If the US really believes that supporting terrorists makes you as guilty as the terrorists themselves, then it would have to put on trial most of its military and political leadership over the last handful of administrations, and more. Peter McLaren
The US record of war crimes has been, from the nineteenth century to the present, a largely invisible one, with no government, no political leaders, no military officials, no lower-level operatives held accountable for criminal actions ... Anyone challenging this mythology is quickly marginalized, branded a traitor or Communist or terrorist or simply a lunatic beyond the pale of reasonable discussion. Carl Boggs
In Greece the British army toppled the popular leftist national liberation front and restored the monarchy and right-wing dictatorship sparking a communist-led uprising. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States IV: The Cold War 1945-50, Showtime 2012
The CIA had now come into its own and in the next year organised the overthrow of Guatemala's popular leader Jacobo Arbenz. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States V: The 50s: Eisenhower, The Bomb & The Third World
Operation Mongoose: A terror campaign overseen by his [J F Kennedy] brother Robert. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States VI: JFK: To the Brink
Under Kennedy’s three-year watch the CIA launched 163 major covert operations worldwide. ibid.
Sounding more like a gangsta than a statesman Kissinger conveyed the order to bomb. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States VII: Johnson, Nixon and Vietnam: Reversal of Fortune
The American war against the poor of the Earth ... the collateral damage. ibid.
Drones: Obama’s weapon of choice. He personally began selecting those on the kill-list. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States X: Bush & Obama: Age of Terror
Unconstrained by any superpower rival or system of global governance, the US giant has rewritten the global financial and trading system in its own interest; ripped up a string of treaties it finds inconvenient; sent troops to every corner of the globe; bombed Afghanistan, Sudan, Yugoslavia and Iraq without troubling the United Nations; maintained a string of murderous embargoes against recalcitrant regimes; and recklessly thrown its weight behind Israel’s 34-year illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as the Palestinian intifada rages. The Guardian 2001
On September 20 2001 California Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D) cast the only dissenting vote in the entire US Congress opposing S J Resolution 23 giving President Bush a free hand to attack terrorists anywhere in the world as he saw fit. Mike Ruppert, The Truth & Lies of 9/11
This War on Terror is a War of Terror. Ken O’Keefe
Emergency powers to imprison suspected international terrorists indefinitely using special closed courts will be announced this week. The measure, which will require exception from human rights legislation, will be used to round up about twenty suspects hiding in Britain out of the reach of existing laws. Daily Telegraph article 11th November 2001
A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn’t have an air force. William Blum
We must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend. Margaret Thatcher, speech 15th July 1985
All terrorism even if you mean well tends to go badly. Martin Summer, On the Edge with Theo Chalmers and Tony Gosling
Throwing a bomb is bad,
Dropping a bomb is good;
Terror, no need to add,
Depends on who’s wearing the hood.
Kangaroo courts are wrong,
Specialist courts are right;
Discipline by the strong
Is fair if your collar is white.
Company output ‘soars’
Wages, of course, ‘explode’;
Profits deserve applause,
Pay-claims, the criminal code.
Daily the Church declares
Betting shops are a curse;
Gambling with stocks and shares
Enlarges the national purse.
Workers the absentees,
Businessmen relax,
Different as chalk and cheese;
Social morality
Has a duality –
One for each side of the tracks. Roger Woodis, Ethics for Everyone
You are not going to win any war against Terror as long as there are conditions in the world that make people desperate. Bishop Desmond Tutu
US Army Intelligence must have the means of launching special operations which will convince host country governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger. US Army Intelligence should seek to penetrate the insurgency by means of agents on special assignment, with the task of forming special actions groups among the most radical elements of the insurgency. Alleged US Army Intelligence Field Manual
There may be times when HC [Host Country] governments show passivity or indecision in face of Communist or Communist-inspired subversion, and react with inadequate vigor to intelligence estimates transmitted by US agencies. Such situations are particularly likely to arise when the insurgency seeks to achieve tactical advantage by temporarily refraining from violence, thus lulling MC authorities into a state of false security. In such cases, US Army Intelligence must have the means of launching special operation which will convince HC government and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger and of the necessity of counteraction. ibid. 30-31: Appendix E
Our exploitation and use of terrorism at home and abroad actually appears to be a force that is promoting terrorism rather than combating it. Jim Fetzer, interview Fox News
I will do such things, –
What they are yet I know not, – but they shall be
The terrors of the earth. William Shakespeare, The History of King Lear II iv 283
In December 1987 the US blocked the strongest UN General Council resolution condemning terrorism in all its forms ... The US and Israel alone voted against it. Noam Chomsky, University of Colorado 5th April 2003
The biggest international terror operations that are known are the ones that are run out of Washington. Noam Chomsky
If the Nuremberg laws were applied then every post-war American president would have been hanged. Noam Chomsky
It cannot be a war on terror … We are all total hypocrites on any issue relating to terrorism. Noam Chomsky, lecture Harvard University 2002, ‘Distorted Reality: A War on Terrorism?’, Youtube 55.13
Reagan 1984: His administration had immediately declared that the war on terrorism would be the focus of US foreign policy … ‘by depraved opponents of civilisation.’ ibid.
State terror is far worse than individual terror for the obvious reason that states have means of violence that individuals don’t have or groups. ibid.
The United States hires terrorist states. ibid.
Among the many symbols used to frighten and manipulate the populace of the democratic states, few have been more important than ‘terror’ and ‘terrorism’. These terms have generally been confined to the use of violence by individuals and marginal groups. Official violence, which is far more extensive in both scale and destructiveness, is placed in a different category altogether. This usage has nothing to do with justice, causal sequence, or numbers abused. Whatever the actual sequence of cause and effect, official violence is described as responsive or provoked (‘retaliation’, ‘protective reaction’ etc.), not as the active and initiating source of abuse. Similarly, the massive long-term violence inherent in the oppressive social structures that US power has supported or imposed is typically disregarded. The numbers tormented and killed by official violence-wholesale as opposed to retail terror-during recent decades have exceeded those of unofficial terrorists by a factor running into the thousands. But this is not ‘terror’ ... ‘security forces’ only retaliate and engage in ‘police action’.
These terminological devices serve important functions. They help to justify the far more extensive violence of (friendly) state authorities by interpreting them as ‘reactive’ and they implicitly sanction the suppression of information on the methods and scale of official violence by removing it from the category of ‘terrorism’ ... Thus the language is well-designed for apologetics for wholesale terror. Noam Chomsky, The Washington Connection & Third World Fascism
A drone strike is a terror weapon, we don’t talk about it that way. It is; just imagine you are walking down the street and you don’t know whether in five minutes there is going to be an explosion across the street from some place up in the sky that you can’t see. Somebody will be killed, and whoever is around will be killed, maybe you’ll be injured if you’re there. That is a terror weapon. It terrorizes villages, regions, huge areas. It’s the most massive terror campaign going on by a long shot. Noam Chomsky