Do oppressive regimes create terrorism?

The imperialistic US foreign policy on “creating Democracy” and “liberating” oppressed societies (at least those which benefit the US economically), puts the US in the position of the enemy to the people we are trying to “liberate.” If the US was truly concerned about the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, they would be treating those people in at least a respectful and humane way.

The fight to be liberated should be the fight of the people in question, not the fight of foreign governments. Imposing American democratic values, on those of other cultures, is against the very nature of those values we are trying to impose. The US foreign policy is at least hypocritical. It is no wonder that we are viewed as the enemy, even if we threw out the former enemy. It is not our right to impose “liberation” on a country that doesn’t ask for it. This is what breads terrorism; oppressive governments bread revolution. We are not fighting terrorists in Iraq; we are fighting revolutionaries. We have become the oppressive government.

Here is an excerpt of an interesting article from the US Law and Security Digest:

HARVARD STUDY FINDS POLITICAL INSTABILITY AT ROOT OF TERRORISM

In a new study, a professor of Public Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government challenges the idea that terrorism arises out of economic deprivation, arguing instead that a nation’s level of political freedom is the primary rootcause. Professor Alberto Abadie examined both international and domestic terrorism, and focused on a number of factors including wealth, political freedom, geography, and ethnic conflicts. The study concludes that terrorism is strongly linked to a nation’spolitical freedom, with ‘intermediate nations’ – societies intransition between authoritarian and democratic forms of government – most at risk.

Read the Report Here:

Poverty, Political Freedom, and the Roots of Terrorism – PDF

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