It's Not Terrorism When WE Do It "
The United States is arguably the world's largest sponsor of terrorism, although we call it "self defense" and fighting "humanitarian" wars.
But when other people -- especially brown-skinned people who wear funny clothes -- do the same things that we do, we label it as terrorism.
Mark Selden - Bartle Professor of History and Sociology at Binghamton University -- explains:
"American politicians and most social scientists definitionally exclude actions and policies of the United States and its allies" as terrorism."
For example, the American military indiscriminately kills innocent civilians (and see this), calling it "carefully targeted strikes." When others do it, we rightfully label it terrorism.
When Al Qaeda, Syrians or white supremacists target people attending funerals of those killed -- or those attempting to rescue people who have been injured by -- previous attacks, we rightfully label it terrorism. But the U.S. government does exactly the same thing, without any criticism by government apologists.
Torture is a recognized form of terrorism. The United States has always considered waterboarding to be a crime of torture, including when the Japanese did it in WWII (and see this).
But the government and its lackeys tried to say that American waterboarding in the "war on terror" was not torture. When asked during his 2008 presidential bid whether waterboarding was torture, Rudy Giuliani answered:
"It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it."
Indeed, we have a long history of using bombs and violence as a way to scare the civilian populations into seeing things our way.
But that is never labeled terrorism by the U.S. Instead, anyone who simply disagrees with U.S. policy (including those with the nerve to criticize the wars on brown-skinned people throughout North Africa and the Middle East planned 20 years ago) may be targeted with the terrorist label.
Why Are the American People So Easily Fooled?
As the Atlantic points out:
"Since 9/11, many Americans have conflated terrorism with Muslims; and having done so, they've tolerated or supported counterterrorism policies safe in the presumption that people unlike them would bear their brunt. (If Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD sent officers beyond the boundaries of New York City to secretly spy on evangelical Christian students or Israeli students or students who own handguns the national backlash would be swift, brutal, and decisive. The revelation of secret spying on Muslim American students was mostly defended or ignored.)
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