That U.S. foreign embassies would, at some point, become increasingly prime targets for terrorists was not difficult to predict. The closing of at least 25 U.S. embassies and consulates in the Middle East and North Africa recently, in response to terrorist threats, is a disturbing development that signals great danger for those who function on the front lines of American foreign policy.
Question: when in the world will this U.S. government finally accept the fact and admit that that the War on Terror and the thousands of enemies it has created were of its own making, having developed over the course of many decades when it used its military power in unnecessary and unjustifiable wars and conflicts involving numerous countries?
Many respected journalists and analysts firmly believe that the War on Terror was created by the neocon war hawks in Washington in order to keep Americans in a state of fear and apprehension so that the defense industry could continue to profit from an agenda of endless war. Many also believe that this military hubris will, undoubtedly, bring about more and more blowback or payback, i.e., revenge and retaliation, to this country.
How has this situation evolved? Well think about what happens when someone smashes a hornets' nest with a massive club? Those enraged hornets will swiftly retaliate and come after the person who wielded the club with a great vengeance. What is that massive club to which I refer? It's that military hubris that this government has engaged in to rule the seas and control the skies across the world; and pity the poor nation that dares to stand in its way.
That overly aggressive policy by the government has continued during this 21st Century after the War on Terror was initiated by the G.W. Bush administration and then further progressed by that of President Obama; although those in the White House today no longer refer to is as such.
This massive club was used in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan with disastrous consequences in which millions of innocent people either lost their lives, their homes or were forced into exile; and we lost many thousands of troops. Now, after the U.S. military was unable to conquer those nations who strongly resisted it by using guerilla-style warfare, the weapons of choice for the U.S. in invading other nations and going after suspected terrorists are remote-controlled drones that strike without warning.
What we are seeing is that these "terrorists", call them Al-Qaeda or whatever, may be beginning to use a form of psychological warfare against the U.S. government. They, no doubt, learned a lot from watching the color-coded threat alert system once used by the Homeland Security Dept. to warn Americans of impending terrorist threats.
Most Americans probably remember the five levels of warnings -- green was for low, blue for guarded, yellow for an elevated condition, orange for high, and red for very severe. By now Americans have awakened to the fact that this warning system was used by the government to make sure Americans were "afraid, very afraid" of imminent terrorist attacks. It worked for some years and, when it was proven to be no more than a scare tactic, it was discontinued in 2011.
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