious Cold War mentalities espousing modern exploitive criminal capitalism using fervent psychologically corrosive fear-mongering to control populations and assure power through the perpetual shedding of blood. A war without necessity has become a war without end. A war of illegality has become a war of resistance.

Like the unquestionable callousness of human wars that have scarred our entire history, the War of Error will once more prove that the most violent, self-destructive species of animal must satisfy its thirst for blood and appetite for death and destruction. The primitiveness of our being is proved yet again through the absurdity and punishment of killing our own kind.

Increasing valid grievances that have only risen exponentially with every year of seething anger and hatred at American foreign policy, the War of Error assures that the desperate and crazed will continue their wave of terror. The continued exploitation of world peoples by the Pax Americana, be it through tentacles such as the IMF, WTO and World Bank, by the support of despotic, murderous, corrupt and tyrannical regimes or by the sheer hypocrisy of championing freedoms, liberties and democracy worldwide while advancing the virtual enslavement of billions has given birth to a movement, strongest in the Islamic world, to cleanse regions of American meddling and involvement.

The tragedy of 9/11 was a symptom of this disease. American economic, corporate and military interests, so detrimental to billions of humans worldwide, has brought forth a growing surge to excrete from entire regions and nations what is seen as the most pestilent of viruses. Is it so difficult to understand that billions of people’s lives have been ruined as a result of the policies of the American Empire? These policies only serve to make America stronger and more powerful while exhausting and decimating the vast majority of the people of the south.

The War of Error fails to understand the other side, or to confront it. 9/11 was a manifestation of frustrations and hatreds that had been boiling for years. It was a massive demonstration of resistance, targeting the two most repressive symbols of American power gone awry. This truth is a reality 280 million Americans have not been made privy to. It is truth hidden in fictions and manipulation, carefully orchestrated to make captive and ignorant those living within the belly of the beast. Why is it that the world’s view and opinion of reality is so vastly different than those who are enveloped by airwaves transmitting an umbrella of distortions and deceptions from Atlantic to Pacific Oceans? It couldn’t be the altered state of world reality Americans are bombarded with, can it? Certainly it isn’t the escaping of fact for fear of uncovering the evils done in our name, right? Living in and experiencing heaven on Earth is certainly better than seeing how American excessiveness, capitalism, consumerism, greed, individualism and materialism have condemned most of the world to hell.

The day we decide to uncloak our fog-laced eyes to this undying reality and put an end to and alleviate such a plague upon the world is the day our fears, insecurities and terror will be replaced with the lives we once knew to exist. The roots of and reasons for terrorism must be understood and confronted, not discarded. Fighting and waging war with terrorism’s extensions will only help it spread. The roots must be pulled out, and this begins with confronting the reality of our royal superfluity and extravagant lifestyles that spawn so much exploitation, oppression, indigence and suffering worldwide. If we continue the War of Error the terror will never end, only expand, getting much worse, more dangerous and putting in peril the future of our progeny.

Symbols of Global Empire and its Evils

The World Trade Center, the economic symbol of worldwide economic genocide, incessant suffering, perpetuating poverty, wasted opportunity and ability, acrimonious capitalism, debauched democracy, protection of tyranny, market colonialism, oppression, exploitation and enslavement by the Pax Americana was besieged and destroyed by crazed zealots of macabre intentions waging jihad on the enemy of their lands. Three-thousand innocent beings were slaughtered, forever to be mourned and remembered.

In Washington, the Pentagon, the machine controlling the expansion of the American Empire through its over 700 bases worldwide and its legions of sentries was attacked, symbolically illuminating the sword gutting an entire world open through its conquest and intimidation by violence, injury, maiming, death, suffering, destruction, poisoning, extermination, cleansing and genocide. Hundreds of fellow citizens perished, both in the building and in planes, great symbols of innocence lost and energies extinguished.

Fundamentalist extremists at one point supported and trained by the United States in their struggle against another superpower, incensed at America’s implementation of economic genocide in which up to one million Iraqis perished, seething at America’s continued usurpation of Arab land, military presence in the Middle East, support of its oppressive dictators and rulers and infuriated at American military, financial and political support of Israel’s continued crimes, occupation, subjugation and dehumanization of the Palestinian people declared war inside American shores, shaking the mighty empire to its foundation while giving us a small taste of what evils are done in our name.

The symptoms of the disease had caused the virus to cough up a manifestation of monstrous barbarity, yet it paled in comparison to the millions killed by the Pax Americana’s government over the course of the last century. 9/11, though dastardly and demonic, was but a minute expression of violent rage compared to the innumerable and seemingly impossible to count actions by our leaders that have decimated millions upon millions of people and untold areas of land and civilization. For every action, it seems, there is an equal and positive reaction. This we have yet to understand.

Ceaseless Profit, Fear and Violence

Unwinnable in every respect, the War of Error is designed to never cease in its quest to perpetuate fear and insecurity. As long as people fear for their lives, future and security the beast of war will exist. The War of Error’s oxygen is our own insecurity and blind faith in the Bush administration. Its food is our ignorance and penitent reverence to the manipulation and conditioning being flooded into our minds by those in power.

Created to enrich and empower oligarchs and corporations, the War of Error subjugates us and sends us spiraling back to times of feudalism and religious intimidation and trepidation. We are put at the mercy of the powerful that become more powerful the more they spawn fear into our conscious. Witness the gradual evisceration of American civil liberties and the increased power over our lives now prevalent in government.

The War of Error is a vicious cycle of unfettered fear, insecurity, violence and destruction. It is a product of an administration limited in knowledge and vision, common sense and history, understanding of culture and empathy for humankind. It was begun by a Commander in Chief possessing inalienable limitations of grey matter, incurious and unlearned of both people and planet, born into royalty lacking understanding of how billions see the world and with a myopic vision of delusion, fantasy and religious weak-mindedness. Throughout history easier battles and smaller wars have been lost by more able men.

The rise of the bogeyman terrorist and the new evildoers of our time, namely Al-Qaeda, have simply coincided with the demise of yesteryear’s enemy, communists and the Soviet Union. Having enemies is part of the fabric of American society ranging all the way to the time Custer was massacring savage Indians. Enemies are the American government’s best friend, for they help expand the economy, curtail the population and enrich the oligarchs. It is, therefore, natural that with the implosion of the evil communists a new, more sinister and wicked enemy arise from the ashes of human wickedness to scare the living daylights out of average Americans ignorant to the manipulation of their primitive emotions.

This new enemy is a true evildoer, a mutated barbarian lurking behind every bush and underneath every rock. Of course we are more likely to get struck by lightning than by a famed suicide bomber but that does not stop the Bush administration from reminding us all of the deadly manifestations of fright possessing dark-skin and a different religion. For this newest of enemies, reincarnated from the graves of all previous evildoers to dare cross paths with the Pax Americana, is the deadliest of them all. Terrorists, you see, are shadows and ghosts, you or me, enraged lunatics hating our freedoms, democracy and society. Or so we are told.

They are the new enemy, ambiguous extremists living among us, without loyalty to land, flag or state, appearing and disappearing, launching ceaseless guerilla war on our society. To Bush and his corporate cohorts in the military-industrial complex, terrorists are a gold mine. They are the answer to lagging profits and power that had dwindled and virtually disappeared with the twilight of the dreaded Soviets. The Cold War was over, military cuts were everywhere; industry was struggling, profits and wealth eroding. A new enemy had to be born, one that could last into perpetuity, instilling terror and fear like never before onto a citizenry subservient to the fictions promoted by the government.

Thus, 9/11 became the greatest profiteering launching pad ever devised by the military-industrial complex. With a war with no end, countless invisible enemies prowling everywhere and a fearful and obedient population the quest for perpetual profit in times of perpetual war and perpetual fear came to be born. Today, everything evil done in our name is excused as being done in the noble name of the war on terror. After all, war is peace. Yet also extremely profitable, which is why the War of Error will last years, perhaps decades into our future.

It is in the MIC’s interest to prolong this most ambiguous and marketable war for as long as possible. When the citizenry has been successfully turned to submissive sheep, ignorant as to its role as a massive pawn, primordial emotions dictating logic and common sense, the MIC is assured of ever-increasing power, control and wealth. From cradle to the grave, we are but slaves to the military-industrial complex, nothing more than puppets whose strings are attached to the massive claws of the omnipotent masters tearing us to shreds as they amuse themselves with the games of disquieting existence and rapacious divisiveness they thrust upon our oblivious selves.

Greed-mongers, fear-mongers, warmongers and profiteers, the Bush administration, the Corporate Leviathan and the MIC together are annihilating our future. When greed intermingles with the almighty dollar, profit is placed above people, we become statistics in cost-benefit analysis, we are shamelessly exploited and we all become open wounds waiting to become collateral damage.

War of Error

As Paul O’Neill and Richard Clarke have made clear, the Bush administration was never seriously concerned with Al-Qaeda, even with multiple warnings about its dangers. Instead, upon squirming into the Oval Office, Bush began concentrating on Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, others began to unilaterally dislodge the US from numerous world protocols, treaties, institutions and conventions. Missile defense was given priority, as was the entire spectrum of scorched earth and polluting industries. Yet Al-Qaeda was placed in the back burner, of little concern to an administration intent on catering to its corporate masters.

From the start Iraq was an object of desire to the neoconartists and the Bush cabal. The subsequent invasion of the dilapidated state under the rubbish of imminent threat was a rather simple operation, almost like taking candy from a baby. Severe sanctions and Gulf War I had crippled Saddam’s army and Iraq’s infrastructure, meaning the potent American forces blitzkrieged their way to victory. Winning the war was never in doubt, though securing the peace certainly was. Delusions of ignorance failed to yield warm embraces of flowers, thankful arms extended to the heavens and welcoming smiles from the Iraqi people. Instead, the United States today finds itself bogged down in swamps of discontent and dunes of hatred and revenge for the carnage and crimes against humanity it has perpetrated against the Iraqi people.

Flowers of fantasy have given way to burned, dragged and hanged American bodies. The invasion and occupation has turned into a quagmire and nightmare for America. It is finding that imposing a western capitalistic and democratic ideology through the barrel of a gun is harder than the neocons expected. To our great detriment, their wet dreams of Machiavellian splendor have turned instead to blood-dripped hands smeared in complicity and maimed faces soaked in fault.

Iraq is a disaster, an unwelcome catharsis of rage and animosity that has spread from the Sunni Triangle to the rest of the Muslim world. Hatred of America is at an all time high. Thousands of jihadists have been created, ready to die in holy war against the Great Satan. Bush has succeeded in employing more “terrorists” than American workers. Winning hearts and minds has failed throughout a Muslim world that sees an American Crusade to conquer, pilfer, rape and humiliate. The war in Iraq has allowed terror to sprout and thrive throughout the lands of the western world.

The Iraq war was unleashed to satisfy the ignoble loathing Bush and the neocons had for Saddam, to quench the thirst of the military-industrial complex and the energy industry and to put into place a new era of market colonialism with the Middle East subservient to America and deferential to Israel. Genuflecting and penitent the Arab world is expected to become, allowing one more time the infiltration into their lands of Western Judeo-Christian ideology and armies intent on pilfering all black gold the Arabian lands possess.

What the war in Iraq has accomplished is the near universal undermining of the pursuit of Al-Qaeda, a group of highly skilled warriors, much more creative than those commanding America’s armies, that can at any moment attack virtually anywhere, at anytime and with virtually no warning. The imminent threat was Al-Qaeda, not Saddam. The real target was Osama bin Laden, two years ago.

Today, the capture of Osama and his number two is meaningless, of little value towards stopping the Muslim organization. Osama has succeeded in franchising Al-Qaeda throughout the world. America has played right into his hands through the foolish ignorance of the Bush administration. Now, Al-Qaeda has branched off, inspiring thousands of new recruits spread out throughout the world that continue to be assembled faster than they are killed. Bush’s war has created hundreds of new bin Laden’s eager to punish America for its continued subjugation of Muslims. The assembly line Henry Ford invented Bush has, through his dim-witted sojourn into Iraq, allowed to flourish in the hands of purveyors of violence.

Bin Laden can be killed tomorrow and be bigger in death than he ever was in life. His mission is accomplished; he has seen the birth of a movement that now spans the world two times over. Like a grandfather overlooking his many grandchildren upon his death bed, bin Laden has bequeathed to the new generation of Al-Qaeda his vision, beliefs and hatred of America. Almost three years removed from 9/11 bin Laden is still alive, inspiring and planning, training and plotting. Why? Because Bush took the US to war with Iraq, a boxed-in, contained misery of a nation threatening to no entity but the dreams of the neocon establishment loyal to Israel.

Al-Qaeda is today much more powerful, much more clandestine and much more willing to attack western interests. Able to strike virtually unimpeded, since 9/11 the group and its branches have unleashed a wave of bombings that has been ceaseless and devastating. How dare Bush claim he has made us safer when there have been so many attacks on western interests, many more than ever existed before 9/11? How dare Bush claim Al-Qaeda is weaker when it has only mutated, morphing with other groups and fusing with utter devastation?

We haven’t been attacked since 9/11 because Al-Qaeda has wanted it so. We are at their mercy for they know America can do little to stop an attack. There are literally thousands of sites from which to strike that cannot be guarded. It is physically impossible. The day the organization decides to launch an attack is the day the next rumble is felt in our belly. They are waiting for the right moment at the right time. They are comprised of clever and intelligent men with an understanding of patience and the long-term benefits of history. Unlike those in the Oval Office, those “living in caves” envision the larger context of humanity and our history. To underestimate them is to make a grave mistake.

America had a window of two years to find bin Laden but instead diverted its resources to Iraq. It has had two years to shore up its defenses and security at home yet wasted over $160 billion in Iraq, most of it going to the profiteers and the greed-mongers in the military-industrial complex. The War of Error has been a disaster, the American homeland is under funded and unprepared which has grievously placed the American people in much more danger than before 9/11. How this sitting president can run as a leader that has made the nation safer is preposterous given all he has done to strengthen Al-Qaeda. It is a shameless fraud. He has done nothing but make the US a bigger, more inviting target that will soon have to once more bury its sons and daughters thanks to the policies of the worst administration in history.

When the military-industrial complex is your pimp, however, you can only bend over to its dictates, unbuckle your belt and prepare to meet your maker.

Finality

The War of Error must be beheaded before more damage is done to America and the world. Terrorism can only be defeated by declaring war on its roots and causes. The real war must be declared on poverty, lack of education, lack of healthcare, suffering, hatred, animosity, lack of opportunity, injustice, inequality, unfairness, despotism, exploitation and dehumanization. Only then can the War of Error be transformed to the War to end all Wars. Only by understanding the reasons why we are hated can we declare victory. We must eliminate the egotistical and asinine excuses that the world hates us because of our success, society and freedoms. That makes us feel good but it is pure bull fecal matter. We must educate ourselves, forever burying our world ignorance and our detested arrogance. Empathy and humbleness must be instilled into our future.

Until then, however, actions will only lead to reactions, cause will only be followed by effect and the whole world will go blind. Until Americans realize the causes of such anger directed at their national symbols and until we see the damage being done in our name we will not be made safe. Fear will follow us to all corners of the globe like an epidemic jumping from host to host, robbing us of the opportunity to live in symphony with the greater fraternity of nations. Insecurity will become a way of life, imprisoning us in our own homes, making our shores enormous walls of separation that will prevent us from seeing the wonders Earth has to offer. Fortress America will make withering flowers of us all.

The Corporate Leviathan, Global Empire and Military-Industrial Complex must be stopped before the country that we have grown to live in and love is but a distant memory in a never-opened history book of bygone times. Our freedoms and liberties are being eroded, our nation is becoming a police state and the rights once enjoyed by all will become but a distant glimmer of memory to our children. We must put a stop to the three-headed monster laying in our wake, run by the few elite greed-infected capitalist oligarchs that are transforming democracy into mockery, the Constitution of the many into that of the few, diversity into despotism and the American Dream into exploitative capitalism descended from the innards of feudalism.

Together we can take back America. Together we can unite and help make right what has been made wrong. The further we descend away from the brotherhood of nations and peoples the closer we approach implosion. The closer we become to our world brothers and sisters the closer we will be to reclaiming the wonderful lands and dynamic society of the United States. There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders. It is time to erase the Bush administration from the pages of history and salvage all that has been lost, rebuild all that has befallen a once great nation and march forward to the trumpeting sounds of peace and progress.

The War of Error must be erased from the long memory of humankind’s civilization. It is one more mistake in a long line of human errors that scourge our long journey. Enlightenment must replace primitiveness, the Other Superpower must replace the only superpower and humanity must put an end to the pandemic called violence. Eliminating the War of Error is a good start. Understanding the plight of billions is another. Bush has undone progress made and exacerbated the “war on terrorism.” To change our ways we will have to start from behind, handicapped and with the demons unleashed by the Bush administration at our feet. Yet start we must before what we once knew no longer exists.

Manuel Valenzuela is social critic and commentator, activist, writer and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel to be published in Spring of 2004. His articles appear weekly on axisoflogic.com where he is also contributing editor. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net

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