Guest Opinion: Liberate America from war fairytales

“Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

— George Orwell, 1946

Since 2001, American administrations have used “terrorism” as an instrument to conduct a more openly aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East.

Predictably, there has been no real examination of how the term has been used and of existing conditions that have allowed the United States to assume the singular role of terrorism arbiter, deciding who and what is a threat to the world. Nor has there been much reflection on how U.S. policies have caused tremendous anger and pain in the Middle East.

President George W. Bush constructed his war on terror on lies that have yet to be deconstructed. He and others in the Washington foreign policy establishment have used the word “terrorism” to stoke fear, to silence and to obscure failed policies.

Bush’s fairytale that the United States was attacked on 9/11 because “they hate our freedoms” persists, because to question that platitude has become equated with a lack of patriotism.

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America’s military missions in Afghanistan and Iraq were always about maintaining hegemony in Central Asia and protecting the interests of multinational corporations, arms manufacturers, a privatized military and the state of Israel. They were not, as claimed, about defending freedom and human rights. Like Bush, successive presidents have never leveled with the American people about their true motives and what the costs of war would be.

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A 2004 federal advisory committee, the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication, tasked with advising the secretary of defense, concluded that “Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather, they hate our policies.” The committee also found that the overwhelming majority of Muslims objected to America’s support of Israel and Arab dictatorial regimes.

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The language of jingoism and public indifference have led to an ever-expanding military-security state and counterterrorism operations spread across the globe. According to an estimate from Brown University’s Costs of War project, more than 363,000 civilians have been killed in America’s war on terror.

President Joe Biden has stated his intent to continue the “war on terrorism” in Afghanistan. Deprived of an Afghan base in Central Asia, the administration has turned to what it calls its “over-the-horizon” counterterrorism strategy, which consists of identifying and striking targets with drones launched from outside Afghanistan.

Biden, like his predecessors, seems not to believe that drone strikes represent a significant challenge to the international rule of law or to the rules-based international order he touts.

A public airing has yet to be had of Washington’s underreported “targeted-killing” drone program. Details about the executive branch program remain secret. Because it is administered without meaningful oversight, little is known about how much evidence is required before an individual is identified as a terrorist and placed on the military kill list.

The U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan has ended, but the vast military, intelligence and information infrastructure designed to fight the war on terror remains inveterate. Significantly, the mindset and propaganda that created it continues solidly entrenched.

Generations of Muslims have had to live with U.S.-Israeli terror. Drone attacks, bombing, torture and daily humiliation by American and Israeli occupiers have fueled hatred and stifled the development of civic culture in Middle Eastern countries.

After 20 years in Afghanistan, the United States left the country with an active terrorist network and a collapsing economy. The administration has added to Afghanistan’s suffering by freezing $9.5 billion belonging to the Afghan central bank.

After nearly bombing Afghanistan into the Stone Age, Washington now expresses concern about human rights and the entitlement of women.

The testimony of the secretary of defense and America’s top generals — the country’s warlords — before Congress in September revealed how little U.S. leaders knew about the culture and country they were mired in.

For two decades, the United States has attempted to solve the problem of terrorism through military force, birthing instead more terrorists. The answer to ending terrorism rests not with Hellfire missiles, but in understanding its origins and then acting to change the causes that have given it life.

For that to happen, Americans need to be liberated from the fairytales — the appearance of solidity to pure wind — that have sustained the global “war on terror.”

Dr. M. Reza Behnam is a political scientist specializing in the history, politics and governments of the Middle East.

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This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Guest Opinion: Liberate America from war fairytales