”What was the post-9/11 madness but blind revenge? What were the lockups at Guantanamo but revenge? What is joining Al-Qaeda but revenge? Is revenge a legitimate response to an attack on America? Why isn't it equally appropriate for those who have suffered sadistic American brutality?”
Failed airliner bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab told US investigators that he was only one of many trained in Yemen who plan to attack Western targets. "There are more just like me who will strike soon," he said.
FBI sources claim Abdulmutallab underwent a month-long training in Yemen; and during this training, he learned how to detonate explosives and how to pass the security check by sewing the explosives to his underwear.
According to Haaretz, Yemen's foreign minister said: “There are over 300 Al-Qaeda activists in his country and [he] requested intelligence aid from the West."
A year ago, the Yemeni government rejected US criticism of its record of combating terrorism and insisted that it could successfully handle the Yemeni detainees, who made up the largest national contingent at Guantanamo Bay.
Andy Worthington, Truthout news analyst, reported on 30 December 2009 that Yemenis make up nearly half of the remaining 198 prisoners in Guantánamo. A week earlier, six Yemenis were repatriated. Only 16 Yemenis had been freed from Guantánamo throughout the prison's long history.
An unnamed senior US administration official is reported saying that "one of the recruiting and motivational tools that it [Al-Qaeda] used in its initial announcement to generate sympathy for its cause as well as recruits was the facility at Guantanamo Bay."
Locking up "enemy combatants" without proof of any crime having been committed led to the eventual release of the large majority of Gitmo detainees. A large majority of the uncharged, tortured prisoners simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In mid-December, the Washington Post reported: “Critics of repatriation argue that sending detainees to a country where Al-Qaeda is believed to be flourishing is essentially returning soldiers to the battlefield."
If they had never been on a battlefield, how could they be returned to one? If, as there is good reason to believe, the majority of these detainees were completely innocent of any crime and had no significant connection to Al Qaeda, why would they want to become terrorists instead of celebrating their release and freedom?
The answer should be obvious to any rational thinker: they could reasonably seek revenge for the criminal mistreatment that they, their families and friends have suffered since the post-9/11 madness began with the lies of bounty hunters rewarded for delivering live bodies.
In the film “Rendition”, one question stood out as pointing to what many seem to ignore. The American who had witnessed torture in a foreign prison, his first, asked: “For every one tortured, how many enemies do we create? Ten? A hundred? A thousand?
The Boston Conservative Examiner reports: "District of Columbia Circuit Judge Richardo M. Urbina's 31 December dismissal of charges against five former Blackwater USA employees who fired upon at least 40 unarmed men, women and children in Baghdad's Nisour Square on 16 September 2007 means that Iraqi victims will not find justice in US Courts.”
How many of those men, women and children along with their families and friends, will want revenge? Can we blame them for wanting to avenge their losses? How long can we get away with treating others as lesser humans, expecting them to avoid attraction to Al Qaeda?
British journalist Kim Sengupta writes: "The ruling which clears Blackwater will confirm for Mr Salman and others in Iraq the belief that foreigners were above the law, that, in Western eyes, Iraqi lives did not, somehow, matter.” America is allowed to field terrorists, but no one else is.
Stephen Farrell of the New York Times reported (9 January 2010): “Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, the Jordanian suicide bomber who killed eight people at a Central Intelligence Agency outpost in Afghanistan last month, was shown in a video on Saturday [9 January] saying that the attack was carried out in revenge for the 2009 killing of the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.”
What was the post-9/11 madness but blind revenge? What were the lockups at Guantanamo but revenge? What is joining Al-Qaeda but revenge? Is revenge a legitimate response to an attack on America? Why isn't it equally appropriate for those who have suffered sadistic American brutality?
Doug Horton warned: “While seeking revenge, dig two graves – one for yourself.”
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