For Whom Does Condi Speak — Americans or Pentagon War Machine?

American political analyst and activist Bill Dores has criticized former US Secretary of State Condoleezza “Condi” Rice who said on Sunday that Americans are safer today because the United States invaded Afghanistan and Iraq following the 9/11 attacks.

Rice, who served as the US secretary of state from 2005 to 2009 and as the national security advisor from 2001 to 2005, also said she is concerned that the United States has lost what she calls its “eyes and ears” in Afghanistan, following the American military withdrawal after implementing a policy of death and destruction for twenty years.

Commenting to Press TV on Tuesday, Dores, a writer for Struggle/La Lucha and longtime antiwar activist, said, “I wonder of whom Rice speaks.”

“On September 5, nearly 8 million jobless US workers lost their benefits. They have no means of support. Are they safer because the US government spent $6.4 trillion bombing and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan?” he asked.

“Moratoriums on evictions, home foreclosures and utility shutoffs are ending in most states. Tens of millions are affected. Are they safer? Will the Pentagon war machine protect their homes?” he added.

“What about the people who lost their homes to Hurricane Ida? Some saw their loved ones drowned. They could use some of that ‘defense’ money,” he said.

“When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, the Louisiana National Guard was not there to help. It had been deployed to Iraq. Nearly 2000 people drowned in the floods. Guard members come back to find their homes destroyed,” he pointed out.

“Cuba and Venezuela offered to help. Nearly 2000 Cuban doctors and nurses were ready to get on a plane. The Bush regime refused to let them in,” he said.

“When fuel prices spiked that winter, Venezuela supplied free heating oil to poor communities in the United States. US-imposed sanctions stopped that. That’s how the US military state makes people in the United States ‘safer,’” he stated.

What happened to trillions of dollars spent on the ‘war on terror’?

The analyst said, “US troops and contractors have left Afghanistan. But not a dime is being cut from the ‘defense’ budget. It’s going up to $752 billion next year. That doesn’t even count funds for the CIA, nuclear weapons, the endless flow of arms to the Israeli occupation regime in Palestine. Or the interest on all that money,” he said.

“The trillions spent on ‘the war on terror’ did not go into the ocean. They are still here, in the bank vaults of the corporate war profiteers,” he explained.

“The ‘war on terror’ was not only slaughter of innocent people around the world. It was a giant robbery of working-class and oppressed people inside the United States. The military-industrial complex were not even the biggest profiteers,” the activist said.

“Condoleezza Rice was George W. Bush’s national security adviser when the 9/11 attacks happened. Before that she was on the board of Chevron, the second-biggest US oil monopoly,” he said.

“The US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, combined with sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, saved Chevron and other US oil majors from financial disaster. It brought them their most profitable years ever. Today, Chevron is plundering natural gas from the waters of occupied Palestine under the protection of the Israeli occupation regime,” he said.

‘Endless war makes Wall Street bankers richer, ordinary Americans poorer’

“What was the ‘war on terror.’ It was a desperate attempt to seize back the monopoly of the world’s energy resources US companies enjoyed after World War II. Not because the United States needed oil, but because US corporations needed profits,” he pointed out.

“It did not begin on 9/11/01. From 1991 to 2001, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, mostly children, were murdered by US bombs and sanctions. The plans for the first US war against Iraq were on George Bush Sr.’s desk months before Iraqi troops went into Kuwait. The plans to invade Afghanistan wherein his son’s desk on Sept. 10, 2021,” he stated.

“The second Bush regime was run by members of the Project for a New American Century. A 1998 PNAC document said a ‘new Pearl Harbor’ was needed to galvanize support for a wider war. On Sept. 11, 2001, their wishes came true. A few weeks later, as the US bombed Afghanistan, Gen. Wesley Clark was told the Pentagon planned to ‘take out seven countries in the region in five years,’” he said.

“Endless war may make Wall Street bankers and CEOs richer. But it doesn’t make ordinary people here safer. It just makes us poorer. We need an end to the military-financial state and an end to Wall Street’s wars,” the analyst concluded.

In an interview on Sunday, Rice said that the United States is safer than it was before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, which was a series of strikes that killed nearly 3,000 people and caused about $10 billion worth of property and infrastructure damage in the United States.

US officials assert that the attacks were carried out by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists, but many experts and independent researchers have raised questions about the official account.

They believe that rogue elements within the US government, such as former Vice President Dick Cheney, orchestrated or at least encouraged the 9/11 attacks in order to accelerate the US war machine and advance the Zionist agenda.

Following the 9/11 attacks, the United States under the presidency of Republican George W. Bush invaded and occupied Afghanistan, despite the fact that no Afghan was involved in the attacks. The occupation continued for 20 years. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans died in the US war on the country.

Wesley Clark, the retired 4-star US Army general and Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the 1999 War on Yugoslavia, said in the famous 2007 interview that the purpose of the 9/11 attack was to take out the governments of seven countries in five years. These seven countries were Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, and Iran.

Clark’s interview serves as a reminder regarding the diabolical timeline of the American Empire’s hegemonic project. All of these countries have been directly or indirectly been the object of US aggression.

Iran has been a target of malicious US intentions but the United States failed to launch a war against it due to the Islamic Republic’s strong defense against the global hegemon.

Source: Press TV