No Further Attacks

Well might the Republican delegates have chanted "USA, USA" at that anti-war demonstrator. In so doing, they were joining in her protest.

Early on in his rather tedious and badly-delivered speech, McCain praised Bush for having prevented a further attack on American soil after 9/11. He was right. But not in the way that he intended his hearers to think. And possibly not even in the way that he himself honestly meant.

In fact, in probably the only good move that Bush that has ever made, he responded to 9/11 by removing the pointless, but to many people gravely offensive, American troops from Saudi Arabia. As a result, there has been no attack on American soil since, just as there has been none against Spain since she withdrew from Iraq, even though Spain was part of the Caliphate for many centuries. Post-7/7 Britain, get the message.

But all the attention at the time of Bush's wise action was on Afghanistan, where the precedent was being set for the always-intended wars against Iraq and Iran. To that end, the removal of the disagreeable khalifah, Pashtun regime would always have happened anyway, secure in the only too well-founded Straussian knowledge that a sufficiently deceived common herd would never pick up on just how different that was from the secular, Arab regime in Iraq or the Shi'ite, Persian "regime" in Iran.

And Afghanistan would always have had to be invaded anyway, whoever was running her, as the base for invading Iran from the east, just as bases were or would be provided by Turkey for invading Iran from the north, by the Gulf for invading Iran from the south, and by occupied Iraq for invading Iran from the west. Indeed, the invasion of Afghanistan would always have had to have taken place at just the time when it did, in order to keep the invasions of Iraq and Iran on schedule.

So the war against Afghanistan would have happened anyway, and would have happened when it did, 9/11 or no 9/11. It is also worth pointing out, not only that far larger numbers have died in Afghanistan and Iraq than died on 9/11, but also that they have died at the hands of supposedly civilised governments. And for what? To what end? Furthermore, the number of deaths on 9/11 was about equal to the number of deaths on British roads every year, and we seem perfectly willing to tolerate that.