Ooh, Not Us!

Iran's supreme leader on Saturday accused the United States of supporting terrorism, pointing to American drone strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan that he said have killed scores of civilians.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said a country whose military forces are responsible for such deaths can't lecture the world about fighting terror.
~ from Iran's Supreme Leader Accuses U.S. of Terrorism by Ali Akbar Dareini ~

Who in the hell does this guy think he is? The United States of America cannot be equated with terrorism! We're the country that fights terrorism. We're the ones who protect innocents from being terrorized. Where does he come off leveling such an outrageous accusation?

Hmm. Let's see. According to the dictionary, terrorism is defined as

1. systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve some goal
2. the act of terrorizing
3. the state of being terrorized

The US currently is involved in 6 KNOWN wars or military operations. Not only do we shoot people with guns, but we also drop bombs and hurl missiles as well. It seems that not a week goes by when we learn that our various bullets, bombs and missiles have killed some of the people we supposedly are trying to protect.

I'm guessing that many of these innocents are terrorized by our past actions and feel threatened by what we might do next. If our actions are terrorizing them, then it looks to me like the Ayatollah isn't off-base after all.

In a related story,

The US has conducted its first drone strike on Islamist militants in Somalia, marking the expansion of the pilotless war campaign to a sixth country.

The missile strike on a vehicle in the southern town of Kismayo, reported last week as a helicopter assault, wounded two senior militants with al-Shabab and several foreign fighters according to the Washington Post.

Armed Predator and Reaper drones already operate in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and Libya, where they are controlled by the US military or the CIA.

I don't know about you, but I bet that the possibility of a drone flying over your town and doing who-knows-what is terrifying times ten. The use of unmanned drones operated by folks miles and miles away would seem to fall under the "systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve some goal."

So, from the standpoint of the Arab world, the US supports terrorism. We are working very diligently to terrorize the Muslim population.