At the end of the U.S. 12-day invasion of Iraq, hailed as the greatest military victory ever, the greatest military blunder ever began during the subsequent occupation. The Sunni military elite of Saddam’s Ba’athist Regime, his most vicious death squads, were jailed at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. They were subjected to “physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape, sodomy, and murder”, by the U.S. Army and CIA, as reported by Amnesty International and Associated Press in late 2003.
(Source — wikipedia.org-Abu_Ghraib_torture).
The anger and hatred of these mutilated men, numbering 7,490 as of March 2004 is now directed towards the entire Christian world, not just the Americans. They were released later in a general amnesty and helped organize ISIS, the most brutal terrorist group on planet Earth, resorting to beheadings and massacres, which launch the most successful Internet global recruitment ever, the boomerang of the century. The ant-terrorist creates more terrorists — more vicious, more resolute, more in number.
An eye for an eye becomes ten eyes for an eye which becomes a thousand eyes for ten eyes. This is the vicious cycle of vengeance. Geometric not additive, blind with hatred, creating wars not just of nation against nation but of nation against itself. Home-grown terrorism is the new monster.
Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. The vengeful will suffer the Lord’s vengeance. (ecclesiasticus 27:30)
It is a strange phenomenon that in an affluent society, people with deep mental disorders find their way into the military to become the agents of terrorism growth as torturers. Lynndie England, the most celebrated torturer in the Internet whose case went viral, was, as a child, “diagnosed with selective mutism”, an anxiety disorder. Sabrina Harman, another celebrated torturer, said at her sentencing, “My actions potentially caused an increased hatred and insurgency towards the United States, putting soldiers and civilians at greater risk.”
Major General Antonio Taguba, who first exposed the tortures at Guantanamo, reported in 2004 “that a detainee had been sodomized with ‘a chemical light and perhaps a broomstick.’” He gave photographic evidence of rape at Abu Ghraib. A detainee reported that “he heard an Iraqi teenage boy screaming, and saw an Army translator raping him, while a female soldier took pictures.”
The next step was authorization and institutionalization of torture. The American Civil Liberties Union submitted to the FBI in December 2004 documents on the “torture and abuse at prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq”, triggering on a global scale the radicalization of young Muslims to join ISIS through the Internet. The best experts cannot contain this cyber recruitment phenomenon.
An ”On the Scene Commander — Baghdad” referred to an Executive Order that sanctioned interrogation tactics by US military personnel, such as sleep deprivation, humiliation by removing clothes, and the use of dogs. He further said that “the Pentagon had limited use of the techniques by requiring specific authorization from the chain of command”. “This was the first internal evidence that forms of coercion of captives had been mandated by the president of the United States.”
George Bush said the abuses were “isolated incidents”, which was vehemently contradicted by the Red Cross, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch., adding that the abuses “were part of a wider pattern of torture and brutal treatment at American overseas detention centers”. There was evidence that authorization came “from high up in the military hierarchy”. Obama suppressed the release of gruesome photos because that would put troops in danger and “inflame anti-American public opinion”. In employing authorized and institutionalized torture and rape, the US is today facing a monster of its own creation. The victim is the Christian world through home-grown terror, the culprit is the anti-terrorist, the torturer and his supporters. Yet, no one is protesting. No one can stop it. The home-grown massacres in Paris and London can be traced to this monster.
Later, the infamous Torture Memos emerged, authorizing “enhanced interrogation techniques”, arguing that the Geneva Convention did not apply to American interrogators overseas. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that no one is exempt from institutionalized torture. Although there were efforts to convict torturers, it was only at the lower level. Those who rationalized and covered up the crimes and defended the institution were not. “Many of higher rank were not prosecuted”.
As long as anti-terrorism are handled by ‘terrorists’, terrorism growth will never be contained. It may be delayed by assassinating a handful of terror leaders with drones, but a hundred more deadlier terrorists rise. We are beginning to realize that perhaps goodwill remains the best anti-terrorism solution.
The Birth of Home-Grown Terrorism
Home-grown terrorism is the most deadly because it is committed not in the battlefield overseas, but in the neighbourhood and when everyone is asleep. NATO’s vast resources is not enough to contain the flood of refugees. NATO cannot police the entire Mediterranean. An EU-Turkey deal may fail to stop the refugees. They can build walls, set up barb wires, demolish camps but they still cannot contain the refugees, who would rather die than go home. Thousands have drowned. The traffickers are creative, finding loopholes, because it is a multi-million dollar business. The refugees are an irresistible force and there seem to be no immovable object to stop it.
Meanwhile, the affluent host nations are at a brink of civil wars, brother against brother, pro-refugee versus anti-refugee. Refugees are caused by wars and poverty. We must stop the wars and uplift the poor as the final solution to the refugee crisis, a monumental feat. War is no longer just abroad. It is in our neighbourhood. Violence and anarchy will consume the big affluent cities in the US, UK, EU. A new type of deadlier war is evolving, not nation against nation but nation against itself. Paris, London, Berlin, Madrid are at the brink of implosion. It seems the Refugee Crisis is beyond human intervention.
Home-grown terrorism has evolved. The young refugees mingle with natives in affluent cities, quietly working on menial jobs for years, until they are radicalized in the Internet by drones killing women and children if only to take out a single terrorist leader. Ten eyes for an eye. (eastwindreplyctr@gmail.com)