It is a particularly bitter pill to swallow. Throughout its entire history both at home and abroad the United States has been responsible for more acts of terrorism than any other nation in history.
Upon reading the title of this article many might reflexively click off, going straight to the comments section to voice their disapproval, to vitriolically chastise the perceived lack of patriotism and the insinuation that the United States of America is anything but the greatest bastion of freedom and liberty in the world. A beacon of light in the dark protecting democracy from the dregs of despotism.
It is a reaction that has been programmed into many of us, one that even among the "liberty community" many, including yours truly, espoused at one time or another. Since birth we are programmed via nationalistic propaganda to have such a worldview.
Every single day of our schooling for at least 12 years we are indoctrinated to place our hands over our hearts and pledge our allegiance to the nation, in other words our loyalty to the government, or more specifically — given the origins of the pledge itself — the ideologies of colonialism in honoring Christopher Columbus, Anglo-American ethno-nationalism, and later, a reinforcement of US political and religious moral superiority, that is itself inherent to the government and its systemic norms.
Denoting these sentiments under a negative connotation will as well likely spark the ire of many who still refuse to acknowledge the role of settler-colonialism in the American experiment, but we digress.
The point is, we as Americans have been institutionally inculcated our entire lives with sentiments of nationalism and American exceptionalism which have subsequently, with assistance in no small part from the heavily controlled corporate mainstream media and the centralized education system, blinded huge swaths of the population from the realities of the innumerable crimes committed by the American government. Both in the past, and the present day.
Chief among these misbehaviors would be the ways in which America would behave itself with regard to it's foreign policy, both early in its existence as a burgeoning superpower and today as the leader of a globe spanning unipolar hegemon.
Beginning with the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 wherein the US asserted itself as being the sole authority in the entirety of the Western Hemisphere, It would slowly go on to refine this doctrine as justification for intervention and expansionism, first in Latin America and expanding outward to the rest of the world.
As the US would continue to expand its power and influence over its global neighbors the destabilization of sovereign governments that Washington viewed as being at odds or potentially deleterious to its agendas of regional control became standard procedure.
We recently elaborated upon this briefly with regard to the century of US intervention in Haiti and the long history of US backed regime change.
As neocolonialist foreign policy would evolve to include the problem reaction solution philosophy of the Hegelian dialectic, the US would increasingly and frequently find itself fomenting the very same bad actors that it would ostensibly position itself to oppose. As such being responsible for the terror those elements wrought in their wake.
The recent brutal attack against Russian citizens at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow which killed at least 143 people perpetuated by ISIS-K, the Afghan and Pakistani offshoot of the Islamic State terrorist group, has sparked fresh conversation reminding the world that the group is among the latest in a long line of destabilizing terror groups fomented by the US.
The monstrosity that is ISIS got its start in the 2010's under a clandestine arm and equip program known as Operation Timber Sycamore. With funding from Saudi Arabia and Qatar the CIA would run point on the operation as the US would make the decision to funnel weapons to jihadist fighters, later referred to as "moderate rebels", in Iraq and Syria, many of whom belonged to al Qaeda – which the US had just spent the better part of two decades warring against – in a bid to destabilize Syria amid a dirty war to oust the government of Bashar al-Assad.
But collusion with extremist elements such as the Islamic State, Al Nusra, and al Qaida was not the first time throughout its history the American government would support such an organization. As a matter of fact the existence of al Qaeda itself owes it's lineage to US covert operations and intervention in the Middle East.
Anyone who's paid the slightest bit of attention to foreign affairs particularly in the Middle East since the mid 1990s is well aware of the terroristic accolades of al Qaida.
What some may still not be aware of is the secret history of al Qaida and its formation under the auspices of a US covert program known as Operation Cyclone. In which, beginning in 1978, the Carter and later Reagan administrations through Central Intelligence Agency assets began to arm, fund, and train Afghan militants known as the mujahedeen as a part of a Cold War policy to fight back against the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan.
Among these assets receiving covert US support was a young wealthy and radical Saudi businessmen who would go on to become one of the most infamous terrorists in history, Osama bin Laden. Following the withdrawal of the Soviets and the subsequent Afghan civil war in 1989, the very same forces that the US spent a decade arming and training would splinter into what would become al Qaeda and the Taliban.
The same ideology that gave birth to the rise of arguably the most prolific terror organization in the world today also left its bloody fingerprints on many other conflicts and atrocities. The Truman doctrine and later policies of opposing communism at all costs led to the US backing of several brutal regimes and bloodthirsty terror groups throughout much of Latin America and Europe during the Cold War.
Following the Second World War and the formation of NATO, US and British intelligence agencies would collude together on establishing a vast network of paramilitaries and insurgent groups throughout various European countries as a covert stay behind army to stand ready to oppose a perceived impending invasion by the Soviet Union. The project was known as Operation Gladio.
A calculated decision was made at the highest levels of intelligence that this paramilitary network would be largely comprised of far right militants, fascists and Nazi collaborators, and actual Nazis that had fled to other parts of Europe following World War II.
Unsurprisingly this had catastrophic consequences, as many of these paramilitary groups would go on to wage campaigns of terrorism against the very people they were supposedly established to protect. Ranging from harassment and psychological warfare, to kidnapping, torture, massacres, assassinations, and bombings, many of which were utilized as false flag attacks, Gladio waged a campaign of terror across Europe for nearly 30 years resulting in the death of hundreds of innocent people.
In Central America, on the other hand, a similar operation was taking place with its own blood soaked legacy. Following a series of US backed coups which brought to power a number of brutal dictators sympathetic to US interests in the region, the period from 1975 to 1983 saw a largescale campaign of terrorism and mass murder under the umbrella of a covert program known as Operation Condor.
Though not American in origin, under the watchful eye of US intelligence eight repressive regimes set up throughout Central America would begin joint operations of targeting left-wing political dissidents using much of the same tactics. Right wing death squads would carry out a wave of state sponsored terrorism with impunity. Kidnapping, torturing, raping, and murdering thousands. It is estimated that between 60,000 to 80,000 people died as a result of Operation Condor, with an additional 400,000 political prisoners being taken.
Southeast Asia would also not go unmolested by the brutality of US intervention. In that regard no one person deserves more ire than former Secretary of State and life long war criminal Henry Kissinger. And nowhere are the peak of his atrocities more apparent than in 1970s Cambodia, wherein the relatively peaceful country found themselves in Kissinger's crosshairs due to their unfortunate geographical location, being neighbors with Vietnam in the midst of a tumultuous conflict between the communist North and the US-backed South and a brutal US invasion.
Despite not officially being a participant in the war, Cambodia would allow the north Vietnamese to transport troops and equipment along the Ho Chi Minh trail which ran through the north of the country, and establish base camps within its borders. As a part of the Nixon administration's response, Kissinger would orchestrate a covert carpet bombing campaign known as Operation Menu. Rather than just striking military targets the campaign would indiscriminately target Cambodian civilian populations, resulting in mass death and arguably one of the worst atrocities of the Vietnam era. Dropping 500,000 tons of ordinance and resulting in the death of tens of thousands of Cambodians.
As an added effect, disdain for the campaign also strengthened support for the Khmer Rouge, and it is widely viewed as having largely contributed to the rise of the brutal Pol Pot regime.
However there is a great and terrible irony in the United States going to such destructive lengths to oppose the spread of communism, and it is found in one of the most bewildering and seldom reported plot twists in history. Contrary to the narratives established throughout the Cold War and prevailing into today of America's staunch aversion to communism, the little known truth is that it was the United States itself, the financial and political ruling class specifically, that was responsible for the creation of the Soviet Union and communism's rise to power.
In his 1974 book titled Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, historian, Stanford University Hoover Institute research fellow, and University of California economics professor Anthony C. Sutton lays out the case through various official documents, archived records, and first hand accounts of how western capitalists help laid the foundation of support for the Bolsheviks to seize power.
Sutton explains that his research uncovered evidence demonstrating how New York bankers financially supported Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky while in exile in the United States and how the political establishment of the US and Britain facilitated his travel back to Russia to join the revolution. Similarly it elaborates how the German general staff assisted Vladimir Lenin during his exile in Germany to usher him back to Russia through Switzerland by train.
He further elaborates how a faux Red Cross mission was orchestrated as a cover in which Wall Street bankers and lawyers were secretly sent to Russia to assist with on the ground logistical support with financing and American weapons approved via the US State Department, along with a host of other covert actions taken to support the revolution. In the interview below professor Sutton discusses these facts in greater detail.
Sutton explains that this was done largely for financial gain. Allowing the socialist economic policies to take hold in Russia and paralyze the market, thus creating a captive market ripe for exploitation by big business monopoly capitalists in the West. With this being the case the argument can be made, and made quite effectively, that the global proliferation of communism and the terroristic horrors of communist regimes throughout the world are also at least to a certain extent the fault of the US, even if indirectly or inadvertent.
Domestically too, the United States government has not shied away from committing egregious acts of terrorism. One need look no further than what it means to be black in Amerikkka.
Following four centuries of brutal enslavement, a form of mass terrorism in its own right, emancipation did not bring respite for African Americans. Rather, the reconstruction era brought with it a wave of lynching's and racial terror through into the Civil Rights era. The tumultuous period from the 1950s to the late 1960s that saw African Americans and other civil rights advocates protest for fair and equal treatment was rife with violence and acts of terrorism.
While some of the most heinous acts were committed by private citizens including lynch mobs and terror groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, refusal of the federal government to act swiftly against such acts of violence arguably aided and abetted it.
More on par with the subject matter at hand was the direct involvement of local and state authorities in such blatant acts of terrorism including the frequent use of fire hoses and police dogs to intimidate peaceful activists. Particularly in Alabama, in March of 1965 Governor George Wallace authorized the use of force by police in Selma to push back a peaceful protest as activists attempted to march to Montgomery. The ensuing chaos came to be known as Bloody Sunday, as local sheriff's deputies and state troopers would go on a rampage mercilessly attacking the protesters on Edmund Pettus bridge.
Four years earlier in 1961, members of the Birmingham Police Department and the FBI would collude with the Ku Klux Klan to commit a fire bombing attack on a bus of protesters known as the Freedom Riders.
On the federal level the FBI spent much of the civil rights movement waging war against black Americans, engaging in operations undermining the work of civil rights and anti war activists via the COINTELPRO program, conducting operations of surveillance, disinformation, harassment, subversion and orchestrating numerous assassinations of civil rights leaders the likes of Fred Hampton and Martin Luther King Jr.
Just one chapter in its long history of corruption acting as the new Gestapo for the modern day police state.
Indeed, we can look even further beyond this back throughout history and find even worse examples in the past as well as more recently.
The very foundation of the expansion of post revolution America was predicated upon a century of genocide of indigenous peoples rooted in religious persecution, resulting in the mass slaughter of millions. As well as the continued perpetual mistreatment of natives to this very day in numerous forms; including the breaking of treaties, the forcible installation of dangerous pipelines on tribal land, the poisoning of land, water, and people, police brutality against indigenous water protectors, and federal neglect on reservations resulting in disproportionate mass poverty and illness.
The war between the states too, was fraught with acts of terror against civilian populations, none worse than those war crimes committed by general William T Sherman, who's troops aside from engaging in legitimate military confrontation with confederate soldiers plundered and massacred their way through the South. Sparing no innocents in a "total war" scorched earth policy, burning entire cities to the ground.
Whereas in the modern day several more examples can be looked upon, including but not limited to the unnecessary vaporizing of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Federal involvement in fostering terror attacks such as the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, extremists the likes of Timothy McVeigh and the atrocious 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, or the attacks of September 11th 2001. For which there is a plethora of evidence demonstrating government involvement.
As well as the consequential war of terror which followed in its wake. In the same vein as all the other atrocious wars this nation has waged on false pretexts to justify its imperial expansion. Or otherwise facilitated its allies carrying out similar actions, including how our government is currently assisting in a mass genocide taking place in Gaza.
At no point in history has the US government not been a participant in deplorable acts of terrorism.
This article is written as a reminder for the average person, that our government are master manipulators. Gaslighters of the highest degree. They attempt to convince the world and its people that they are its saving grace when in fact they are exactly the opposite. Both at home and abroad the United States government is the world's most prolific sponsor of terrorism, responsible for more death and destruction than any other regime or empire in history.
Yet with that being said let not this piece be viewed upon as some unamerican diatribe, but rather a vehement castigation of its behavior. An imploring of the American people to see the truth beyond the red white and blue blinders.
Nationality of a government is irrelevant in regard to its behavior, just as race is irrelevant to a mans actions. Judgment is reserved based upon character alone. The character of this government is grotesque, and should not be viewed as anything less. It matters little if the government is of an American, British, Russian, Chinese, or some other persuasion. Actions such as these should be viewed with contempt as completely unacceptable.
They spend countless hours and billions of dollars on propaganda campaigns and divide and conquer psy-ops convincing us that our fellow common folk are the enemy because they are of a different sex, religion, race, class, nationality, or political ideology.
Only when the people see through the lies and recognize the misdeeds of those who claim authority over them, and as one unified body find disgust in the actions of their rulers can they exercise their most fundamental of rights as enshrined by the founding fathers in our Declaration of Independence —
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
