This story raises some very important points about violence: The blowback: When American violence leads to anti-American violence David Mizner 11:47 AM on 05/30/2013 http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/05/30/the-blowback-when-american-violence-leads-to-anti-american-violence/ President Obama invoked Osama bin Laden in his counterterrorism speech last week to help him make the case that his policies had worked. The president cited a document in which bin Laden had written, “We could lose our reserves to the enemy’s air strikes. We cannot fight air strikes with explosives.” Bin Laden’s words are evidence of the effectiveness of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan. It supports the view that, whatever their legal, moral, and strategic downsides, they helped to decimate the al Qaeda leadership. But if we’re going to heed the words of those who wage violence against the west—and we should—we shouldn’t do so selectively. Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wrote a note on the wall of the boat where he hid while law enforcement searched the Boston area for him. In it, he said his actions were payback for U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and likened the victims to innocent Muslims killed by the United States. Last week, the perpetrator of the machete attack on a British soldier in England was no less explicit: “The only reasons we killed this man is because Muslims are dying daily. This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. We apologize that woman had to see this today, but in our lands our women have to see the same.” Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square bomber, told a court in 2010 that he’d acted in response to U.S invasions of predominantly Muslim nations. Previously, when apprehended, the Pakistani-born American had said to law enforcement officials, “How would you feel if people attacked the United States? You are attacking a sovereign Pakistan.” American violence leads to anti-American violence: it’s logic so basic a six-year-old could grasp it. In fact, the CIA coined a term for it: “blowback.” It was first used to describe the potential consequences of the American-backed 1953 coup in Iran. Yet to point this out has always been controversial. After 9/11, a handful of prominent figures, from Susan Sontag on the left to Ron Paul on the right, dared to state the obvious. They were called traitors and terrorist-supporters by people who didn’t understand, or pretended not to understand, the difference between explanation and justification. Use link provided above for more on this story.
Violence certainly does beget violence. No doubt about it. Look how the Libyans reacted to the slaughter Obama visited upon them.
