Why do Terrorists Attack the US?

That seems to be a fairly straight forward question, does it not? Now, depending on who you ask, I suppose, you'll get a myriad of responses, and regrettably everyone doesn't settle on the obvious answer. If you ask Republicans they'll have a very different response than if you ask Democrats, and vice versa.

Over the years, since September 11th 2001, that has been a question that has lied at the heart of many of our military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The whole "hit them there, so they can't hit us here" mentality.

However I think that an aspect of the "why do they hate us/why do they attack us" question is looked at in the wrong way by many people. President Bush once responded that the reason that the terrorists of the world hate us is because "they hate us for our freedoms". Meaning that the terrorists somehow look at us and despise us because we are free to do whatever we want. We don't suppress our women to where they can't drive a car, or go out in public with a man who's not their husband, and what not.

Or it's the "they hate us for our decadence" excuse that we've heard over the years. That the "Godless Liberals in Hollywood" and the decaying morals of the United States offended them, so they.... want to kill us or something. Or there's the one that Security Chief John Brennan used in response to Helen Thomas' honest question of what motivates terrorists to keep trying to attack us, in which it's simply that terrorists are evil sonsabitches.

Now I paraphrased there, here was the actual response:



Brennan keeps dancing around the issues throwing out phrases such as "religion" and whatnot, and I'm sure that plays to the base of people who believe that it's all about killing "infidels" and that the Islamic Terorrists are simply wanting to kill Christians, but that's not what it's about.

The motivation has been laid out repeatedly by not only various terrorists, but also by Osama Bin Laden himself, in which it's been pointed out that our meddling in the Middle East, our setting up bases in their countries, our killing their civilians (whether accidentally or not) is all the reasons for us being attacked. Not to mention Abu Graib and Guantanamo.

They don't want us in their countries, and we're too stupid to figure that out, even when they FLAT OUT TELL US!

I was thinking about this today and I have a perfect analogy for this:

Say you walk to work everyday. Now you can take the road, which will cost you about a half hour longer, or you can cut across the farmland next door to you which will get you there quicker. Now everyday you walk through the neighbor's land without permission, and every day the farmer comes out and smacks you across the face with a two by four.

This goes on for weeks, and months. Every day, it's the same thing. Finally one day you say "why are you doing this? Why do you keep hitting me in the face with this two by four?"

And the farmer responds, "I don't like you walking across my land, trampling my grass and plants."

And yet everyday you keep on walking through there, and everyday the farmer walks out and smacks you in the face with a two by four.

At work people ask you "what happened to your face? It's all red on the side." And you respond "oh my neighbor hit me"

When they ask why he hit you, you respond "oh he's just jealous of how I live my life. He's petty and hates that he doesn't have what I have."

Now, that's obviously an exaggerated scenario, and obviously this wouldn't have gone on for so long, but hopefully my point is made. The reasons they attack us have been given, and instead of acknowledging that, we just ignore it, and make up our own ridiculous reasons for why shit goes down the way it does.

Glenn Greenwald over at Salon.com has a great piece on this in which he pretty much sums it up:

The evidence of what motivates Terrorism when directed at the U.S. is so overwhelming and undeniable that it takes an extreme propagandist to pretend it doesn't exist. What is Brennan so afraid of? It's true that religious fanaticism is a part of their collective motivation, but why can't he just say what's so obviously true: "they claim that the U.S. is interfering in, occupying and bringing violence to their part of the world, they cite things like civilian deaths and our support for Israel and Guantanamo and torture, and claim that their terrorism is in retaliation"?

Indeed, Brennan's boss, the President, has often claimed that things like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib help Al Qaeda recruitment (and it seems clear it was part of Abdulmutallab's hatred for the U.S.), so clearly U.S. actions are part of the motivation. Yet Brennan is afraid to acknowledge that not just past actions, but current ones, fuel the desire to target the U.S. for attacks.

When are we going to wise up to this? And by "we" I mean the government? What's that quote? "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different response?"

We are acting insanely and it's costing the United States thousands of American lives fighting overseas, trillions of dollars wasted on this so-called "war on terror", and our own country is crumbling from within under the weight of two wars that are wastes of our time.

But the United States has always had an overwhelming compulsion to engage in these dick measuring contests with the world, and to back down would mean failure and weakness. Much better to just stick with it and continue to hemmorhage money and lives, right? Better that than to accept and admit that you've been going at it the wrong way. Print this post