How U.S. foreign policy may have led to Ft. Hood incident

States don’t just exist - they actively exist. It is as difficult for a state to gain sovereignty and existence as it is to sustain them. And how states sustain both tells us a lot about their sense of national security. National security with regards to terrorism breaks down into two types: domestic and international. The former being terrorism perpetrated by American citizens on U.S. soil and the latter being foreign threats faced by the U.S. either on its own soil or abroad.

With all the focus on international terrorism since 2001, it may seem as though American sovereignty and existence are contingent upon the elimination of imminent, foreign threats. But according to FBI reports between 2002 and 2005, twenty-three of the twenty-four recorded terrorist incidents against the United States were domestic. Minus one white supremacist firebombing of a synagogue, the other twenty-three domestic attacks were carried out by extremist environmental and animal rights group.

The sole international terrorist incident involved an Egyptian national killing two at Los Angeles Airport.

Before the pro-war advocates tell you there was only one such international incident because of Bush’s decision to wage wars against Islamic fundamentalism, also know that between 1980 and 2000, 250 of the 335 suspected terrorist acts against the United States were domestic. It appears that the same animal-loving, tree-hugging, white-supremacist type individuals of today have been targeting the wellbeing of the United States longer than Osama himself. And as a result, American national security may be ruling out the probability that it faces a great danger from members of its own state than it does from pro-bin Laden fanatics hiding in the caves of north-western Pakistan.

With two abysmal wars waging onwards in Iraq and Afghanistan, many are asking the same sorts of questions. Namely, is America really that much safer than it was just before the 9/11 attacks? Is it as unsafe now as it was prior to 2001?

Since 2001, national security measures of the United States have focused on preventing imminent threats from abroad. These measures have narrowed their focus on Islamic groups and individuals – making the assumption that because 9/11 was perpetrated by Muslims, the biggest threat to US national security must continue to come from the Islamic world. Additional assumptions must also exclude the probability that increased terrorist activity from Islamic communities were reactionary to pre-emptive American action. After all, if such wasn’t excluded, one could argue that the United States was engaging in terrorism and facing the opposition out of defense.

There is no doubt that the Untied States has provoked a great deal of social and ethno-religious unrest throughout the Islamic world in recent years. Also given the unique and heterogeneous nature of the American citizenry, these measures have adversely affected many Muslim-American communities. Is it possible for such a state as the U.S. to pursue national security interests, aimed at guarding the wellbeing of the state and its people, such that their very nature ends up marginalizing American citizens it seeks to protect?

Aside from the Americans who raid fur factories and bomb industrial ones (in the name of foxes and Mother Earth) it should become apparent that improper national security measures will also lead to reactionary situations. This is where the international and domestic terrorist threats merge into one major concern. I find this to be the prominent issue surrounding the recent Ft. Hood massacre in Texas. Unlike Lierbman’s anxiousness to investigate where Hasan’s assessment went wrong, I wonder where the U.S. went wrong on a very different level.

By preemptively engaging in two massive wars against Islamic states and developing rather discriminatory legislation aimed at marginalizing individuals of Arab and Muslim descent (see: The Patriot Act), the U.S. created a situation in which its own unregulated paranoia is prompting development of imminent threats against it. In a sense, it is contributing to its own difficulty in maintaining its sovereignty and survival.

Had Hasan not been subject to the discrimination and marginalization that he was, would he have snapped? Had the US not pursued a unilateral mission against the Islamic world, would our troops be as keen on weeding out their fellow Muslim soldiers?

It appears that the majority of attacks have always been domestic, but now we’re importing reasons for our own citizens to pursue them even more.