is the U.S. a terrorist nation?

[mike_c]

Poll question: is the U.S. a terrorist nation?

While folks are voting about whether Iran is a "terrorist nation" I thought it might be useful to apply the same lens to viewing our own history. Ironically, that history includes our support-- political and material-- for the overthrow of Iran's prime minister and the installation of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the former Shah installed because of his pro-western bias, and a corrupt tyrant by any measure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi#Oil_nationalization_and_the_1953_coup

Under the direction of Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., a senior CIA officer and grandson of the former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, the CIA and British intelligence funded and led a covert operation to depose Mossadegh with the help of military forces loyal to the Shah, known as Operation Ajax.<3> The plot hinged on orders signed by the Shah to dismiss Mossadegh as prime minister and replace him with General Fazlollah Zahedi, a choice agreed on by the British and Americans. Despite the high-level coordination and planning, the coup initially failed, causing the Shah to flee to Baghdad, later leaving for Rome. After a brief exile in Italy, the Shah returned to Iran, this time through a successful counter-coup.

[acmavm]

1. Hells bells, take a look at our Central and South America

exploits alone.

[mike_c]

3. egg-zactly....

eom

[american_typeculture]

2. It ain't easy being green.

[reprehensor]

4. Then there's Ali Mohamed...

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/reprehensor/52

[SteelPenguin]

5. Has America deliberatly targeted civilians for purposes of terror?

Not a soldier here, or an accident there, but a deliberate attack, ordered by our government, on civilians for no other purposes than to instill fear in that civilian population?

Not bombing a military target and being wrong and it being a wedding party, or destroying a 'baby milk' factory thinking they were making anthrax there, but deliberately bombing a wedding party in order to instill fear and terror in the local population?

If so, can you link please to an example?

[mike_c]

6. you must be kidding-- I don't know where to start....

Good god. Is that a serious question?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Jewels_%28Central_Intelligence_Agency%29

This is just a start. You've got a LOT of reading to do!

[SteelPenguin]

11. It's a Semantic Issue

Yes it's a serious question, and I'd like a serious answer.

Dresden doesn't qualify. It was done for strategic reasons, not to expressly terrorize the German people.

My Lai doesn't qualify. It ranges from a single company misinterpreting a strategic order, to at the highest (and to varying accounts) a Colonel giving an illegal order.

As far as the Family Jewels, nothing listed qualifies as a terrorist act. Illegal acts certainly, but not terrorist.

Has America acted illegally in the past? Of course. Have American's made bad, or even criminal, decisions in the past which resulted in the deaths of thousands upon thousands of innocent people? Of course. That doesn't make them terrorist actions.

[mike_c]

16. well that's a knife that cuts both ways-- MOST nations act violently and illegally...

...in support of their strategic interests, yet we routinely demonize them as "terrorists" for it. By that standard, the WTC was as legitimate a target as the temples of Nagasaki, or the civilian hospitals of Saigon. My point is that we need to examine the double standard-- if the our violent and illegal actions in support of strategic foreign policy objectives, or in support of perceived philosophical superiority, are not "terrorism," then neither are anyone else's. And the mere circumstance that terror is produced does not make those actions terrorism-- doubtless there was lots of terror in Dresden....

[SteelPenguin]

20. It does indeed cut both ways

As you say, simply because terror is produced, does not make those actions terrorism, however a deliberate targeting of a civilian target for no other reason than to instill fear is something that has been perpetrated by a number of nations, who I would call terrorist nations.

Iran would be one of them.

[mike_c]

36. please cite an example....

Please link an act of Iranian international terrorism without strategic objectives.

[SteelPenguin]

39. Hezbollah

Training, supporting, funding people who blow up public buses in Israel would fit.

It was paid for, trained, and supported by Iranian agents and it targeted Israeli civilians to create fear for a political rather than strategic goal.

Libya is guilty as well for blowing up the Pan Am flight.

[mike_c]

43. ask the Palestinians whether attacks against Israel...

...have no strategic objectives.

I think this conversation is spinning off into make-believe land-- Hezbollah is much more than a simple "terrorist organization," but that's beside the point. By that standard U.S. training of central and south american military personnel at the SOA/WISC is equally an act of terrorism. WE might have have strategic goals for doing so, but the corrupt dictatorships we've supported used our training and support for little more than inspiring terror among those who opposed their regimes, including such classics as disappearing tens of thousands of civilians, torture, mass murder, death squads, etc. Again, the knife cuts both ways.

[ieoeja]

52. How does what you describe differ from the School of Americas?

Training, supporting, funding people who blow up villages throughout South and Central America would fit.

It was paid for, trained, and supported by the United States government and it targeted Latin American civilians to create fear for a political rather than strategic goal.

[me b zola]

19. I imagine that most people would agree that the creation & training of death squads

are terrorist actions.

[acmavm]

24. Oh hi Dick. Nice that you could come out of your undisclosed

location and spew some nonsense.

[SteelPenguin]

41. Must be nice to be able to say whatever you feel like

and actually believe it's true. How's that working out for you George?

[acmavm]

8. Shock and Awe. They initial bombing campaign (122 bombings)

didn't hit ONE 'high value' target. And we bombed in civilian areas.

Did we do that on purpose? You betcha. Did we give a shit how many innocent men, women, and children died? Fuck no?

Was this a deliberate attack? Of course, the idiot squatting in the White House advertised it for days before he finally started killing people.

[SteelPenguin]

13. Shock and Awe was strategic

The reasons for the initial bombing campaign weren't to terrorize the Iraqi Civilian population, therefore it was stategic and not a terrorist action.

[acmavm]

23. Bullshit. That was an illegal action directed at an unarmed and

defenseless country. Or is that how you define 'strategy'?

And this administration knew that they were unarmed.

[SteelPenguin]

33. Unarmed?

Iraq was unarmed? Are you kidding?

According to the Iraqi soldiers the campaign had a highly demoralizing effect. One reason they crumbled so fast was it seemed like suicide to them to fight us by the point they saw our tanks rolling into Baghdad. Sure they were inept as well, but an inept army of half a million with guns is still formidable. Make most of them say "fuck this" and run home and you've got alot less casualties on both sides.

Heck Shock and Awe may have saved IRAQI lives.

[Donnachaidh]

9. bombing a large city doesn't strike you as terroristic?

Three little words -- SHOCK and AWE.

[SteelPenguin]

14. No it doesn't

Bombing a city for the explicit purposes of frightening the civilian population would be a terrorist act, but bombing selected targets (even if some civilians are killed in said targeting) for a military or strategic purpose is not a terrorist act.

[bemildred]

10. It's been our SOP for a very long time.

Of course the advent of aerial bombing campaigns has greatly facilitated out natural propensities in that direction. The history of the VietNam war is a good place to start. The Phoenix program for example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program

[SteelPenguin]

17. How as the Phoenix Program a terroist one?

It was a counter insurgency operation aimed at removing active supporters and members of the Viet Cong. It was not deliberately targeting civilians for no other purpose but to instill fear, but specifically targeting members of an insurgency.

[bemildred]

22. So you think you can kill lots of people without scaring them?

What do you think is going on in Iraq right now? You think you can kill lots of civilians with little or no discrimination and then say "Well! I didn't want to frighten them, so I am NOT a terrorist!"

I don't think the word means much really, war IS terrorism, organized theft and violence for the purpose of getting you way.

[SteelPenguin]

31. Simply because terror is generated doesn't make an act a terrorist one

A terrorist act is defined by the intentions and means of the perpetrator, not the reaction of the witness. Similiar to a Hate Crime. Killing an African American because of the color of his skin is a hate crime. Killing him for having sex with your wife is not. Just because he's got dark brown skin doesn't make every crime against him a Hate Crime.

Similiar to the present state of Iraq, simply because people are living in terror, doesn't make the United States a terrorist nation. It makes us incompetent and criminal. The United States isn't bombing water plants in Iraq to prevent people from having clean water, or blowing up power lines to keep people from having electricity.

Look, I'm not saying "yay war!". I'm saying that the word 'terrorism' and 'terrorist nation' have actual definitions, and war really ISN'T terrorism.

Dogs are mammals. Cats are mammals. I don't want to eat either a dog nor a cat, but that doesn't make them the same thing.

[bemildred]

34. So you feel no American service people are feeling hate over there?

Or is it Bush that doesn't hate anyone?

So you are asserting that it is the internal mental state of the perpetrator that decides whether an act is terrorist or not? If they blow up New York out of love for Allah or professional duty, then it's OK?

[SteelPenguin]

37. Oh they're feeling hate

From the sounds of it they feel the hate daily.

If Bush is anything like the Bitch who sired him, i'm sure he's full of hate.

I'm not so much asserting that it's the internal mental state of the perpetrator, but the reason and means of the action, which define an act as a terrorist one. I'm not the only one. I'm not going to link you dictionary.com or wikipedia to prove a definition of terrorism, but the definition is basically an attack on a civilian population to create fear, in order to accomplish a political goal.

So you need to

a) target innocent civilians. Not insurgents or logistical supporters of the opposition, but innocent people who did nothing. You need to specifically target them too, a bomb misdrop which kills civilians is not a terrorist act. Bad intelligence which ends up killing a wedding party is not a terrorist act. You have to KNOW they're civilians and specifically target them.

b) create fear. easy. fly over. drop bomb. screams. tears. dead babies.

c) expect it to create a political purpose. Survivors give us whatever we want. Cancel treaty with other country. Give us oil drilling rights. Whatever.

b and c we do routinely, a not so much.

So to answer your question, no. It's never ok to kill people. Duh. Just because people die though doesn't make the act a terrorist one.

[bemildred]

42. Well, you seem a reasonable person.

I think we do a.) quite a lot. Usually, at this point, the argument moves over into the issue of "targeting", and how many civilians it is OK to kill if there is a "military" target nearby, and so on. But I think I will leave it here.

I don't find that the idea of "terrorism" stands up as a meaningful distinction in matters of organized violence, and it seems much simpler to just admit that crime, war and terrorism are mostly the same thing, with some distinctions in organization and methods.

It's been a pleasure talking to you, you do state your case well.

[SteelPenguin]

45. Thanks

I appreciate rational discussion.

I agree that the definitions become somewhat moot when we admit that criminal actions, illegal actions, war, and terrorist ones are all wrong.

You're right though. The next stage of the argument devolves into what exactly is 'targeting' and whether knowingly killing civilians in order to destroy a military target constitutes enough to become a terrorist act.

[RethugAssKicker]

25. What about the terrorist attacks on Cuba... sponsored

and orchestrated by America??

[SteelPenguin]

35. Which ones?

Like the Bay of Pigs or the assasination attempts on Castro? Plenty of sketchy, illegal, and criminal activities against Cuba and her leaders, but no terrorist ones.

[RethugAssKicker]

27. What about right here with the past treatment of black Americans?

[THUNDER HANDS]

29. if there is a God

I doubt he cares if it was on purpose or not.

[SteelPenguin]

40. A death is a death

What does it matter if someone is killed by a stray tomahawk missile or from a pipebomb?

Doesn't matter at all to the person who was killed, or to the guy who blew himself up. Matters a whole hell of a lot to the person who pushed the button on the cruiser which launched the missile.

That's the difference.

[Donnachaidh]

7. DUPLICATE poll

Same thought came through last night. :shrug:

[madokie]

12. of course we are

whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not, we are terrorizing the people in south america as well as in the middle east now.

[BlooInBloo]

15. Over/under: 30 more threads on Iran/US by DUers falsely thinking they have something original to add

Hopefully this US/Iran brushfire is about to burn itself out with DUers.

[blondeatlast]

18. It really hurts me to say it--but hell, yes, the US is decidedly a terrorist nation.

Dropping bombs on major cities--not army bases?

That's terrorism.

[Zywiec]

21. Do you think any of our candidates feel this way?

Do you think if you polled Democrats on the street, 80% would agree with this statement as in the poll here?

Sometimes I wonder if what's polled on DU is an accurate representation of all Democrats. Thanks!

[Douglas Carpenter]

26. this may not be good Democratic Party P.R. -- I concede -- but the truth is the truth

[RethugAssKicker]

28. THE US is the #1 TERRORIST NATION !!!!

[Swamp Rat]

30. The most dangerous on Earth

[PDJane]

32. Oh, fer.........

the US deliberately targetted civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for starters. Yeah, there were industries in those areas, but there was no reason except the desire to drop an experimental device and see what happened. In fact, Nagasaki was a secondary target. Neither city had been hit by any major bombing, so they were ripe for the experiment. Yes, there were some military and civilian support installations in both cities, but most of the damage was done to civilians and civilian infrastructure.

The paroxysm of slaughter and annihilation did not end with the use of weapons that may very well bring the species to a bitter end. We should also not forget that these species-terminating weapons were created by the most brilliant, humane, and highly educated figures of modern civilisation, working in isolation, and so entranced by the beauty of the work in which they were engaged that they apparently paid little attention to the consequences: significant scientific protests against nuclear weapons began in the labs in Chicago, after the termination of their role in creation of the bomb, not in Los Alamos, where the work went on until the grim end. Not quite the end.

The official US Air Force history relates that after the bombing of Nagasaki, when Japan’s submission to unconditional surrender was certain, General Hap Arnold “wanted as big a finale as possible,” a 1,000-plane daylight raid on defenceless Japanese cities. The last bomber returned to its base just as the agreement to unconditional surrender was formally received. The Air Force chief, General Carl Spaatz, had preferred that the grand finale be a third nuclear attack on Tokyo, but was dissuaded. Tokyo was a “poor target” having already been incinerated in the carefully-executed firestorm in March, leaving perhaps 100,000 charred corpses in one of history’s worst crimes.

Such matters are excluded from war crimes tribunals, and largely expunged from history. By now they are hardly known beyond circles of activists and specialists. At the time they were publicly hailed as a legitimate exercise of self-defence against a vicious enemy that had reached the ultimate level of infamy by bombing US military bases in its Hawaiian and Philippine colonies.

(more to be found at: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9549.htm)
Interesting little side trip on the topic:
Howard zinn, about the reasons for WWII and his service:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17311.htm
About the Christian monument deliberately made into ground zero:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/kohls8.html

Reading a copy of Rogue State by William Blum is a good start too.

Bombings in Vietnam were mostly of civilian populations; bombing in Cambodia and Laos were almost always of civilian targets; they provided food for Vietnamese, and we can't have that, can we?

The Iraqis swear that the US is targetting civilians in Iraq; what is certain is that initial bombing runs targetted civilian infrastructure; water and electric plants, food supplies, hospitals and schools. That is illegal under the terms of the geneva conventions. (This is, by the way, a tactic that Israel also employs.) A discussion on the targetting of civilian populations in Iraq can be found here:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/27/otsc.irq.brahimi/

The bombing in Afghanistan is deliberately targetting civilians too. When U.S. warplanes strafed the farming village of Chowkar-Karez, 25 miles north of Kandahar on October 22-23rd,killing at least 93 civilians, a Pentagon official said, "the people there are dead because we wanted them dead." The reason? They sympathized with the Taliban1. When asked about the Chowkar incident, Rumsfeld replied, "I cannot deal with that particular village. " (by the way, US bombs were really hard on the sheep population of Afghanistan too.)

http://www.cursor.org/stories/civilian_deaths.htm

Don't give me that "show sources" shit. The sources are there and the effects of war, invasions and occupations on civilian targets are well known. That's been true of Attila the Hun right on through to the US and its allies.

Since WWII, the US has been waging a war on the third world, which was originally why the phrase Third World War was coined. It's been a damn thorough job, too..........

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

38. "Terrorism" is a tactic. It's not a state, ideology, political party, or individual.

As I've said on other similar threads, the difference between a "terrorist" planting a bomb to kill/injure civilians is no different than a pilot dropping a bomb to kill/injure civilians.

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy.” - Gandhi

[mike_c]

46. that is precisely the point I was hoping folks would think about....

:thumbsup:

[Solon]

47. The question is, if a state gave that bomb to a group, or gave them money to buy the bombs...

while knowing about their tactics of attacking civilian targets indiscriminately, are they not supporters of terror?

[mike_c]

48. like this...?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor

[Solon]

49. Yes, exactly like that...

I would go further than my own definition, the CIA has, in the past, DIRECTLY attacked civilian targets for the sole purpose of terrorizing the population and destabilizing democratic governments. Under the United States' definition of a terrorist group, the CIA qualifies, especially considering that, in most cases, they funded many of these operations through drug smuggling and therefore acted as an independent contractor for political or economic purposes.

[hiphopnation]

44. is this an overly-simplistic poll?

yes

doesn't the u.s. top the list for charitable donations? the u.s. government certainly commits acts of terrorism, but the u.s. people, i have to believe, are duped and aren't always privy to the actions of its government. while that ignorance may not absolve them of guilt, i do believe that there are a great many concerned, caring, and genuinely good people here in this country, THAT MAKE UP THIS COUNTRY, that do not condone acts of terror. so can i state, unequivocally, that the u.s. is a terrorist nation? i guess i cannot. i'm more comfortable with stating "the u.s. government commits acts of terror on par with, if not worse than, some of the most violent terrorist sects and regimes in the world."

$0.02

[Disturbed]

50. Most of the direct acts of Terrorism are committed by

sub-contractors that the US Govt. supports financially & logistically. The CIA, Special Forces, Seals,Delta Force, etc. usually pay the RWing of other countries to actually carry out terrorist acts &/or torture. There are also US Mercs that carry out such acts. The US Govt. practices the concept of plausible denial on a consistent basis. The Iran/Contra Operation is a prime example.

[hiphopnation]

51. the poll is overly-simplistic

i don't dispute much of what you're saying but i still stand by my comments. i'm not comfortable unequivocally stating "The United States is a Terrorist Nation". i think it's a gross oversimplification and would like to believe that most duers are capable of a greater degree of analysis than this. call me a wingnut :shrug:

[mike_c]

53. actually, that was one of the points of this whole exercise....

It IS simplistic, just like the poll asking whether Iran is a "terrorist nation"-- and for exactly the same reasons.

[hiphopnation]

56. splendid!

i'm happy to report that i've been party to none of those ridiculous threads as i'm uncomfortable making such garishly simplistic statements. some around here seem just addicted to "the flame" because I don't believe that that many DUers view the world in such "us & them" terms. it's bush-think, intellectually lazy, morally reprehensible and also getting kind of old.

[Jed Dilligan]

54. Allende is another example of state-sponsored US terrorism. nt

[ileus]

55. No. Never...