Myth and Denial in the War Against Terrorism:
            Just why do terrorists terrorize?

     The notion that terrorist acts against the United States can be explained by envy and irrational hatred, and not by what the United States does to the world -- i.e., US foreign policy -- has been written on the face of the Bush administration ever since the attacks of September 11, 2001.
     The fires were still burning at Ground Zero in New York when Secretary of State Colin Powell declared: "Once again, we see terrorism, we see terrorists, people who don't believe in democracy."{1}
     President Bush picked up on that theme and ran with it. He's been its leading proponent with his repeated insistence, in one wording or another, that terrorists are people who hate America and all that it stands for, its democracy, its freedom, its wealth, its secular government. (Ironically, the president and his first Attorney General, John Ashcroft, probably hate America's secular government as much as anyone.)
     Here is the president more than a year after September 11: "The threats we face are global terrorist attacks. That's the threat. And the more you love freedom, the more likely it is you'll be attacked."{2}
     The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a conservative watchdog group founded by Lynne Cheney, wife of the vice-president, announced in November 2001 the formation of the Defense of Civilization Fund, declaring that "It was not only America that was attacked on September 11, but civilization. We were attacked not for our vices, but for our virtues."{3}
     In September 2002, the White House released the "National Security Strategy", purported to be chiefly the handiwork of Condoleezza Rice, which speaks of the "rogue states" which "sponsor terrorism around the globe; and reject basic human values and hate the United States and everything for which it stands."
     In July of the following year, we could hear the spokesman for Homeland Security, Brian Roehrkasse, declare: "Terrorists hate our freedoms. They want to change our ways."{4}
     And in his January 2005 inauguration address, the president spoke of the threat to the United States: "We have seen our vulnerability -- and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny, prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder, violence will gather." Not a single word in his talk about anything the United States has ever done to contribute to this resentment and hatred. It's just there in the anti-American terrorists, perhaps in their genes.
     To all of this, Thomas Friedman the renowned foreign policy analyst of the New York Times would say amen. Terrorists, he wrote in 1998 after two US embassies in Africa had been attacked, "have no specific ideological program or demands. Rather, they are driven by a generalized hatred of the US, Israel and other supposed enemies of Islam."{5}
     This idée fixe -- that the rise of anti-American terrorism owes nothing to American policies -- in effect postulates an America that is always the aggrieved innocent in a treacherous world, a benign United States government peacefully going about its business but being "provoked" into taking extreme measures to defend its people, its freedom and its democracy. It follows from this idea that there's no good reason to modify US foreign policy, no choice but to battle to the death this irrational international force out there that hates the United States with an abiding passion.
     Thus it was that Afghanistan and Iraq were bombed and invaded with seemingly little concern in Washington that this could well create many new anti-American terrorists. And indeed, following the first strike on Afghanistan in October 2001 there were literally scores of terrorist attacks against American institutions in the Middle East, South Asia and the Pacific, more than a dozen in Pakistan alone: military, civilian, Christian, and other targets associated with the United States, including the October 2002 bombings in Bali, Indonesia, which destroyed two nightclubs and killed more than 200 people, almost all of them Americans and their Australian and British allies. The following year brought the heavy bombing of the US-managed Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, the site of diplomatic receptions and 4th of July celebrations held by the American Embassy; all this in addition to the thousands of attacks in Iraq against US occupation.
     Even when a terrorist attack is not aimed directly at Americans, the reason the target has been chosen can be because the country it takes place in has been cooperating with the United States in its so-called "War on Terrorism". Witness the horrendous attacks of recent years in Madrid, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
     A US State Department report on worldwide terrorist attacks -- "Patterns of Global Terrorism" -- showed that the year 2003 had more "significant terrorist incidents" than at any time since the department began issuing statistics in 1985, even though the figures did not include attacks on US troops by insurgents in Iraq, which the Bush administration explicitly labels as "terrorist".{6} When the 2004 report showed an even higher number of incidents, the State Department announced that it was going to stop publishing the annual statistics.{7}

Terrorists in their own words
The word "terrorism" has been so overused in recent years that it's now commonly used simply to stigmatize any individual or group one doesn't like, for almost any kind of behavior involving force. But the word's raison d'être has traditionally been to convey a political meaning, something along the lines of: the deliberate use of violence against civilians and property to intimidate or coerce a government or the population in furtherance of a political objective.
     Terrorism is fundamentally propaganda, a very bloody form of making the world hear one's jeremiad.
     It follows that if the perpetrators of a terrorist act declare what their objective was, their statement should carry credibility, no matter what one thinks of the objective or the method used to achieve it. Let us look at some of their actual declarations.
     The terrorists responsible for the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 sent a letter to the New York Times which stated, in part: "We declare our responsibility for the explosion on the mentioned building. This action was done in response for the American political, economical, and military support to Israel the state of terrorism and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region."{8}
     Richard Reid, who tried to ignite a bomb in his shoe while aboard an American Airline flight to Miami in December 2001, told police that his planned suicide attack was an attempt to strike a blow against the US campaign in Afghanistan and the Western economy. In an e-mail sent to his mother, which he intended her to read after his death, Reid wrote that it was his duty "to help remove the oppressive American forces from the Muslims land."{9}
     After the bombings in Bali, one of the leading suspects, who was later convicted, told police that the bombings were "revenge" for "what Americans have done to Muslims." He said that he wanted to "kill as many Americans as possible" because "America oppresses the Muslims".{10}
     In November 2002, a taped message from Osama bin Laden began: "The road to safety begins by ending the aggression. Reciprocal treatment is part of justice. The [terrorist] incidents that have taken place ... are only reactions and reciprocal actions."{11}
     That same month, when Mir Aimal Kasi (or Kansi), who killed several people outside of CIA headquarters in 1993, was on death row, he declared: "What I did was a retaliation against the US government" for American policy in the Middle East and its support of Israel.{12}
     In June 2004, Islamic militants in Saudi Arabia beheaded an employee of the leading US defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, maker of the Apache helicopter, on which the victim, Paul Johnson, Jr. had long worked. His kidnappers said he was singled out for that reason. "The infidel got his fair treatment. ... Let him taste something of what Muslims have long tasted from Apache helicopter fire and missiles."{13}
     Finally, we have another audio message from Osama bin Laden, in April 2004, containing the following excerpts:

The greatest rule of safety is justice, and stopping injustice and aggression. ... What happened on 11 September and 11 March [the Madrid train bombings] is your commodity that was returned to you. ... we would like to inform you that labelling us and our acts as terrorism is also a description of you and of your acts. ... Our acts are reaction to your own acts, which are represented by the destruction and killing of our kinfolk in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. ... Which religion considers your killed ones innocent and our killed ones worthless? And which principle considers your blood real blood and our blood water? Reciprocal treatment is fair and the one who starts injustice bears greater blame. ... The killing of the Russians was after their invasion of Afghanistan and Chechnya; the killing of Europeans was after their invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan; and the killing of Americans on the day of New York was after their support of the Jews in Palestine and their invasion of the Arabian Peninsula.{14}

Difficulty of maintaining the simplistic idée fixe
It should be noted that when Mir Aimal Kasi was executed, the State Department warned that this could result in attacks against Americans around the world.{15} It did not warn that the attacks would result from foreigners hating or envying American democracy, freedom, wealth, or secular government.
     In the days following the start of the American bombing of Afghanistan there were numerous warnings from US government officials about being prepared for retaliatory acts, and during the war in Iraq, the State Department announced: "Tensions remaining from the recent events in Iraq may increase the potential threat to US citizens and interests abroad, including by terrorist groups."{16}
     Similarly, in June 2002, after a car bomb exploded outside the US Consulate in Karachi, killing or injuring more than 60 people, the Washington Post reported that "US officials said the attack was likely the work of extremists angry at both the United States and Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, for siding with the United States after September 11 and abandoning support for Afghanistan's ruling Taliban."{17}
     George W. and others of his administration may or may not believe what they tell the world about the motivations behind anti-American terrorism, but, as in the examples just given, some officials, at least in effect, have questioned the party line for years. A Department of Defense study in 1997 concluded: "Historical data show a strong correlation between US involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States."{18}
     Former US president Jimmy Carter told the New York Times in a 1989 interview:

We sent Marines into Lebanon and you only have to go to Lebanon, to Syria or to Jordan to witness first-hand the intense hatred among many people for the United States because we bombed and shelled and unmercifully killed totally innocent villagers -- women and children and farmers and housewives -- in those villages around Beirut. ... As a result of that ... we became kind of a Satan in the minds of those who are deeply resentful. That is what precipitated the taking of our hostages and that is what has precipitated some of the terrorist attacks.{19}

     Colin Powell has also revealed that he knows better. Writing of this same 1983 Lebanon debacle in his memoir, he foregoes clichés about terrorists hating democracy: "The U.S.S. New Jersey started hurling 16-inch shells into the mountains above Beirut, in World War II style, as if we were softening up the beaches on some Pacific atoll prior to an invasion. What we tend to overlook in such situations is that other people will react much as we would."{20}
     The ensuing terrorist attack against US Marine barracks in Lebanon took the lives of 241 American military personnel.

Hostile foreign policy, a list
The bombardment of Beirut in 1983 and 1984 is but one of many examples of American violence or other outrage against the Middle East and/or Muslims since the 1980s. The record includes:
* the support of corrupt and tyrannical Middle East governments, from the Shah of Iran to the Saudis
* the support for Russia and China against their Muslim populations
* the shooting down of two Libyan planes in 1981
* the bombing of Libya in 1986
* the bombing and sinking of an Iranian ship in 1987
* the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane in 1988
* the shooting down of two more Libyan planes in 1989
* the massive bombing of the Iraqi people in 1991
* the continuing bombings and horrific sanctions against Iraq from 1991 to 2003
* the bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998
* the habitual support of Israel despite the routine devastation and torture it inflicts upon the Palestinian people
* the habitual condemnation of Palestinian resistance to this
* the abduction of "suspected terrorists" from Muslim countries, such as Malaysia, Pakistan, Lebanon and Albania, who are then taken to places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where they are tortured
* the large military and hi-tech presence in Islam's holiest land, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region
* the devastation and occupation of Afghanistan beginning in 2001 and of Iraq beginning in 2003
     "How do I respond when I see that in some Islamic countries there is vitriolic hatred for America?" asked George W. "I'll tell you how I respond: I'm amazed. I'm amazed that there's such misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us. I am -- like most Americans, I just can't believe it because I know how good we are."{21}
     It's not just people in the Middle East who have good reason for hating what the US government does. The United States has created huge numbers of potential terrorists all over Latin America during a half century of American actions far worse than what it's done in the Middle East. If Latin Americans shared the belief of radical Muslims that they will go directly to paradise for martyring themselves in the act of killing the great Satan enemy, by now we might have had decades of repeated terrorist horror coming from south of the border.
     As it is, there have been numerous non-suicidal terrorist attacks against Americans and their buildings in Latin America over the years.
     To what extent do the American people really believe the official disconnect between what the US does in the world and anti-American terrorism? One indication that the public is somewhat skeptical came in the days immediately following the commencement of the bombing of Iraq on March 20, 2003. The airlines later announced that there had been a sharp increase in cancellations of flights and a sharp decrease in future flight reservations in those few days.{22}

How the Muslim world sees the United States
In June, 2003 the Pew Research Center released the results of polling in 20 Muslim countries and the Palestinian territories that brought into question the official thesis that support for anti-American terrorism goes hand in hand with hatred of American society. The polling revealed that people interviewed had much more "confidence" in Osama bin Laden than in George W. Bush. However, "the survey suggested little correlation between support for bin Laden and hostility to American ideas and cultural products. People who expressed a favorable opinion of bin Laden were just as likely to appreciate American technology and cultural products as people opposed to bin Laden. Pro- and anti-bin Laden respondents also differed little in their views on the workability of Western-style democracy in the Arab world."{23}
     After another year of US occupation of Iraq and torture scandals, polling results unsurprisingly offered Washington no more support for its claims. A June, 2004 Zogby International survey of men and women in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates produced results such as the following, reported the Washington Post:

Those polled said their opinions were shaped by U.S. policies, rather than by values or culture. When asked: 'What is the first thought when you hear "America?" respondents overwhelmingly said: 'Unfair foreign policy.' And when asked what the United States could do to improve its image in the Arab world, the most frequently provided answers were 'Stop supporting Israel' and 'Change your Middle East policy'. ... Most Arabs polled said they believe that the Iraq war has caused more terrorism and brought about less democracy, and that the Iraqi people are far worse off today than they were while living under Hussein's rule. The majority also said they believe the United States invaded Iraq for oil, to protect Israel and to weaken the Muslim world.{24}

     The Pentagon's own advisory panel, the Defense Science Board, corroborated some of the above, reporting in November 2004: "Today we reflexively compare Muslim 'masses' to those oppressed under Soviet rule. This is a strategic mistake. There is no yearning-to-be-liberated-by-the-U.S. groundswell among Muslim societies -- except to be liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate tyrannies that the U.S. so determinedly promotes and defends. ... Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather they hate our policies ... when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy. ... [Muslims believe] American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering."{25}
     Lastly, we have Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA, where he was a senior terrorism analyst. In his 2004 book, Imperial Hubris: Why The West is Losing the War on Terror (written under the name "Anonymous"), and elsewhere, he makes the following observations:

None of bin Laden's stated reasons for waging war on the United States "have anything to do with our freedom, liberty, and democracy, but everything to do with U.S. policies and actions in the Muslim world," notably unlimited support for Israel's repression of the Palestinians and the destruction of Iraq.{26} "As long as unchanged U.S. policies motivate Muslims to become insurgents," the United States will have to "kill many thousands of these fighters in what is a barely started war."{27} "This mind-set holds that America does not need to reevaluate its policies, let alone change them; it merely needs to better explain the wholesomeness of its views and the purity of its purposes to the uncomprehending Islamic world. What could be more American in the early 21st century, after all, than to re-identify a casus belli as a communication problem, and then call on Madison Avenue to package and hawk a remedy called "Democracy-Secularism-and-Capitalism-are-good-for-Muslims" to an Islamic world that has, to date, violently refused to purchase?"{28}

The Iraqi resistance
The official Washington mentality about the motivations of individuals they call terrorists has also been manifested in US occupation policy in Iraq. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld has declared that there are five groups opposing US forces -- looters, criminals, remnants of Saddam Hussein's government, foreign terrorists and those influenced by Iran.{29} American official in Iraq maintained that many of the people shooting at US troops are "poor young Iraqis" who have been paid between $20 and $100 to stage hit-and-run attacks on US soldiers. "They're not dedicated fighters," he said. "They're people who wanted to take a few potshots."{30} With such language do American officials avoid dealing with the idea that any part of the resistance is composed of Iraqi citizens who are simply demonstrating their resentment about being bombed, invaded, occupied, tortured, slain, and subjected to daily humiliations.
     Some officials convinced themselves that it was largely the most loyal followers of Saddam Hussein and his two sons who were behind the daily attacks on Americans, and that with the capture or killing of the evil family, resistance would die out; tens of millions of dollars were offered as reward for information leading to this joyful prospect. Thus it was that the killing of the sons elated military personnel. US Army trucks with loudspeakers drove through small towns and villages to broadcast a message about the death of Hussein's sons. "Coalition forces have won a great victory over the Baath Party and the Saddam Hussein regime by killing Uday and Qusay Hussein in Mosul," said the message broadcast in Arabic. "The Baath Party has no power in Iraq. Renounce the Baath Party or you are in great danger." It called on all officials of Hussein's government to turn themselves in.{31} What followed was several days of some of the deadliest attacks against American personnel since the guerrilla war began. Unfazed, American officials in Washington and Iraq continued to suggest that the elimination of Saddam himself would surely write finis to anti-American actions. His capture, in December 2003, of course did no such thing.

Another way in which the political origins of anti-American terrorism are obscured is by the common practice of blaming poverty or repression by Middle Eastern governments (as opposed to US support for such governments) for the creation of such terrorists. Defenders of US foreign policy cite this also as a way of showing how enlightened they are. Here's Condoleezza Rice as National Security Advisor:

[The Middle East] is a region where hopelessness provides a fertile ground for ideologies that convince promising youths to aspire not to a university education, a career or family, but to blowing themselves up, taking as many innocent lives with them as possible. We need to address the source of the problem.{32}

There are those on the left who speak in a similar fashion, apparently unconscious of what they're obfuscating. Their analysis confuses terrorism with revolution. But, in any case, why would a person suffering from hopelessness become a suicide bomber instead of merely committing suicide, if not for a political reason?

September 11 Commission
On June 16, 2004, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (investigating the events of September 11, 2001), issued a report which stated that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, regarded as the mastermind of the attacks, wanted to personally commandeer one aircraft and use it as a platform to denounce US policies in the Middle East. Instead of crashing it in a suicide attack, the report says, Mohammed planned to kill every adult male passenger on the plane, contact the media while airborne, and land at a US airport. There he would deliver his speech before releasing all the women and children.{33}
     The question once again arises: Why was Mohammed planning on denouncing US policies in the Middle East? Why wasn't he instead planning to denounce America's democracy, freedom, wealth and secular government, or its music, films or clothing?

A while ago, I heard a union person on the radio proposing what he called "a radical solution to poverty -- pay people enough to live on."
     Well, I'd like to propose a radical solution to anti-American terrorism -- stop giving terrorists the motivation to attack America. As long as the United States insists that anti-American terrorists have no good or rational reason for retaliation against the United States for anything the US has ever done to their countries, as long as the Bush administration feverishly experiments with one program after another to improve America's image in the Muslim world instead of putting and end to a foreign policy of bloody and oppressive interventions, the "War on Terrorism" is as doomed to failure as the war on drugs has been.

NOTES
1. Miami Herald, September 12, 2001
2. Agence France Presse, November 19, 2002
3. The Guardian (London), December 19, 2001, article by Duncan Campbell
4. Washington Post, August 1, 2003, p.4
5. New York Times, August 22, 1998, p.15
6. Washington Post, June 23, 2004 and June 28, p.19
7. "Bush Administration Eliminating 19-year-old International Terrorism Report", Knight Ridder Newspapers, April 15, 2005
8. Jim Dwyer, et al., "Two Seconds Under the World" (New York, 1994), p.196; see also the statement made in court by Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who planned the attack, New York Times, January 9, 1998, p.B4
9. Washington Post, October 3, 2002, p.6
10. Agence France Press, December 23, 2002; Washington Post, November 9, 2002
11. Los Angeles Times, November 13, 2002, p.6
12. Associated Press, November 7, 2002
13. Associated Press, June 19, 2004
14. BBC News, April 15, 2004
15. Associated Press, November 7, 2002
16. Voice of America News, April 21, 2003
17. Washington Post, June 15, 2002
18. US Department of Defense, Defense Science Board 1997 Summer Study Task Force on DOD Responses to Transnational Threats, October 1997, Final Report, Vol.1
19. New York Times, March 26, 1989, p.16
20. Colin Powell with Joseph E. Persico, "My American Journey" (New York, 1995), p.291
21. Boston Globe, October 12, 2001, p.28
22. Washington Post, March 27, 2003
23. Ibid., June 4, 2003, p.18
24. Ibid., July 23, 2004
25. New York Times, November 24, 2004
26. "Imperial Hubris", p.x and passim
27. Washington Post, June 26, 2004
28. Los Angeles Times, July 2, 2004, op-ed by "Anonymous"
29. Pentagon briefing, June 30, 2003
30. Washington Post, June 29, 2003
31. Ibid., July 24, 2003, p.7
32. Ibid., August 8, 2003
33. Ibid., June 17, 2004, p.14