The United States government is the largest terrorist organization operating today.
As if we needed more proof of this fact, underground media site Wikileaks.org recently posted a video of U.S. troops murdering two Reuter’s photographers. The video, taken through an Apache helicopter’s gun-cam and termed the “collateral murder” video, shows the pilots mistaking the photographer’s cameras for guns, opening fire on civilians and proceeding to laugh about it.
And that’s not even the disgusting part. Toward the end of the video, a van shows up on the street to help one of the Reuter’s photographers. The people who get out of the van are obviously unarmed, and it’s clear their only mission is to help a wounded man. The pilots ask for permission to engage, which is given, and then they open fire on the van, killing the Reuter’s photographer and the men who got out of the van to help. It should be noted that, since they were clearly trying to help an injured man and were clearly unarmed, the men who arrived in the van could be conceived as a medical team. Following the Geneva Conventions, it’s a war crime to kill medical personnel.
And that’s still not even the disgusting part. As it turns out, there were two children in the van. The children were wounded by gunfire from the helicopter. In the video, the Army shows up on the ground, discovers the wounded children and announces it’s taking them back to the Army base for medical treatment. Their commanding officer comes over the radio and orders them to leave the children there until the Iraqi police show up to take them to a local hospital. One of the Apache pilots says, “It’s their own fault for bringing kids to a war zone.”
First of all, the whole country is a war zone. Secondly, the kids will be OK with Iraqi medical care? What Iraqi medical care? We bombed all their hospitals.
If murdering civilians, reporters and children and then laughing about it doesn’t qualify as terrorism, then what does?
Immediately following this horrifying video was Monday’s announcement that NATO troops opened fire on a civilian bus in Afghanistan. Following standard protocol, the bus pulled off to the side of the road to allow a NATO convoy to pass, and the troops opened fire as they passed it, killing four people.
In case you slept through history class, the U.S. is a key member of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Meaning we participated in cold-blooded murder of civilians yet again.
There have been at least 100,000 documented civilian casualties in Iraq since the beginning of the war. And that’s based on the most conservative estimate I can find.
This killing can be traced all the way to the president. Barack Obama ordered the assassination of a U.S. citizen. A New York Times article titled “U.S. approves targeted killing of American cleric,” details the story of Obama’s jihad against Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. The administration offered a somewhat sketchy portrait of al-Awlaki’s ties to Al Qaeda, and openly admitted that he’s targeted for murder.
Assassination, of course, is a war crime. It’s also terrorism.
None of this should come as a surprise to anyone that’s familiar with American history. Torture of prisoners, massacres of civilians and support for violent dictatorships are all acts of terrorism, and the U.S. has engaged in these practices throughout all of its history.
Even during World War II, perhaps the finest hour of the U.S. military, we performed several high-scale terrorist acts.
Most obviously, we dropped nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both civilian areas. The goal of these bombings was to scare the Japanese military into
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
surrendering, and this goal was successful. I’ll admit that there’s a strong argument that this was necessary, but the definition of terrorism is the murder of civilians in order to create fear. Clearly, the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki met this definition.
Add to this the fire-bombing of Dresden (another civilian area – roughly 25,000 civilians killed in one attack) and numerous reports of rape, torture and massacres by American troops during WWII, and it becomes clear that we engaged in terrorist activity even during the only “justifiable” war in American history.
Just to bring it home, consider the case of police-state dictatorship-style terrorism in Albuquerque. During a 2003 protest against the Iraq war, the Albuquerque Police Department attacked the protesters, beating people and launching tear gas into a crowd that included women and infants. There is no evidence that the protest ever became violent.
The protesters waited seven years to see a judge. Their case was deliberated for about three weeks before being dismissed. No punitive action whatsoever was taken against the police officers that blatantly violated the First Amendment.
Again, this is the very definition of terrorism. The police attacked a peaceful protest with the intention of suppressing the freedom of speech of the people. This attack served the dual purpose of inspiring fear in anyone who might be dumb enough to exercise his or her First Amendment rights in the future.
America is not the greatest country in the world. We are not morally superior to anyone. It’s impossible to imagine that we are God’s chosen people, unless your belief system involves God being unrepentantingly evil.
America is a terrorist state, perpetually involved in murder, torture and suppression of human rights. If we truly want to fight a “War on Terror,” we should start by examining ourselves.
