by Scott Creighton
“Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Antoine de Saint Exupéry 1943
In 1996, a self-proclaimed terrorist and thief fled the reach of Osama bin Laden and ran right into the outstretched arms of the FBI, where he probably couldn’t have felt more at home. He had stolen money from bin Laden, some one hundred thousand dollars it is said, and so the FBI offered him shelter, money, and new life. For three years the American tax-payers shelled out nearly one million U.S. dollars to protect the thief in hiding. It was then, under the tutelage of FBI agent Jack Cloonan, that the very mythology of Al Qaeda was born. It was then that the craft of the first part of the Grand Illusion took shape.
Al-Fadl gladly provided the testimony the FBI and CIA needed to create such an organization centered around a man who Al-Fadl had stolen over $100,000 from at the helm. Never mind that Jack Cloonan and the FBI had 3 years to prepare Al-Fadl’s testimony for the great magic act. Never mind that Cloonan had paid Al-Fadl $950,000 (of our money) to that point to ultimately create the Global War on Terror’s “Pledge”; Al Qaeda. Me (I know, I know…)
Also in 1996, a revolutionary new doctrine of American military intervention was conceived. The ideological foundation of the doctrine was soon to become an axiom of American culture; that terrorism, when created by us, when used by us, is more than simply right and just; it is moral.
In our excursion, we seek to determine whether and how Shock and Awe can become sufficiently intimidating and compelling factors to force or otherwise convince an adversary to accept our will in the Clausewitzian sense, such that the strategic aims and military objectives of the campaign will achieve a political end. Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance
Finally, in late 1996 and early 1997, a group of very influential men began to gather behind closed doors. Some would later say that these men were the real magicians; the real architects of the Grand Illusion. I think not. They were merely the blind stage-hands laboring diligently to craft the great illusion, to move the props into place, to clear the bodies from the stage for the real masters of illusion. They would become the ominously named Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and their role would be to blend the newly created international terrorist Pledge, al Qaeda, with their new terroristic doctrine of military interventionism throughout the world. Many of these PNAC members gathered later to become The Vulcans; George Bush’s foreign policy advisors during his campaign. Then they took key positions in his newly formed administration in 2000 after an act of the Supreme Court had to overrule the will of the people and hand control of the country over to these men. You see, the stage was set, the actors were in play, and some silly little thing like an election was not going to hamper the schedule of the production. The show must go on, as they say.
Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor. Section V – Rebuilding Americas Defense, PNAC 2000
This is the point of this article, The Prestige. This is the magic, the Grand Illusion of the Decade of Magic – it is the switch, the “second man”, the “body double” who steps into “the box” so that the magician can step out, take the bows, and bask in the accolades of the mesmerized audience. They, the magician and the Pledge, are identical in every respect but one. They act the same, they look the same, their words even sound the same… because they are the same. One terrorist is reviled, the other revered; one is confined, the other unshackled; one dies in a box while the other lives on to continue the show day after day, night after night. In the end, like in the film, there are a hundred boxes with a hundred Pledges floating lifeless in a basement while the magician retires to a life of luxury and speaking engagements.
These two twins, who perform the greatest illusion of all time, are completely identical in every way but one. For it is the magician who creates the Pledge in his own image; the twin destined to die in a box. The “twin” isn’t real, he is a fictious self-portrait, a mirror image of the magician himself.
The magician turns shadows into terrorists and then terrorists into gods. When the transformation is complete and the hero appears from the box we applaud the unconscionable, we cheer the unethical, and in so doing we insure the next performance to satiate our desires. We practically beg for it. Because you see, it wasn’t the patsy in the box who was transformed and it wasn’t the magician who remains the same ruthless terrorist throughout. No. The real magic is that the performance, the illusion, has transformed us. That is the trick and that is the magic.
What we “see” onstage is an ever decaying farcical production. It is a pretense; a lie. An aging hack going through the motions to keep the doors open and put bread on his table. But all of us know, we know in our hearts, we know in our gut.
3. “The Prestige“. The secret impresses no one. The trick you use it for is everything. – Shock and Awe
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Filed under: fake war on terror, Scott Creighton, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, War on Yemen | 8 Comments »
