Terrorists hate US freedom?

I don't believe it. Haven't believed it even once, despite the rhetorical political drivel one hears the press regurgitate.

If ever we lack indication that terrorists think more broadly, or wonder whether it might in fact be American foreign policy that they dislike, consider, for a moment, the date 9-11.

On 9-11-1973, an American supported military coup in Chile replaced an elected democracy with the military dictatorship of Pinochet.  Don't take my word for the American involvements:

U.S. involvement, specifically of Richard Nixon and Henry "Dr. Death" Kissinger, in the coup is staggering. In the documentary La Ultima Batalla de Allende (The Last Battle of Allende), Edward Korry, the U.S. ambassador to Chile from 1967-71, states that the CIA spent $2.7 million in the 1970 presidential election to sway the vote away from Allende, and Senate hearings in 1975 revealed that the CIA received $11 million to "destabilize" his administration. - article

One might also review this.

I don't believe for even a moment that the coincidence of dates is accidental.

Perhaps I have no sense of history to have missed this (I claim in defense being neither American nor Chilean), but I must admit to a certain surprise that in all the coverage of the more recent 9-11, the media haven't drawn more attention to this parallel, and apprently prefer the Administration's other excuses for conflict.

Even more, I cannot comprehend a mainstream media, or the American public that continues to believe said media, that parrots the Administration's excuses for renewed conflict. Despite that those behaviours clearly create more terrorists and division, not less. In fact, Bush's actions don't meet even his own administration's reports of their own goals:

Strategy links means to ends, designing tactics capable of achieving goals. ... [National Security Advisor Condoleezza] Rice says the Bush administration’s strategy rests on three pillars: First, thwarting terrorists and rogue regimes; second, harmonizing relations among the great powers; third, nurturing prosperity and democracy across the globe. But the effort to crush terrorists and destroy rogue regimes through preemption, hegemony, and unilateralism shatters great power harmony and diverts resources and attention from the development agenda. An effective strategy cannot be sustained when the methods employed to erect one pillar drastically undermine the others. - article

This kind of disconnect is what I've referred to in other contexts as the intelligence test of enlightened self interest. Goals that fail to meet or possibly meet ends ... well, Bush fails this test in spades. At least so far as professed goals of value to the American public. The desired ends of getting re-elected? Well, that is another story, isn't it?

Rice and common sense both compel me to believe that the only way to win the so-called war on terror -

Aside: what a joke that name is! That we're against something doesn't mean a war. Despite the fact that calling it a war makes this war time, and the elected leader a war-time president. So I suppose I'm waiting for the upcoming war on internet porn, followed by wars on littering and free speech.

- is to inspire fewer terrorists, not more, and that this is achieved not through killing the friends and family of borderline terrorists, but by taking away some of their major dissatisfactions with US foreign policy. I don't, after all, hear of terrorist attacks against Switzerland, despite the Swiss also having great freedoms.

Disclaimer: I am displaced, and disenfranchised. I didn't vote for or against Bush, and cannot vote in the upcoming US election, nor any other, American or otherwise. All the above is therefore less a political statement than a bemused social commentary in which I have neither personal nor political stake.

[Comments from my previous blog]

1. DID YOU KNOW left...

Sunday, 17 September 2006 9:38 am

 

on 9-11 germans,poland 1930,if not poland than one of those nations in europe. if you run a computer search on every major world problem since the 1600, the number 9-11 will show up many times. the old world order and the new world order,like to use this date. check to see how many major and minor wars,also who has been kill,removed from office, all the leaders in this world,this date will showup all through history.