Blowback: Why they hate us. From Dan Sullivan

Dan Sullivan, Pittsburgh, fellow Libertarian, wrote on another email list, reposted below:

This attempts to explain why Muslims hate Americans so much that they would be willing to strap bombs onto children or kill themselves in suicide attacks. Those who insist that this is some irrational, unprovoked, religious jihad should look at how many of them and their children have suffered terrible, protracted deaths due to US foreign policy.

This is not about GW Bush. Even though he has done terrible things to Americans and has completely botched the second undeclared Iraq War, the hatred of America's intervention was already established by our previous foreign policies that attempted to subjugate these people to control their oil.

Probably the best recruiting tool Osama Bin Laden ever had was this clip of Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, saying that half a million Iraqis dying due to our embargo of Hussein was "worth it." Here is a very short clip.

http://qurl.com/nzzd3

Yes, Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator. But those who make that argument ignore the fact that Hussein was already a brutal murderer when we helped him overthrow the Qassim government, and a brutal mass murderer who was getting "weapons of mass destruction,"
including nerve gas and biological weapons, from the United States.

This slideshow, made to the sound of Bing Crosby singing "Thanks for the Memories," lasts 4 1/4 minutes.

http://www.bushflash.com/thanks.html

Yes, Saddam killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians and Kurds, but he did so, not only with our acquiescence and approval, but with our resources. The reason we figured he still had anthrax-causing bacteria was that we had sent it to him to use on Iran.

Why did we help him make war on Iran? Because the Iranian people had overthrown their own brutal dictator, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (the Shah of Iran), whom we had installed in 1953 after we overthrew the democratically elected President Mossadech.

The Shah's denial that he engaged in torture now echoes in our own similar denials. This clip is one minute and 20 seconds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8u2UKWCHtM&feature=related

Our imperialist brutality has existed under many of our regimes. The following Bill Moyers Journal episode focuses on Reagan, because it was made in the wake of the Iran Contra Scandal. However, its historical background implicates every President since Truman, with the exception of Jimmy Carter.

This documentary, made by liberal journalist Bill Moyers over two decades ago, said exactly what Ron Paul is saying about the dangers of ignoring the Constitution, and said it very, very well. And the excuses made for trashing the Constitution then are very much like the excuses being made today. This 86-minute video is EXCELLENT!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3505348655137118430

In looking at all of these videos, I keep thinking of the people in other countries where we did these things, and asking Ron Paul's question, "How would we feel if some foreign power did things like this to us?" How many of our own children would have to die at the hands of these brutal murderers before we become desperate enough to want one of those children to take a bunch of foreign imperialists down with him?

-ds