The United States has been accused of having directly committed acts of state terrorism, as well as funding, training, and harboring individuals and groups who engage in terrorism.^[1]

Definitions

Like the definition of terrorism and the definition of state-sponsored terrorism, the definition of state terrorism remains controversial. There is no international consensus on what terrorism, state-sponsored terrorism, or state terrorism is.^[2] Professor Igor Primoratz of the University of Melbourne says that many scholars have been reluctant to assign the word "terrorism" to activities that could be construed as "legitimate state aims". Primoratz himself defines terrorism as "the deliberate use of violence, or threat of its use, against innocent people...", and writes that his definition can be applied to both state and non-state activities.^[3]

General allegations against the US

Arno Mayer, Emeritus Professor of History at Princeton University, has stated that "since 1947 America has been the chief and pioneering perpetrator of 'preemptive' state terror, exclusively in the Third World and therefore widely dissembled."^[4] Noam Chomsky also argues that "Washington is the center of global state terrorism and has been for years."^[5] Chomsky has characterized the tactics used by agents of the U.S. government and their proxies in their execution of U.S. foreign policy — in such countries as Nicaragua — as a form of terrorism and has also described the U.S as "a leading terrorist state."^[6]

After President George W. Bush began using the term "War on Terrorism", Chomsky stated in an interview:^[6][7]

The U.S. is officially committed to what is called "low-intensity warfare"... If you read the definition of low-intensity conflict in army manuals and compare it with official definitions of "terrorism" in army manuals, or the U.S. Code, you find they're almost the same.

State terrorism and propaganda

Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton, has argued that the U.S. and other first-world states, as well as mainstream mass media institutions, have obfuscated the true character and scope of terrorism, promulgating a one-sided view from the standpoint of first-world privilege. He has said that "if 'terrorism' as a term of moral and legal opprobrium is to be used at all, then it should apply to violence deliberately targeting civilians, whether committed by state actors or their non-state enemies."^[8][9] Moreover, Falk argues that the repudiation of authentic non-state terrorism is insufficient as a strategy for mitigating it, writing that "we must also illuminate the character of terrorism, and its true scope... The propagandists of the modern state conceal its reliance on terrorism and associate it exclusively with Third World revolutionaries and their leftist sympathizers in the industrial countries."^[10]

Specific allegations against the US by region

Cuba (1956-present)

After revolutionary forces vanquished Fulgencio Batista’s forces, a new government was formed in Cuba on January 2, 1959. The CIA initiated a campaign of regime change in the early parts of 1959^[11], and by the spring of 1959 was arming counter-revolutionary guerrillas inside Cuba. By winter of that year US-based Cubans were being supervised by the CIA in the orchestration of bombings and incendiary raids against Cuba. ^[12]

Operation Mongoose

A prime focus of the Kennedy administration was the removal of Fidel Castro from power. To this end it implemented Operation Mongoose, a US program of sabotage and other secret operations against the island. ^[13] Mongoose was led by Edward Lansdale in the Defense Department and William King Harvey at the CIA. Samuel Halpern, a CIA co-organizer, conveyed the breadth of involvement: “CIA and the U. S. Army and military forces and Department of Commerce, and Immigration, Treasury, God knows who else — everybody was in Mongoose. It was a government-wide operation run out of Bobby Kennedy's office with Ed Lansdale as the mastermind.” ^[14]. The scope of Mongoose included sabotage actions against a railway bridge, petroleum storage facilities, a molasses storage container, a petroleum refinery, a power plant, a sawmill, and a floating crane. Harvard Historian Jorge Domínguez states that "only once in [the] thousand pages of documentation did a U.S. official raise something that resembled a faint moral objection to U.S. government sponsored terrorism." ^[15] The CIA operation was based in Miami, Florida and among other aspects of the operation, enlisted the help of the Mafia to plot an assassination attempt against Fidel Castro, the Cuban president; for instance, William Harvey was one of the CIA case officers who directly dealt with the mafiosi John Roselli.^[16]

Dominguez writes that Kennedy put a hold on Mongoose actions as the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated, and the "Kennedy administration returned to its policy of sponsoring terrorism against Cuba as the confrontation with the Soviet Union lessened." ^[17] However, Chomsky argued that “terrorist operations continued through the tensest moments of the missile crisis,” remarking that “they were formally canceled on October 30, several days after the Kennedy and Khrushchev agreement, but went on nonetheless.” Accordingly, "the Executive Committee of the National Security Council recommended various courses of action, "including ‘using selected Cuban exiles to sabotage key Cuban installations in such a manner that the auction can plausibly be attributed to Cubans in Cuba’ as well as ‘sabotaging Cuban cargo and shipping, and [Soviet] Bloc cargo and shipping to Cuba." ^[18] Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, raised the point that according to the documentary record, directly after the first executive committee (EXCOMM) meeting that was held on the missile crisis, Attorney General Robert Kennedy “convened a meeting of the Operation Mongoose team” expressing disappointment in its results and pledging to take a closer personal attention on the matter. Kornbluh accused RFK of taking “the most irrational position during the most extraordinary crisis in the history of U. S. foreign policy”, remarking that “Not to belabor the obvious, but for chrissake, a nuclear crisis is happening and Bobby wants to start blowing things up.”^[19].

Professor of History Stephen Rabe writes that “scholars have understandably focused on…the Bay of Pigs invasion, the U.S. campaign of terrorism and sabotage known as Operation Mongoose, the assassination plots against Fidel Castro, and, of course, the Cuban missile crisis. Less attention has been given to the state of U.S.-Cuban relations in the aftermath of the missile crisis.” In contrast Rabe writes that reports from the Church Committee reveal that from June 1963 onward the Kennedy administration intensified its war against Cuba while the CIA integrated propaganda, "economic denial", and sabotage to attack the Cuban state as well as specific targets within.^[20] One example cited is an incident where CIA agents, seeking to assassinate Castro, provided a Cuban official, Rolando Cubela Secades, with a ballpoint pen rigged with a poisonous hypodermic needle.^[21] At this time the CIA received authorization for thirteen major operations within Cuba; these included attacks on an electric power plant, an oil refinery, and a sugar mill.^[22] Historian Stephen Rabe has observed that the “Kennedy administration...showed no interest in Castro's repeated request that the United States cease its campaign of sabotage and terrorism against Cuba. Kennedy did not pursue a dual-track policy toward Cuba....The United States would entertain only proposals of surrender." Rabe further documents how "Exile groups, such as Alpha 66 and the Second Front of Escambray, staged hit-and-run raids on the island...on ships transporting goods…purchased arms in the United States and launched...attacks from the Bahamas.” ^[23]

Operation Northwoods

A secret plan, Operation Northwoods, was approved by the the Pentagon and Joint Chiefs of Staff and submitted for action to Robert McNamara^[24] then Secretary of Defense. This plan included acts of violence on U.S. soil or against U.S. interests, such as plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities; blowing up a U.S. ship, and contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "The U.S. could follow up with an air/sea rescue operation covered by U.S. fighters 'evacuate' remaining members of the non-existent crew. Casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation." The plan was rejected by the Kennedy administration after the Bay of Pigs Invasion.^[25][26]

Cuban government officials have accused the United States Government of being an accomplice and protector of terrorism against Cuba on many occasions.^[27][28][29] According to Ricardo Alarcón, President of Cuba’s national assembly "Terrorism and violence, crimes against Cuba, have been part and parcel of U.S. policy for almost half a century.”^[30] The claims formed part of Cuba's $181.1 billion lawsuit in 1999 in Havana's Popular Provincial Tribunal against the United States on behalf of the Cuban people which alleged that for over 40 years, "terrorism has been permanently used by the U.S. as an instrument of its foreign policy against Cuba," and it "became more systematic as a result of the covert action program."^[31] The lawsuit detailed a history of terrorism allegedly supported by the United States. The United States has long denied any involvement in the acts named in the lawsuit.^[32]

Cuba also claims U.S. involvement in the paramilitary group Omega 7, the CIA undercover operation known as Operation 40, and the umbrella group the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations. Cuban Counterterrorism investigator Roberto Hernández testified in a Miami court that the bomb attacks were "part of a campaign of terror designed to scare civilians and foreign tourists, harming Cuba's single largest industry."^[34]Testifying before the United States Senate in 1978, Richard Helms, former CIA Director, stated; "We had task forces that that were striking at Cuba constantly. We were attempting to blow up power plants. We were attempting to ruin sugar mills. We were attempting to do all kinds of things in this period. This was a matter of American government policy."^[35]

In 2001, Cuban Ambassador to the UN Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla called for UN General Assembly to address all forms and manifestations of terrorism in every corner of the world, including - without exception - state terrorism. He alleged to the UN General Assembly that 3,478 Cubans have died as a result of aggressions and terrorist acts.^[36] He also alleged that the United States had provided safe shelter to "those who funded, planned and carried out terrorist acts with absolute impunity, tolerated by the United States Government."^[36] The Cuban government also asserted that in the 1990s, a total of 68 acts of terrorism were perpetrated against Cuba.^[36]

Allegations of harboring terrorists

The Cuban revolution resulted in a large Cuban refugee community in the U.S., some of whom have conducted sustained long-term insurgency campaigns against Cuba.^[37] and conducted training sessions at a secluded camp near the Florida Everglades. Initially these efforts are known to have been directly supported by the United States government.^[38] The failed military invasion of Cuba during the administration of John F. Kennedy at the Bay of Pigs marked the end of documented U.S. involvement.

The Cuban Government, its supporters and some outside observers believe that the group Alpha 66, whose former secretary general Andrés Nazario Sargén acknowledged terrorist attacks on Cuban tourist spots in the 1990s^[37] and conducted training sessions at a secluded camp near the Florida Everglades,^[39] has, according to Cuba's official newspaper Granma, been supported by the National Endowment for Democracy, the United States Agency for International Development and, more directly, the CIA.^[40]

The U.S. has also been criticized for failing to condemn Panama's pardoning of the alleged terrorists Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll, Pedro Remon, and Gaspar Jimenez, instead allowing them to walk free on U.S. streets.^[33] Claudia Furiati has suggested Sampol was linked to President Kennedy's assassination and plans to kill President Castro.^[41]

Luis Posada

Luis Posada is a Cuban-born Venezuelan and a former CIA operative. He has been accused of a string of terrorist bombings, including that of Cubana Flight 455 in 1976. Shortly after the bombing, the Castro government accused the CIA of "directly" participating. The Cubans also cite the involvement of FBI attaché Joseph Leo, who admitted multiple contacts with one of the convicted bombers of Cubana 455, Hernan Ricardo, before the attack.^[42] Cuba has not repeated these accusations more recently but still criticizes the US for not extraditing Posada.^[43] In an interview in 2001, Cuban Vice President Ricardo Alarcón stated: "The most quoted phrase by President Bush or ever repeated by him refers to the same idea every time he speaks. 'Those who harbor a terrorist are as guilty as the terrorist himself.'"^[30] In a 2003 statement to a U.N. committee, the Cuban ambassador to the U.N. said that "instead of bringing to trial the eight individuals who had hijacked a Cuban plane last November, the United States had provided them with asylum."^[36]

As described by researcher Peter Kornbluh of the non-governmental research institute National Security Archive, he "is a terrorist, but he’s our terrorist," referring to Posada's relationship with the U.S. government. In 2006, the U.S. Justice Department described Posada as “an unrepentant criminal and admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks on tourist sites.”^[44] On May 18, 2005, the National Security Archive posted additional documents that purportedly show the CIA had concrete advance intelligence, as early as June 1976, on plans by Cuban exile terrorist groups to bomb an airliner of the Cuban airline Cubana. The Archive also says that while Posada stopped being a CIA agent in 1974, there remained "occasional contact" until June 1976, a few months before the bombing.^[45] Political scientist J. Patrice McSherry claims that an FBI agent involved in a case concerning the assassination of Orlando Letelier confirmed that Posada had participated in 1976 meeting of a coalition of violent anti-Castro organizations named CORU (Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations), in the Dominican Republic "in which both the airline bombing and the Letelier assassination were planned."^[46] McSherry writes that "according to several sources the CIA had actively approved of the Bonan meeting- and perhaps even instigated it- and encouraged CORU to “punish” Castro for Cuban intervention in Angola."^[47]

In a series of interviews with the New York Times, Posada claimed responsibility for deadly bombings at hotels and nightclubs in Cuba in 1997 in which an Italian tourist died and scores more were injured. Posada stated "The FBI and the CIA do not bother me, and I am neutral with them...Whenever I can help them, I do."^[48] He later denied that he was involved, stating that he had only wanted to create publicity for the bombing campaign in order to scare tourists.^[49]

Journalist Robert Scheer wrote in a column in the Los Angeles Times "For almost 40 years, we have isolated Cuba on the assumption that the tiny island is a center of terrorism in the hemisphere, and year after year we gain new evidence that it is the U.S. that has terrorized Cuba and not the other way around."^[50]

Venezuela has accused the US of hypocrisy on terrorism since the US "virtually" collaborated with convicted terrorist Luis Posada by failing to contest statements that Posada would be tortured if he were extradited to Venezuela. Some U.S. officials, who declined to speak on the record, also deplored the decision by immigration judge William Abbott not to extradite Posada. The administration stressed that Posada may still be subject to deportation to another country, although their efforts thus far to persuade several Latin American countries have proved fruitless.^[51][52]

Nicaragua (1979-90)

Following the rise to power of the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua, the Ronald Reagan administration ordered the CIA to organize and train the Contras, a right wing guerrilla group. In 1981 President Reagan secretly authorized his Central Intelligence Agency under his appointee CIA director William J. Casey to recruit and support the guerrillas.^[53]

The Republic of Nicaragua vs. The United States of America^[54] was a case heard in 1986 by the International Court of Justice which found that the United States had violated international law by direct acts of U.S. personnel and by the supporting Contra guerrillas in their war against the Nicaraguan government and by mining Nicaragua's harbors. The US was not imputable for possible human rights violations done by the Contras.

Guatemala (1954-96)

Professor of History, Stephen G. Rabe, writes "in destroying the popularly elected government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman (1950-1954), the United States initiated a nearly four-decade-long cycle of terror and repression" ^[55]

After the U.S.-backed coup, which toppled president Jacobo Arbenz, lead coup plotter Castillo Armas assumed power. Author and university professor, Patrice McSherry argues that with Armas at the head of government, "the United States began to militarize Guatemala almost immediately, financing and reorganizing the police and military."^[56]

In his book “State Terror and Popular Resistance in Guatemala”, human rights expert Michael McClintock^[57] has argued that the national security apparatus Armas presided over was “almost entirely oriented toward countering subversion,” and that the key component of that apparatus was “an intelligence system set up by the United States.”^[58] At the core of this intelligence system were records of communist party members, pro-Arbenz organizations, teacher associations, and peasant unions which were used to create a detailed “Black List” with names and information about some 70,000 individuals that were viewed as potential subversives. It was “CIA counter-intelligence officers who sorted the records and determined how they could be put to use.”^[59] McClintock argues that this list persisted as an index of subversives for several decades and probably served as a database of possible targets for the counter-insurgency campaign that began in the early 1960s.^[60] McClintock writes:

United States counter-insurgency doctrine encouraged the Guatemalan military to adopt both new organizational forms and new techniques in order to root out insurgency more effectively. New techniques would revolve around a central precept of the new counter-insurgency: that counter insurgent war must be waged free of restriction by laws, by the rules of war, or moral considerations: guerrilla “terror” could be defeated only by the untrammeled use of “counter-terror”, the terrorism of the state.

— Michael McClintock^[61]

McClintock writes that this idea was also articulated by Colonel John Webber, the chief of the U.S. Military Mission in Guatemala, who instigated the technique of “counter-terror.” Colonel Webber defended his policy by saying, “That’s the way this country is. The Communists are using everything they have, including terror. And it must be met.”^[62]

Utilizing declassified government documents, researchers Kate Doyle and Carlos Osorio from the research institute the National Security Archive document that Guatemalan Colonel Byron Lima Estrada took military police and counterintelligence courses at the School of the Americas. He later served in several elite counterinsurgency units trained and equipped by the U.S. Military Assistance Program (MAP). He would eventually rise to command D-2, the Guatemalan Military Intelligence services who were responsible for many of the terror tactics wielded throughout the 1980s.^[63]

School of the Americas

Professor Gareau argues that the School of the Americas (reorganized in 2001 as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), a U.S. training institution mainly for Latin America, is a terrorist training ground. He cites a UN report which states the school has "graduated 500 of the worst human rights abusers in the hemisphere." Gareau alleges that by funding, training and supervising Guatemalan 'Death Squads' Washington was complicit in state terrorism.^[64]

Defenders argue that the alleged connection to human rights abusers is often weak. For example, Roberto D'Aubuisson's sole link to the SOA is that he had taken a course in Radio Operations long before El Salvador's civil war began.^[65] They also argue that no school should be held accountable for the actions of only some of its many graduates. Before coming to the current WHINSEC each student is now “vetted” by his/her nation and the U.S. embassy in that country. All students are now required to receive "human rights training in law, ethics, rule of law and practical applications in military and police operations."^[66][67][68]

El Salvador (1980-92)

The Salvadoran Civil War was predominantly fought between the government of El Salvador against a coalition of four leftist guerrilla groups and one communist group known as the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) mainly between 1980 and 1992. A violent insurgency existed already in the 1970s. The United States supported the government and Cuba and other Communist states the guerrillas. In total the civil war killed 75,000 people.

Chile

In the period of 1970-1973, the United States has been accused of supporting and committing State Terrorism during the overthrow of the socialist elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende. Prof. Stohl writes, "In addition to nonterroristic strategies...the United States embarked on a program to create economic and political chaos in Chile...After the failure to prevent Allende from taking office, efforts shifted to obtaining his removal." Money authorized for the CIA to destabilize Chilean society, included, "financing and assisting opposition groups and right-wing terrorist paramilitary groups such as Patria y Libertad ("Fatherland and Liberty")." Project FUBELT (also known as Track II) was the codename for the secret CIA operations that were intended to undermine Salvador Allende's government and promote a military coup in Chile. In September 1973 the Allende government was overthrown in a violent military coup in which the United States is claimed to have been "intimately involved." ^[69]

Professor Gareau, writes on the subject: "Washington's training of thousands of military personnel from Chile who later committed state terrorism again makes Washington eligible for the charge of accessory before the fact to state terrorism. The CIA's close relationship during the height of the terror to Contreras, Chile's chief terrorist (with the possible exception of Pinochet himself), lays Washington open to the charge of accessory during the fact." Gareau argues that the fuller extend involved the US taking charge of coordinating counterinsurgency efforts between all Latin American countries. He writes, "Washington's service as the overall coordinator of state terrorism in Latin America demonstrates the enthusiasm with which Washington played its role as an accomplice to state terrorism in the region. It was not a reluctant player. Rather it not only trained Latin American governments in terrorism and financed the means to commit terrorism; it also encouraged them to apply the lessons learned to put down what it called “the communist threat.” Its enthusiasm extended to coordinating efforts to apprehend those wanted by terrorist states who had fled to other countries in the region....The evidence available leads to the conclusion that Washington's influence over the decision to commit these acts was considerable."^[70]"Given that they knew about the terrorism of this regime, what did the elites in Washington during the Nixon and Ford administrations do about it? The elites in Washington reacted by increasing U.S. military assistance and sales to the state terrorists, by covering up their terrorism, by urging U.S. diplomats to do so also, and by assuring the terrorists of their support, thereby becoming accessories to state terrorism before, during, and after the fact." ^[71]

Scholars have written on Chile as an example of State Terrorism of a very open kind that did not attempt a façade of civilian governance, and that had a "September 11th effect" through the hemisphere. Professor of History Thomas Wright, argues that "unlike their Brazilian counterparts, they did not embrace state terrorism as a last recourse; they launched a wave of terrorism on the day of the coup. In contrast to the Brazilians and Uruguayans, the Chileans were very public about their objectives and their methods; there was nothing subtle about rounding up thousands of prisoners, the extensive use of torture, executions following sham court-marshal, and shootings in cold blood. After the initial wave of open terrorism, the Chilean armed forces constructed a sophisticated apparatus for the secret application of state terrorism that lasted until the dictatorship’s end...The impact of the Chilean coup reached far beyond the country’s borders. Through their aid in the overthrow of Allende and their support of the Pinochet dictatorship, President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, sent a clear signal to all of Latin America that anti-revolutionary regimes employing repression, even state terrorism, could count on the support of the United States. The U.S. government in effect, gave a green light to Latin America’s right wing and its armed forces to eradicate the left and use repression to erase the advances that workers - and in some countries, campesinos - had made through decades of struggle. This “Septmember 11 effect” was soon felt around the hemisphere.” ^[72]

Prof. Gareau concludes, "The message for the populations of Latin American nations and particularly the Left opposition was clear: the United States would not permit the continuation of a Socialist government, even if it came to power in a democratic election and continued to uphold the basic democratic structure of that society."^[73]

Iran (1979-present)

In 2007, an article in the Asia Times Online by an Indian diplomat asserted that the United States was providing aid to rebels in Iran revolting against the Tehran government.^[74] An Asian Times article refers to this as part of a U.S. policy of continuous fomenting of ethnic strife and sponsorship of terrorism in Iran.^[75]

Jundullah

The Sunni militant organization Jundallah has been identified as a terrorist organization by Iran and Pakistan^[76][77]. According to an April 2007 report by Brian Ross and Christopher Isham of ABC News, the United States government had been secretly encouraging and advising the Jundullah in its attacks against Iranian targets. This support is said to have started in 2005 and arranged so that the United States provided no direct funding to the group, which would require congressional oversight and attract media attention.^[78] The report was denied by Pakistan official sources.^[79][80]

Fars News Agency, an Iranian state run news agency, reported that the United States government is involved in the terrorist acts of the Peoples Resistant Movement of Iran (PRMI).^[81] The Voice of America, the official broadcasting service of the United States government, interviewed Jundullah leader Abdul Malik Rigi in April 2007, an act condemned by the Iranian government.^{[82][83][84][85]}

People's Mujahedin of Iran

In April 2007, CNN reported that the US military and the International Committee of the Red Cross were protecting the People's Mujahedin of Iran, with the US army regularly escorting PMOI supply runs between Baghdad and its base, Camp Ashraf.^[86] The PMOI have been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States (since 1997), Canada, and Iran.^[87][88] According to the Wall Street Journal^[89] "senior diplomats in the Clinton administration say the PMOI figured prominently as a bargaining chip in a bridge-building effort with Tehran." The PMOI is also on the European Union's blacklist of terrorist organizations, which lists 28 organizations, since 2002.^[90] The enlistments included: Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States in 1997 under the Immigration and Nationality Act, and again in 2001 pursuant to section 1(b) of Executive Order 13224; as well as by the European Union (EU) in 2002.^[91] Its bank accounts were frozen in 2002 after the September 11 attacks and a call by the EU to block terrorist organizations' funding. However, the European Court of Justice has overturned this in December 2006 and has criticized the lack of "transparency" with which the blacklist is composed.^[92] However, the Council of the EU declared on 30 January 2007 that it would maintain the organization on the blacklist.^[93][94] The EU-freezing of funds was lifted on December 12, 2006 by the European Court of First Instance.^[95] In 2003 the US State Department included the NCRI on the blacklist, under Executive Order 13224.^[96]

According to a 2003 article by the New York Times, the US 1997 proscription of the group on the terrorist blacklist was done as "a goodwill gesture toward Iran's newly elected reform-minded president, Mohammad Khatami" (succeeded in 2005 by the more conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad).^[97] In 2002, 150 members of the United States Congress signed a letter calling for the lifting of this designation.^[98] The PMOI have also tried to have the designation removed through several court cases in the U.S. The PMOI has now lost three appeals (1999, 2001 and 2003) to the US government to be removed from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and its terrorist status was reaffirmed each time. The PMOI has continued to protest worldwide against its listing, with the overt support of some US political figures.^[99][100]

Past supporters of the PMOI have included Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), Rep. Bob Filner, (D-CA), and Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO), and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, "who became involved with the [PMOI] while a Republican senator from Missouri."^[101][102] In 2000, 200 U.S. Congress members signed a statement endorsing the organization's cause.^[103]

Iraq (1992-95)

The New York Times reported that, according to former U.S. intelligence officials, the CIA once orchestrated a bombing and sabotage campaign between 1992 and 1995 in Iraq via one of the resistance organizations, Iyad Allawi's group in an attempt to destabilize the country. According to the Iraqi government at the time, and one former CIA officer, the bombing campaign against Baghdad included both government and civilian targets. According to this former CIA official, the civilian targets included a movie theater and a bombing of a school bus where children were killed. No public records of the secret bombing campaign are known to exist, and the former U.S. officials said their recollections were in many cases sketchy, and in some cases contradictory. "But whether the bombings actually killed any civilians could not be confirmed because," as a former CIA official said, "the United States had no significant intelligence sources in Iraq then."^[104][105]

Lebanon (1985)

The CIA has been accused of being the perpetrator of a 1985 Beirut car bombing which killed 81 people. The bombing was apparently an assassination attempt on an Islamic cleric, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah.^[106][107] The bombing, known as the Bir bombing after Bir el-Abed, the impoverished Beirut neighborhood in which it had occurred, was reported by the New York Times to have caused a "massive" explosion "even by local standards," killing 81 people, and wounding more than 200.^[108] Investigative journalist Bob Woodward stated that the CIA was funded by the Saudi Arabian government to arrange the bombing.^[106][107] Fadlallah himself also claims to have evidence that the CIA was behind the attack and that the Saudis paid $3 million.^[109]

The U.S. National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane admitted that those responsible for the bomb may have had American training, but that they were "rogue operative(s)" and the CIA in no way sanctioned or supported the attack.^[110] Roger Morris writes in the Asia Times that the next day, a notice hung over the devastated area where families were still digging the bodies of relatives out of the rubble. It read: "Made in the USA". The terrorist strike on Bir el-Abed is seen as a product of U.S. covert policy in Lebanon. Agreeing with the proposals of CIA director William Casey, president Ronald Reagan sanctioned the Bir attack in retaliation for the truck-bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks at Beirut airport in October 1983, which, Roger Morris alleges, in turn had been a reprisal for earlier U.S. acts of intervention and diplomatic dealings in Lebanon's civil war that had resulted in hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian lives. After CIA operatives had repeatedly failed to arrange Casey's car-bombing, the CIA allegedly "farmed out" the operation to agents of its longtime Lebanese client, the Phalange, a Maronite Christian, anti-Islamic militia.^[108] Others allege the 1984 Bombing of the U.S. Embassy annex northeast of Beirut as the motivating factor.^[110]

Japan (1945)

Some legal scholars, historians, other governments, and human rights organizations have characterized the United States' World War II nuclear attacks against the Empire of Japan as state terrorism. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the only time a state has used nuclear weapons against concentrated civilian populated areas.^[111][112]

The role of the bombings in Japan's surrender and the United States' justification for them has been the subject of scholarly and popular debate for decades. J. Samuel Walker writes in an April 2005 overview of recent historiography on the issue, "the controversy over the use of the bomb seems certain to continue."^[113] Most interpretations of the atomic attacks as "state terrorism" center around the targeting of innocents to achieve a political goal. Supporters of this classification argue that the meeting of the Target Committee on May 10–11 1945^[114] rejected the use of the weapons against a strictly military objective and chose a large civilian population to create a psychological effect that would be felt around the world.^[115]The attacks in this context were thus seen as both militarily unnecessary and as transgressing moral barriers.^{[116][117][118][119][120][121]}

Historian Howard Zinn writes: "if 'terrorism' has a useful meaning (and I believe it does, because it marks off an act as intolerable, since it involves the indiscriminate use of violence against human beings for some political purpose), then it applies exactly to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."^[122]

Howard Zinn cites the sociologist Kai Erikson who states that the attacks

"...were not 'combat' in any of the ways that word is normally used. Nor were they primarily attempts to destroy military targets, for the two cities had been chosen not despite but because they had a high density of civilian housing...the attacks were to be a show, a display, a demonstration. The question is: What kind of mood does a fundamentally decent people have to be in, what kind of moral arrangements must it make, before it is willing to annihilate as many as a quarter of a million human beings for the sake of making a point?"^[122]

Michael Walzer writes of it as an example of "...war terrorism: the effort to kill civilians in such large numbers that their government is forced to surrender. Hiroshima seems to me the classic case."^[123]

Professor C.A.J. (Tony) Coady is head of the Australian Research Council Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE) and studies political violence, Just War Theory, Terrorism, and Humanitarian intervention.^[124] He writes in Terrorism and Justice: Moral Argument in a Threatened World: "Several of the contributors consider the issue of state terrorism and there is a general agreement that states not only can sponsor terrorism by non state groups but that states can, and do, directly engage in terrorism. Coady instances the terror bombings of World War II, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as acts of terrorism."^[125]

Mark Selden, professor of sociology and history at Binghamton University and author of War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century, writes, "This deployment of air power against civilians would become the centerpiece of all subsequent U.S. wars, a practice in direct contravention of the Geneva principles, and cumulatively the single most important example of the use of terror in twentieth century warfare."^[126]

Richard A. Falk, professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton University has written in some detail about Hiroshima and Nagasaki as instances of state terrorism. He writes "The graveyards of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the number-one exhibits of state terrorism... Consider the hypocrisy of an Administration that portrays Qaddafi as barbaric while preparing to inflict terrorism on a far grander scale... Any counter terrorism policy worth the name must include a convincing indictment of the First World variety."^[10]. He also writes:

Undoubtedly the most extreme and permanently traumatizing instance of state terrorism, perhaps in the history of warfare, involved the use of atomic bombs against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in military settings in which the explicit function of the attacks was to terrorize the population through mass slaughter and to confront its leaders with the prospect of national annihilation....the idea that massive death can be deliberately inflicted on a helpless civilian population as a tactic of war certainly qualifies as state terror of unprecedented magnitude, particularly as the United States stood on the edge of victory, which might well have been consummated by diplomacy.

— Richard Falk, War and State Terrorism^[127]

While paying tribute to the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hugo Chavez - President of Venezuela - referred to the bombings as "the greatest act of terrorism in recorded history."^[128]

Burleigh Taylor Wilkins states in Terrorism and Collective Responsibility that "any definition which allowed the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to count as instances of terrorism would be too broad." He goes on to explain "The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while obviously intended by the American government to alter the policies of the Japanese government, seem for all the terror they involved, more an act of war than of terrorism."^[129] It has also been argued that because Japan was engaged in total war "there was no difference between civilians and soldiers"^[130] and that Hiroshima and Nagasaki did also have strategic significance as army headquarters and for military production.^{[131][132][133][134]}

Some scholars argue that the institutionalized form of terrorism carried out by states have occurred as a result of changes that took place following World War ll, and in particular these atomic bombings.^{[citation needed]} In this analysis state terrorism as a form of foreign policy was shaped by the presence and use of weapons of mass destruction, and that the legitimizing of such violent behavior led to an increasingly accepted form of state behavior. Examples of state terrorism cited are Germany’s bombing of London and the U.S. atomic destruction of Hiroshima. The argument is discussed by Professor of Political Science Michael Stohl and George A. Lopez, in their book "Terrible beyond Endurance? The Foreign Policy of State Terrorism." 1988.

Philippines

In “The Terrorist Foundations of US Foreign Policy”, Professor of International Law Richard Falk argues that during the Spanish American War, when the U.S. was “confronted by a nationalistic resistance movement in the Philippines,” American forces were responsible for state terrorism. Falk relates that “as with the wars against native American peoples, the adversary was demonized (and victimized). In the struggle, US forces, with their wide margin of military superiority, inflicted disproportionate casualties, almost always a sign of terrorist tactics, and usually associated with refusal or inability to limit political violence to a discernible military opponent. The dispossession of a people from their land almost always is a product of terrorist forms of belligerency. In contrast, interventions in Central and South America in the area of so-called “Gunboat Diplomacy” were generally not terrorist in character, as little violence was required to influence political struggle for ascendancy between competing factions of an indigenous elite.” ^[135]

In “Instruments of Statecraft"[[8]], human rights researcher Michael McClintock described the intensification of the U.S. role during the Hukbalahap rebellion in 1950, when concerns about a perceived communist-led Huk insurgency prompted sharp increases in military aid and a reorganization of tactics towards methods of guerrilla warfare. McClintock describes the role of U.S. "advisers" to the Philippine Minister of National Defense, Ramon Magsaysay, remarking that they “adroitly managed Magsaysay's every move.” Air Force Lt. Col. Edward Geary Lansdale was a psywar propaganda specialist who became the close personal adviser and confidant of Magsaysay. The forte of another key adviser, Charles Bohannan, was guerrilla warfare. McClintock cites several examples to demonstrate that “terror played an important part” in the psychological operations under U.S. guidance. Those psywar operations that utilized terror included theatrical displays involving the exemplary display of dead Huk bodies in an effort to incite fear in rural villagers. In another psywar operation described by Lansdale, Philippine troops engaged in nocturnal captures of individual Huks. They punctured the necks of the victims and drained the corpses of blood, leaving the bodies to be discovered when daylight came, so as to play upon fears associated with the local folklore of the Asuang, or vampire.[[9]]

For McClintock, this Philippines episode is particularly important because of its formative influence on U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine. In his essay, American Doctrine and State Terror, McClintock explained that U.S. Army instruction manuals of the 1960's concerning 'counterterrorism' often referred to "the particular experiences of the Philippines and Vietnam." Noting that tactics similar to those used during the Huk Rebellion (from 1946-54) in the Philippines were cited in the manuals, he elaborated that the "Department of the Army's 1976 psywar publication, DA Pamphlet 525-7-1, refers to some of the classic counterterror techniques and account of the practical application of terror. These include the capture and murder of suspected guerillas in a manner suggesting the deed was done by legendary vampires (the 'asuang'); and a prototypical "Eye of God" technique in which a stylized eye would be painted opposite the house of a suspect." ^[136]

Opposing views

See also: Foreign relations of the United States#Support

Regarding support for various dictatorships, especially during the Cold War, a response is that they were seen as necessary evil, with the alternatives even worse Communist or fundamentalist dictatorships.

Empirical studies (see democide which has been argued to be equivalent to state terrorism^[137]) have found that democracies, including the United States, have killed much fewer civilians than dictatorships.^[138][139]

See also

• Allegations of state terrorism by Iran
• Allegations of state terrorism by Russia
• Allegations of state terrorism in Sri Lanka
• American terrorism
• Command responsibility
• Economic terrorism
• List of terrorist incidents
• U.S. Army and CIA interrogation manuals

External links

• Paper argues that US State Terrorism is a function of the global capitalist economy, described as Imperialism.

Notes

References

• Alexander, George (December 1991). Western State Terrorism. Polity Press. p. 276. ISBN 9780745609317.
• Chomsky, Noam (January 1988). The Culture of Terrorism. South End Press. p. 269. ISBN 9780896083349.
• Sluka,, Jeffrey A., editor (1999). Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-1711-7. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Selden,, Mark, editor (November 28, 2003). War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. ISBN 978-0742523913. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Menjívar, Cecilia and Rodríguez,Néstor, editors, When States Kill:Latin America, the U.S., and Technologies of Terror, University of Texas Press 2005,isbn=978-0-292-70647-7
• Pilger, John (December 12, 2002). "Bush Terror Elite Wanted 9/11 to Happen". Third World Traveler. Retrieved 2007-07-09. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Perdue, William D. (August 7, 1989). Terrorism and the State: A Critique of Domination Through Fear. Praeger Press. p. 240. ISBN 9780275931407. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |city= ignored (|location= suggested) (help)
• Campbell, Bruce B., and Brenner,Arthur D.,eds. 2000. Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability. New York: St. Martin's Press
• "Understanding Terrorism". Public Broadcasting Service. August 15, 1997. Retrieved 2007-07-09. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Vann, Bill (November 21, 2001). "Bush nominee linked to Latin American terrorism". World Socialist Web Site. Retrieved 2007-07-09. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Wright,, Thomas C. (February 28, 2007). State Terrorism in Latin America: Chile, Argentina, and International Human Rights. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. ISBN 978-0742537217. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)