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Contents
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Recommended reading
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Acknowledgements
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6
National stupidity: How
the War on Terror is killing
and impoverishing us
One researcher estimates nearly 1600 more Americans died on US roads after
9/11 than would have otherwise been the case, because they opted not to fly.
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and work accidents, each of which kill more Americans annually than the death toll from 9/11, let alone the ongoing annual
death toll from terrorism, which is negligiblein fact, so small
it ranks below bathtub accidents and shootings by toddlers as
a cause of death. In terms of demonstrated threat, terrorism is
on par with exotic diseases, skydiving accidents and choking in
restaurants.
Indeed, Americans need more protection from their own
police forces than from terrorists. On average, American police
shoot, taser or beat to death around 400 of their fellow citizens
a year, often for the most spurious of reasons, with the mentally
ill and African Americans featuring prominently as innocent
victims. In 2014, a North Carolina police officer called by the
parents of a mentally ill teenager shot him dead even after two
other officers had restrained him, declaring, I dont have time
for this. Oklahoma police beat a man to death in front of his
family after he had tried to intervene in a dispute between his
wife and daughter. In 2013, Iowa police shot dead an unarmed
teen whose father had called them because his son had taken his
truck to buy cigarettes. Georgia police shot dead a diabetic man
after his girlfriend rang 911 for medical assistance. Washington
DC police shot dead an unarmed mentally ill female driver with
a toddler in the back of her car. In 2012, Houston police shot
dead a mentally ill double amputee in a wheelchair. These are
only some of the more high-profile recent victims of Americas
hyper-aggressive and heavily armed police.
In Australia, there has only been one terrorism-related
death since 2001, when a Christian fundamentalist killed
an abortion clinic security guard, though authorities insist
they have thwarted four mass-casualty attacks during that
period. Approximately 100 Australians have also died because
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Mass shootings are, strangely, not considered terrorism events despite usually
being carried out by, for example, Neo-Nazi white males.
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Manufacturing terrorism
Besides the Iraq War encouraging terrorism against Western
targets, the conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have
created other positive feedback loops for terrorism. The destabilising effect of the Iraq War and massive expenditure on oil
by Western armies in their campaigns helped drive oil prices
to record highs: one oil analyst suggested the Iraq War was
responsible for oil prices trebling. This has been a boon for
Saudi Arabia and other repressive Middle Eastern autocracies,
which promote fundamentalist forms of Islam that provide
fertile soil for Islamist alienation and resort to violence.
The more significant feedback loop is the direct radicalising effect of the United States extra-judicial killing program
involving drones, which have killed at the very least hundreds of
civilians, and many children, in Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan,
as well as an Australian, a New Zealander and several US citizens, including Anwar al-Awlaki and his son, Abdulrahman.*
Drone strikes that kill civilians enrage target communities and
directly create the conditions for radicalisation and anti-Western
anger. This isnt just the view that Malala Yousafzai, the brave
Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot by the Taliban, put to Barack
Obama in her White House meeting with him, but also that
of the former US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley
McChrystal, who explained that drone strikes are hated on a
* The drone strike that incinerated the sixteen-year-old Denver-born
Abdulrahman, who was eating at a cafe with friends while looking for his (by
then dead) father in Yemen, killed no militants. The man who ordered the
strike, Homeland Security Advisor John Brennan, was rewarded by Barack
Obama with promotion to head of the CIA. The killing of this boy has never
been investigated by any authorities, and was dismissed by one source close
to the Obama Administration as a case of wrong place, wrong time.
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visceral level, even by people whove never seen one or seen the
effects of one and that they threaten the achievement of broader
goals. As it turns out, the direct manner in which the attack on
Iraq increased the terrorist threat to Western citizens is being
continually replicated via drone warfare.
However, its the FBI that seems most committed to perpetu
ating the War on Terror, and if there are no terrorists, the FBI
will invent them. The great majority of people prosecuted for
terrorist plots in the United States since 9/11 have been caught
in FBI stings, usually involving plots initiated or advanced by
the FBI or its informers themselves, not those prosecuted. In
one case, an FBI informant convinced a homeless man to sell
two old stereo speakers (sic) to an undercover FBI agent for
grenades to use in a plan, suggested by the informant, to attack
a shopping mall. The homeless man is now serving seventeen
years for terrorism. In another case, that of the Newburgh Four,
four drug users living in poverty, including a mentally ill man,
were recruited by an FBI informant and promised holidays,
cars, businesses and huge amounts of cashup to a quarter of
a million dollarsto carry out a plot; one of them was told he
would be killed if he backed out. All four are serving twentyfive years for terrorism.
The FBI isnt alone in this type of behaviour. British police,
in league with the UKs febrile tabloids, entirely invented an
Islamic extremist plot to blow up Manchester Uniteds Old
Trafford ground in 2004there was no plot, no explosives and
no extremists. Another Islamic extremist plot, said to involve
the biotoxin ricin, turned out to have no ricin, and four of the
five people charged were acquitted.
Three of the key features of the War on Terror thus
demonstrate how it can be a vast, self-perpetuating cycle of
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Stupid: the Iraq War actually made us less secure by radicalising civilians in target countries and increasing the incomes
of fundamentalist Middle Eastern regimes; drone strikes
continue to enrage and radicalise target communities; and
undermining encryption as part of mass surveillance degrades
internet security. And if terrorist plots dont exist, they are
invented by police agencies.
And while we have incorporated the low-level Stupid of
the War on Terror into our daily livesenduring the security
theatre of the airport scan, assuming our governments are
spying on us, tolerating the waste of billions of dollars on
pointless conflictswere oblivious to the greater absurdity:
that the fixation with national security comes with a body
count, not merely of foreign lives lost in distant wars, but in
the consequences of infrastructure not built, health services not
provided, prevention programs not funded, social services cut
back, all in the name of strategies that in fact make us less safe. The
desperate and draconian effort to make Westerners more secure
is killing them too, not just the nameless victims of violence in
places like Iraq. And this form of Stupid will continue as long
as governments, intelligence and law enforcement agencies and
large corporations benefit from it.
BK
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