* By Matthew Harwood,
Ever since 9/11, American society has had the self-destructive tendency of primarily seeing terrorists as monsters intent on devouring their social experiment in human liberty and popular rule. Rather than listen to what motivates the individual terrorists that have attacked the United States at home and abroad, Americans only hear a convenient narrative left over from the Bush years: \\\"They hate our freedoms.\\\" This belief, however, is nothing more than a collective delusion that continually feeds a foreign policy destructive of our homeland security. Nothing proves this more than examining the motivations of three men who have punctured Americans\\\' sense of security over the past year.
In September, federal authorities arrested 25-year-old Najibullah Zazi, who was planning to suicide bomb the New York subway system. The Afghan immigrant recently pled guilty to conspiring to murder innocent commuters. According to the New York Times, Zazi rationalised his motive to kill innocents this way: \\\"I would sacrifice myself to bring attention to what the US military was doing to civilians in Afghanistan.\\\"
A little more than two months later, Americans were shocked when Major Nidal Malek Hassan, a Muslim army psychiatrist, murdered 13 people — 12 service members and one civilian — at the military base at Fort Hood, Texas. Much like Zazi, Hassan\\\'s motivation to massacre his fellow comrades seems to have arisen from his horror at US foreign policy, a policy he was entrusted to carry out. Two years before his crime, Hassan lectured colleagues that American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were an assault on Islam. \\\"It\\\'s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims,\\\" Hassan said in a self-fulfilling PowerPoint presentation. And while Hassan didn\\\'t blow himself up at Fort Hood, there seems little doubt that he never intended to walk away from his attack. And he didn\\\'t, an officer\\\'s bullet left him paralysed.
Finally on Christmas Day, 23-year-old Omar Farouq Abdul Muttalib, a rich kid from Nigeria, stashed powdered explosives in his underwear and attempted to blow up Northwest Flight 253 on its way to Detroit. Fortunately he failed. After his botched attack, National Public Radio investigated why the son of a prominent banker would choose the path of a suicide bomber. One reason, it seems, was the treatment of Muslim detainees at Guantanamo. NPR\\\'s West African correspondent Ofeibea Quist-Arcton said the anger motivating Muttalib was unique in its violence but not in its sentiment. \\\"I have to say that a lot of people I spoke to in northern Nigeria, if it wasn\\\'t specifically Guantnamo, were also talking about the fact of US foreign policy, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Palestinian-Israeli crisis, how they felt so personally that the US was attacking not only Muslims, as they felt, but even Nigerian Muslims.\\\"
(Courtesy Guardian)
Ever since 9/11, American society has had the self-destructive tendency of primarily seeing terrorists as monsters intent on devouring their social experiment in human liberty and popular rule. Rather than listen to what motivates the individual terrorists that have attacked the United States at home and abroad, Americans only hear a convenient narrative left over from the Bush years: \\\"They hate our freedoms.\\\" This belief, however, is nothing more than a collective delusion that continually feeds a foreign policy destructive of our homeland security. Nothing proves this more than examining the motivations of three men who have punctured Americans\\\' sense of security over the past year.
In September, federal authorities arrested 25-year-old Najibullah Zazi, who was planning to suicide bomb the New York subway system. The Afghan immigrant recently pled guilty to conspiring to murder innocent commuters. According to the New York Times, Zazi rationalised his motive to kill innocents this way: \\\"I would sacrifice myself to bring attention to what the US military was doing to civilians in Afghanistan.\\\"
A little more than two months later, Americans were shocked when Major Nidal Malek Hassan, a Muslim army psychiatrist, murdered 13 people — 12 service members and one civilian — at the military base at Fort Hood, Texas. Much like Zazi, Hassan\\\'s motivation to massacre his fellow comrades seems to have arisen from his horror at US foreign policy, a policy he was entrusted to carry out. Two years before his crime, Hassan lectured colleagues that American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were an assault on Islam. \\\"It\\\'s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims,\\\" Hassan said in a self-fulfilling PowerPoint presentation. And while Hassan didn\\\'t blow himself up at Fort Hood, there seems little doubt that he never intended to walk away from his attack. And he didn\\\'t, an officer\\\'s bullet left him paralysed.
Finally on Christmas Day, 23-year-old Omar Farouq Abdul Muttalib, a rich kid from Nigeria, stashed powdered explosives in his underwear and attempted to blow up Northwest Flight 253 on its way to Detroit. Fortunately he failed. After his botched attack, National Public Radio investigated why the son of a prominent banker would choose the path of a suicide bomber. One reason, it seems, was the treatment of Muslim detainees at Guantanamo. NPR\\\'s West African correspondent Ofeibea Quist-Arcton said the anger motivating Muttalib was unique in its violence but not in its sentiment. \\\"I have to say that a lot of people I spoke to in northern Nigeria, if it wasn\\\'t specifically Guantnamo, were also talking about the fact of US foreign policy, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Palestinian-Israeli crisis, how they felt so personally that the US was attacking not only Muslims, as they felt, but even Nigerian Muslims.\\\"
(Courtesy Guardian)
