One of my posts, several pages back, testifies to the serious bad business the US government has been up to, and not only in the Mideast region, for decades.
Now I'm sure this won't be very popular with the ideologues here, however, the situation demands a more objective analysis than what a sentimental patriotism (or purly ideological position) usually permits.
When one talks about crimes and terrroism, one should be honest enough to indicate all such instances where such acts are commited and not only those one wishes to identifiy, or give two different measurements to the same weight. Thus when it comes to America having for decades provided political, at times even military, support for some the worst regimes and dictators on the planet; or even merely tollerating them, because the economic and strategic expedients were viewed as decisive within a culture of realpolitik (first against communism, then for oil and other resources), it shares the weight of moral responsibility in terms of the crimes those regimes commit against civilian society. What did America do to obstruct the coup d'étate and subsequent murderous folly ("purgings"), for example, of Auguste Pinochet, to cite but one example?
From a juridical point of view the US government can't be put on the same plane as Al Qaeda of course, however, in such instances any signifcant ethical or moral difference among them becomes rather difficult to clearly identify, as everything gets blurry. In other words, I don't see, in an objective analysis, a substantial difference between arming a pathological dictator, who then goes on to murder thousands of his own people, and training a bunch of terrorists to fly some planes into a couple of skyscrappers. Neither do many in the Arab world, and not only. The only real difference is that juridically the one can't be processed, while the other can (provided they bring them in alive), yet morally the responsibility is the same.
And it is precisely this distinction between legality and ethics, or rather the blurred contours deliminating what is legal and what's right, which also allows for the one to convince its people that it has done nothing wrong while acting within its legal rights, while the other to convince its sympathizers (who are many) of rather being freedom fighters in a just cause against the tyranny of oppression. This is why it has so often been said that one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. It all depends on the perspective (and propaganda) with which one chooses to view the circumstances.
The point I'm trying to make is that if America wants to be viewed as less brutal and hypocritical to the poor and disenfranchised of the planet, then it needs to make its "legal rights" corrospond with actual, and not merely simulated, ethical practice. Backing the Saud regime or playing off the brutality of this or that dictator for reasons of political and economic expediency, won't do the trick. While this is also the surest way of providing a nurishing fertilizer to the garden of anti-Americanism, anti-Westernism within which the terrorist networks thrive.
Of course America isn't alone in this bad business, but so too are most of the powerful European states as well. Ultimately defeating the terrorists, however, will take place only when we remove all reasons allowing them to be viewed and perceived as freedom fighters and not as the mere criminals they are. Repression only pruduces limited results, like cutting the branch off a tree which grows back again, instead of uprooting it entirely. We do this by, in point of fact, not behaving criminally. But so far this has not been done. In fact, it is far from the case. Most unfortunately.
While chalking it up, rather cynically, to just realpolitik, as if the world could only function this way (simply becuase it always has) or, worse, claiming an alibi by pointing out everybody else's crimes: is only a pathetic way to not deal with what remains a very serious issue that is historically way beyond its expiration date. The terrorists are the first to realize this, in fact, it provides them with their raison d'etre.
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