After a decade has passed since the horrific terrorist attack against the United States, perhaps it is time to reexamine our world view of 9/11.
Michel Chossudovsky in his book, America’s War on Terrorism, articulates that when war and propaganda combine, truth is the first sacrifice. The main objective of war propaganda is to fabricate an enemy in a terror context to convince the public that war is justified for a humanitarian and noble cause.
In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attack, a war cabinet meeting from different US government departments launched the global “War on Terror” campaign, and largely dismissed the intelligence foreknowledge warnings and forensic investigation of the wreckage. The rest is the history of winners and losers in the context of terrorism and war against terrorism.
Frames have been drafted from the history of the Soviet-Afghan War to compel the public opinion in the controlled pipelines toward selective directions. Secret diplomatic agreements between the winners of Jimmy Carter’s Operation Cyclone i.e. Osama bin Laden, Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal and General Zia-ul-Haq are declassified to feed crispy themes in the news rooms against religious extremism and fundamentalism and to formulate public opinion in favor of the global war against terrorism.
A famous Kenyan proverb says “When elephants fight it is the grass that suffers.” All powerful nations and strong economies in the world have their basic concern with power and profit. Due to their geographical location and geopolitical relations, South Asian countries remain a battlefield between strategic competitors throughout history.
The United States seeks to control the Middle East and Central Asia
Washington wants to dominate the energy reservoirs in the Gulf region and Caspian Sea basin, and to counter with any confrontation with this nuclear region in the coming centuries where China, Russia, India, Pakistan and nuclear ambitious Iran exist. This game of bombs and blood to achieve peace and democracy is not only played in the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. Since September 11 – under the pretext of the global war against terrorism – the US has intervened in Libya, Yemen, Colombia, Sudan and Pakistan to enhance American dominance and gain access to oil and other natural resources.
The media is used as a psychological weapon. Targets are chosen because of their psychological value rather than military value. Information warfare is known as psychological warfare which distorts the opponent’s view of reality to project a false view of things and manipulate the opponent.
Undoubtedly, September 11 was a tragic attack against the United States
We are sorry for all of those that died on 9/11. Because of those 19 sadistic hijackers, America declared war on many nations. At least half a million Iraqis have been killed and thousands of Afghans – the precise figure is unknown. There is a dire need to rethink 9/11 because it is still a question mark for authorities to disclose the real bakers’ sponsors and beneficiaries of this ongoing war.
It is also a matter of significance for anthropologists to explore that how the power players transfer the paradigms from the “War on Drugs” to the “War against weapons of mass destruction” and then to the “War on Terror.” Cries of all the victims and tears of their families are still waiting for kind considerations of historians, political and social scientists, and foreign policy experts to study the lust of power and to diagnose the mentality of both the terrorist and the war mongers.
The souls of all those that died on 9/11 and all of those that died because of it are focused on the mainstream media and intellectuals to know about the crime and cause of their brutal killing.
Qaisar Shehzad Farooq is a creative writer, communication researcher and contemporary blogger in the perspectives of Global Information Management Systems. Qaisar is a PhD fellow at the Center for Communication and Media Studies, Pakistan. His research thesis “Framing War against terrorism” is considered an excellent and model study by academics, historians and renowned supervisors. He had already coordinated research studies in media, literature and development campaigns. His English and Urdu articles appear in newspapers & blogs.
