The Reality of Terrorism

Currently the U.S. has escalated their "war on terrorism." Since the simultaneous bombings of U.S. embassies in August, the debate has raged over how best to respond to terrorists. While it is generally agreed that a violent response will only incur more violence, "our national safety and interest demand nothing less."

Throughout all of the political posturing, media hype and "expert" opinions is a unified view that terrorism is something that is done to the U.S. Let’s take a closer look at that.

A cruise missile slams into a neighborhood at night, killing innocent men, women and children. A jet guides a "smart" bomb into an air raid bunker, killing the hundreds of people who were seeking shelter from the incessant carpet bombings of B-52s. Thousands upon thousands of infants and children die each month due to sanctions imposed upon the leader of their country. Several hundred pounds of explosives inside a car are exploded outside an embassy building killing many innocent people. In all of these cases, innocent people were killed, but only one has been labeled "terrorism" by the U.S. Why? In all but the last example, the U.S. is the one doing the killing and they justify their actions with words like democracy, freedom, and national security. The U.S. government sees nothing wrong with using violence to accomplish their goals and controlling the media to explain away their actions.

Webster’s dictionary defines terrorism as the "systematic use of terror and intimidation especially in order to coerce" and terror as "violence by a group to achieve a political objective." It becomes clear that the system that has made use of violence to achieve its political objectives, from its birth, has been U.S. imperialism. As veterans of the U.S. military, ex-members of the largest terrorist group in the world, we can say with unshakable certainty that in order to rid the world of terrorism we are going to first have to rid the world of the #1 terrorist. As long as U.S. imperialism is able to grind the people of the world under its boots, car bombs will be placed outside embassies and in skyscrapers in opposition.