poll : Is the USA a terrorist nation?

I firmly say no, the USA is not a terrorist nation. Some of the posters here obviously believe otherwise.

Between 1979 and 1987, the United States armed, trained, and financially backed the military forces of the government of El Salvador, which over the same period carried out a policy of ongoing, systematic murder against the Salvadoran population. Seventy thousand men, women, and children--journalists, priests, nuns, teachers, labor organizers, students, political figures-- were murdered. About 1% of El Salvador's population was so destroyed.


Also as a direct result of United States actions, another seventy thousand civilians were similarly murdered during the same period by the military government of Guatemala. And during the same period, the United States created a force of counter-revolutionaries, the contras, to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The contras did not focus their attacks on military targets; they deliberately attacked defenseless civilians, a policy which our President felt made them the moral equivalent of our founding fathers.


The United States did not carry out the murders in these countries. But it put the bullets and guns in the hands of the terrorists, trained them how to use the weapons, and organized them for the purpose of terrorism.


During roughly the same period, according to the Israeli government, the PLO killed, in all acts of terror between 1968 and 1981, 282 Israelis.


We must oppose terrorism in all of its forms.

You neglected to add that those communist forces in Latin America had to be resisted: Soviet-style-supported communism presented very real long-term dangers to the security of the USA, even if these dangers were not easily quantifiable. The USA also could not exactly tell the anti-communist forces how to wage war in their own countries and to stick to what we believed was morally correct, and expect that they would accede to our requests; yet it was important to resist communism in Latin America. Now, I'm not saying everything we did was right, but combine the above with the fact that we were in fact resisting a greater "terrorism" (the governmental/military terrorism of Soviet tyranny and aims of world domination), and I believe there is room to dispute the "terrorism" designation of the USA activities you listed. That's not to say that we should not be more careful in the future, and we should of course keep such experiences and concerns in mind.

thats why i said in a posting here, about an american being killed at that taliban prison uprising, that hey, he was a cia interrogator (torturer), he deserved it.


if even a significant minority of americans start believing that well, we have to torture and murder people -just in case- , then were done.


brad

I kind of figured this post might get your attention. [img]/images/wink.gif[/img]


These movements we opposed in Latin America were not Soviet-style supported communism. The Sandanistas were not running, as we were told by our President "a totalitarian dungeon." They held elections in which they were defeated and they left office. Ortega ran again this past year and lost again.


The U.S. supported and trained and armed the terrorists. We approved of their terrorism, always denying that they did anything wrong. Check the statements of our leaders, not just Reagan, Bush Sr., Kirkpatrick and the others from that time, but going all the way back to Richard Nixon and John Foster Dulles when we supported the butchers in Guatemala in the 1950s, overthrowing Arbenz for the benefit of United Fruit. When our leaders invoked the Soviets to justify our interventions, they were lying.


The Soviets were indeed an evil empire, but they were not responsible for all the evil in the world.


"combine the above with the fact that we were in fact resisting a greater "terrorism" (the governmental/military terrorism of Soviet tyranny and aims of world domination), and I believe there is room to dispute the "terrorism" designation of the USA activities you listed."


I don't understand this statement. Even assuming, for the sake or argument, that I agreed with your assertion (which I don't) that we were fighting the Soviets when we were supporting the terrorists in Latin America, how does this dispute the fact that this was indeed terrorism? Maybe you could argue that it was justified, but it certainly doesn't change it from what it was.


We must oppose terrorism in all of its forms. This is why I support the current campaign in Afghanistan and why I opposed the campaign in Latin America when we were on the side of the terrorists.

"Soviet-style-supported communism presented very real long-term dangers to the security of the USA, even if these dangers were not easily quantifiable."


Let's assume that the FSLN and FMLN in Nicaragua and El Salvador weren't really trying to topple murderous dictatorships, where the resources were owned by a few while many starved, for the usual or apparent reasons, but were really trying to turn their country into a Soviet-controlled dungeon.


How is it remotely possible that a Soviet-style government in El Salvador, with no navy, no armored infantry, and no air force save a few helicopters, and with the entire country's population a bit larger than Houston's, could possibly represent a threat to the mightiest superpower the world has ever seen? Dominos toppling in Costa Rica? Troops marching toward the Mexican oil fields, as GF Will once predicted? Then how do you explain that Mexico and Costa Rica were some of the bitterest critics of U.S. intervention in Central America? Missiles aimed at the U.S.? Answer: same agreement as with Cuba, and anyway there is no coner of the U.S. that cannot be targeted by land-based or submarine based missiles. Most tellingly, the U.S. never, and I mean not even once, proposed to lefists in Central America a version of peace on the condition that U.S. security interests were not threatened. Instead, at every opportunity, following the Cuban paradigm, the U.S. sought to isolate the left-wing movements in these countries in order to push them as far as possible into the "Soviet camp" to provide a pretext for a policy of domination and exploitation that has been ongoing in this region since before the Soviet Union even existed. The idea that the revolutions in Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador stemmed from Soviet expansionism and arms rather than the indigenous social forces and the international arms market betrays a absolute ignorance of the history of these countries and the revolutions within them.


The reason the U.S. intervened in these countries is that it needs to continually remind the world that it will not tolerate political seccession from its empire for fear that successful alternatives to the usual State-backed private control over resources will spread to countries where it makes a real difference to U.S. business and financial interests (although virtually none to the average American, who could care less if his gasoline comes form the House of Saud or Saddam Hussein). Even in it's remotest corners the U.S. will kill almost any number of people to prevent it from happening.

It's good to find out who the dangerous dissatisfied radicals are that post here.


I'm amazed that anyone would call the USA a terrorist nation.

I don't think I'm dangerous. When my country does something wrong, I'm dissatisfied. The information I talked about in my initial reponse to your post contains the fact of our foreign policy vis-a-vis Latin America in the 1980s.

Dalmer didn't think he was dangerous either. I think the government should decide who is dangerous.

"Dalmer didn't think he was dangerous either"


-Who's Dalmer?


"I think the government should decide who is dangerous."


For disagreeing with a particular foreign policy? That's the way Lenin and Stalin worked; it's not the way our government works.