USA kills 18 in terrorist attack on Pakistan

State terrorism in action

While the US bemoans the potential terror threat of Iran, it kills 18 people (including women and children) in a (state) terrorist attack on Pakistan. It justified this attack by saying it was aimed al-Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri (it initially, wrongly, claimed to have killed him). If Iran had done something similar we can be sure of what the US response would have been but because America had done it, the murders are reported matter-of-factly and not as the crime it most surely was.

The US military tells us that most of its victims were terrorists. How it knows that is a mystery. What is true is that someone has taken a decision to attack a civilian area, knowing that innocent lives will be lost and that these people were expendable in the name of a greater goal. Is that not why terrorism is denounced by our rulers? Are not the people of Pakistan terrorised just like people in London after July 7th? Which suggests that the state does not object, in principle, to the mentality or morality that produces acts of terrorism, but simply to having a rival.

Why state terrorism is not denounced in the same manner as non-state terrorism is obvious -- any act becomes good when "reasons of state" require it. That is why legal and moral considerations are cast aside in cases like these – such considerations only have utility when they can be used to further elite interests.

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