glenn greenwald on eternal war

This War will never be won. This era of eternal war will never end. It will not be allowed to. Period !

I remember writing an essay in which I had said just that. That was in 2003, the year  the " Shock and Awe" attack on Iraq began. I was living in Iran then . The country that was already part of the Planned, Plunder.    The new  Grind into submission and Grab Resources Great Game that continued the 19th century Game of the same name. With resources now rarer and  the appetite for them greater the Great Game  has no end .

This is another great Glenn Greenwald  article.  Hats off.

"When does this thing we are in now end? And if it does not have an end — and I'm not speaking as a lawyer here, I am just speaking as a citizen who feels morally accountable for my country's actions — if it does not have an end, then morally speaking it does not seem like it is a war. And then,our country is killing people and locking them up outside the traditional judicial system in a way I think we maybe cannot be forgiven for."

It is precisely the intrinsic endlessness of this so-called "war" that is its most corrupting and menacing attribute, for the reasons Maddow explained. But despite the happy talk from Johnson, it is not ending soon. By its very terms, it cannot. And all one has to do is look at the words and actions of the Obama administration to know this.

In the name of the War on Terror, the current president has diluted decades-old Miranda warnings; codified a new scheme of indefinite detention on US soil; plotted to relocate Guantanamo to Illinois; increased secrecy, repression and release-restrictions at the camp;minted a new theory of presidential assassination powers even for US citizens; renewed the Bush/Cheney warrantless eavesdropping framework for another five years, as well as the Patriot Act, without a single reform; and just signed into law all new restrictions on the release of indefinitely held detainees.

Does that sound to you like a government anticipating the end of the War on Terror any time soon? 

There's no question that this "war" will continue indefinitely. There is no question that US actions are the cause of that, the gasoline that fuels the fire. The only question - and it's becoming less of a question for me all the time - is whether this endless war is the intended result of US actions or just an unwanted miscalculation.

It's increasingly hard to make the case that it's the latter. The US has long known, and its own studies have emphatically concluded, that "terrorism" is motivated not by a "hatred of our freedoms" but by US policy and aggression in the Muslim world. This causal connection is not news to the US government. Despite this - or, more accurately, because of it - they continue with these policies.

One of the most difficult endeavors is to divine the motives of other people (divining our own motives is difficult enough). That becomes even more difficult when attempting to discern the motives not of a single actor but a collection of individuals with different motives and interests ("the US government").

But what one can say for certain is that there is zero reason for US officials to want an end to the war on terror, and numerous and significant reasons why they would want it to continue. 




If you were a US leader, or an official of the National Security State, or a beneficiary of the private military and surveillance industries, why would you possibly want the war on terror to end? That would be the worst thing that could happen. It's that war that generates limitless power, impenetrable secrecy, an unquestioning citizenry, and massive profit.






But the notion that the US government is even entertaining putting an end to any of this is a pipe dream, and the belief that they even want to is fantasy. They're preparing for more endless war; their actions are fueling that war; and they continue to reap untold benefits from its continuation. Only outside compulsion, from citizens, can make an end to all of this possible.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/04/war-on-terror-endless-johnson