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                        Why Terrorists Hate America
                              by William Blum
                               September 2002
                               Common Ground



     Why do terrorists hate America enough to give up their lives in
     order to deal the country such mortal blows? Of course it's not
     America the terrorists hate; it's American foreign policy. It's
     what the United States has done to the world in the past half
     century -- all the violence, the bombings, the depleted uranium,
     the cluster bombs, the assassinations, the promotion of torture,
     the overthrow of governments, and more. The terrorists -- whatever
     else they might be -- are also rational human beings; which is to
     say that in their own minds they have a rational justification for
     their actions. Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what
     they see as social, political or religious injustice and
     hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often
     retaliation for an action of the United States.

     Most Americans find it difficult in the extreme to accept the
     proposition that terrorist acts against the United States can be
     viewed as revenge for Washington's policies abroad. They believe
     that the US is targeted because of its freedom, its democracy, its
     modernity, its wealth, or just being part of the West.

     But government officials know better. A Department of Defense
     study in 1997 concluded that: "Historical data show a strong
     correlation between US involvement in international situations and
     an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States."
     Former president Jimmy Carter, some years after he left the White
     House, was unambiguous in his concordance with such a sentiment:
     "We sent Marines into Lebanon and you only have to go to Lebanon,
     to Syria or to Jordan to witness first-hand the intense hatred
     among many people for the United States because we bombed and
     shelled and unmercifully killed totally innocent villagers --
     women and children and farmers and housewives -- in those villages
     around Beirut. . . . As a result of that . . . we became kind of a
     Satan in the minds of those who are deeply resentful."

     The terrorists responsible for the bombing of the World Trade
     Center in 1993 sent a letter to the New York Times which stated,
     in part: "We declare our responsibility for the explosion on the
     mentioned building. This action was done in response for the
     American political, economical, and military support to Israel the
     state of terrorism and to the rest of the dictator countries in
     the region."

     For more than four months the most powerful nation in history
     rained down a daily storm of missiles upon one of the poorest and
     most backward people in the world. Eventually, this question
     pressed itself onto the world's stage: Who killed more innocent,
     defenseless people? The terrorists in the United States on
     September 11 with their flying bombs? Or the Americans in
     Afghanistan with their AGM-86D cruise missiles, their AGM-130
     missiles, their 15,000 pound "daisy cutter" bombs, their depleted
     uranium, and their cluster bombs? By year's end, the count of the
     terrorists' victims in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania stood
     at about 3,000. The total count of civilian dead in Afghanistan
     was essentially ignored by American officials and just about
     everyone else, but a painstaking compilation of numerous
     individual reports from the domestic and international media, aid
     agencies, and the United Nations, by an American professor --
     hunting down the many separate incidents of 100-plus counts of the
     dead, the scores of dead, the dozens, and the smaller numbers --
     arrived at considerably more than 3,500 through early December,
     and still counting.

     The American scorched-earth bombing of Afghanistan may well turn
     out to be a political train wreck. Can it be doubted that
     thousands throughout the Muslim world were emotionally and
     spiritually recruited to the cause of the next Osama bin Laden by
     the awful ruination and perceived injustice? That is to say, the
     next generation of terrorists. Indeed, in December, while the
     American bombs were still falling on Afghanistan, a man -- British
     citizen Richard Reid, who was a convert to Islam -- tried to blow
     up an American Airlines plane en route to the United States with
     explosives hidden in his shoes. At the London mosque that Reid had
     attended, the cleric in charge warned that extremists were
     enlisting other young men like Reid and that agents aligned with
     radical Muslim figures had stepped up recruiting efforts since
     September 11. The cleric said that he knew of "hundreds of Richard
     Reids" recruited in Britain. Reid, described in the press as a
     "drifter," reportedly traveled to Israel, Egypt, the Netherlands,
     and Belgium before arriving in Paris and boarding the American
     Airlines plane. This raises the question of who was financing him.
     The freezing of numerous bank accounts of alleged terrorist groups
     throughout the world by the United States may have rather limited
     effect.

     Americans do not feel any more secure in their places of work, in
     their places of leisure, or in their travels than they did a day
     before their government's bombings began.

     Has the power elite learned anything? Here's James Woolsey, former
     Director of the CIA, speaking in December in Washington,
     advocating an invasion of Iraq and unconcerned about the response
     of the Arab world: The silence of the Arab public in the wake of
     America's victories in Afghanistan, he said, proves that "only
     fear will re-establish respect for the U.S." What, then, can the
     United States do to end terrorism directed against it? The answer
     lies in removing the anti-American motivations of the terrorists.
     To achieve this, American foreign policy will have to undergo a
     metamorphosis.

     If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against
     the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first
     apologize to all the widows and orphans, the tortured and
     impoverished, and all the many millions of other victims of
     American imperialism. Then I would announce, in all sincerity, to
     every corner of the world, that America's global interventions
     have come to an end, and inform Israel that it is no longer the
     51st state of the USA but now -- oddly enough -- a foreign
     country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90%
     and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims. There would
     be more than enough money. One year's military budget of 330
     billion dollars is equal to more than $18,000 an hour for every
     hour since Jesus Christ was born. That's what I'd do on my first
     three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I'd be
     assassinated.

     William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA
     Interventions Since World War II and Rogue State: A Guide to the
     World's Only Superpower. Email: bblum6@aol.com. Portions of the
     books can be read at:
     http://members.aol.com/superogue/homepage.htm.


     Copyright © 2003 Common Ground Publishing Corp
     Reprinted for Fair Use Only.




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