Counterpunch
By Christian Sorensen
03/22/2012
On March 15, American Defense Secretary Leon Panetta remarked that “terrorists cannot be the friends of any country. Terrorists are terrorists.” Yet Panetta is mistaken. His own Defense Department and America’s chief ally are easily classified as terrorists. Dissecting the substance of Panetta’s errors requires analyzing the failures of America’s beltway academics.
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Will the REAL "Terrorists" please stand up |
Hoffman’s definition, embraced by many within the American foreign policy establishment, deliberately excludes national actors, like the United States of America. Compare Hoffman’s academic definition to the perspective of a man who has personally witnessed terrorism’s vicious reality:
Terrorism is ‘the use of terrorizing methods of governing or resisting a government.’ This simple definition has one great virtue, that of fairness. It’s fair. It focuses on the use of coercive violence, violence that is used illegally, extra-constitutionally, to coerce. And this definition is correct because it treats terror for what it is, whether the government or private people commit it.
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Terrorist? |
Perhaps the Hoff-Men of America, a label which comprises most DC think-tanks, Beltway pundits, State Department careerists, and Intelligence Community dogmatists, adhere to Hoffman’s definition for rational reasons. After all, deviation from the standard discourse risks negative saliency; direct and indirect employees of America’s military-industrial complex often forego lucrative funding and career enhancement if they speak out against the grain on issues of imperial war and terrorism.
Individuals who adhere to the status quo flood America’s terrorism-pundit industry, which blossomed in the post-9/11 hysteria. Take, for example, Daniel Byman, of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy. He is by no means a malicious partisan or a zealot with an axe to grind. Quite the opposite, as he is simply grounded in the prevailing discourse of beltway academia, like Georgetown University where he holds professorship in Security Studies. Terrorism, now an academic discipline, is taught in universities largely by individuals like Byman who have an interest in adhering to the prevailing discourse and operating within the parameters of American bias.
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Terrorist? |
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Terrorists? |
To make matters worse, Secretary Panetta still insists that America is in Afghanistan “to ensure that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven” from where terrorists can plan attacks. However, as the 7 July 2005 England bombings and the 11 March 2004 Spain bombings illustrate, terrorist attacks can be hatched, planned, and implemented in even the most stable, democratic nations. This fact alone scuttles Panetta’s assertions. Even if America were able to miraculously goad Afghanistan into the confines and arbitrary standards of Western democracy, attacks can still be planned from its soil, a fact which no amount of military occupation can change. Despite all, after conducting a massive bombing campaign, the American military dislodged the Taliban from some positions of power in Afghanistan and has occupied the country ever since.
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Or.... Terrorists? |
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Is this a "real" Terrorist? |
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Are these dead children Terrorists? |
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Is this goofy idiot a Terrorist? |
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, a pioneer of this tactic, insists that terrorists are filled with “hate for the United States and for everything we stand for, [including] freedom and democracy.” Erroneous clichés like these, espoused by policymakers, and not actively dispelled by beltway academics, lead to further ignorance during a crucial time in American history.
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Did Terrorists commit the Bali bombings of 10/12/2002, or was it the CIA? |
Bin Laden’s grievances, as he articulated time and time again, were quite clear: Firstly, the American military should not be based in or around the Arabian Peninsula. Secondly, the American government should not punish the Iraqi people perversely. Sanctions against Iraq, enacted in the days following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, were allegedly intended to compel the Iraqi people to rise up against Saddam. While the Iraqi people never effectively rose up, they did suffer grievously. Conservative estimates of dead children, as a direct result of the American-led sanctions, hover around a couple hundred-thousand bodies. Saddam Hussein meanwhile lived a life of opulence. Thirdly, the American government should not support the state of Israel unconditionally in its oppression of the Palestinian people. Finally, the American government should stop supporting Middle Eastern dictatorships, like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Egypt, and Algeria (Lawrence 2005). This wasn’t the first time a terrorist had cited such grievances as rationale for attacking America. Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, conveyed similar motivation in his testimony before the New York City Federal District Court.

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War Criminal Donald Rumsfeld |
We are being attacked in the west, and will continue to be attacked… as long as we are in Afghanistan, as long as we support the Israelis, [and] as long as we protect the Saudi police state… It’s about intervention… about being in the Arabian Peninsula, and it has nothing to do with… cultural things. We are the ones that are arranging the cultural war against them.
Unfortunately, America’s government has not adjusted course. In August 2011, Defense Secretary Panetta reaffirmed America’s unwavering commitment to her irresponsible course of action, refusing to adopt the wisdom of a strategic shift ten years into its imperial Afghanistan war: “We should never give up until we have defeated their intent to attack this country.” The historical record will reflect the American government’s foolish choices. Unfortunately, the muted misery of the American military family, the Afghan civilian casualty, and the Iraqi mass grave will never be detailed fully.
Future terrorists, spawned in the rubble of America’s terrorism, will likely attack America again. To pretend otherwise is delusional. Future attacks, founded upon a just grievance, should be understood in context, since all Americans would also seek revenge if a foreign government had killed one of their innocent loved ones.
We still have much to learn. Defense Secretary Panetta hypocritically scolded Pakistan for picking and choosing among terrorists, without any understanding that America pioneered that tactic. In addition to Panetta’s astonishing remarks, Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that:
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Mullen: Terrorist? |
Mullen’s words are perfect advice for the United States of America. Tweaked slightly, the lessons are clear:
In choosing to use violent military operations and terrorism as an instrument of policy, the government of the United States, the Pentagon, and CIA, jeopardize not only the prospect of regional peace, but America’s opportunity to salvage any respect within the global community.
We all have lessons to learn, but the American pot calling the Pakistani kettle “black” doesn’t help matters. One day Mullen, realizing the error of his ways, will wish he heeded some of his own advice: to always keep private “the counsel you give our nation’s top leaders.”
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San Francisco Anti-War "Terrorist?" |
The American government must emphasize diplomacy, since massive military responses to terrorism only exacerbate the problem. It is more patriotic to employ precise political solutions than to glorify military action that aggravates an interminable global conflict. America can deal with the remaining al-Qaeda leadership, which the Pentagon estimates at less than 20 operatives worldwide, through implementing a precise, restrained, global police operation. A balanced blend of diplomatic, investigative, and collaborative international policing will yield positive results without picking fights with Boko Haram, Al-Shabbab, Abu Sayyaf, the Lord’s Resistance Army, and other groups that posed no threat to the United States of America. When necessary, strict congressional oversight may allow combined-joint special operations forces to break up terrorist cells.
America’s reward is awesome. When the American government chooses to end its imperial wars, it might then focus on internal national security threats: a failed education system, flagging infrastructure, a deteriorating industrial base, environmental pollution, lack of access to affordable healthcare, and mass unemployment (Gershon 1991: 367).
References:
Gerson, Joseph and Bruce Birchard. The Sun Never Sets. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1991, p. 367.
Hoffman, Bruce. Inside Terrorism. New York: Columbia University