Motives Behind War On Terror

LAHORE: The war on terror has killed a large number of people, including children, and destroyed the infrastructure in those countries where this war is being waged. About 151,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in three years following the US-led invasion of their country, according to World Health Organisation (WHO). Almost the same number of people has been killed in Afghanistan.

In Pakistan, senior army officials told at a news conference on November 14, 2007, that 28 suicide attacks killed 600 security men, in addition to 1,300 civilians after the Lal Masjid siege. It also said that from 2001 till November 14, 2007, 966 troops were killed and 2,259 others were injured, 488 foreign militants were killed and 24 others were arrested. It has been speculated that the unofficial number of Pakistani soldiers killed in action to be somewhere around 3,000 by late 2006.

Pakistan received about $4 billion from the US for the logistical support it provided for the counter-terrorism operations from 2002 to 2006, for its military operation in Waziristan and other tribal areas, according to Asian Development Bank. The Bush administration also offered a $3 billion five-year aid package to Pakistan for becoming a frontline ally in its ´war on terror´. Annual instalments of $600 million each split evenly between military and economic aid began in 2005.

In his autobiography, President Musharraf has mentioned that the US had paid millions of dollars to Pakistan´s government as bounty money for capturing al Qaeda operators from the tribal areas. About 359 of them were handed over to the US. Pakistan´s army enjoyed the prestige of being a symbol of order and unity for the country during last 60 years.

The war on terrorism was declared by the Bush administration after the 9/11 incident. Aside from 19 hijackers, 2,974 people died immediately after these attacks, according to official figures released by the US government.

After September 11, NATO invoked its famous Article 5 – the pledge that an attack against one will be treated as an attack against all. Most US government officials, journalists and independent researchers generally accepted the conclusion that al Qaeda is solely responsible for the attacks and consequent destruction. Most civil engineers generally accept the mainstream account that impacts of jets at high speeds in combination with subsequent fires, rather than controlled demolition, led to the collapse of Twin Towers.

Many 9/11 conspiracy theorists claims often suggest that individuals in the US government knew of the impending attacks and refused to act on that knowledge, or that the attacks were a false flag operation carried out by high-level US officials with the intention of stirring up passions and winning the allegiance of Americans in order to facilitate military spending, garner support for Israeli policies towards Palestinians, the restriction of civil liberties and/or a programme of aggressive and profitable foreign policy.

The BBC reported on September 18, 2001, that Niaz A Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. MSNBC reported on May 16, 2002, that President Bush received plans to begin a worldwide war on al Qaeda on September 9, 2001, two days before the 9/11 attacks.

Some conspiracy theories hold that Israel had foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks. Other theories proposed by some right-wing groups go further in claiming that Israel played a role in carrying out attacks and that 9/11 was part of an international Zionist conspiracy. "Framing is a process whereby communicators, consciously or unconsciously, act to construct a point of view that encourages facts of a given situation to be interpreted by others in a particular manner," wrote Kuypers. These findings suggest that the public is misinformed about the government justification and plans concerning the war on terror.

The "War on terrorism" and policies it denotes have been a source of a ongoing controversy. As critics argue it has been used to justify unilateral preemptive war, perpetual war, human rights abuses and other violations of international law.

A study by two journalism organisations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about national security threat from Iraq in two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks. The study concluded that these statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanised public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretences."

The study counted 935 false statements in two years. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and some administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al Qaeda or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al Qaeda," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism, while writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

It has been proved that the Iraq war was based on erroneous estimate that has killed hundreds of thousands civilians in many countries, including Pakistan. The purpose of waging this war was to obtain American hegemony for getting control of the world´s oil, a technological transformation of the military in which fighting from space would become central, an enormous increase in military spending and to modify the doctrine of preemptive attack so that the US would be able to attack other countries even if they posed no imminent threat.