My examination of 54 prominent international examples of what U.S. President Donald Trump is presumably referring to when he uses his often-repeated but never defined phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” indicates that it is exclusively a phenomenon that is financed by the U.S. government’s Sunni fundamentalist royal Arab ‘allies’ and their subordinates, and not at all by Iran or its allies or any Shiites at all. Each of the perpetrators was either funded by those royals, or else inspired by the organizations, such as Al Qaeda and ISIS, that those royals fund, and which are often also armed by U.S.-made weapons that were funded by those royals. In other words: the U.S. government is allied with the perpetrators.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani and Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad (Source: antiliberalnews.net)
See the critique of this article by Kevin Barrett
Stop the Smear Campaign (and Genocide) Against Sunni Islam!By , June 13, 2017
Though U.S. President Donald Trump blames Shias, such as the leaders of Iran and of Syria, for what he calls “radical Islamic terrorism,” and he favors sanctions etc. against them for that alleged reason, those Shia leaders and their countries are actually constantly being attacked by Islamic terrorists, and this terrorism is frequently perpetrated specifically in order to overthrow them (which the U.S. government supports even overtly, such as in the case of Bashar al-Assad). Furthermore, all of that terrorism and those attacks, not only against the U.S. and Iran but against all nations except for Israel, are perpetrated not by Shia such as the U.S. President alleges, but instead by fundamentalist Sunnis, and they are financed by the very same fundamentalist Sunni Arab leaders that President Trump calls America’s allies against “radical Islamic terrorism.”
My review of well-known Islamic terrorist incidents shows that, other than terrorism inside and against Israel, all Islamic terrorism is perpetrated by fundamentalist Sunnis, none of it is perpetrated by Shia, either fundamentalist or not, though the U.S. government and its allies blame Shia countries for “radical Islamic terrorism” — even while the U.S. government and its officials know full well that only fundamentalist Sunnis are actually behind it. Israel, the Sauds, and their client-nations — and U.S. weapons-manufacturing firms such as Lockheed Martin — benefit, but the publics get slaughtered by these terrorist groups, which are financed by America’s ‘allies’, and armed largely by the U.S.
The exceptional case is Israel. Specifically in that country, Al Quds Brigades in the Gaza Strip are “majority funded by Iran”, but, even in Israel, America’s allies contribute to the terrorism. The dominant Hamas in the Gaza Strip is not Shiite, but is instead strictly fundamentalist Sunni, with the “donor bodies located in Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Britain, Germany, the United States, United Arab Emirates, Italy and France”. (That’s most of the strongly U.S.-allied countries.) The other major terrorist organization in Israel is Hezbollah, which is fundamentalist Shia, and is funded by Shia throughout the world, not only in Iran (such as the U.S. government frequently implies, though it’s false to attribute Hezbollah to Iran, instead of to the world’s wealthy Shia everywhere).
However, outside Israel, all of the Islamic terrorism is perpetrated by fundamentalist Sunni groups, such as Al Qaeda, ISIS, and their regional affiliate organizations, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba in India.
The countries that the U.S. government rails against and imposes economic sanctions against, are the non-sponsors of radical Islamic terrorism (except in Israel), and are themselves the chief victims of it, such as Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Those countries’ governments, and Shia populations, are purely victims of Islamic terrorism (sometimes beheaded for being so), not perpetrators of it (except, occasionally, against Israel — but, even there, they don’t have any monopoly, whereas Islamic terrorism against countries other than Israel is virtually, if not entirely, a Sunni fundamentalist monopoly).
Wikipedia keeps a “List of Islamist Terrorist Attacks”, which currently describes 479 Islamic terrorist incidents. I have looked into the perpetrators of 54 of these incidents that struck me as having been especially publicized in the U.S., and that thus might reasonably be expected to have formed the American public’s general impression of Islamic terrorism, if the U.S. is a democracy (and so the public in the U.S. would be informed by an honest press), but I excluded all incidents that were against Israel, because if the U.S. is a democracy, then the U.S. public wouldn’t be focused on any single foreign country’s experience with Islamic terrorism, but would instead be concerned mainly about the national (U.S.), and then secondarily the global international, problem — no one foreign country. Every one of the perpetrators, so far as I was able to determine from the news-reports, has been fundamentalist Sunni (affiliated with, or else inspired by, known fundamentalist Sunni terrorist organizations). In none of the 54 instances was any connection at all indicated to the Shiite terrorist organization, Hezbollah, which group focuses solely against Israel, nor connected to any other Shia organization.
Here are those 54 incidents (and for the basic details about each one, see that wikipedia list of all 479 attacks), all of which would reasonably be referred to by the phrase (if used by an American) “radical Islamic terrorism,” if any terrorist attack would be referred to by that commonly-used-by-Trump phrase:
U.S., 11 September 2001, 4 hijacked airliners
U.S., 4 July 2002, shooting at Los Angeles International Airport
Indonesia, 12 October 2002, Bali bombings
Russia, 23 October 2002, Moscow theater hostage crisis
Russia, 12 May 2003, Znamenskoye Grozny suicide bombing
Indonesia, 5 August 2003, Marriott Hotel bombing in Mega Kuningan, South Jakarta
Turkey, 15-20 November 2003, Istanbul bombings
Philippines, 27 February 2004, sinking of Super Ferry by Abu Sayyaf
Turkey, 9 March 2004, pipe-bomb attack in Istanbul restaurant
Spain, 11 March 2004, Madrid train bombings
Russia, 31 August 2004, Moscow Metro bombing
Russia, 1-3 September 2004, Beslan school hostage crisis
Indonesia, 9 September 2004, Australian Embassy bombing in Jakarta
UK, 7 July 2005, London bombings
Indonesia, 1 October 2005, Bali, Jimbaran, and Kuta, bombings
India, 11 July 2006, Mumbai train bombings
India, 13 May 2007, Jaipur bombings
India, 26 July 2008, Ahmedabad bombings
India, 13 September 2008, Delhi bombings
India, 26 November 2008, Mumbai attacks in the financial center
U.S., 1 June 2009, Little Rock recruiting office shooting
Indonesia, 17 July 2009, Marriott and Ritz-Carlton bombings in Mega Kuningan
U.S., 5 November 2009, Fort Hood shooting
Russia, 29 March 2010, Moscow Metro bombings
Iran, 15 July 2010, Zahedan bombings
Egypt, 1 January 2011, Alexandria bombing
Russia, 24 January 2011, Domodedovo International Airport bombing
Egypt, 7 May 2011, Attacks on Imbaba Coptic church
China, 30 July 2011, Knife and bomb attacks in Kashgar
Bosnia and Herzogovina, 28 October 2011, U.S. Embassy shooting
Nigeria, 25 December 2011, church bombings in four cities
Russia, 3 May 2012, Makhachkala attack
Libya, 11 September 2012, Benghazi attack on U.S. Consulate
U.S., 15 April 2013, Boston Marathon bombings
Syria, August 2014, ISIS massacres 700 residents of Deir Ezzor
France, 7-9 January 2015, Charlie Hebdo shootings
Nigeria, 8 January 2015, Baga massacre
Denmark, 14 February 2015, Copenhagen shootings
Nigeria, 26-30 June 2015, Boko Haram rampage kills 200+
France, 13 November 2015, Paris bombings and shootings
Belgium, 22 March 2016, Brussels bombings
Iraq, 3 July 2016, Baghdad bombings
France, 14 July 2016, Nice truck-attack
Germany, 18 July 2016, Wuerzburg knife-hatchet attack
Germany, 24 July 2016, Ansbach suicide-bombing
France, 26 July 2016, Rouen church attacks
U.S., 28 November 2016, Ohio State U. car-attack
Sweden, 7 April 2017, Drottninggatan truck-attack
Egypt, 9 April 2017, Coptic churches attacked in several cities
France, 20 April 2017, Champs-Élysées shooting-rampage
UK, 22 May 2017, Manchester Arena massacre
Egypt, 26 May 2017, Minya shootings of Copts
UK, 3 June 2017, Knife-attacks on London Bridge
France, 6 June Notre Dame knife attacks
100% of those attacks were by fundamentalist Sunnis.
That is not intended to constitute an all-inclusive count of all terrorist instances, but to be instead a count of instances that I, an American, recollected seeing reported since the time of the 11 September 2001 attacks against America, and, thus, as being reasonably what is referred to by Trump’s often-repeated phrase, “radical Islamic terrorism.”
President Donald Trump and King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia sign a Joint Strategic Vision Statement for the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, during ceremonies, Saturday, May 20, 2017, at the Royal Court Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Official White House Photo Shealah Craighead)
The conclusion that I draw from those 54 instances is that U.S. President Trump is himself strongly allied with the chief international funders of what he calls “radical Islamic terrorism”. For example, when ISIS on June 7th did deadly gun and suicide-bomb attacks against Iran’s parliament in Tehran, Trump immediately responded by blaming Iran’s government for that, by saying,
“We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote.”
Later that same day, the pro-Saud, anti-Shiite, CNN reported,
“Iran’s Revolutionary Guards say Saudi Arabia supported ISIS in the deadly twin attacks in Tehran on Wednesday, an accusation likely to infuriate the Saudi kingdom amid high tensions in the region.”
(In other words: if the Sauds attack Iran afterward, they’ll just be doing what the Iranian government should have expected — and the Sauds would not, in that case, be doubling-up on their own hatred and aggression against Iran and against Shia generally, such as in Yemen and Syria.)
Contrast this Trump-response versus the way Iran had responded to the 9/11 attacks against Americans:
(George W. Bush responded to that initiative by Iran, only slightly less hostilely than Trump did to the attacks by ISIS in Tehran. The names of U.S. Presidents change far more frequently than U.S. government policies do. Trump, Obama, and Bush, are merely different brand-names for the same basic governmental product. The U.S. aristocracy remains much the same regardless of the nominal President etc.)
In addition, however, I should note that Trump’s phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” presumes the existence of such a thing as “moderate Islamic terrorism,” and that Trump’s remaining admirers evidently don’t care about, nor even notice, such ugly, or even stupid, implications of this phrase that he often uses. He would be better advised to remove the term “radical” from it. He might as well distinguish between “radical” versus “moderate” genocides, as talk about “radical” versus “moderate” terrorism. But there is no evidence that his followers even notice that ugly absurdity from him.
The evidence is clear and overwhelming, that the U.S. government is allied with the people who fund international Islamic terrorist groups, except for the few Islamic terrorist groups that perpetrate their attacks in or otherwise against Israel. At least in this regard, the U.S. government is clearly anti-American (i.e., against the American people), but the owners of U.S. weapons-manufacturing firms benefit from it, and so too do Israel and the owners of the fundamentalist Sunni countries that are treated by the U.S. government as ‘allies’ but might perhaps more accurately be referred to (along with Israel’s aristocracy) as America’s “masters.”
Just in as this was being written, came the news, “Saudi Soccer Team Refuse To Observe Minute’s Silence For London Terror Attack Victims”.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
Featured image: credits to the owner
