On Monday December 8th 1941 FDR stood before Congress and said “December 7th, 1941, a date that will live in infamy…” and the people of our nation rallied to the cause for justice.
After 9/11 Junior Bush also rallied our people by telling us to “Get down to Disney World in Florida… take your families and enjoy life…” The US-NATO invasion of Afghanistan commenced on October 7, 2001.
Meanwhile, our great Military Industrial Empire was given the go ahead to gear up for WAR. On March 19th, 2003 the Bush crew, led by former G.D. Searle CEO Rumsfeld (under his thumb the slow poison artificial sweetener Aspartame was born) announced the newest phony war term. That would be Shock and Awe as we carpet bombed and missile shredded Iraq’s infrastructure and citizenry.
Why not, as this was good business for the Bush/Cheney donors who would then get contracts to clean up the mess or AKA Reconstruction. Isn’t infamy great?
This writer has written on more than one occasion my experience of that fateful morning of March 19, 2003. The night before I was glued to my television set watching the news shows from Canada, hoping for an eleventh hour cancelation of the impending attack on Iraq.
A month earlier millions, no, tens of millions of people from throughout the entire world marched and rallied against the planned illegal and immoral pre-emptive attack on another sovereign nation. Well, that fateful morning all we had hoped for did not occur. My country did the dirty deed, and its karma still resonates. I can recall standing in my living room, watching some asshole on either CNN or MSNBC describing the Shock and Awe like a cheerleader at a football game. I cried like a baby. Sadly, many of my friends and neighbors ‘Drank the Kool-Aid’ and marched along with the lying Bush/Cheney Cabal. Remember how many Democrats also wore their flag pins on those lapels? Months earlier, worrying about their upcoming re-elections, too many of them voted to authorize the Cabal’s pre-emptive attack plans. Miss Hillary, destined to be champion of her party in 2016, marched lockstep with the evil doers… and you wonder why she lost her bid for the White House?
Only a fool will deny that most of what our government labels as Al Qaeda or ISIL or whatever fanatical Islamic group is out there, would not even fit inside of a sports stadium with their numbers… IF we never attacked, invaded and occupied Iraq. Ditto for Afghanistan, where the Taliban had offered to turn over Bin Laden after 9/11. No, those two nations had to be controlled.
Why? Well, as to Iraq, Hussein was going to begin selling his oil in Euros and not in the dollars he always traded in. Of course, Iraq’s oil reserves were massive and needed to be controlled by us. Iraq was also right next to the other ‘AXIS of Evil’, Iran, and wouldn’t it be great to have our military right on their border?
As to Afghanistan, well, it was a gateway and transport area for the whole oil and gas Caspian region. Plus, as we have later found out, Afghanistan is overripe with mineral deposits, one such being the lithium needed for the hundreds of millions of batteries for the sea of electronic gadgets used worldwide. As the late General Smedley Butler had written in his 1935 short book War is a Racket we need to see who profits from our military engagements AKA Wars. All the European and Middle Eastern nations that are flooded with this severe refugee crisis should finger the blame on Uncle Sam and their own participation in NATO. For without those terrible attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Syria by this US led imperialist coalition, more hearts would be still beating, more towns and cities not destroyed, along with a decent way of life for millions.
Question is: When will the hundreds of millions of our citizens wake up and smell the coffee, or shall I say the burning sewage coming from our elected officials and mainstream media? Holding one’s nose is just not enough.
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Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 400 of his work posted on sites like Global Research, Greanville Post, Off Guardian, Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust, whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected].
