Why do the terrorists hate our freedom? A [very] brief history of US intervention in the Middle East.

Why the Turrurusts Hate Your Freedums:

If there is anything I desire for the reader to understand from this post, it is the concept of the term blowback. Essentially this word refers to a seemingly random attack on a civilian population. I say seemingly because the ideological factors behind the attack are unknown to the public—because the attack is the result of clandestine operations. The September 11th, 2001 attacks are a shining example of blowback. You can read the Wikipedia article for yourself, but in this post I will attempt to describe certain actions of the United States government and the resulting ‘blowback’.

The root of the terrorist situation, like so many of today’s contemporary issues, can be traced back to the result of World War II. The resulting Cold War and the proxy wars caused by it is the reason why we are fighting a war in Afghanistan. But before I get to the Jihadist Mujahideen (the terrorists that the Taliban harbored, AKA Al-Qaeda), I am compelled to start at the beginning.

American intervention in the Middle East began in 1953. Not surprisingly, it began over control of oil. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) discovered an oil field in Iran a few decades earlier (1908). This oil helped fuel the Allied war machine in WW2 and was turning out huge profits for the British Empire. In 1954 APOC was renamed “British Petroleum Company”. It’s the same guys you may have filled your tank from at some point.

Tensions grew between Britain and Iran over the British exploitation of this oil. The Iranian government eventually nationalized the British Oil extraction and processing facilities. Instead of forcibly regaining the company, which was one of Britain’s most lucrative; the Prime Minister came up with a plan to stage a coup. They approached the Americans with the notion that the nationalization of BP was a sign that Iran was falling to the communists. Remember that the Cold War had already begun, and the US was fighting communist forces in Korea at this time. To make this long story short, the US CIA enacted Operation Ajax, which destabilized Iran and set the stage for a coup d’état. A democratically elected leader was thrown out, and an unpopular dictator was installed. Next time you hear Ahmadinejad badmouth America, understand where he is coming from.

Operation Ajax was the beginning of our influence in the Middle East. From this point on, Britain’s influence waned and America came to be a major influence on these countries and the resources they were sitting on. But this isn’t the only time US intervention in the Middle East was unjust. In 1979, Iran had an Islamic revolution. The puppet that the CIA had installed, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, was exiled and the Iranians held elections. They voted to become an Islamic Repulic and installed Ayatollah Khomeini as their supreme leader. To this day his likeness is plastered all over Iran.

Shortly afterward, in September of 1980, Iraq invaded Iran. Saddam Hussein had a lifelong goal of creating a pan-arabic government. His minority party, which had seized Iraq by force, feared a domino effect of revolution. During this period, the US secretly supplied weapons and ammunition to both sides. This was a horrible war—the longest of the 20th century. To the Iranians, we supplied weapons and ammunition. To the Iraqis, we supplied samples of Anthrax, West Nile Virus, and botulinum toxin. Yes, we supplied Iraq with the means to produce weapons of mass destruction. Much of it was destroyed in the 1990 Gulf War, but the fact remains that the United States gave weapons of mass destruction to Iraq for “medical purposes”. It’s no wonder George Bush suspected him of possessing them. His father gave them to Saddam.

This is just yet another shining example of western democracy raining Twinkies and hot-dogs on the Middle East. Except it was American-produced Anthrax and 5.56x45mm bullets…

Following U.N. Security Council Resolution 598 and a declared ceasefire, the war came to a halt. The war had regressed to a point where Iran and Iraq were attacking the civilian populations. But Saddam’s idea of a pan-arab unification would not end.

In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Iraq had an immense debt to pay to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for his war in the 80’s. He also claimed that Kuwait was driving down the price of oil, and at one point accused them of drilling under the border in order to tap Iraqi oil reserves. During this period, Iraq was within range to fire missiles and fly aircraft sorties against Saudi Arabia, the Muslim holy land. Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi, offered his sword to protect Saudi Arabia. The Saudis declined, and instead asked the Americans to defend them. To this day there are still American military installations inside Saudi Arabia. This is cited as one of the reasons for the September 11th attacks. I’m not sure why the Saudis thought we would leave their country at the conclusion of the war… Just look at Okinawa.

After the invasion of Kuwait, a coalition of nations intervened. The US spearheaded these efforts. This was the beginning of the Persian Gulf War, and I’m sure many of us remember what happened. At the end of the war, sanctions were placed on Iraq. The coalition left Saddam in place, and it is thought that the US hoped the Iraqi people would overthrow Saddam’s Ba’athist regime. Much of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons were destroyed by the coalition, and the Iraqi army and air force was devastated.

At this point I must digress to talk about the original topic at hand; terrorism. The Al-Qaeda fighters we are combating are not centralized in Iraq or Iran. Osama Bin Laden is from Saudi Arabia, who we are still very friendly with. Osama has a vision that was somewhat like Saddam’s; a unified Islamic Caliphate. I neglected to speak about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which happened during the Iran-Iraq war.

There was a communist revolution in Afghanistan, and they asked the Soviet Union to help. On the other side, there was the mujahideen resistance, who wanted to rule Afghanistan as an Islamic nation. The United States, horny to combat communism at any cost, provided weapons and training to the mujahideen fighters. This was portrayed in the film, ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’, and I recommend it to all.

One of the mujahideen fighters who used his family fortune to set himself up as a warlord was none other than Osama Bin Laden. It is very probable that the US provided weapons and funding to him. The Soviet Union eventually collapsed for a multitude of reasons, but this left a sort of power vacuum in Afghanistan. In the mid 1990’s, the Taliban came to the spotlight. They continued to harbor Osama’s jihadist movement, called Al-Qaeda, or, in Arabic, “The Base”.

What really compounded all of these actions was the fact that the US has been in bed with Israel for years. Again, this is largely Britain's fault (British Mandate of Palestine was essentially given to the zionists to colonize) and is traced back to the period shortly after World War Two. The terrorists fear that there is a worldwide Jewish-Christian conspiracy to wipe Islam off the planet. With the actions of Israel, which I will not discuss here, this is a stretch but not far from the truth. We are the #1 contributor to Israel, and the #1 enemy of Islamic Zealots (besides the US...) is Israel.

So Al-Qaeda flew planes into our symbolic buildings. We declared a war and invaded Afghanistan. We began to fight people who just a few years earlier we were supplying weapons, ammunition, and training to.

All of this, the reason why the terrorists hate us is blowback. It's because of things that we did in the name of preventing the spread of communism. Most of it was done without the consent of the American people, or even our representatives.

Another reason why the terrorists oppose us is ideological. Western society is incompatible with Islamic beliefs. We treat our women as equals and display and enjoy them with minimal clothing. This might be considered a crime in many Islamic nations. We display sexuality in almost every aspect of our media. Again, this may be seen as a crime in some places. It's ethnocentrism on both sides that causes the hatred.

The strategy of Al-Qaeda is to terrorize us, antagonizing us into invading a Muslim nation. There, they incite unrest and wage guerrilla warfare against our military. After a while, multiple wars on numerous fronts will eat away at our economy until the US collapses. This is going to happen very soon if nothing changes. I hope our leadership understands this.

But the root of all of these conflicts is ethnocentrism and nationalism. IMO these are products of ignorance. I never like it when somebody complains about a problem without providing a solution. So here is my big ticket solution: provide a free, world class education from Kindergarten and up to a post-secondary degree. Maybe if we put half of our military budget into education, and changed the way we look at our educational system, we wouldn't have these problems.