That Trump fellow sure is making things interesting with his recent statements. “Say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time.” Trump’s attack forced Jeb Bush to defensively claim that his brother, President George Bush, “kept us safe.”

The idea that President George Bush kept us safe has always been ludicrous. He ignored a memo from US intelligence entitled ”Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,’‘ before 9/11 and while the attack was happening sat reading My Pet Goat to school children in Florida. And Jeb Bush’s answer to this problem, to try to make 9/11 about the aftermath, isn’t going to help him much. The aftermath was the failed Iraq War, which had nothing to do with 9/11.

That someone has finally called bullshit on the idea of President Bush keeping us safe is a good start but it seems to me that everyone is still missing the fundamental contradiction in the war on terror narrative. The fundamental contradiction is Sunni terrorists, as represented by al-qaeda, rather than being mortal enemies are and have always been either proxies or patsies. That’s right, every presidential administration since Carter has either employed Sunni terrorists as proxies to carry out covert US foreign policies, or like Bush in seizing upon al-qaeda’s attacks as a pretext to advance already agreed upon plans for Middle-East conquest. These plans are summed up nicely by the Project for the New American Century, whose assortment of neoconservative luminaries wrote openly of desiring “a new Pearl Harbor,” in order that they might reconfigure the Middle-East. Of course they got their Casus belli with 9/11.

For much more on the neoconservatives plan to remake the Middle-East in their splendid image check out this, and this, and this, and this. The one redeeming behavior of the neoconservatives, if that’s what you can call it, is that they are vain and tend to leave a vast paper trail.

With the Obama Administration continuing to employ Sunni-terrorists in Syria as proxies, this fundamental contradiction in the war on terror narrative takes on increased significance. During the Cold War Democrats lived in fear of being labeled as soft on communism by Republicans and shied away from any compromise with the Soviets less they be tarred with appeasing the enemy.

Now that the Cold War has morphed into the war on terror, where America’s mortal enemy is supposedly al-qaeda, the Obama administration is not just compromising with al-qaeda but wielding them as a battlefield proxy in Syria and there is silence from the Republicans. In fact, the Republicans are urging them on.

A CNN op-ed that Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a leading voice on national security issues, wrote on Oct. 13, 2015, was particularly chilling. McCain called on Obama to support our moderate fighters in their struggle against the Syrian government, and going further in his bellicosity, urged Obama to inflict severe pain on Russia and Putin regardless of the consequences.

Of course, McCain and the Republicans, and Democrats like Obama pretend that we’re supporting moderates rather than terrorists in Syria and that we’re only doing it to bring about democracy but that’s a load of crap. McCain and Obama understand the ugly reality of the US palling around with terrorists, it’s only the American people who are in the dark.

This has to stop. If the American people discover that the Obama Administration is working with al-qaeda there will be hell to pay. Shit, the whole reason we went to war forever was the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, in the wake of 9/11 that explicitly targeted al-qaeda.

“Under U.S. domestic law Obama justifies his attacks on the Islamic State in Syria (which is illegal under international law) with reference to the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists as passed by the United States Congress on September 14, 2001. According to that AUMF: That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist …”

I’m pretty sure the AUMF was a giant bait and switch. In the wake of 9/11, what were our policy makers like Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld concerned with? Give yourself cookie if you answered Iraq. I’m also pretty sure that the so-called war on terror is simply an excuse to wage an endless war and pursue the sorts of militaristic foreign policies that our deep-state demands.

All powerful and aggressive empires prize control over everything else. And their policy elites know that the biggest potential stumbling block to exercising control over the resources and/or strategically located territories they covet comes in the form cohesive polities—secular nation-states in our era—located on top of those precious materials and key pinch points. Conversely, they understand that they can actually exercise more control of the things (both material and strategic) they desire when such places are mired in internecine conflicts which, of course, eventually engender the creation of “failed states”.

The 2016 Presidential campaign has the potential to blow the lid off these falsehoods. The Donald, odious as he obviously is, reminds me of a classic Greek play with the appearance of Deus ex machina, an unexpected intervention of some new event, or character.”

If the US is still a democracy then the present US foreign policy of employing Sunni terrorists as proxies needs to come out of the shadows to be openly debated.