Do they really hate us?
    Americans see their country as a wonderful place - the land of the free and home of the brave, the savior that rescued the world from Hitler and Tojo, the source of uncountable technological advancements, purple mountains, amber waves of grain. How could anyone hate us?
    They don't hate us. I began traveling abroad in 1967. I've lived abroad, and visited 44 countries. For each person who treated me badly, there have been at least a hundred who have been friendly and helpful.
    But they really, really hate the US government.
    Again, the country and the government are not the same thing. Long ago, foreigners made this distinction, and rarely held the individual American responsible for the actions of his government. They knew the typical American knew little about what federal officials were doing in other countries.
    But that pleasant circumstance is ending, as the destruction of the Twin Towers showed.
    Foreigners can't do much damage to the federal government, so they're coming after the ordinary American - you and me, and our families.

They Backed Any Tyrant
    Born on a continent that is separated from the rest of the world by two oceans, US politicians have always been exceedingly ignorant and naive about the feelings of foreigners.
    Almost from the day it was created, Washington has had a policy of backing any tyrant who claimed to be pro-US. These "pro-US" cutthroats have received money, weapons, ammunition, almost anything they needed to suppress their own populations and attack other countries.
    For decades, victims of these "pro-US" thugs tried to change the behavior of the US government. Mass protests at the gates of US embassies became routine.
    The demonstrations had little effect, so the increasingly frustrated victims of the US leviathan state began to hit back against the individuals represented by that state. These acts of revenge were dubbed...

...Terrorism
    The official US explanation for the "terrorism," has been, they hate us because we are good and they are bad.
    Actually, I'm convinced that in most cases the attackers do not hate the people they are killing, any more than US bomber crews hated the civilian men, women and children they were killing in World War II.
    If a foreign government is a threat to your family, you hurt it in whatever ways you can, including killing the people who work for it and pay taxes to support it.
    The "terrorists" would love to be using aircraft carriers, cruise missiles and B-1 bombers on Washington, but they don't have them, so they use what they have.
    Also, most US government facilities have been "hardened," leaving only "soft" civilian targets to hit.
    In other words, like armies all through history, the "terrorists" use what they have and hit what they can.
    If you happen to own a few spare Ohio-class Trident missile submarines you'd like to donate to Washington's enemies, I'm sure these people would launch a full-blown textbook war against us and lose all interest in so-called terrorism.

Part of the Solution
    The ancient US policy of supporting any tyrant who claims to be pro-US has ignored the fact that each victim of these tyrants has had family and friends, and these people retaliate.
    Part of the solution, therefore, is ethics. The US government must stop supporting governments that harm the innocent.
    Notice that the ethical approach is also the pragmatic approach. An ethical foreign policy helps minimize the number of people who hate us and try to kill us.
    Here is an updated article that appeared in my March 2002 U.S. & World Early Warning Report.

Blowback     In my opinion, the most important war in US history was the Spanish-American War in 1898. After defeating Spain, Washington set up a puppet government in the Philippines.     To install this puppet, the US Army massacred 220,000 Filipino men, women and children.1 This was the precedent for Washington's massive and routine interventions in foreign countries. Interventions prior to that had been less frequent and smaller in scale.     During the 20th century, US forces were sent into foreign conflicts no less than 188 times.2     Since 1898, every president, both democrat and republican, has ordered American troops into far corners of the globe, usually not to defend liberty, but to train, equip or provide other kinds of help to the armed forces of crooks and tyrants. These Washington-backed terrorists have included Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Manuel Noriega in Panama, President Diem of Vietnam, the Shah of Iran, Marcos in the Philippines, Batista in Cuba, Mobutu in the Congo, Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan, General Park in Korea, Suharto and Habibie in Indonesia, and many others.     China's Chiang Kai-shek in World War II murdered twice as many innocent civilians as the Japanese,3 yet President Franklin Roosevelt backed Chiang - he sent the Flying Tigers to help him.     The Japanese retaliated by hitting Pearl Harbor.     The CIA calls that blowback.     Blowback is the root cause of the "terrorism."     President Roosevelt had also frozen Japanese assets,4 sent cruisers and destroyers to invade Japanese home waters,5 and cut off Japan's supplies of oil, iron and other raw materials.6 Yet, I have never heard of anyone asking after the Pearl Harbor attack, why do they hate us?     Roosevelt boiled Washington's foreign policy down into 15 words when he famously said of the Nicaraguan cutthroat Somoza, "he may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."     Ours. Part of our empire. One of our enforcers.

Bush Admitted It
    For 20 years prior to 9-11, my readers were warning their friends that Washington was provoking a world war with Muslims. On August 7, 2006, George Bush admitted 9-11 was caused by Washington.
    Boasting to reporters about his plan to democratize the entire world, Bush said it "flies in the face of previous policy." Then, defending this strategy, Bush (accidentally?) admitted that "as a result" of the previous US policy, "anger and resentment bubbled forth with an attack, with a series of attacks, the most dramatic of which was on September the 11th."⁷
    He repeated this admission, although less bluntly, on August 31st, then on September 5th, said it again, crystal clear: "For decades, American policy sought to achieve peace in the Middle East by pursuing stability at the expense of liberty. The lack of freedom in that region helped create conditions where anger and resentment grew, and radicalism thrived, and terrorists found willing recruits. And we saw the consequences on September 11th, when the terrorists brought death and destruction to our country."
    07-Aug-06, President Bush and Secretary of State Rice Discuss the Middle East Crisis
    31-Aug-06, President Bush Addresses American Legion National Convention
    05-Sep-06, President Discusses Global War on Terror
    How much did you hear about his confessions in the mainstream press?

Humanitarian Aid
    Few Americans know much about any of this. When someone speaks of foreign aid, they think the money goes for causes that are humanitarian. They assume the recipients are the general populations of those countries.
    In some cases, foreign aid money does go to the poor and starving, but many billions of dollars have also gone not to the people but to the governments who terrorize them.
    Washington's attitude has been, yes, we gave weapons to the local dictator, who killed your wife and children, but that was a long time ago. Be reasonable, let bygones be bygones. We're giving you a new house and free medical care. Why do you hate us?

We Don't Know What's Good For Them
    The gangsters backed by Washington have hurt millions of innocent civilians, so today Washington has a lot of enemies, and these enemies have begun to retaliate. We cannot possibly kill "terrorists" as fast as the White House and Congress can create them.
    How do we end this?
    Certainly not by spreading democracy, which is George Bush's plan. We don't know what is good for others, and we have no right to cram majority rule down their throats.
    When an American talks about freedom, he means, among other things, free speech, a free press, and freedom of religion. We can speak, publish, and worship as we please.
    In many parts of the world, freedom means, we are free to wipe out the neighboring village before they do it to us.
    Feuds and vendettas that go back centuries are one of the reasons millions of foreigners are perfectly happy to be ruled by people such as Saddam Hussein. They want a strong, ruthless leader who will instantly kill the people down the road if these people threaten them.
    Their neighbors are equally afraid, and want the same thing, security.
    Again, we don't know what's best for others. We haven't, as the saying goes, walked in their moccasins.

If Democracy Isn't The Solution, What Is?
    Washington must swallow its pride and give up its global empire.
    The president must go on TV for a historic speech, something that could put him on Mount Rushmore.
    He would begin by giving ten gruesome examples of Washington's foreign policy - perhaps some of the cases in Part Two of this report. This confession will shock Americans into realizing they have been lied to about the games the federal leviathan plays abroad.
    Then the president should apologize, and announce a 180-degree change in course. Washington will make a total break with its past. From now on, its foreign policy will be based on the ethical principles that underlay the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights.⁸
    This will mean, among other things, that Washington will become neutral and stop meddling in other nations. The armed forces, which are now in more than 100 countries, will be withdrawn and brought home to defend the American homeland.
    Again, we will no longer try to cram democracy down other people's throats.
    We don't know what's good for others.
    We need a total break with the past, a fresh start.
    Now, before we go on to the list of specific examples of the damage the U.S. government has done in other countries, here are two more things that must change in order to get us out of the war.
    By themselves they are probably not sufficient, but I believe they are prerequisites, the war cannot end without them.

The Root Cause of the Problem: The Flaw in the Bill of Rights
    No one admires the American founders more than I do, but they were human, they made mistakes.
    One of the worst mistakes is in the Bill of Rights - or, rather, it has been omitted from the Bill of Rights.
    The main body of the Constitution is the operating instructions, the owners' manual, for the federal government.
    The Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments. The main body says, this is what the politicians can do to us. The Bill of Rights says, this is what they can't do to us.

The Pronoun Problem Copyright © 2006 by Richard Maybury     In school we were all taught to use the word we when referring to the government. If the government does something, then "we" did it.     This means that when the government harms an innocent person, we are all guilty.     The pronoun "we" makes it easy for foreigners who have been hurt by the government to blame all of us, and to target all of us.     The very first step in finding a solution to terrorism and the war, and all the economic and financial problems resulting from them, is to be very careful with the word we.     If government officials take an action that harms the innocent - and, incidentally, it does this every day in dozens of countries - well then, if you use the word we when referring to the government, you are setting up yourself and your family for retaliation.     You didn't do it, they did it. You are not responsible unless they contacted you and followed your personal instructions.     The very first step in solving the terrorism problem and the war problem is to solve the pronoun problem.     If I make a mistake, then I am responsible; you aren't, unless you were a willing participant. I have no right to use the word we, I can only say I.     The same rule should apply to the government. You are not responsible unless you were a willing participant in what they did. We are not guilty, they are, and we do not deserve the punishment, they do.     The government isn't we, and it isn't us , it's them, and when they help a foreign tyrant commit torture or murder, we are not deserving of punishment, they are.     Again, we cannot solve the terrorism problem or the war problem until we first solve the pronoun problem. Put the blame where it belongs.

    Why is there a Bill of Rights?
    Because the founders didn't trust the government. They created it, but they didn't trust it.
    They studied the effects of political power - what it does to a person's mind - and they were scared to death of it. Jefferson once said of the founders themselves, including himself, that if the people ever became inattentive to public affairs, then "you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves."
    The Bill of Rights was intended to be a leash for the wolves.
    The problem is, the Bill of Rights stops at the border. It does not protect foreigners.
    A politician spends a substantial part of his life trying to acquire power, then when he finally has it, he's hamstrung inside the US.
    Outside the US, he can do anything he pleases. He can even behave like a Stalin or a Hitler, because citizens of foreign countries are not protected by the Bill of Rights.
    As we shall see in Section Two, things US presidents and legislators have done routinely in foreign countries would send them to prison or the gallows if done inside the US.
    So, in order to change course and give America a chance to live in peace and security, we must make sure the Bill of Rights no longer stops at the border.

Foreign Aid
    This article, slightly revised, is from my U.S. & World Early Warning Report, of January 2002:

Ever since the Spanish-American War in 1898, Washington's foreign policy has reflected the best thinking of the finest minds in the nation's top kindergartens.     Seriously, Washington's two prime foreign policy assumptions have been (1) the whole world is divided into good guys and bad guys like a TV cartoon and (2) anyone who claims to be pro-American is a good guy deserving of US aid.     I checked the WORLD ALMANAC for a list of governments that get money, weapons, military training or other kinds of assistance from Washington. Then I checked the Freedom House web site to see how many of these governments permit enough liberty that an American might regard their countries as free.     Washington gives aid to 114 governments. Of these, 20 permit a sizable measure of liberty. Most of the people on this planet fear their governments with an intensity few Americans can imagine.     Those who are victims of the 94 crooked and brutal regimes backed by Washington have little good to say about America. They have been complaining about Washington's foreign aid since 1915, but few of us have listened.     For 86 years, the victims have been sinking our ships, hijacking our airliners, blasting our embassies and killing our troops.     Rarely did Americans ask, why do they hate us? Only since 9-11 has that question been in the forefront of public debate.     In our government-controlled schools, we were taught that we are simpletons who should trust foreign policy to the "experts." Never be critical. My country right or wrong - which, in actual practice means, my government right or wrong.     If you were wondering why the World Trade Center no longer exists, now you know. Foreign aid.     You also know why this war will not end any time soon. The victims of Washington's foreign meddling intend to make us suffer as much as they've been suffering, and Washington has no intentions of admitting it has spent 103 years setting the stage for this disaster.

Blankets and Schools
    Americans are taught to think of foreign aid as, blankets and food to victims of earthquakes and hurricanes. Or, hospitals and schools for villages in Africa.
    Some of the foreign aid is of that type, but even this is really meddling in the politics of other countries.
    In each case of humanitarian aid (as opposed to military aid), the ruler of the country that is being helped is able to take credit for arranging the US aid. This gives him a huge public relations advantage over his opponents. The aid can easily sway an election or destroy popular support for bands of revolutionaries.
    All the tyrant's enemies then become our enemies. They start looking for ways to get revenge on us - on everyone represented by the US government.
    The only solution to the humanitarian aid problem is to transfer all the government's humanitarian equipment, personnel and offices to private providers, such as the Red Cross. The Red Cross is not a government, it cannot represent anyone but itself.

Hubris run amok
    After the Soviet empire collapsed, the Clinton gang had the opportunity to break out of this insane pattern of meddling in other countries, but they were too arrogant to do it.
    In fact, they escalated it. In 1998, Clinton's secretary of state Madeline Albright announced, "If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see farther into the future."
    The Book of Proverbs warns, "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."
    Will an apology and halt to foreign meddling really end the war?
    By themselves, probably not, but I am sure the war cannot end without them.

Please help
    The government is not the country. Most people around the world still admire America, and they like Americans as individuals, but they hate and fear the US government.
    Part Two is a list of specific examples why. Warning: this will be painful reading. The extent of the US-backed bloodshed and destruction is shocking, so don't read about it if these sorts of things cause you severe emotional stress (which is why the mainstream press won't touch them with a ten-foot pole).
    If you do read it, and you agree that others should, too, then I hope you will help spread the word.
    This is an ongoing project that will probably never be complete. We invite your comments, and especially any additional information about the U.S. government's foreign meddling. (We need specific sources, so that we can check the veracity.)
    As you read, bear in mind that if you are an American, the federal government - democrats and republicans alike - did these things claiming to represent you and your family.