Abu Juwairiya
Junior Member
"American reliance on state terror has been greatly facilitated by technological innovations in weaponry that have deprived adversaries of reciprocal means to strike back.
Further the American conduct of warfare in the Pacific region over the course of the past century has been shielded from critical scrutiny due to the geopolitical status of the United States, its leverage over the formal procedures assessing legal accountability that operate in international society, its influence on the media, and its refusal to impose international legal accountability on its own leadership.
As a result, American wartime practices involving the deliberate targeting of civilians has been shielded from authoritative scrutiny and the United States has been spared official condemnation of its tactics as tantamount to state terrorism.
Such a shielding appears particularly blatant as the United States has taken on the mantle of leading a worldwide antiterrorist crusade, the scope of which is defined in such a way as to conceive of terrorism as confined to anti-state violence.
This distorting control of language and of media presentations of terrorism has a profoundly misleading effect, obscuring the primary reality of terrorism, namely that states rather than anti-state actors are responsible for the great majority of civilian deaths over the course of the past several decades as well as throughout modern history.
As a consequence, the lesser anti-state violence is demonised, while the greater state violence is virtually immunise from criticism."
(Source: "War and State Terrorism, The United States, Japan and the Asia Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century" By Mark Selden and Alvin Y. So, P 57, 2004)
Further the American conduct of warfare in the Pacific region over the course of the past century has been shielded from critical scrutiny due to the geopolitical status of the United States, its leverage over the formal procedures assessing legal accountability that operate in international society, its influence on the media, and its refusal to impose international legal accountability on its own leadership.
As a result, American wartime practices involving the deliberate targeting of civilians has been shielded from authoritative scrutiny and the United States has been spared official condemnation of its tactics as tantamount to state terrorism.
Such a shielding appears particularly blatant as the United States has taken on the mantle of leading a worldwide antiterrorist crusade, the scope of which is defined in such a way as to conceive of terrorism as confined to anti-state violence.
This distorting control of language and of media presentations of terrorism has a profoundly misleading effect, obscuring the primary reality of terrorism, namely that states rather than anti-state actors are responsible for the great majority of civilian deaths over the course of the past several decades as well as throughout modern history.
As a consequence, the lesser anti-state violence is demonised, while the greater state violence is virtually immunise from criticism."
(Source: "War and State Terrorism, The United States, Japan and the Asia Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century" By Mark Selden and Alvin Y. So, P 57, 2004)