Scary, Non-Existent Terrorism

Nearly 12 years after the 9/11 attack, virtually every single element of national security policy – from the occupation of Afghanistan, to the drone war, to a massive NSA surveillance apparatus, to a defense budget that outpaces the rest of the world combined – is justified by citing terrorism as a threat. Together these policies amount to trillions of dollars, the decay of the rule of law, rampant government criminality, and the evisceration of the the constitutional rights of millions of Americans.

What does this terrorist threat really amount to though?

According to the State Department a mere 10 Americans were killed by terrorism in 2012. None of them in the U.S.

U.S. citizens worldwide killed as a result of incidents of terrorism: 10
U.S. citizens worldwide injured as a result of incidents of terrorism: 2
U.S. citizens worldwide kidnapped as a result of incidents of terrorism: 3

Nine out of 10 of those killed were in Afghanistan, the remaining one in Iraq. One of the injured was in Afghanistan, the other in Iraq. The three instances of a single person being kidnapped occurred in Nigeria, Somalia, and Yemen.

Instead of tormenting Afghans in a military occupation that costs more than $120 billion per year; instead of empowering the NSA to snuff out the Fourth Amendment and collect and store the communications of all Americans; instead of wasting almost $1 trillion annually on defense spending mostly as a wealth transfer to rent-seeking corporations; instead of granting the president the kingly power to assassinate anyone, anywhere, at any time – maybe we just shouldn’t go to the above-mentioned countries. Then our terrorism casualty rate will be zero.

77 thoughts on “Scary, Non-Existent Terrorism”

  1. Pingback: War on Terror: Make No Mistake: They Are Killing Us Over There While We Are Killing Them Over There! - Hit & Run : Reason.com
  2. Pingback: War on Terror: Make No Mistake: They Are Killing Us Over There While We Are Killing Them Over There! | Symposium Magazine

  3. Be patient, John, our aggressive policies of attacking, invading and occupying countries and assassinating and torturing people will create the terrorists needed to continue convincing Americans that they and their families are in constant danger. Now Americans are frightened to death of the boogiemen, but there is a great effort to change that. Our leaders are spending way too much money to create real terrorist for it to also fail – after all, we have to be successful at something we do internationally, no?

    1. For next year's Boston Marathon (after which there was martial law and the lockdown for a day – the real Patriot's Day of Lexington and Concord fame – of Boston and six neighboring towns), the Police Chief of Boston has expressed the wish for drone surveillance of the race.

      The inflated casualty figures from the "terror attack" throw the down-played statistics into the shade. I personally do not believe it happened as officially stated. But as we see, it has been very useful and in Boston it is all anyone can talk about.

  4. CitiBank Madoff'z ran/stole/killed 194U$coloniez for 70yrs vs IkhwanMuslimoon ran Masajid for 1400yrs

  5. Even if such terrorism existed how many are they, 4000-20000, who pays for their training and costs of living, where are they coming from. Is USA have anything to do with creating them as Osama bin laden which was sent by Saudis to Afghanistan to fight the Russians, and Afghanistan was given to Talibans as long as they fight Russians military and they have Afghanistan their religious sanctuary, how about USA and EU government helping terrorism in Syria, how about terrorists stats sponsored governments as Saudis, UAE, Turkey, Israel and…… All that world wide surveillance and other illegal masseurs for that amount of terrorists?, there is something fishy going on, don't you think people. Beside, why not go after the source, isn't that less costly then creating surveillance and wars and then forced to lie about everything, that is right when there is no functioning democracy then there is no democracy.

  6. On 5 July 2013, north of the border, in the town of Lac Megantic, Quebec, an estimated 50 people were incinerated in a, well, some may call it an transportation accident, the downtown razed to the ground. The story appears to be a cost-cutting company and a cut back transportation safety department mixed with the shale oil boom and hazardous materials transported on substandard infrastructure through populated areas. That stuff of course is not important, what is 50 people under such conditions? Had it been terrorism, though… ooh, baby!

  7. You must not have gotten the memo about the "terror attack" on Boston, which is all the buzz now that there will be a trial of one of the "perpetrators".

    1. You must not have read the article. It references terror attacks in 2012. Boston was 2013.

      1. No. I read it. The point of the article was that we currently overstate terror threats. I personally doubt the official story of Boston, but if the article is to retain its force of logic, the author is going to have to grapple with what most people believe about being attacked by terrorists, whether or not I believe it or whenever it happened. To make his point, he cannot confine himself to the past, however recent. He has to have the courage to take on what Americans have been led to believe about their threats.

        But thanks for pointing out my seeming stupidity.

    2. Now Americans are frightened to death of the boogiemen, but there is a great effort to change that. Our leaders are spending way too much money to create real terrorist for it to also fail – after all, we have to be successful at something we do internationally, no? Leticia Stevens

  8. right wing extremists and christian crusaders against civil rights scare me daily, yet the thought of being injured by a muslim never crosses my mind. a majority of americans want to cut defense spending and they probably would like to severely cut back or eliminate some of the grotesque security agencies we now have. do the american people get what they want?

    1. Not afraid of Muslims? Sir, you are not paying attention to the lessons. You're going to flunk current events.

      Why anyone would take their eyes off those jihadis to pay attention to such things as Texas anti-woman laws or care about fracking or pipelines or Fukushima or Walmart paying less than living wage or McDonalds' workers being subsidized by taxpayers because they have to use foodstamps (like other working poor)… or any number of distractions from the terrible threat of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and wolves in sheep's clothing like him (in cities where the death rate on one weekend from weapons drawn in anger is two or three times higher than the Boston bombing)…. I don't know. It's sometimes just very important to concentrate on hating someone, because you can just drift….and all that money spent to protect you will just be wasted. Achtung!

      1. It seems that there are two entirely different ways of measuring history and current events in this world today: Everything negative is done by people who happen to be Muslims, which means that the Muslims in general mean to do us harm – the Muslim conspiracy theory. OMG! Really scary!

        Whenever negative acts are committed by the Christian community, it is just history, it´s just the way things are. Let´s look at Christianity and Christians from the same looking glass as we are presently judging the Muslim community, OK? Here is how Christianity looks:

        •When Christianity began in Europe, their leaders went all through Europe torturing and burning alive women who were naturally the spiritual leaders and healers in society, bringing them down to the status of a pet animal. Both Catholic and Protestant churches performed such horrors, and even spread it to New England in America.
        •Christians purposely committed genocide of the American Indians (9 million assassinated and the rest placed in open air concentration camps, with all of theirapproximately 400 treaties being broken). This was done by Christians and only Christians. The worst cases were in Anglo-Saxon areas, because the Indians were not considered as human beings, while in the French, Spanish, and Portuguese areas Christians intermarried and converted the Indians to Catholics. Mass Christian genocide.
        •The Jews were persecuted and expelled by the European Christian communities throughout Europe, only to be accepted by the Muslim nations, from Morocco to and including Turkey and Iran, where they lived in total peace for 500 years (until the Zionists created Israel).
        •Prior to those 500 years of peace, the Jews lived another 800 years in peace in Muslim Spain, until they were expelled by the good Christian community when “it” took over.
        •According to Howard Zinn, the North American slaves were the worst treated in the entire history of slavery – also done by Christians.
        •WW-I and WW-II were Christian Wars – the first world wars in history.
        •The Holocaust was a 100% Christian production and execution (except for the poor Jews involved). Jews had passports and were urged by the Nazis to leave Germany in the 1930s, and except for a handful, could not obtain visas to neighboring countries. For God´s sake, even the Americans turned away a shipload of Jews escaping from the Nazis only to return to be incarcerated in prison camps. The Allies refused to bomb the railways that were bringing Jewish people rounded up in Italy and other places on their way to concentration camps. The Holocaust was a Christian doing, and not only by Germans.
        •The good Christians of America bombed, invaded, and occupied, illegally, the country of Iraq, murdering over one million souls, displacing over four million more, totally destroying the physical infrastructure, government organizations, hospitals, clinics, schools, and ransacked their museums. Sadam, the dictatorial monster who was compared to Hitler himself only killed 50,000 of his people.
        •Abu Ghraib was a 100% pictorial description of how Christians treat fellow human beings. There were even more such pictures from another of our prisons in Iraq which made the news – we are consistent.
        •We increasingly continue to attack Muslim countries in the ME and now Africa, creating hatred all over the world at a truly alarming rate.
        •Etc.

        This is an incomplete list of the horrors committed by Christians right up to today. How can we point our finger at the Muslims? “Judge ye as ye be judged”. We must judge ourselves in the same way we judge others.

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  12. The Obama administration needs to reconsider its cumbersome foreign and domestic policies towards Muslims sooner than later. On the one hand, it appears that the US is genuinely interested in the welfare of people around the world but on the other hand it seems to turn blind eye to many atrocities committed in certain parts of the world where victims are, by large, Muslims.

    The war on terror is only limited to Muslim-majority countries. In many other countries human rights are violated at a much greater degree but the US government seems oblivious of these crimes. Killing and burning of Muslim homes and businesses in Myanmar is a case in point. There has been no adequate condemnation from the Obama administration of these extrajudicial and savage killings of Muslims by ‘969 squad’, a terrorist Buddhist group in Burma.

    The US is also involved in mass surveillance program and according to a common belief it is also directed at Muslims, violating their privacy rights.

    1. It is high time that the US changes its discriminatory policy towards Muslims. The Obama administration must address many grievances felt by Muslims around the world in a pragmatic way if it is to maintain its status as a global leader and a symbol of democracy.

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  28. Nine out of 10 of those killed were in Afghanistan, the remaining one in Iraq. One of the injured was in Afghanistan Thanks. HHO

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