What did Reagan and bin Laden have in common?

Osama bin Laden has been killed, bringing closure to families affected by terror, as well as re-emphasizing American power abroad and validating the “war on terror.” Yet, too many U.S. leaders have gone without trial, and civilians terrorized by their actions have not received justice.

For bin Laden, the killing of innocent civilians was a tactic for achieving a larger political goal. His ideology, based on radicalized religion coupled with anti-Western rhetoric, provided the underlying logic that “justified the means.”

Following bin Laden’s example, I define terrorism as “acts of physical violence against civilians by an individual or organization who views killing civilians as necessary or central to the achievement of an ideological and political goal.” Given this definition, Ronald Reagan and bin Laden had a lot in common — both were terrorists.

During the Salvadoran civil war, the military and death squads killed nearly 100,000 civilians. The U.S. sent a billion dollars in weapons, training and economic support, knowingly bolstering a military regime involved in widespread killings of innocent people.

Reagan claimed the U.S. was supporting a mission against “Marxists,” aiming to ensure that “democracy” and “Westernization” prevailed in El Salvador. U.S. officials justified sponsoring torture, kidnappings and systematic slaughter of innocent Salvadorans by the greater political considerations of the Cold War.

Reagan supported terror against a civilian population at a scale 30 times that of bin Laden’s killing of U.S. civilians. To this day, few Salvadoran officials involved in terrorism have been brought to justice and not one U.S. official has been tried. For those families whose loved ones were killed, justice has not been served.

The same can be said of Dick Cheney and other leaders over the past 10 years. The statistics on civilian deaths in Iraq at the hands of the U.S. are appalling (low estimates in the hundreds of thousands). The cycle of terror (the killing of civilians in service of a “greater purpose”) by the U.S. continues unabated.

The scale of U.S.-sanctioned “terrorism” against civilian populations makes bin Laden look like a petty pocket thief. When will U.S. terrorists be held accountable?

Benny Amon
Davis

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