deafmuslimpunx:

Also check out Osama’s other post, “Common misconceptions about Sufis”

dznm:

crazyland:

Henry Rollins, you badass you.

The criminals Bush and Cheney hastily wrote out their cover stories and received their advances. They were paid to re-write history and bend the truth to conform to their narrative. They are trying to stay out of prison because they are War Criminals and they know it.

The disparities in the Bush and Cheney books ‘Decision Points’ and ‘In My Time’ respectively, show that neither can keep their stories straight when it comes to their actions on September 11th, 2001. It makes sense as to why they testified together and not under oath at the 9-11 Commission in 2004. The truth is something that obviously neither can deal with. Criminal is as criminal does.

9-11-01, ten years on. The America is Kool-Aid stained and punch drunk. The America is now the red white & war.

The America can’t seem to be at peace in the world—ever. It seems the America is always drawing down on someone somewhere. The death toll of American soldiers in Afghanistan last August is proof that the America is still out there, kickin’ real world ass to keep the America safe and free. Free to lay off teachers and firefighters.

Recently, I got a letter from a woman currently deployed in Afghanistan, “A-Stan” as she called it. Her husband is deployed there as well. She has ten months left on this rotation. She wrote that the largest challenge she faces is keeping the morale of her troops up. She added that occasionally they get to kill “bad guys”. It’s cops and robbers. It’s kid’s games with a lot of death and mutilation. This is the legacy of 9-11-01.

9-11-01 is a story of incompetence, either intentioned or not. Cheney is a War Criminal, that’s no longer even a debatable point. His book, In My Time, is a crime novel.  He is a liar and a fraud. Cheney is a true sociopath. But mostly, Dick Cheney is a coward. He is a coward who cannot leave the America without fear of arrest. The only reason he got as far as he did is because of his five deferments that allowed him to avoid service in Vietnam. Had he gone, no doubt, he would have been fragged.

9-11-01 is what the America gets for global hegemony. The CIA calls it “blowback”. The ten resulting years of fear, death, waste and debt is what the America gets for not standing up to the steady lies. Lies so naked, so brazen and crass, their issuers; Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz should perhaps be given a pass for being so upfront with it all. No one in the mainstream media or the halls of government had the patriotism to stand up to them in any meaningful way. The citizens who did oppose this blood-splattered crime sprees were marginalized and called un-American.

Perhaps that criticism is absurdly accurate. Perhaps wanting peace is to be at odds with the American War Machine. This sentiment brings to mind a Phil Lynott penned lyric from the song Warrior found on the Thin Lizzy album Jailbreak.   

    I am the warrior / I serve the death machine
    Losers or conquerors / All flash past on my silver screen

No doubt, the lyric was more swagger and bravado than anything else but it is a fair assessment of the America’s foreign policy posture and perceived mindset abroad. The Americans are known all over the world as the toughest gang in town. The America drops atomic bombs, cluster bombs, defoliants that keep on killing well after the conflict has ended. Not only is the America really good at all this, it is also very proud of it.

9-11-01 gave the America the invasion and occupation of Iraq. How long all that was in the works is up for speculation. Ten years later, the America is still in Iraq, still in Afghanistan, still in Cuba. Money continues to hemorrhage from the America into these countries by the truckload. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are out of work. At least they can feel relatively safe as they starve out.

The Bush Administration went to war against the America and won.

9-11-01 is now the convenient excuse to denigrate Muslims, spread ignorance and hatred toward Islam and people who “look Muslim”.

9-11-01 justifies every demand from the Pentagon for expenditures no matter how pointless, illogical or outrageous. To even question their requests inspires anger.

9-11-01 allows cowardly politicians to avoid the hard work of a foreign policy that inspires peaceful and positive relationships with other countries.

9-11-01 provides cover for the America’s blatant power grabs all over the Middle East and Central Asia.

9-11-01 Permits the intelligence agencies of the America to work without any oversight, thus allowing them to do who knows what to whom, who knows where.

9-11-01 has turned millions of Americans into terrified idiots claiming victim status. They bask in their cowardice and ignorance. They wear their stupidity like a badge on their overfed chests. They wonder “why people hate our freedom” and rarely have the backbone to look into the history of their country’s foreign affairs. Rarely do they have the fortitude to put the shoe on the other foot and ask themselves what they would do in the same situation that another country’s population has found themselves in when dealing with the America.

9-11-01 showed anyone who had a few seconds to notice that the America’s media was complicit with the criminal activity of the Bush administration. They are all as guilty of withholding and manipulating information as any member of the Bush cabinet.

9-11-01 has created a new holiday for the Americans. They can talk about the bravery of the people who died, the first responders, the families and others, as if the bravery of these people was their own. Ten years later, that misfortune, sacrifice and heroism has passed into the collective consciousness of the American identity. These people have in fact, done nothing to deserve this self-congratulatory comforting of their stupidity.

9-11-01 has created a American populace that is gullible to the point of comedy. The word “billion” has never been used in the America as much as it has been in the ten years since 9-11-01. Now it’s just another denomination of the America’s treasury that gets routinely hurled into the furnace of “The war on terror”. This is money squandered that does absolutely nothing to keep the America safe. Nothing. In fact it insures conflicts in the years ahead. It is the investment in the America’s future. Not educating its young people, but bankrolling the higher tech, higher stakes conflicts that are to come. This is money that will never return to the America. This money went to the corporations of the Bush administration’s choosing. This was obviously fine with a large slice of the American population. The broken roads, under funded educational systems and other ruination are the result. By not standing up against these crimes, the American people got what they voted for.

9-11-01 made heroes out of war deferring frauds and corporate scum.

9-11-01 was perhaps the clearest and last wake-up call for the America. For the most part, it went unheard, misread and unreported. The America has instead, doubled down on xenophobia, religious extremism, ignorance, military global hegemony and a last ditch, pathetic, bellicose posture as it bares its teeth at a world that is no longer afraid and moving on quickly with new technology, new ideas and new conversations. Meanwhile, the America hoarsely issues threats and ultimatums as its economy goes over the cliff and into the great darkness. An empire falling over like a winded, senile beast.

9-11-01 should be remembered as ten years on as the great accumulation of the America’s foreign policy and intelligence failures.

9-11-01 was not deserved but arguably inevitable.

9-11-01 cannot surprise anyone who has an understanding of world history over the last one hundred years or who travels internationally.

9-11-01 showed the world how monumentally flawed and unprepared the America was for a domestic attack. To see the president, standing on a pile of rubble, barking hollow promises at a yet unknown enemy was as pitiful as it was moronic.

9-11-01 could have been the start of new America; an America more connected with the rest of the world. It has in fact, only hastened the America’s demise.

9-11-01 is now just another day to celebrate American exceptionalism.

Henry Rollins. Standing ovation everyone.