September
13, 2021 -- "Information
Clearing House
- "Sputnik"
-
The United States’
245-year history as a political entity has been one long trail
of wars and more wars. It is estimated that nearly 95 percent of
that historical span has seen the nation involved in either
all-out wars, proxy conflicts, or other military subterfuges.
But since the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, the US has gone into
hyper-war mode. Twenty years ago, the invasion and occupation of
Afghanistan ushered in multiple other American wars and covert
operations from Asia to Africa, from the Middle East to the
Americas.
At one point, the former Obama administration was bombing seven
countries simultaneously all in the name of “fighting
terrorism”. Hundreds of US bombs rain down somewhere on the
planet every day.
What is rather sickening is how the 20th anniversary of the 9/11
event this weekend is marked with solemn speeches by US
president Joe Biden and his British counterpart Boris Johnson –
the two countries that spearheaded the “War on Terror” era.
Biden claims that 9/11 demonstrates the “unity and resilience”
of the American people, while Johnson blusters with platitudes
about 9/11 showing that “terrorists did not defeat Western
democracy and freedoms”. This self-indulgent piffle is
contemptible and nauseating.
Two decades after the US and Britain launched their criminal
blitzkrieg on Afghanistan and the rest of the world, those two
nations are more financially broke than ever. Internally, they
are more bitterly divided than ever. More evidently, their
so-called democracies are in reality oligarchies where a tiny
rich elite rule over a mass of impoverished people who are spied
on and treated like serfs by unaccountable secret agencies and a
mass media in hock with oligarchic masters.
If there was a genuine commemoration of 9/11 it would entail a
mass uprising by the people to overthrow the war-mongering class
system that Biden and Johnson serve as frontmen.
Just this week – of all weeks – the American and British states
are in effect admitting that their societies are collapsing from
vast economic inequality and crumbling infrastructure. The Biden
administration is trying to release a budget of up to $4.5
trillion to alleviate poverty and repair decrepit roads,
bridges, buildings and other public utilities.
The Johnson
regime in Britain is forced to admit that the National
Health Service is overwhelmed by a chronic lack of
funding. Taxes are being
hiked that will hit
low-income workers in order to pay for the £12 billion
($16bn) needed to prop up the enfeebled health service.
All of the cost
for trying to repair the US and Britain to make these
countries a modicum of decency for its citizens to live
in could have been covered by the expenditure on wars in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen and
elsewhere that the US and Britain have directly or
indirectly been involved in.
A new
estimate of the cost
for the “war on terror” by the United States alone is
put at $8 trillion. This is roughly double the
infrastructure bill that Biden is trying to get passed
by Congress. American politicians are objecting to the
extravagance of that “rescue budget”, yet they had no
qualms about spending $8 trillion on wars. It is also
estimated that for Britain its military adventurism in
Afghanistan alone cost a total of $30 billion. Again,
just imagine how British society might be better off if
that money had been spent instead on attending to the
health needs of its citizens.
9/11
ushered in an orgy of wars and destruction by
the American and British ruling classes aided
and abetted by their servile politicians and
corporate media who lied at every turn to
whitewash the criminality.
But 9/11
also ushered in wanton warmongering regimes in
Washington and London that have bled the American
and British public of finances and democratic
rights. In 2001, the US national debt was about $6
trillion. This year that
debt burden on
future American generations has
escalated to $28
trillion – a crushing, unsustainable burden largely
driven by criminal wars.
The
healthcare costs for American military veterans wounded and
maimed from the wars on terror are projected at $2 trillion.
Over 30,000 US service members and veterans are reckoned to have
committed suicide over the past 20 years. That’s 10 times the
number of American people who died on the day of 9/11.
Untold millions of
innocent civilians were killed by the wars that the US
and British launched after 9/11. Such suffering and
destruction all for nothing except for the enrichment of
war-profiteering corporations and the oligarchic elite.
The United
States and Britain have been so deformed by criminal
wars they have become dysfunctional and dystopian. They
have inflicted failed states around the world, but none
more so than on their own people.
The towers that fell on 9/11
were a premonition of much bigger collapse.
Finian Cunningham
has written extensively on international affairs, with
articles published in several languages. He is a
Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked
as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of
Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career
in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and
songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor
and writer in major news media organisations, including
The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.
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