Mahboob A. Khawaja, Ph.D.

“Afghanistan did not attack America on September 11, 2001. The war on Afghanistan was already on the Pentagon’s drawing board prior to 9/11. The US led war on Afghanistan, using 9/11 as a pretext and a justification is illegal and criminal. The US and NATO heads of state and heads of government from 2001 to the present are complicit in the launching of a criminal and illegal war. Invoking article 5 of the Washington Treaty is an illegal and criminal procedure. The (former) US and NATO heads of state and heads of government should be prosecuted for war crimes. On October 7, people across the land in the US, Canada and NATO countries must demand that all foreign occupation troops be immediately withdrawn and repatriated.” (Professor Michel Chossudovsky “Was America attacked by Afghanistan on September 11, 2001?” Global Research: 10/4/2012)

“If war is a crime what is its name? The Constitution of the United States of America calls it “Treason.” …….So all in all it appears causing unconstitutional war and genocide is a crime; the crime is Treason …..The Judges are the only ones who can achieve prevention without violence. A jurisprudential revolution can prevent war and genocide simply by thinking judicially instead of politically.” (W’Lawpsh, “And Its Name Is Treason!” Dissident Voice: 11/24/2011)

“Was America attacked by Afghanistan on September 11, 2001?” (Global Research: 10/4/2012), asks Professor Michel Chossudovsky. You wonder if an ant can attack an elephant. How else can you put the answer in a rational context? The unchallenged facts of the contemporary history remain in tact that the wars on Iraq and subsequently on Afghanistan and the spill-over continuing into Pakistan were all planned by the US politicians long before the happening of the 9/11 attacks on the US soil. With the approaching peak oil age, America and the industrialized West Europeans desperately needed supplies of natural resources to maintain their hegemony over the globe and to ensure unparallel supremacy in warfare. Professor Chossudovsky analysis points out the undeniable facts that most scholars and global citizenry would agree to:

Both the media and the US government, in chorus, continue to point to the 9/11 attacks and the role of Al Qaeda, allegedly supported by Afghanistan. The bombing and invasion of Afghanistan has been described as a “campaign” against Islamic terrorists, rather than a war. To this date, however, there is no proof that Al Qaeda was behind the 9/11 attacks…….The Afghan government (Talaban Govt) in the weeks following 9/11, offered on two occasions to deliver Osama bin Laden to US justice, if there were preliminary evidence of his involvement in the attacks. These offers were refused by Washington

In sharp contrast to analyse the pertinent developments of the 9/11 attacks, the US government did not provide any factual-impartial analysis of the events to the global citizens. Frank Taylor report (Pentagon) was a home-made unilateral and secret assessment. The call to NATO action was instant and a ready-made plan. Under the NATO article 5,

“if it is determined that the [September 11, 2001] attack against the United States was directed from abroad [Afghanistan] against “The North Atlantic area“, it shall be regarded as an action covered by Article 5 of the Washington Treaty”

Now eleven years later that “if” and “determination” of the facts remain a political mystery. Afghanistan and Iraq or Pakistan were not the enemy of the US or Western Europe but nations with whom the US had interactive relations and in the recent past had military alliance for long time to challenge the growing influence of the former USSR led communism. If the “War on terrorism” was not a premeditated conspiracy to attack the oil-gas enriched Muslim countries, what else was there to invoke the insanity against the peaceful humanity?

“The War on Afghanistan had been Planned Prior to 9/11”, explains Professor Chossudovsky:

“According to Jane Defense India had been approached in March 2001 by US to participate in a US military operation against Afghanistan: Insider accounts published in the British, French and Indian media have revealed that US officials threatened war against Afghanistan during the summer of 2001. These reports include the prediction, made in July, that “if the military action went ahead, it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.”

Why did America invade Iraq and Afghanistan? There is a critical crisis in THINKING and IDENTITY across the United States. Frank Scott (“Who Are we?” Media Monitors Networks: 11.11.2010) offers a rational context to Who Are We?

“Under assault by a consciousness control system that insists we are doing quite well even when evidence shows we’re on the critical list, we have reason to be confused…..If we, the people of these United States, are ever to be a united nation we have to penetrate the lead curtain of misinformation in which we are imprisoned and begin thinking as a population with a collective destiny which demands collective action. We have a serious social identity crisis and cannot save ourselves by making war against ourselves. But if we want a peaceful world and safe environment, we need to break out of the mental prison in which we’ll remain as long as we are kept separate, and unequal, by the controllers of what goes into our minds under the false label of information.”

Americans and most Europeans are indoctrinated that Islam and Muslims are their enemies and somehow, the 9/11 attacks have come to revisit the superstitious and unthinkable episode. In reality, “terrorism” myth was manufactured by the lobbyist-run Western political leaders and groups whereas, it has nothing to do with Islam or Muslims. The myth is self-engineered by the former neo-conservatives of Bush administration.

The Europeans transgressors invaded the morally and intellectually advanced Islamic Civilization and crushed it by military campaigns all their material and scientific progress and public institutions. The colonization scheme of things was not outcome of the Western democratic values to spread freedom, liberty and justice but ferocity of violence and killings of millions and millions of human lives for the European Empires to be built on colored bloodbaths. The European crusaders crossed the channels and unknown time zones to subjugate the much divided Muslim people as part of their superior nationalism perception and values that Muslims were inferior to the European race and could be used as subjects without human identity and raw material to build the new Empires. Many centuries past, if there was a UNO, it would not have dared to call the European intruders as terrorists because it would have been their own organization as Muslims lived in slavery and denial of basic human rights and identity. They were classified as “subjects of conquered race.” In an information age, knowledge–driven global culture of reason, ignorance is no longer a requisite to learn from the living history.

History speaks of the Al-Andalusia Arab civilization as the longest advanced civilization lasting for eight centuries in Europe. The European Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution were the inspired outcomes of the Islamic intellectual and scientific contributions to the Western Europe. When the Arabs followed Islam as a system of thinking and practices, the earth felt their weight and importance and often they had moral and intellectual superiority over others. They seem to have lost the imperatives of Islamic values when they opted for oil-producing superficial prosperity, exclusive materialism and political authoritarianism by negating Islam and leadership accountability as a system of governance. The blood suckers authoritarians killing the people striving for freedom and human dignity have become a disgrace to Muslims and Islam. Now, the Europeans identify themselves as civilized people but the effective date for the claim remains a mystery. The previous Empires knew their geography and limits, but the newly articulated American Empire in its infancy, is challenging to the limits of the Laws of God and appears obsessed with “fear” of being replaced by the new emerging economically productive nations of Asia such as China, India and combination of others small nations. President George W. Bush invoked the “War on Terrorism” as a dictum of power, not reason and wisdom, to camouflage the prospective future with acts of barbarity and to dispel the notion of accountability in global affairs. Historically, people and nations pursuing this path of behavior have ended up in self-delusional and self-destruction.

The 9/11 attacks on the US were allegedly carried out by some individuals and were not inspired or supported by the religion of Islam or Muslims anywhere. Muslims and Islam have no animosity toward the Western civilizations as they have lived under its continued influential impacts. Some hourly paid intellectuals turned guardian of the approved truth, allege that Islam breeds terrorism. The Western news media poisoned the public thinking and perceptions of ‘radical Islam’ with enhanced ‘fear’ of terrorism as if Arabs and Muslims were born in the eye of the storm and terrorism was an exclusive domain of the Islamic religious precepts.

Truth is one and indivisible. The US and its allies invaded Iraq and Afghanistan to occupy and exploit the oil and gas resources and the “war on terror” has crossed over the borders into Pakistan. Caroline Myss, “Dark Times Require Transcendant Responses.” OpenEdNews: 3/21/2010) takes us on a moral and spiritual discovery of the American landscape and points out, what has been lost in the course of terrible confrontational history must be recovered through self- evaluation and self- realization:

“All the great learnings that develop a person's moral conscience, inner skills, capacity for discernment, to appreciate the arts, to refine themselves as a human being-- are gone. These are the thinking arts. Technology is the money art. We've removed the thinking, refinement arts. We've replaced them with superstitious, evangelical crap-- ... racist, filled with fear. with superstars…….Always in the history of humanity there has been horribleness-- nightmares and waking up, nightmares and waking up……..We have to find a higher way of looking at this or you're going to be consumed by the negativity. I have learned to see things through grace, because I have to. At the end of the day... you can't reason with a crisis, a catastrophy or disease...”

Every beginning has its end. It is just that most transgressors do not know about it when they cross over the limits of the Laws of God. The Roman, Austro-Hungarian and British Empires collapsed after they violated the limits. Nazis claimed to run the world for thousands of years, but ended up in just 12 years after killing millions of human beings throughout the Western hemisphere. Fascism met resistance at its early stages. The beginning envisions the end. The USSR was defeated, the day it raided the destitute people of Afghanistan and disturbed the dead in graveyards with continuous bombing. The American and British surrendered the day international community learned about the Guantanomo Bay prisoners and photos of the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq. Since March 2003, an estimated three million civilians have been killed by the American-British war in Iraq. After the facts, the American and British apologists would put up the explanations that the soldiers had social and mental disorders. The US media reports indicate that approximately 19 - 25 of their war veterans at home and troops commit suicide every day on the war fronts.

A century earlier C.E, M. Joad (Guide to Modern Wickedness), captioned the human tragedy in these words:

“….Human nature is at least in part wicked and in part foolish, how can human beings be prevented from suffering from the results of their wickedness and folly? ….Men simply do not see that war is foolish and useless and wicked. They think on occasion that it is necessary and wise and honourable, for war is not the work of bad men knowing themselves to be wrong, but of good men passionately convinced that they are right.”

After waging a decade old bogus wars of terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, American and some of its hired European allied policy makers and military strategists appear to have lost their rational thinking and miserably failed to understand or differentiate between the myth of power and realities on the ground that they cannot win any wars against Islam and Muslims. The war on terror lacks purpose and meaning. Of all the forbidden truth that the Western news media does not exhibit and the political leaders failed to grasp is that the US and its former imperial allies do not have the will nor weapons to fight against God and Islam. They have done all they could to instigate and perpetuate animosity against the Faith and People who enjoin peace in thoughts and practices and their daily prayers start by sending peace and blessings Prophet Abraham and his progeny - Moses, Jesus and Mohammad. Are there any technologically advanced weapons to fight against God? If time and history could reawaken their lost conscience and give them an opportunity and a slot for self-reflection and self-consciousness, would the US - Europeans ever learn this compelling reality from the undeniable history of the Nature of things?

Future must be anew, not the repetition of the past. Future making does not lie with the aggressors nor with the failed international institutions, it is with the will and resolve of conscientious and well informed global community to oppose the warlords and to articulate anew and a more people-oriented feasible future for the mankind to co-exist in peace and harmony. While the planned wars and military aggressions have failed to achieve any strategic goals except causing large scale deaths and environmental destruction of the human habitats, political thinkers and intellectuals and experts in conflict resolution should envision new strategies to avert the futuristic wars. One of such rational approach would be to organize interactive rational dialogues between the Muslim scholars and the American-European intellectuals to assess and to know where we are and what wrongs and cruelties have been done to the mankind, and how best we could come out of the prevalent man-made foolishness and drudgery and deception?

Dr. Iqbal, a great poet, thinker and philosopher of the East once noted: “Nations are built by thinkers, intellectuals, poet, artists and philosophers but destroyed by politicians.” America and its European allies are disconnected with the POWER of REASON and priorities of the 21st century surviving mankind. Now, it is up to the new thinkers and intellectuals of the global humanity to work for ANEW vision of the world where these belligerent Western nations have flunked, indeed, the trump card rests with the educated and spiritually enriched visionary and proactive intelligent thinkers and problem-solving experts of the Islamic world to show courage, imagination and take initiatives and to help build a new world of human dignity, rights and justice for the missing global peace and co-existence.

In his concluding analysis, Professor Chossudovsky (Global Research) makes the facts abundantly clear that:

“Afghanistan did not attack America on September 11, 2001. The war on Afghanistan was already on the Pentagon’s drawing board prior to 9/11. The US led war on Afghanistan, using 9/11 as a pretext and a justification is illegal and criminal. The US and NATO heads of state and heads of government from 2001 to the present are complicit in the launching of a criminal and illegal war. Invoking article 5 of the Washington Treaty is an illegal and criminal procedure. The (former) US and NATO heads of state and heads of government should be prosecuted for war crimes. On October 7, people across the land in the US, Canada and NATO countries must demand that all foreign occupation troops be immediately withdrawn and repatriated.”

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(Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Lambert Publishing Germany-May, 2012)