Selected Crimes of the World’s Greatest Terrorist

After the horrific murders of civilians in Paris, France, for which ISIS has claimed responsibility, the global powers including the U.S. declared they were escalating what they call a “war on terrorism.” But if terrorism is defined by the deliberate targeting of civilians, then there is no match for the record of the United States. The following list of terrorist crimes is only a short selection from the history of the United States and its acts around the world. The fact that this history is not taught in schools, or acknowledged in acceptable discourse, does not mean these things didn’t really happen. Readers are challenged to look these up for themselves.

U.S. Marines walk past bodies of people killed in the U.S. assault on Fallujah, Iraq, 2004. AP photo.

Genocide of Native Americans: The United States was built on the genocide of Native Americans and the theft of their land, including the “Trail of Tears” where tens of thousands were driven off their lands in the Southeastern U.S. and forced to march to Oklahoma—of 15,000 relocated Cherokee, 4,000 died on the march.
Invasion of the Philippines, 1899: U.S. troops brutally crushed anti-colonial forces. In the words of Mark Twain, the U.S. “buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining tens of millions...”
Atomic Bomb Attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Firebombing of Tokyo, 1945: 200,000 civilians died, some burned to death on the spot, others of radiation poisoning.

A prisoner being abused in Abu Ghraib prison. AP photo

Korea, 1950-1953: Of the U.S. invasion of Korea, U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay boasted that U.S. planes “burned down every town in North Korea.” The U.S. used more bombs and artillery shells in Korea than in all of World War 2, and used napalm against military and civilian targets. Three million civilians were killed in the war.
Vietnam, 1965-1975: The U.S. dropped more than seven million tons of bombs on Vietnam and the neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos before being driven out in 1975, killing an estimated three million Vietnamese.
Somalia, 1993: U.S. Army missiles fired into a crowd from a helicopter killed 100 unarmed people. Villagers’ huts and crops were burned, their livestock killed, bodies of the dead mutilated.
Shooting Down Iranian Civilian Airliner, 1988: The U.S. military shot down an Iranian civilian airplane over Iranian territory (Flight 655), killing all 290 people on board, including 66 children. President George H. W. Bush said, “I’ll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever, I don’t care what the facts are.”

Screenshots from the Collateral Murder video, one of the documents Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning was accused of leaking. The video shows American soldiers in an Apache helicopter in Baghdad, 2007, firing on and killing 12 Iraqi civilians.

Afghanistan, 2001-present: On October 3, 2015, 12 medical staff and at least 10 patients were killed by a deliberate U.S. air attack on a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Before that, thousands of civilians were killed directly by U.S.-led invasion and occupation forces who bombed wedding parties, terrorized Afghans with late-night raids, and locked people up in torture chambers.
Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, 2003-present: Iraq Body Count estimates over 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the 2nd Iraq war and occupation. The U.S. used cluster bombs, white phosphorous, and depleted uranium against the Iraqi people—war crimes and terrorist acts targeting civilians.
Drone Attacks: In the three years leading up to and during 2009, U.S. drone attacks—from unmanned planes—killed over 700 people, overwhelmingly civilians (including civilians targeted for non-military activities). In some areas, 90 percent of those killed were random killings or “collateral damage.” The attacks continue in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.