Why and How the United States Became a Judas Iscariot

The world’s reaction to the events of Sept. 11 was a sharper pain for Americans than the incident itself. From Peru to Japan, writers competed to condemn al-Qaida’s destruction of the World Trade Center’s twin towers, which resulted in the deaths of more than 3,000 people. Then came talk of its significance, that the United States deserved the insult that had been hung upon it, that the twin towers had symbolized America’s commercial, economic and financial preeminence.

The American writer Neil Asherson visualized the destruction of the twin towers in the following manner: “Manhattan that morning was a diagram, a blue bar-chart with columns which were tall or not so tall. A silver cursor passed across the screen and clicked silently on the tallest column, which turned red and black and presently vanished. This is how we delete you. The cursor returned and clicked on the second column. Presently a thing like a solid grey-white cauliflower rose until it was a mountain covering all south Manhattan. This is how we bury you.

“It was the most open atrocity of all time, a simple demonstration written on the sky which everyone in the world was invited to watch. This is how much we hate you.”

Americans constitute only 4 percent of the world’s population. Nevertheless, their country controls economics, commerce, wars and culture on a global level. They say that that control was earned thanks to diligence, earnestness and a spirit of adventure along with the establishment of strong institutions that function competently. However, the rest of the people in the world, despite their recognition of American leadership in more than one field, believe that America achieved what it did by plundering and exploiting the wealth of peoples and marginalizing those peoples.

After World War I, the leaders of the United States saw that their country wouldn’t become a great power without getting rid of armed socialist countries and leading an undertaking for all nations to liberate their markets so they would embrace the unqualified, “unleashed” capitalist regime. For that cause, the U.S. worked to found the International Bank, International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, then the World Trade Organization. As Thomas Friedman said in his book, “The Lexus and the Olive Tree,” which takes a look at the manifestations of globalization: terms like privatization and free markets were “made in America.” Just as the buffoon Francis Fukuyama alleged that the fall of the Soviet Union was the end of history and a victory of liberalism in its American form, Friedman outstripped that absurdity in saying that the appearance of the city of Medina in a weather broadcast on CNN was an irrefutable, decisive indication that the city had attained an international presence.

With his occupation of Kuwait, the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein lost the backing of most Arab people. Once his army collapsed in confrontation with the liberating American military without an Iraqi soldier firing a single shot, Saddam’s rule had lost its prestige even within Iraq. But former American President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, with its moronic excuses, had hardly begun before Saddam was transformed into a hero, then into an Arab martyr.

When they were unable to procure any evidence that Saddam had owned any kind of internationally forbidden weapons, the Americans alleged that they had at least rid Iraq of dictatorial rule and ushered in an era of democracy and prosperity But that prosperity was allotted to the Halliburton Company, of which Vice President Dick Cheney was a board member. The company took over the export of weapons, sandwiches and toilet paper to Iraq, and, in order to expand the circle of American beneficiaries, Blackwater was commissioned to provide protection and security to facilities and personnel.

In this way, the Americans plundered what was available and easily taken from Iraq’s resources, and their appetite for spoils grew such that they began to access oil and gas facilities. They were then forced to cut and run from Iraq because their lust had been met with armed, violent resistance from a jihadi group (al-Qaida under the leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi). This along with the arrival of the Baraqish* Nouri al-Maliki to power was the incubator for the Islamic State; consequently, Washington is the one responsible for that organization’s manifestation.

*Translator’s note: “Alaa ahliha janat Baraqish” is classical Arabic idiom referring to a dog/woman who brings ruin to her own people.