TERRORISM THROUGH THE AGES

There’s a rather smug email being passed around - a multiple choice questionnaire in which numerous terrorist acts are the question and the answer is always something like: “Muslim Extremists under the Age of 30”. This mock quiz is intended to show just how animalistic Muslim “extremists” are and as some form of justification for going to war. Mostly what it stands for is a dehumanization of Muslims. A way of saying that they are morally reprehensible such that killing them is to be justified. This got me thinking about the magnitude of what they have perpetrated upon America and if there was some comparable actions that the United States has (historically) taken which could show that the Muslim behavior is rather normal. A simple Google search later and I has numerous instances of American atrocities which oddly enough seem to dwarf whatever the Muslim Terrorists have perpetrated upon the United States. To be brief I will set forth a brief consolidated list of these acts (which go back 200 years) as follows:

The CIA trained and managed Iran's dreaded SAVAK secret police which tortured and murdered countless people.

In 1953 the CIA initiated “Operation Phoenix”, a program of torture and murder of civilians in Vietnam.

In 1958 the CIA hired Saddam Hussein to assassinate the President of Iraq - Abdel Karim Qassim. Resulting in countless deaths and atrocities.

In the spring of 1864 the USA launched a campaign of violence against the Cheyenne Indians and their allies, killing "any and all Indians" and razing their villages AFTER THEY HAD SURRENDERED!

The USA dropped two atom bombs on Japan killing over 200,000 civilians.

In 1953 the CIA organized a coup which overthrew the democratically-elected and progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, initiating 40 years of death-squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions, and unimaginable cruelty, totaling well over 100,000 victims.

In December 1989 the USA wiped out a large tenement barrio in Panama City leaving 15,000 people homeless, (officially) 523 plus dead and 3,324-something wounded.

A Pentagon agency document describes 320 alleged incidents of atrocities against Vietnamese and Cambodian civilians (not including the 1968 My Lai massacre) and who committed them. 320!

The USA dropped more bombs on Laos than all the U.S. bombs dropped in World War II such that a quarter of all Laotians will eventually become refugees, many living in caves.

In 1964 the CIA backed a military coup in Brazil to overthrow the democratically elected government of Joao Goulart causing the junta that replaces it (over the next two decades) to become one of the most bloodthirsty in history, creating Latin America's first death squads, or bands of secret police who hunt down "communists" for torture, interrogation and murder?

In 1981 the CIA begins selling arms to Iran at high prices, using the profits to arm the Contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua?

On March 16, 1968, the USA assaulted the Vietnamese village of My Lai and the surrounding area murdering 400 to 500 Vietnamese civilians?

So while the Muslim Terrorists killed American citizens on September 11th, do we really have a right to be outraged? Do we have a right to object to their animal behavior when we’re on the same page? I guess what I mostly object to is American Hypocrisy - that is to point fingers at the rest of the evil-doers and forget were from the same fabric. To say that we are morally superior when we are in fact morally similar.

Some would attempt to justify American Terrorism with some contextual history. To place these atrocities in to some historical context is absurd. The correct context is “we are human” - any other context (historical, factual) would simply be an attempt to justify the abhorrent actions of our country and thereby exasperate the actions which are perpetrated against us - there is no historical context which is required to recognize that atrocities have been committed.

These types of atrocities have been happening over the course of human history, am we’re not the first pack to mask our actions in the shadows of morality. The Nazis, The Crusades, the Medieval or Episcopal Inquisition, the Spanish Inquisition, the Portuguese Inquisition and the Roman Inquisition come to mind. Immoral acts presented as moral for the sake (I suggest) of suppressing individual morality such that immoral behavior could continue.

I would say that human tendencies prevent even the smartest among us from recognizing that the perpetration of “acts of terror” toward control and dominance are the norm - even for we Americas. And I further think that we and every pack, group, or country has a self-inflated idea of our own worth and morality. This is systemically human-natural - as we humans are programmed to defend our packs in all instances. That would make recognition of our packs inherent negative similarities to our enemies almost impossible (if not impossible). As such, the atrocities I list are an example of the fallacy in being out-raged at “terrorism” toward we Americans. Our “historical terrorism” dwarfs anything that has been perpetrated upon us. And, the animal acts of attaining dominant are rather human and historical indeed.