Given the U.S. response to the September 11 attacks, which was considered destructive and self-defeating by large numbers of people around the world, there is a good deal of concern that something similar could happen in the wake of the Boston bombings. This editorial from Mexico’s La Jornada recalls what it perceives as the misplaced aggression of the Bush Administration, and expresses hope that the Obama White House will act differently.
The La Jornada editorial says in part:
It is pertinent here to recall that after the 9-11 attacks on New York and Washington, the White House focused on terrorist threats from foreign organizations, mainly Islamic ones, as well as on governments that it deemed to be politically hostile, like the one headed by Saddam Hussein in Iraq – even if that Arab country had never launched an attack on American targets. Thus, Washington provided an answer to its own question [why do they hate us?], leaving in its wake devastation in Afghanistan and Iraq, and vast and fully justified anti-American resentment.
Another consequence of the security policy adopted after 9-11 – which was in fact a strategic repositioning of Washington in Central Asia and the Middle East – was to forget the multi-faceted and prolific history of domestic terrorism in the United States, formed by a mixture of White supremacists, ultra right wing groups, fundamentalist Christians and even radical formations of environmentalists and animal rights activists. In fact, up until 9-11, the worst terrorist attack within the continental United States had been the blowing up of Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, in which 168 people died and some 700 were wounded. This act was perpetrated almost 18 years ago (April 19, 1995) by a small group of ultra right wing conspirators headed by Timothy McVeigh, a decorated soldier who had fought in the first U.S.-led war against Iraq in 1991.
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