By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, May 4, 2026
My name is David Swanson. I’m recording this at the request of the Association for Defending Victims of Terrorism, an Iranian NGO.
The word terrorism in the corporate media where I live in the United States means violence by someone against whom violence should be used. In other words the very concept of terrorism is an appeal to the use of terrorism while deluding oneself that one is opposing terrorism. Another word for terrorism is war, something most governments prepare for, threaten, or engage in, including the Iranian government. But no other government comes close to that of the United States in terms of investment in and frequency of use of war. And it may actually help us in understanding that reality to use the word terrorism.
When the U.S. blows up a school, killing 156 people, of whom 120 are children, it’s only a tiny fraction of the killing, injuring, traumatizing, impoverishing, and destroying. It’s not more acceptable when the victims are older. It wouldn’t have been less acceptable if done at close range with knives instead of a missile. It would not be acceptable if done to members of a military who remain human beings and not fair game for mass murder. But it is not a matter of our distorting emotions to recognize that when you blow up a school, children who attend the surrounding schools become afraid to go to school — in other words, terrorized. When you blow up a variety of types of structures, you spread the terror further.
In U.S. corporate media and the U.S. government, we aren’t supposed to call the world’s greatest purveyor of violence a terrorist organization. If we oppose one of its wars it’s supposed to be because the war raised the price of gas, or the war hurt the stock market, or the war didn’t do enough damage to the supposedly threatening enemy, or the war wasn’t over fast enough, or the price of jet fuel hurt tourism, or the war got one of the people who matter — the people from the United States — killed. But this is the opposite of morality, not just because it’s valuing only one type of person, but also because the gas and the jet fuel will eventually kill us all if the wars don’t do it first.
Let’s be honest, benevolent omnipotent aliens who recognized that we could not be reasoned with would probably start the preservation of the planet by closing the Straight of Hormuz, the very thing brought about by this war and the undoing of which then quickly became the excuse for continuing the war. If all the money being dumped into wars and militaries were put into reparations for wars and sanctions and into building a global system of sustainable energy production, no one would complain about leaving the oil in the ground, not dropping it from the sky or spilling it into the sea or burning it at the unimaginable rate at which we burn it.
The wars prevent us from cooperating on the non-optional crises, divert our resources, and directly destroy our natural world, our historical treasures, our homes and loved ones — and people we would love if we ever met them. The bigotry generated by wars, even among fierce opponents of many other sorts of bigotry, is incredible. People will tell you with a straight face that they prefer air wars or drone wars because in those wars nobody gets hurt. Who counts as nobody? A lot more than just 120 little children. But war poisons our societies and our governments.
Wars most closely resemble, among all other phenomena, hurricanes, floods, and volcanic eruptions. The main difference is how clear the causes are, and the clear actors who have committed the crime. You can no more win a war than you can win a hurricane, as Jeanette Rankin said, but Trump now says that unless I tell you he’s winning this war I’m committing treason. Yet I’m the one who wants to avoid generating enemies, starting a nuclear war, driving the climate to inhabitability, or burning up the money needed to provide food, housing, healthcare, and education in the United States and the rest of the world.
Do I criticize the U.S. government? Not all of it. Not the impeachment clauses, not the 25th amendment, not Article I, not the treaties that the Constitution makes the Supreme Law of the Land, not the freedom of speech.
Do I support some other government? No, they’re all pretty awful. But they aren’t improved by murdering little children. One need only imagine how horrifically catastrophically awful the U.S. government would be right now if those children had been killed in the United States by a foreign government. Unless we evolve a bit before that happens, none of us will survive it.
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