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Some terror \u2013 i.e. the use, or threat, of violence against civilians for political\/economic ends<\/i> \u2013 isn\u2019t contrived. Some terror is all too real. And has deep roots:<\/p>\n
The continent-wide armed robbery of indigenous lands. Thanks to their higher tech weaponry, European invaders ethnically cleansed Native Americans \u2013 mostly non-combatants. We all occupy stolen land.<\/p>\n
The wholesale abduction of Africans \u2013 robbing them not only of their labor, liberty, and dignity, but of their offspring. Without a whip at her back, a noose around his neck, no human endures such rape and servitude. See the film 12 Years a Slave<\/i>.<\/p>\n
That terrorist regime lives on today with mass incarceration and what author Michelle Alexander calls \u201cThe New Jim Crow.\u201d Police assassinating young black men mirror Ku Klux Klan lynching. Both go unprosecuted. (Note the enduring intersection of impunity and racism.)<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve been conditioned to believe terrorism is violence perpetrated by the \u201cother\u201d \u2013 the non-white other. Blind to the origins of white supremacy and privilege, we are the legatees of our previous terrorisms. Only when terrorism is defined do we see Manifest Destiny and slavery for what they were. Only when terrorism is defined do we see today\u2019s \u201cWar on Terrorism\u201d for what it is: a War of <\/i>Terrorism.<\/p>\n
The \u201cWar on Terrorism\u201d \u2013 quotation marks are a must \u2013 features aerial bombing of people of color who can barely shoot back: the Anglosphere globalizing its centuries-long terror track.<\/p>\n
Since August 6, 1945 the world has been chilled by US nuclear blackmail. Since the grotesquely one-sided air onslaught on Viet Nam and since the 2003 \u201cshock and awe\u201d terror attacks on Baghdad, the world knows it resists the Imperium at its peril.<\/p>\n
Nuke and B-52 terror can\u2019t neutralize, but they do provoke, non-state terrorism and resistance. The hunter\/killer MQ9 Reaper drone and its cowardly ilk seem for now to be just the thing for taking out \u201cbad guys.\u201d But for each \u201cbad guy\u201d assassinated, many others are killed or recruited. Not smart\u2026unless, of course, you profit from keeping the pot boiling.<\/p>\n
Here in Upstate New York the Syracuse Post-Standard<\/i> normalizes the hunter\/killer Reaper drone operating out of Hancock Air Force Base. Like the KKK and the Wild West cavalry, these robots are deployed to kill with impunity. The Post<\/i> ignores Reaper illegality, its evasion of due process, its violating others\u2019 sovereignty. The Post<\/i> sanitizes Reaper transgression against human bodies and human rights.<\/p>\n
It barely mentions the drone \u201ccollateral damage\u201d incinerating and dismembering mostly women and children and other noncombatants both within and beyond \u201clegal\u201d war zones. The Post<\/i> ignores the back story behind the blowback \u2013 always called \u201cterrorism\u201d \u2013 of those avenging and resisting US aggression and domination. Further, perhaps sensing what a boon to business arms races are, the Post <\/i>ignores the deadly prospect of drone proliferation.<\/p>\n
The December 17 Post<\/i> reports that the Reaper now is actually flying \u2013 not just being remotely controlled \u2013 out of Hancock AFB and<\/i> from Syracuse\u2019s civilian international airport. The Page 1 story, festooned with color photos, is headlined \u201cReaper Drone Makes History in Syracuse.\u201d<\/p>\n
With no pretense to journalistic balance, such stories fail to note that since 2010 there have been recurring anti-Reaper protests at Hancock AFB, home of the 174th drone Attack <\/i>Wing. The increasingly militarized local police, at Hancock\u2019s bidding, arrest these protesters exercising their First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievance. Multiple incarcerations ensue.<\/p>\n
But the Post<\/i> doesn\u2019t acknowledge such erosion of civil liberty. Nor has it investigated allegations of Hancock war crime. Further, the Post <\/i>has been eerily silent about the role that domestic drones may well soon play in policing and intimidating dissidents and minorities.<\/p>\n
Like the 1950s\u2019 \u201cAtoms for Peace\u201d hype masking the dark side of the then-emerging nuclear industry, mainstream media downplay the drone dark side. The Post <\/i>doesn\u2019t want to jinx upstate New York\u2019s becoming the Silicon Valley of an emerging domestic drone money machine. Over the next several years Governor Cuomo will be subsidizing that industry with tens of millions of taxpayer dollars.<\/p>\n
What does domestic drone development and deployment have to do with terrorism? Plenty. Like the manned aviation and nuclear industries, the domestic drone industry (again think Lockheed Martin) will maintain the industrial base \u2013 facilities, research, engineering expertise, skilled labor, and operators \u2013 for the Pentagon\u2019s Terror War.<\/p>\n
As long as perpetual war keeps yielding corporate profit, state terrorism will keep \u201cmaking history.\u201d If we let it.<\/p>\n
Ed works with SPC\u2019s Ground the Drones and End the Wars committee. Reach him at edkinane@verizon.net. For more of Ed\u2019s drone commentary, see truth-out.org\/author\/itemlist\/user\/45267.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pundits and politicos incessantly invoke, but seldom define, \u201cterrorism.\u201d Like the phony \u201cwar on drugs,\u201d the phony \u201cwar on terrorism\u201d promotes economic interests, serves political agendas. Neither war reduces drug use or violence. Nor are they designed to. \u201cTerrorism\u201d \u2013 past and present \u2013 pervades the US psyche and economy….<\/p>\n