What fuels terrorism, it’s about time we recognize it

The US media and government play a very dangerous role against Muslims by poisoning public minds and in the process breeding terroristic tendencies.

Stay with us for an article by freelance journalist Dave DeCamp for the ‘Antiwar’ site, titled: “What Fuels Terrorism, It’s About Time We Recognize it”.

Since September 11th 2001, the US media and government have demonized Muslims and fetishized the US military so much that many Americans do not understand what a devastating impact their foreign policy has had on the Muslim world. It is the duty of every American to question their government’s action, we need to get this idea out of our head that patriotism means blind support for our military adventures in the Middle East.

Osama bin Laden has been painted as a maniac, a man so insane and blind with rage that he allegedly toppled New York’s Twin Tower Trade Center because he was inspired to hate Western culture. But the fact is that, Osama bin Laden, if he really was the culprit behind the 11^th September incidents in New York in 2001, had made his motivation very clear: US intervention in the Muslim world.

It means that if this root cause of terrorism is not addressed, the cycle of violence will never end.

Bin Laden in 1996 issued "Declaration of Jihad against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holiest Sites (Expel the infidels from the Arab Peninsula)." The title makes bin Laden’s goal clear. After the Soviet Union was driven out of Afghanistan and collapsed at the end of the Cold War, bin Laden turned his eye on the United States. The US support for Israel long angered him, but it was US troops occupying the Arabian Peninsula that really stoked his rage.

George H. W. Bush’s cabinet found a new enemy in Iraqi strongman Saddam, giving up on the peace dividend that would have slashed the defense budget and reinvested the money back into the United States. After Operation Desert Storm, when Saddam was driven out of Kuwait, the US maintained its presence in the Arabian Peninsula. The administration broke its promise to go home once Saddam’s forces retreated back to Iraq.

The US and UN together maintained a brutal sanction and bombing campaign after the war, a UN sponsored report in 1995 claimed the US sanctions were responsible for the deaths of over half a million Iraqi children. In a 1996 interview with Nida’ul Islam magazine, when listing examples of the US killing innocent Muslims, bin Laden said, “the death of more than 600,000 Iraqi children because of the shortage of food and medicine which resulted from the boycotts and sanctions against the Muslim Iraqi people.”

Since September 11th there have been more terrorist incidents within the US where the perpetrators’ motives were related to US intervention in the Muslim World. In 2009, Nidhal Hassan, a US Army psychiatrist, killed 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas.

According to Colonel Terry Lee, a colleague of Hassan, he was angry about US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was hoping that President Barak Obama would pull troops out and that things would settle down, and when things were not going that way, he became more agitated and more frustrated with the conflicts over there, and he would just – he made his views well known about how he felt about the US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hassan was about to be deployed, although it was not clear at the time if it would be to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Johar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston Marathon bomber wrote a note on the inside of the boat police found him in, "The bombings were in retribution for the US crimes in places like Iraq and Afghanistan [and] that the victims of the Boston bombing were collateral damage, in the same way innocent victims have been collateral damage in US wars around the world. Summing up, that when you attack one Muslim you attack all Muslims." Tsarnaev’s note leaves no doubts as to his motive.

On June 12th 2016, Omar Mateen opened fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 patrons. In the wake of the massacre, it was reported as a hate crime, but more evidence has been released showing Mateen’s motive was US bombing campaigns in the Muslim world. The shooter didn’t even know the club was a gay club, reportedly asking the security guard where all the women were before opening fire.

Mateen posted to facebook during the shooting, "You kill innocent women and children by carrying out airstrikes. … Now taste the vengeance." Released transcripts of a conversation between Mateen and a 911 operator make his motivations clear, “A lot of innocent women and children are getting killed in Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan, okay,” Mateen said. “You see, now you feel, now you feel how it is, now you feel how it is.”

In 2007, during the republican presidential debates, candidate Ron Paul said, "They attack us because we’ve been over there, we’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We’ve been in West Asia.

Rudy Giuliani, who was also running for the presidential nomination responded to Paul, by saying: I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11.

Giuliani’s response is a perfect example of the type of willful ignorance that has helped continue Washington’s disastrous foreign policy. The fact that Giuliani was the mayor of New York at the time of the 9/11/-2001 incidents makes it all the more pathetic that he never thought to question his own governments responsibility for the deaths of thousands of his constituents.

Now that it’s 2019, almost 18 years after 9/11, the US government can no longer guilt us into ignoring the plain facts in front of us: what drives these persons to kill is not Islam, their religion is just a common identity, the real motivation and drive to commit violence stems from US intervention – or state terrorism against Muslims. Ignoring these facts is not patriotism, it is cowardice.

AS/SS