Violence... The story so far

After WWII, America was toasted in the East for bringing down the rapacious Japanese Empire and in the West for tipping the scales against Hitler. Warning signs foretelling the age of terror were few and far between, too insignificant to appear in history books, much less in the media of the time. What is happening now was beyond anyone's imagining at the time. In his last days in office, Eisenhower warned us of the Military-Industrial Complex. By then, the making of a New-Age economic empire was well along, and Ike himself had a lot to do with its birth. Each little step seemed right and obvious--at first, only in retrospect in the light of events, did this new pendulum take on tarnish and shards. No longer are we automatically toasted as saviors; rather our nation is roasted in too many circles who have only terrorism as a weapon to fight back against economic exploitation.

Presidents came and went as the political pendulum swung back and forth. Our national passion for combat and profits was so great, none could resist following the inexorable path to world dominance. Cliches heard and read frequently became part of our collective subconsciousness. "American Interests" picked up where "54-40 or fight", "Manifest Destiny", "Remember the Maine", "Your Country Needs YOU", and "Remember Pearl Harbor" left off. Like robots we marched forward, certain that the "American Way" was destiny, not just for us but for the world.

Consistent with this subconscious arrogance, American foreign policy since 1946 has turned us into those "Ugly Americans", the kind indigenous people resent. The degree of resentment among the powerless nations became so great that it eventually spawned terrorism not only by the ideological fringe but by thinking people as well. How this series of events came about is the subject of this series.

None of what is posted here is all that new with us. Critical voices gradually moved out of their wilderness roots to the mainstream in the Third World, with the First World still taking little note, because our "Special Interests" have become, well, just too special.

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