{"id":23777,"date":"2017-04-25T19:26:26","date_gmt":"2017-04-26T00:26:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=23777"},"modified":"2017-04-25T19:28:26","modified_gmt":"2017-04-26T00:28:26","slug":"the-bait-and-switch-war-on-terror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=23777","title":{"rendered":"The Bait-and-Switch \u2018War on Terror\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2017\/04\/22\/the-bait-and-switch-war-on-terror\/\">The Bait-and-Switch \u2018War on Terror\u2019<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>The U.S. \u201cwar on terror\u201d has always been a bait-and-switch scam on the American people, with Washington putting the desires of its Mideast allies ahead of defeating Al Qaeda and ISIS, Gareth Porter reports for Middle East Eye.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman outraged many readers when he\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/04\/12\/opinion\/why-is-trump-fighting-isis-in-syria.html\">wrote an opinion piece<\/a>\u00a0on April 12 calling on President Trump to \u201dback off fighting territorial ISIS in Syria.\u201d The reason he gave for that recommendation was not that U.S. wars in the Middle East are inevitably self-defeating and endless, but that it would reduce the \u201cpressure on Assad, Iran, Russia and Hezbollah.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_10165\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\">\n<p><a class=\"image-anchor\" href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bandar-bush.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-10165\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bandar-bush-300x197.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bandar-bush-300x197.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bandar-bush.jpg 515w\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"197\" data-lazy-loaded=\"true\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then Saudi ambassador to the United States, meeting with President George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas, on Aug. 27, 2002. (White House photo)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>That suggestion that the U.S. sell out its interest in counter-terrorism in the Middle East to gain some advantage in power competition with its adversaries was rightly attacked as cynical. But, in fact, the national security bureaucracies of the U.S. \u2013 which many have come to call the \u201cDeep State\u201d \u2013 have been selling out their interests in counter-terrorism in order to pursue various adventures in the region ever since George W Bush declared a \u201cGlobal War on Terrorism\u201d in late 2001.<\/p>\n<p>The whole war on terrorism has been, in effect, a bait-and-switch operation from the beginning. The idea that U.S. military operations were somehow going to make America safer after the 9\/11 attacks was the bait. What has actually happened ever since then, however, is that senior officials at the Pentagon and the CIA have been sacrificing the interest of American people in weakening Al Qaeda in order to pursue their own institutional interests.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Bait-and-Switch \u2018War on Terror\u2019 The U.S. \u201cwar on terror\u201d has always been a bait-and-switch scam on the American people, with Washington putting the desires of its Mideast allies ahead of defeating Al Qaeda and ISIS, Gareth Porter reports for Middle East Eye. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman outraged many readers when he\u00a0wrote an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[23,135,5242,446,776,864],"class_list":["post-23777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-al-qaeda","tag-cia","tag-gareth-porter","tag-isis","tag-syria","tag-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23777"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23779,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23777\/revisions\/23779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}