{"id":16010,"date":"2012-08-07T05:42:05","date_gmt":"2012-08-07T13:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=16010"},"modified":"2012-08-07T05:45:55","modified_gmt":"2012-08-07T13:45:55","slug":"principles-of-terrorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/07\/principles-of-terrorism\/","title":{"rendered":"Principles of Terrorism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Davis noted<\/a> on Sunday President Obama’s statement<\/a> on the act of terrorism committed by a man shooting up a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The President “mourn[ed] this loss\u00a0which took place at a house of worship<\/strong>” and killed six people. By contrast, Davis writes, Obama did not mourn a similar act of terrorism he committed<\/a>\u00a0in a drone strike which “hit a village mosque<\/strong>” in Pakistan and killed “at least ten people.” Davis sums up the moral of the story: “Whether or not massacring people in a house of worship as part of a self-styled ‘war on terror’ is morally right or wrong depends on geography.”<\/p>\n

Today, Glenn Greenwald noted<\/a> a savage suicide bombing in southern Yemen in which a\u00a0<\/strong>member of\u00a0Al Qaeda attacked “a funeral service<\/strong>\u00a0attended by members of civilian militias,” killing up to 45 people. Those sadistic Islamo-fascists! Except that, as the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has documented<\/a>, “The CIA\u2019s drone campaign in Pakistan has\u00a0killed dozens of \u00a0civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or\u00a0were attending funerals<\/strong>.” And as the New York Times<\/em><\/a> reported in June 2009, US airstrikes “killed at least 60 people at a funeral<\/strong>” and<\/a> “as many as 45 were civilians, among them reportedly ten children.” Glenn sums up the moral of the story: “the same act that is the hallmark of repulsive savagery when done by Al Qaeda, Assad, and the Hutaree militia is transformed into a moral and noble act when done by the Government of the United States of America.”<\/p>\n

Two principles are evident in almost all discussion of US foreign policy: (1) acts of violence by people is “terrorism,” while acts of violence by the state is “foreign policy;” (2) acts of violence by Washington are justified to keep us safe, while acts of violence by other governments we don’t like are crimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charles Davis noted on Sunday President Obama’s statement on the act of terrorism committed by a man shooting up a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The President “mourn[ed] this loss\u00a0which took place at a house of worship” and killed six people. By contrast, Davis writes, Obama did not mourn a similar act of terrorism […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-16010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16010"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16014,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16010\/revisions\/16014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16010"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=16010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}