Why Terrorists Target America

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If someone had asked me last week, "Madam, could you please explain to me why America is a target for foreign terrorists?"  Being an academic, I would have mumbled something sufficiently professorial about  Huntington's theory of a clash of civilizations or economic imperatives.  But I wouldn't have had an honest, that is, gut-level answer.  However, now I do and can even convey it in a single word -- Benghazi.  But what insights does a diplomatic tragedy in Libya involving the loss of four Americans offer to our understanding of rabid anti-Americanism abroad?



Because of America's two-party system, it is understandable that Republicans would call for new hearings and investigations into the Benghazi incident.  Hilary Clinton will probably run for president in 2016 and it's never to soon to start tearing her to pieces.  The GOP will also see to it that the American public is apprised of any and all mistakes made by the Obama Administration during the unfolding of events in Libya.

If Republicans can call for a special investigation into the death of four Americans, why has no one in Congress demanded a super-special investigation into America's catastrophic invasion of Iraq?  That meaningless war brought the United States economy to the brink of collapse.  It also cost more than 3,000 American lives, left another 30,000 wounded, and even more homeless or suicidal.   (For those who care, the number of Iraqi civilians killed numbers over 100,000).  

So why might Benghazi deserve a special investigation if the war in Iraq doesn't?  The reason, of course, is politics.  American politicians -- Democrats and Republicans alike --lacked the courage or decency to stand up to the crazed neo-conservatives in the Bush Administration, who were salivating for war.  With both parties implicated in what may verge on war crimes, there is no motivation to investigate anything about the Iraq war.  And we as a society can pretend that the worse thing that has happened to us since the 9/11 tragedy was the death of four of our diplomats in Benghazi.

American politicians believe that being a superpower means never having to say we're sorry, regardless of how many foreign lives are destroyed in wars concocted for domestic political consumption.  But as long as we remain impervious to the human costs of our actions abroad, we will attract terrorists.  Like naughty children, they will have calculated that negative attention is better than no attention at all.  



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