The Asinine Argument: They Hate us for Our Freedom

The Asinine Argument: They Hate us for Our Freedom

Former President Bush insulted our intelligence when he told us we were attacked by terrorists because of our freedom, and most major media, being official parrots for the government, merely repeated the Presidents line. Never would they dare ask or question his asinine reasoning, but many folks bought into the utter nonsense and it it’s still repeated today, but rarely challenged by mainstream media.

Mainstream media refused to focus on the content of the note written by the Boston Marathon bomber while in hiding, shortly before being captured. It said “you stop killing our people and we will stop killing yours”; pretty simple. This week a US drone in Afghanistan took out 34 people attending a funeral; surely the relatives of those dead now “hate” us, but not because of our freedom, and surely the relatives of all the dead in 8 wedding parties that we took out, also hate us, but not for our freedom. It was General McChrystal who said, for every innocent we kill, we create 10 enemies. So by slaughtering wedding parties and funerals we are exponentially creating new enemies every day. One has to wonder if that is by design. The irrational and insane, but perhaps intended decisions of US foreign policy, can be seen and illustrated in the microcosmic example of our relationship with Egypt, which by the way, is not one of the 14 nations we have bombed since 9/11. That said, meet one of our best friends, Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who overthrew a democratically elected leader named Morsi. Below is a partial list of his brutality.

* July 8, 2013: Egyptian security forces shoot 53 Morsi supporters in front of the building of the Republican Guard in Cairo.

* August 14, 2013: The army and police storm two camps of protestors and kill more than 1,000 people, among them many women and children. Humans Rights Watch identifies the “massacre” as the “worst incident of illegal mass killing in the modern history of Egypt.”

* January 25, 2014: On the third anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution, military and security forces kill more than 100 opponents of the regime during demonstrations.

* March 24, 2014: On a single day of hearings in the largest mass trial in Egyptian history, 529 people are sentenced to death.

* April 28, 2014: In another mass trial, 683 more people are sentenced to death in less than 15 minutes.

* May 15, 2015: Morsi himself and more than 100 other co-defendants are sentenced to death.

* May 16, 2015: Six of those convicted are hanged. Amnesty International strongly condemns the trial and points out that the confessions of the accused were extracted under torture.

That is just a small part of al-Sisi’s reign of terror. Anyone opposing his regime in Egypt who is not killed can expect to be arrested and tortured. According to Amnesty International, in the last two years 41,000 people have disappeared into the country’s prisons. Protests and strikes are prohibited by law. Independent media is suppressed, and parties and organizations that criticize the regime are forbidden, but he is our guy. How do you think that sits with the Egyptian in the street?

This dictator is our man, and is supported by the US government who gives him billions worth of military weapons so he can insure and maintain his ruthless oppression of the Egyptian people. People don’t hate us because we are free, they hate us for many legitimate reasons, like the casual manner in which we kill innocents and the willingness to support and arm countless ruthless dictators who kill innocents daily.



By Joe Clifford

Joe Clifford lives in Rhode Island.