Still -- and I accept the irrationality of this -- when my country wipes out wedding parties in other lands or organizes torture regimes and offshore prison systems where anything goes, or tries to jail yet another whistleblower, when it acts cruelly, arbitrarily, or barbarically, I feel shock and wonder why more Americans don’t have the same reaction.
Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t blame myself for the commission of such acts, but as an American, I do feel a special responsibility to do something about them, or at least to speak out against them -- as it should be the responsibility of others in their localities to deal with their particular sets of barbarians.
So think of my last 12 years running TomDispatch.com as my own modest war on terror -- American terror. We don’t, of course, like to think of ourselves as barbaric, and terror is, almost by definition, a set of un-American acts that others are eager to commit against us. “They” want to take us out in our malls and backyards. We would never commit such acts, not knowingly, not with malice aforethought. It matters little here that, from wedding parties to funerals, women to children, we have, in fact, continued to take “them” out in their backyards quite regularly.
Most Americans would admit that this country makes mistakes. Despite our best efforts, we do sometimes produce what we like to call “collateral damage” as we go after the evildoers, but a terror regime? Not us. Never.