A survey of past and current events reveals that it is the United States’ own policy that is the leading cause of hardship inflicted on US citizens by alleged foreign “enemies.“
A favored phrase in progressive circles is, “Don’t blame the victim.” The expression is useful when engaged in arguments wherein the opposing voice insists on placing the burden of responsibility for societal ills on the powerless, while they obfuscate the larger power dynamics. While I am fully in support of using this phrase when it comes to countering demonization of politically marginalized groups such as Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation, communities of color in the US fighting against police misconduct, or Vietnamese heroically defending their homeland from American invaders, there are other contexts where in blaming the alleged victim is a useful practice. In such cases, the “victim” is the more powerful entity, who in a really real sense, brought on whatever actions rendered them as a “victim” through past actions that made such outcomes predictable, if not inevitable. A survey of the United States of America’s foreign policy challenges and their origins will reveal that nearly every situation wherein Americans have imagined themselves as victims of a hostile enemy, they were brought on by US actions that created hostility. Additionally, those “hostile enemies” have almost always been made adversaries of the US as the direct result of American imperial policy.
We Created the Current “Threats” to the United States
To start, it is imperative to note that no country on the planet poses an actual threat to American security, much less the American people. The American military behemoth dwarfs all competitors in near every metric. However, there are a set of countries that refuse to kowtow to American hegemony and thus are labeled advisories or enemies by the political elite of the global superpower. These are the countries that Americans are supposed to believe are evil and in some cases represent a threat to our precious security. One only has to do a brief review of the US relationship with these nations to understand United States policy itself created hostility that emanates from nations that we are led to believe are a threat.
Nukes Are Only for Me and My Friends!
We are told that North Korea and Iran pose a threat to US security for, among other reasons, they possess or intend to possess nuclear weapons. From both countries, rhetoric that is critical of the United States emanates from the leadership, and here in the US we are led to believe that this is indicative of an irrational belligerence toward our freedom loving nation. The problem is, both the Democratic Republic, Korea, and Iran are extremely rational in their hostility toward the great Satan.
In the case of the DPRK, it is likely difficult for Americans to imagine the level of societal trauma that was inflicted on that nation’s people during the 1950-1953 war that Americans have termed the “forgotten war.” The first barrier to empathizing with the people of the DPRK is the fact that America has not faced the reality of a military invasion by a foreign power since the War of 1812. US citizens have never felt the terrorizing reality of a sustained aerial bombing campaign and thus cannot possibly understand the immediate and generational trauma that would persist from such events. The people of the Korean peninsula have no such misunderstanding. In the three years of the Korean war, the US government waged a war on a civilian population that presented no threat to the American people. The conduct of the war could be (and has been) described as genocidal. The US dropped 635,000 tons of bombs and 32,557 tons of napalm on the North Korean people, burning down every city and town, and killing roughly 1/5th of the population. Long after the ceasefire had been agreed to in 1953, the United States’ military still occupies the same peninsula, regularly rehearsing a repeat of the 1950’s affair which killed several million people. Even so, the DPRK and US had negotiated a peaceful “Agreed Framework” with the Clinton administration in the 1990’s which eased the DPRK’s fear of invasion and allowed them to forgo their pursuit of nuclear weapons. The DPRK did not resume development of nuclear weapons until after George W. Bush ramped up aggression in 2002 by decreeing that the Asian nation was part of an “Axis of Evil.” One of the other societies in this exclusive group of three, would be invaded and destroyed within a year and a month of Bush’s speech. This occurred despite that nation NOT possessing nuclear weapons. The development and possession of nuclear weapons is seen by the DPRK as defensive and one of the only deterrents to a US invasion. Seeing as the last 20 years have seen nations that had given up their nuclear weapons programs get invaded by the US (Iraq and Libya), it is hard to argue that the Korean approach is incorrect. Yet, we are supposed to believe that it is Kim Jong Un who is irrational, who is pursuing conflict with the most powerful nation in world history.
With regards to Iran, the story of US policy toward the Persian state can be characterized as one of mostly unanswered aggression. Since 1979, the US has pursued a stance toward the Islamic Republic that has been belligerent and complemented by an unwillingness to compromise. This hostile stance is fueled by a petty 40-year-old grudge. Indeed, since the Islamic Republic overthrew the US puppet, the brutally repressive Shah Reza Pahlavi, the Americans have, without fail, pursued a path of aggression toward the people of Persia. A non-exhaustive list of US aggression since 1979 toward Iran would include:
- Supporting and arming Iraq’s invasion and subsequent sustained war on Iran of the 1980’s
- Shooting down an Iranian civilian passenger jet killing nearly 300 people and then refusing to apologize
- Labeling the nation (along with Iraq and North Korea) as part of an “Axis of Evil”
- Surrounding the Islamic republic with military bases
- Invading (and destroying) two of Iran’s neighboring countries
- Designating part of the Iranian military as a terrorist group
- Leveling brutal sanctions against Iranians (even through a deadly pandemic)
- Pulling out of the nuclear deal (JCPOA)
- Assassinating Iranian General, Qasim Soleimani
The perceived “threat” from Iran relies foremost on accusations of a nuclear weapons program. Here it is important to note that Iran has never had a functioning nuclear weapons program and gave up any semblance of aspirations to have one in 2003 (a fact acknowledged by the US National Intelligence Estimate of 2007). Even as the Iranians were under US backed Iraqi chemical weapons attacks in the war of the 1980’s, the supreme leader still refused to pursue nuclear or chemical weapons and issued a fatwa against such technology. Iran has also been party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty since 1968, an agreement notably not ratified by US allies Pakistan, India, and of course, Israel.
Still, if we want to pursue this false belief that Iran not only has a nuclear weapons program but also that this poses a great threat, we should also acknowledge that the US and Israel have done everything possible to create that reality. This has included the US pulling out of the 2015 nuclear deal and imposing brutal sanctions on the Islamic Republic. This in turn has strengthened the hard liners in Iran, proving that the US could not be trusted. This creates an environment where Iran is far more likely to pursue WMD technology (even as it remains forbidden by religious edict).
Then again, the conspiratorial side of my brain imagines that there is significant interest in the military industrial complex in portraying Iran as a threat. After all, viewing Iran as a threat justifies much of the lucrative foreign weapons exports (a practice in which the US leads the world) to Israel and the Gulf States. It really does pay more to ignore the fact that Iran (and most of the rest of the world) have been pushing for the establishment of a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East for decades. This proposal has been repeatedly rejected by Israel and the United States. To establish such a policy would require first an acknowledgement that Israel is the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, and it would mandate regular inspections of Israel’s weapons by international officials. This acknowledgment of reality would further endanger the $3 billion dollars of US military aid (weapons sales) to the Israelis every year. US law prohibits such transfers of weapons to nuclear armed countries outside of the NPT network, per the Symington Amendment. Thus, as is frequently the case, the US and Israel are international outliers with regards to proposals that would undoubtedly move the planet in a more peaceful direction.
Russia and China Need to Learn that Only America can Defend Itself!
While on the subject of Iran’s military capabilities, it should be remembered that the Islamic Republic is surrounded by hostile forces, mostly aligned with the US. It would be anything but irrational for Iran to arm itself defensively, even with nuclear arms. Americans love to pretend that our international foes are irrational actors, not bound by real world concerns for security. Iran, along with China, the DPRK, and Russia all have US military bases and US allied nations garrisoning their borders. These serve as a constant reminder of the potential society destroying violence that could be initiated by Uncle Sam at any moment on the citizens of those nations. In the case of Russia, encirclement serves as a reminder of a broken promise. James Baker, Secretary of Defense to George H. W. Bush, promised the Russians in 1990 that “not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” The anti-Russian pact has since advanced up to Russia’s Western borders incorporating nations on the Russian border. One wonders how the US would react if Russia formed a Warsaw Pact 2.0 and started adding countries like Mexico or Canada. In that same vein, one should also ponder how the US might deliberate if China or Russia were to set up military bases in nearby countries (or even the same hemisphere). Considering that US officials react in trepidation to China conducting drills in the South CHINA Sea, it’s easy to imagine that this same group would be hysterical if similar exercises took place in, say, the Long Island Sound. Of course, this hypothetical is a fiction, and we do not live in a world where other nations reciprocate proportionally the belligerence the US displays toward them. It seems that US foreign policy elites either believe that citizens of other nations do not possess the same concern for their safety that Americans do (a belief with some history amongst US leaders), and thus do not consider their perception when enacting aggressive policies OR they simply believe in America’s inherent right to conduct belligerent actions as it sees fit, regardless of the perceptions of other nations.
We encircle and provoke our alleged adversaries and when there is any attempt on their end to build up a defensive military capability they are labeled a threat. This is convoluted logic. This would be equivalent to the school yard bully consistently beating up a smaller classmate; then that classmate starts taking self defense courses to defend himself. At this point, the bully says the classmate is now a growing threat to him that he needs to “defend” against the classmate. This of course justifies more bullying. In this metaphorical school yard, Uncle Sam never considers that the classmate might have a legitimate interest in defending himself. The behemoth continues to bully his weaker classmates and then complains that he is actually the victim when the real victim inevitably stands up for himself.
Non-State Actors
Given the nature of the “War on Terror” many of the current enemies are stateless actors such as Al Qaeda. The degree to which this group has been aided by US policy cannot be overstated. To confirm this point, one only needs to look at the numbers. When the War on Terror began, there were a few hundred members of Al Qaeda living in the mountains of Afghanistan on the Pakistan border. Decades into the War on Terror, their numbers are in the tens of thousands, largely grown by the fame given to them by the US coupled with US aggressive actions in half a dozen Muslim countries which serve as recruiting tools for the Islamist group. Additionally, the US wars in Libya, Yemen, and Syria have all directly or indirectly aided Al Qaeda in its campaigns against the secular governments of those nations.
In 2020, most Americans are likely unaware that their military has been sporadically at war in the African nation of Somalia for nearly 30 years. Currently, the US military operates in this nation mostly through the use of special forces and drone strikes. The latter’s use often results in civilian deaths. But how could the US possibly justify this violence inflicted on East Africa? Pentagon officials will rationalize this absurd imperial behavior by saying that the US is targeting fighters from the loose Al Qaeda affiliate, Al Shabab. This is yet another case where the US war machine continually creates new enemies which then continues the cycle wherein there is some new justification to continue to fight. In the case of Al Shabab, one needs to look to George W. Bush’s administration and its lack of understanding of the intricacies of Somalian politics. In 2006, a group known as the United Islamic Courts rose to power in Somalia with widespread support from the population. The religious clerics were seen as a hope to bring an end to the violence perpetrated by various feuding war lords. Conversely, the US saw the UIC and their Islamic orientation as ripe for targeting in the new global War on Terror. By 2007, the US was locked down in quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan and could not feasibly attempt a full scale invasion of the Horn of Africa. Instead, the US exported its militarism to a proxy in the form of an American supported, Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. In this affair (as in all occasions of aggressive foreign violence), a small militant wing of the UIC was empowered. A small faction of the UIC, made up of young Somali men, gained support during this invasion for their militancy against the external power. Long after the 2006 US supported invasion, Al Shabab remains influential in the region. The US regular targeting of this group that they helped create, and killing civilians often in the progress, is likely to drive otherwise non supporters into the arms of the militant group. As Al Shabab recruitment power is increased due to violent US actions, AFRICOM will continue to provide work for itself for many years with these kinds of policies.
Of the non-state actors that have held a heavy presence in the American mind in the past decade, the leading entity is of course the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. This group that rendered the fictional organization of the same name in the cartoon series Archer obsolete, is one of the more obvious cases wherein US policy has led to the creation of new enemies. To be brief, ISIS was an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq, who only formed after the US invaded in 2003. The groups were able to recruit due to persecution of Sunnis by the US supported Shia chauvinist (and violently repressive) government that was formed after the downfall of Saddam Hussein. Much of the leadership of ISIS were made up of former members of the Iraqi army, whom the US sent into the streets unemployed and armed with many grievances when the army was disbanded by American L. Paul Bremer during his time running the show in Iraq. Additionally, many of ISIS members had been imprisoned and often tortured during the US occupation from 2003-2011. Having been radicalized by their experience, many (including eventual ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi) committed themselves to violent extremism upon release from prison. All that is to say that ISIS could not have formed were it not for the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. Even further, in their attempt to weaken the secular government of Bashar Al Assad of Syria, the US permitted ISIS (an enemy of Assad) to rise and gain territory in the hopes that the group could be used as a bargaining chip against the secular Syrian government. This gambit failed, allowed ISIS to wage terror across both Iraq and Syria and brought the Russians into the Syrian civil war. (This has all been acknowledged by former Secretary of State John Kerry.) For a second, imagine that a well armed terrorist group had started to take control of vast swaths of territory of the US due to a Syrian invasion of Mexico that had spun out of control. Imagine further that Syria had known that this was occurring, yet insisted on doing nothing because they wished to extract some concessions out of the US government. That is the very level of depravity, idiocy, and barbarism that has been on display by the United States’ foreign policy decision makers in the past decade.
A Long, Not So Proud History of Creating Our Own Enemies
If US enemies made Emmy Award like speeches upon being proclaimed the greatest “bad guy” of their time, they would all likely thank the United States. After all, nearly every US enemy from Hitler to Osama Bin Laden owes their fame and power in some part to the North American superpower. For a short list, we can start with the gold standard in most Americans minds for US enemies, Adolph Hitler. The fascist leader detailed his admiration for United States and its stance toward immigration and segregation in his diary Mein Kamp:
“By refusing immigrants to enter there if they are in a bad state of health, and by excluding certain races from the right to become naturalized as citizens, they have begun to introduce principles similar to those on which we wish to ground the People’s State.”
The leadership of the Third Reich also made it explicitly clear that they had been both impressed by, and sought to imitate US policies in terms of race law, subjugation of perceived inferior populations, and the faux science of eugenics. Hitler developed the concept of creating “lebensraum” or “living space” for Germans based on the example that had been set by the American experiment. The dictator admired the way the US created living space for white settlers on the western frontiers of North American through the prolonged extermination of the indigenous peoples. The Nazi regime would apply this concept as they expanded eastward, killing millions in an attempt to create space for their perceived superior Aryan race. Hitler certainly expanded on the structure of the US expansionist, apartheid state in horrific and genocidal ways. That said, it cannot be denied that Hitler’s behavior was directly inspired by the behavior of his white American counterparts. It is also an inconvenient fact that Nazi Germany found no shortage of American corporations that were willing to do business with the fascist government. Another factor complicating the US relationship Hitler is the origin story of his rise to power. This was made possible by the German defeat in WWI, after which the German state was embarrassed with the victor’s treaty signed at Versailles. The humiliation was exasperated by the global depression of the 1930’s. Decades earlier, the combatants in the First World War were locked in a stalemate in the conflict’s fourth year. The affair could have been resolved in a “peace without victory” as US president Woodrow Wilson later proclaimed he desired. However, this type of resolution would have required that Wilson had not made the decision to enter the United States into the conflict on the side of Britain and France in 1917. By doing so, the U.S broke the stalemate that had existed, ensuring an Allied victory and creating the likelihood for the harsh terms of the eventual treaty. Megalomaniac figures like Hitler arise out of desperate societies. The US had a major, if not deciding role, in creating the conditions for which the demagogue was likely to rise to power.
A residual pathology that Hitler inflicted on the world is that his level of evil has subsequently been compared to other leaders who present a challenge to the global hegemon. Hitler’s name has been invoked repeatedly in attempts to justify military action against leaders of nations refusing to submit to US demands. While these comparisons have always been blatant exaggerations, one way they are apt is that often these leaders themselves (like Hitler) owe a great deal of their rise to power to the United States. Take for example, the official “bad guy” of the 1990’s and early 2000’s, Saddam Hussein. The repressive dictatorship that Iraq was under Hussein came into existence with a helping hand from Uncle Sam in its beginnings and through its most violent stages. When the Ba’ath party overthrew (and killed) the Iraqi leader Abdul Kareem Kassem and took control of Iraq, they did so “on a CIA train,” according to Ali Saleh Sa’adi, the Minister of the Interior. Although the CIA role in overthrowing the Qasim is murky, it is undoubtedly true that the leader had become inconvenient for the fervently anti-communist West as he had begun to nationalize Iraq’s oil. What is also indisputable is that the CIA helped the Ba’ath party purge political dissidents. The intelligence agency provided “death lists” of suspected leftists which the regime carried out with vicious brutality, executing thousands doctors, teachers, technicians, and lawyers. Hussein himself was a lead henchman in these executions and later rose to the leadership of the party in 1978. Unsurprisingly, the American support for his party’s brutality continued through the 1980’s even as Hussein’s brutality toward his people and others were at their zenith. When Hussein launched an aggressive war against Iran in 1980, the US supported Hussein through arming his military, running diplomatic cover, providing intelligence. Americans not only ignored, but at times even helped Iraq use chemical weapons on both Iranians and Kurdish Iraqis. US support for this brutality likely had Hussein feeling like he could do no wrong. This feeling was likely amplified after the war with Iran when Iraq had a dispute over oil with Kuwait. When Saddam informed US ambassador April Glaspie of his intention to take action against his southern neighbor, Glaspie told him that the US had, “No opinion on Arab on Arab conflicts, like your border dispute with Kuwait.” It is therefore unsurprising that Hussein felt that he had the green light to violate the sovereignty of the Kuwaiti monarchy and proceeded with an invasion in the summer of 1990. It was only then, when Saudi and Kuwaiti oil supplies were threatened, that the United States felt a need to check their very recent partner. Of course, in the subsequent Gulf War, Saddam was not harmed while the civilian population of Iraq was devastated. Deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure combined with subsequent imposing sanctions killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the following years. Yet somehow, by 2003, Americans were able to be convinced by the George W. Bush administration that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a threat to them. Yes, Saddam Hussein, the same leader whose party was brought to power with US help, was supported by the US in the most brutal war of the late 20th century, and whose country had been severely weakened by the Gulf War and sanctions, was somehow seen as a grave threat to Americans’ safety.
Although very different ideologically, the Islamist Taliban movement in Afghanistan owes its ascension to power to the US for similar reasons that Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party did. Like Hussein, the Islamists benefitted from US policies that were fueled by hysterical anticommunism fervor during the Cold War. The scheme to confront the communists in Central Asia saw the US plot with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to arm and fund Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan in the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1980’s. This was a plan drawn up by Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who planned to fund the Islamist insurgency for the purposes of drawing the Soviet Union into the Central Asian nation. He rationalized this plan by telling Carter that, “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.” While the plan to arm the mujahideen succeeded in drawing the USSR into a bloody quagmire in Afghanistan and overthrowing the secular progressive government, it also destroyed the country. In such chaos, various mujahideen waged war for power after the secular government had been overthrown. Out of this chaos emerged the fundamentalist Taliban, who promised to bring law and order to a nation reeling in the chaos fomented by the US. The group would later become well-known to Americans, who (falsely) believed that the Taliban were aligned with the terrorist group that would eventually attack American soil in 2001. The American military rained violence upon Afghanistan in October of 2001 and have been continuously fighting there for the two decades since. That is to say, for nearly 20 years, the US military has been fighting and killing members of the group that was created by their own government’s policies decades earlier. Currently, the Taliban is in peace talks with the Afghan government and the North American superpower whose policies enabled their ascension in the first place. While this dynamic should be a sign of the failure of American foreign policy to any clear headed person, the architect of the Cold War policy might have disagreed with the assessment. In 1998, Brzezinski defended his role in arming Islamist extremists that led to the eventual rise of the Taliban, “What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?” The victims of the endless violence in the Central Asian steppe might have an answer for this query by the now deceased National Security Advisor.
The list of groups that the American people have been told are enemies is long, but once again nearly all have the common thread of being brought into existence in part due to US actions. These include the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, whose development was dedicated to achieving Vietnamese independence from French and then American influence. The Americans did nearly everything they could to prevent Vietnamese self determination. This includes Woodrow Wilson and later Harry Truman both ignoring Ho Chi Minh’s pleas for support in his struggle against the French empire. It also includes the US support for the French after WWII in their efforts to reassert imperial control over the revolting South Asian colony. This was in spite of the US itself vomiting out rhetoric of a newly freed world. Lastly, of course no Americans would know who the NLF (better known as Viet Cong) were, if several US presidents hadn’t made the decisions to send the US military 10,000 miles from the United States to inflict genocidal violence on a society that had never posed a threat to the the American people. These decisions ensured that the NLF would become well known in US culture for the ferocity of their justifiable violence employed against the invading US military in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
But What About Those Times that THEY Attacked US?
There are of course events in US history where the nation has been the subject of an aggressive foreign attack. In almost all these cases though, it is acceptable to blame “the victim” Nearly every historical case of violence toward US civilians or military personnel were the result of decision making that placed American citizens in situations wherein violence was likely.
To be blunt, I’ll issue a blanket judgment. All American citizens who have been killed while invading a foreign land were not “victims” of violence perpetrated by foreigners. This applies to all the civilian “settlers” of Native American lands who occasionally were subject to indigenous defensive violence throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. It of course also applies to the armed soldiers killed who were on indigenous lands for the sole purposes of forcible removal and violent subjugation. Every US soldier that was killed in the long spanning wars of conquest of Native American nations was killed for wholly justifiable reasons, and could never be judged a “victim” by a reasonable person. This also applies to all US military personnel, diplomatic officials or politicians who were killed in any of many other imperial wars including in Mexico, the Philippines, Haiti, Nicaragua, Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, Syria or Iraq. While acknowledging that members of the American armed forces are often drawn from the poorer more disadvantaged brackets of society, that still does not qualify them as victims, at least without the following disclaimer. The argument should rather be made that all military personnel killed in American wars are primarily the victims of their own nation’s political elites who sent them into harm’s way for purposes that have almost always been imperial in nature. With all this considered, regardless of the ferocity of the resistance displayed by America’s adversaries, the blame for the deaths of American’s at the hands of those resisting US aggression rests with the American government. The American blood that spilled in the swamps of Florida in the Seminole Wars of the 19th century, the rice paddies of Vietnam in the 1960s, or the mountains of Afghanistan in the 2000’s can be attributed first and foremost to US officials who chose to pursue these unnecessary wars.
But what about the incidents where Americans were killed by a foreign power intruding onto US soil? Surely the United States cannot be blamed for that kind of aggression, right?. Wrong. Those killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor attacks and 9/11 can also largely be attributed to American decision making . US possession of Pearl Harbor and at a larger scale, the Hawaii islands, was gained through nefarious, blatantly imperial means. The islands, 5000 miles from the coast of the continental United States was a sovereign kingdom until the late 19th century. It was then that the United States overthrew the government of the island kingdom to serve the interests of the Dole Fruit company. The military base at Pearl harbor was later established. The fact that it was this base, on a conquered territory,, far away from the mainland United States, that was later the subject of attack by a foreign power that brought the US into the deadliest war of all time, should be cause for inquiry. This act of annexing Hawaii combined with the garrisoning of the South Pacific through conquests of the Philippines, Wake Island and Guam put the US on an inevitable path to conflict with imperial Japan. These were the very places attacked by the Japanese in the early days of December of 1941. Had the United States not pursued an imperial path in the decades earlier it is entirely impossible that Americans would have been killed at Pearl Harbor.
The attacks on New York and Washington DC of 9/11/2001 that killed nearly 3000 civilians were an act of barbarism. Still they were made possible, if not inevitable by US actions and policy. One need look no further than Osama Bin Laden’s own declaration of war on the United States issued some five years earlier. The Saudi dissident provided a list of grievances that many Americans might be able to identify with if the author had a more household (read: white) name. Bin Laden pointed to the facts that belie the notion that the attacks of 2001 were the product of a hatred of “our freedom.” Among these were the US support for the brutal repressive monarchies/dictatorships of the the Middle East, support for Israel’s subjugation of Arabs in both Gaza the West Bank and Lebanon, the occupation of the holiest sites of Islam in Saudi Arabia, and the extermination of nearly a million Iraqis through a brutal sanctions campaign on that nation. All of those grievances were based on truth but none of it justifies the mass murder pursued by Bin Laden as consequence. However, while acknowledging that the 9/11 attacks had no valid justification, it is worth examining similar justifications for war that Americans largely have supported. To be consistent with saying that Bin Laden’s crusade was unjustified, we’d also have to say that Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and company should not have launched the war for independence in response to (among other reasons) British military occupation of the American colonies. ( A war that inflicted some 24,000 British casualties). No doubt, Bin Laden was not justified in killing civilians in New York and Washington DC in retaliation for transgressions committed against millions of civilians in the Arab world, Americans should similarly be skeptical of the right of the US to launch a global campaign of mass murder ( the War on Terror) that has killed 2-4 million people in response to the deaths of several thousand Americans on 9/11. The decisions that were made by the Reagan, H.W Bush and Bill Clinton Administrations to occupy Saudi Arabia, impose genocidal sanctions on Iraq and support the subjugation of millions of Arab civilians ensured some kind of blowback against the US. The tragedy of 9/11 is first and foremost the deaths of the nearly 3,000 Americans. The additional tragedy of that day is the total lack of introspection, with the US opting to pursue a path of extreme violence rather than a reevaluation of destructive policies.
Dreaming of the Day when Americans are Aware Enough to Actually Qualify as Victims Worthy of Blame
While considering the aforementioned subset of the much larger set of problems and enemies that the United States’ has created for itself, it is hard not to be cynical. As has been detailed, the United States has continually pursued violent policies that have in turn created regular tragedies for its own people and also made new enemies abroad. These problems and enemies have then further rationalized (in the minds of policy makers) solutions in the form of constant militarism. This violence then further results in new hardship and new enemies as consequence, and the cycle continues. While this cycle of course benefits a select but powerful few who profit from continuous violence, this self induced harm should be obscene to most Americans. At what point do we point to our government and demand evolution from the type of American exceptionalism laden, militaristic, imperial thinking that has been shown repeatedly to not work? When I make the claim that America is the cause of America’s problems I am not really “victim blaming” as I said facetiously in the introduction. Among the victims of American policies are the US citizens and exponentially more foreigners that suffer at the hands of US imperialism. The blame belongs with those that crafted policies that create these victims. Americans are purposely left out of the decision making that creates imperialist policies through a variety of methods from arms industry funded think tanks that write policy to a pliant media that rarely challenges US imperial violence. In other words, the citizenry of the US is deliberately kept unaware of their government’s violence and therefore is not fully to blame.
However, if we ever get to the point where a critical mass of Americans are cognizant of the horror of our foreign policies, we’d be in a position to weaponize our collective power to pressure our leaders to behave better. If at that point of awareness we still allow our leaders to wage war in our name, then we will no longer be victims deserving of exoneration. My hope is that in the near future we can arrive at widespread awareness so as to even qualify as victims deserving of blame.
Currently we are in a place where militarism is to US policy makers what alcohol is to Homer Simpson; “The cause of, and [in their minds] solution to, all of life’s problems.” As a result of this delusional approach, as Martin Luther King Jr acknowledged 53 years ago, the United States government remains the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” The life force of that imperial violence is sustained by ignorance and apathy. Cut these two sources of fuel off and the war machine that creates so many of our problems will crumble.