Author Archives: G.S. Griffin

On Homeschooling

Posted on by under Politics

While citizens should have the freedom to homeschool their children, in the same way they should be free to choose private schools over public schools, that does not mean there are no disadvantages to such a choice, to individuals and society at large.

There are some 2 million homeschooled children in the United States today, roughly 3% of students. Parents cite several reasons for homeschooling their children, including the desire to provide “religious and moral instruction,” a “concern about the school environment,” and “dissatisfaction with the academic instruction” at schools. A 2009 Department of Education report revealed 83% of homeschool parents held providing religious instruction as one of their reasons for partaking in this practice, which is largely unregulated — you can teach kids anything, or nothing at all. Almost 70% of homeschool families are white. This is mostly still the white, conservative Christian movement it was when it launched in the 1980s, though it is becoming more diverse: there are more minority families now, more people choosing this route not because of religion but because of factors like racism in schools or the sad state of many poorly-funded city districts. However, the words of President Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council still categorize the phenomenon:

As a homeschooling parent myself, I understand the desire to give children an environment that affirms traditional values. The government has eliminated God from the classroom and too often replaced Him with an anti-life, anti-family curriculum that misses life’s deepest meaning.

Again, parents have the right to think this way and keep their children at home. But the central disadvantage of homeschooling lies in its very purpose. The true danger isn’t that kids will be isolated or socially inept; a few may, but most homeschool children participate in sports, organizations, and other social outlets (though it’s not as extensive as being among peers 8 hours a day or having instant access to a broad array of free clubs, societies, and teams). Children being homeschooled against their will is problematic, as it can breed resentment against parents, but that is not universal either. The real problem is that children are primarily exposed to a single worldview. And of course that is the whole point. The point is to limit knowledge (of science, sex, gays, atheism, and so on) and enforce an extremely narrow perspective — the opposite of education.

We should want our children to learn many different things from many different people. We should seek a wider base of knowledge and perspective. Consider how many teachers one has in a public K-12 education: perhaps 50-60. Each of these teachers has his or her own worldview and life experience and learning, job history, travels, religion, political beliefs, ethnicity, sexual orientation, economic background — and, importantly, degree in education or other academic field. No reasonable person would suggest one or two parents, no matter how well-educated, could provide the depth of knowledge that 60 people with specialized degrees and experience could in chemistry, mathematics, the arts, history, English, and everything else. There is a reason that we see multiple teachers daily from 5th or 6th grade up, rather than just one: covering all subjects in any advanced fashion is a task no one person should have or could possibly be qualified for. And different viewpoints, of course, helps students think deeper and grow more tolerant of others.

This is not to say homeschool education can’t be successful — homeschool students often excel in college and have strong ACT/SAT scores before that, as any child receiving one-on-one, individualized instruction should — but an education will not be as complete or well-rounded if coming from a single person with a single worldview. I write from personal experience. Knowledge will be lacking or denounced, and diverse perspectives unknown. If parents don’t want to teach a subject, for any reason — perhaps they don’t know Spanish or understand calculus, or think sex ed is the devil’s work — they can skip it entirely. And what a shame that homeschooled students have nearly no chance of learning about the world from a Muslim or Marxist, no chance of seeing things from different angles and thinking critically. To me it’s a shame, to others it’s the point. Instead, students get a parent, which at best means instruction from someone less qualified than those collective dozens with actual degrees across all subjects, and at worst outright lies about the world (anti-evolution, anti-climate change) or intolerance toward certain people (homosexuals, trans Americans). One can easily experience high SAT scores alongside many skipped subjects and a blindness to other points of view.

One might make a similar point about the social value of having more extensive interaction with diverse students. Instead of primary interaction with siblings or other homeschooled children who hold the same religious, conservative ideas, wouldn’t it better prepare students for a diverse world, and help them think critically from multiple viewpoints, if they interacted daily with Hindus, atheists, and African Americans? This is not to say homeschooled students don’t meet and befriend such kids at scouts, ballet, or football, but public school classrooms provide much longer, broader interactions, in an academic environment. There is value in that.

We value the integration and interaction of public schooling over homeschooling for the same reason we value integration and interaction over racially segregated classrooms. As I write in my book:

Integration is our hope because it is only through interaction that we come to know the Other. Separation and isolation is a breeding ground for misunderstanding, misjudgment, fear, and hostility. Interaction is diminishing arrogance and eradicating hatred at every moment. White soldiers of the Civil War forsook prejudice and assisted their black comrades to relocate when the cannons finally quieted because they had served with and befriended those men of color. Religious fundamentalists come to accept homosexuals when they find themselves sitting next to each other and conversing. Young students’ fear of special needs children fades away the longer they share a classroom. Integration serves a moral and social purpose.

The public school classroom provides the most direct interaction of diverse students, encouraging acceptance and understanding. The primary reason to reject homeschooling is the primary reason to support public schooling.

Public schooling is a precious creation. Our tax dollars should provide equally and adequately funded schools that are free and open to the public, contingent only on geographic location. Geographic location is not perfect, as our living arrangements and thus our schools are still very much divided by race and class, but it provides the best opportunity for students to learn with and from others of all political persuasions, religions, sexual orientations, races, income levels, and more. Interaction and integration will breed peace and understanding, as it always does. That is what I want my tax dollars to build and what I think students need to experience, not private, corporate-controlled, or home education. There are still many other challenges, such as eliminating high-stakes testing or expanding democratic control of standards, but public education is worth preserving if we desire a more tolerant society.

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Is Relative Morality More Dangerous Than Objective Morality?

Posted on by under Religion

“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.”

Psalm 14:1 neatly summarizes the anti-atheist stereotype held by many people around the world, and further laid the foundation thousands of years ago for this modern Christian belief. It says so in the bible, thus it must be true. While some people of faith trust that the nonreligious are just as moral as they, others believe atheism makes one more likely to commit unethical acts or even that no one can be good without God.

Having already examined how deities are not necessary to explain morality nor to justify moral decisions, and having cleared up confusion concerning objective morality versus objective truth, it seems relevant to address the idea that relative morality (humans alone deciding what is right and wrong) is so much more dangerous than objective morality (right and wrong as allegedly dictated by God and outlined in holy books).

First we will look at theists’ “relative morality in practice” argument and then move on to the theoretical or philosophical question of which is preferable, relative or objective morality. However, let us be clear from the outset that consequences have no bearing on whether something is true or false. Christians hope everyone will believe in objective morality because otherwise we’ll all kill each other and civilization will burn. Naturally, we should instead believe something is true because there’s evidence for it, not because there would be dire consequences if we did not believe (the argumentum ad consequentiam fallacy). There is, of course, no actual evidence for objective morality.

The “in practice” argument often centers around the atrocities of Hitler, Stalin, and other mass killers. “These atheists were responsible for the worst genocides in human history,” thus any morality devoid of gods is dangerous prima facie. 

This falls apart for several reasons.

First, one notes the personal views of the worst despots are sometimes misconstrued. Hitler repeatedly professed his Christianity in his books and speeches, often to explicitly justify oppressing the Jews; he also publicly criticized the “atheist movement” of the Bolsheviks. Privately, however, he made clear he was an enemy of Christianity, calling it an “absurdity” based on “lies” (Bormann, Hitler’s Table Talk). “The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity,” he said, because it led to Bolshevism. “Both are inventions of the Jew.” Christianity would be “worn away” by science, as all “myths crumble.”

However, anti-Christian is not necessarily atheist. Joseph Goebbels wrote that while Hitler “hates” Christianity, “the Fuhrer is deeply religious” (Goebbels Diaries). Hitler said in private that

An educated man retains the sense of the mysteries of nature and bows before the unknowable. An uneducated man, on the other hand, runs the risk of going over to atheism (which is a return to the state of the animal) as soon as he perceives that the State, in sheer opportunism, is making use of false ideas in the matter of religion… (Bormann)

Hitler said to companions, “Christianity is the most insane thing that a human brain in its delusion has ever brought forth, a mockery of everything divine,” suggesting a belief in higher powers.

And while some of Hitler’s policies attacked the Catholic Church and German Christianity in general, only those who stood up to the Nazis, like some church leaders and Jehovah’s Witnesses, were in danger of extermination. And Hitler also persecuted atheists, banning most atheist groups, such as the German Freethinkers League. Again, fear of the link between atheism and Bolshevism was a factor.

With no real evidence Hitler was an atheist, what of Stalin?

The Soviet dictator’s case is more straightforward. He became an atheist as a youth, while studying to become a priest (also what a young Hitler wanted to do). “They are fooling us,” he said of his teachers. “There is no god” (Yaroslavsky, Landmarks in the Life of Stalin). “God’s not unjust, he doesn’t actually exist. We’ve been deceived” (Montefiore, Young Stalin). Later, he explained that “all religion is something opposite to science,” and oversaw “anti-religious propaganda” to eradicate “religious prejudices” (Pravda interview, September 15, 1927). Such efforts were meant to “convince the peasant of the nonexistence of God” (Stalin, “The Party’s Immediate Tasks in the Countryside” speech, October 22, 1924). As implied above, Communism in the Soviet Union typically embraced science and secularism.

Stalin thought religion was “opium for the people,” an exercise in “futility” that wrought “evil” (Hoxha, With Stalin). “The introduction of religious elements into socialism,” he wrote, “is unscientific and therefore harmful for the proletariat” (Stalin, “Party News,” August 2, 1909). He favored the “struggle” against religion. He also said he did not believe in fate, calling it a “relic of mythology” (Stalin, interview with Emil Ludwig, December 13, 1931). In terms of policy, Stalin shifted from a relative tolerance of religious freedom to a reign of terror against the Russian Orthodox Church and other faith organizations in the 1920s and 1930s. Countless priests, monks, and nuns were exterminated (100,000 between 1937-1938 alone; Yakovlev, A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia).

We could go on, digging into the views of other tyrants. But moving forward to the second point, can it be reasoned that, all other factors remaining the same, Stalin would not have harmed anyone had he believed in God? If Hitler had been a Christian? It is logical to posit Stalin’s disbelief was a contributing factor to his holocaust against his own people, even the primary factor in his massacres of religious leaders, but considering what believers in God (and Christ) have been capable of throughout history it is difficult to conclude piety would have stopped Hitler’s war, the Holocaust of Jews, Roma, and homosexuals, or Stalin’s mass murder of political enemies, kulaks (wealthy peasants), and ethnic minorities (such as the Poles). Would faith really have cured the imperial ambitions, extreme racism, fanatical patriotism, authoritarianism, lack of empathy, and power lust of these men? This is the problem with arguing that atheism was anything more than a contributing factor, at best, to (some) of the worst crimes of the 20th century. There are countless other examples of horrific violence committed by men who were unquestionably religious yet exhibited the same evil, and whose actions had a much stronger connection to their faiths than Stalin or Hitler’s actions had to their more secular views (that is, faith was the primary factor, not a contributing factor).

The crimes of the sincerely religious are vast and unspeakable, stretching not merely a few decades but rather millennia. If we could step back and witness the graveyard of all who were killed in the name of God, what would that look like? How many millions have been oppressed, tortured, maimed, and killed because “God said so”? To please the gods? To spread the faith?

Look to the atrocities that no thinking person believes divorced from faith. The 700-year Inquisition, the torture and mass murder of anyone who questioned Christian doctrine in Europe or refused to convert in the Americas and parts of Asia. The 400-year witch hunts of Europe and North America, the execution of women supposedly in league with and copulating with the devil. The 1,900-year campaign of terror against the Jews in Europe, the “Christ-killers.” The Crusades, bloody Christian-Muslim wars for control of the Holy Land that spanned two centuries and killed millions. The European Wars of Religion during the Reformation that lasted a century (Thirty Years’ War, Eighty Years’ War, French Wars of Religion, etc.), killing millions. And these are just the major wars and crimes against humanity of Christians from Europe! (See “When Christianity Was as Violent as Islam.”)

We could look at Arabian Islam, from the bloody conquest to establish a caliphate across the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain to the murder of infidels, from the Shia-Sunni wars to the terrorist attacks of the modern era. We could examine the appalling executions and genocide conducted by the Hebrews, according to their holy book. We could study the human sacrifices to the gods in South American and other societies. We could investigate today’s Christian-Muslim wars and the destruction of accused witches in sub-Saharan Africa. The scope of all this so large, encompassing all people who believed in a higher power in all cultures throughout all human history. The crimes of 20th century tyrants were horrific, but is there really a strong case that they could not have occurred on just as large a scale had the tyrants been more religious?

You will notice that all these atrocities were more closely connected to the faiths of the perpetrators than the atrocities of Hitler and Stalin were to their anti-Christian or secular views. The Jews were not killed in the name of atheism. Hitler’s attempt to conquer Europe was not an anti-Christian campaign. Stalin wanted to destroy religion, but few would suggest that was his primary goal, ahead of eradicating capitalism, establishing Communism, and modernizing Russia into a world power. Secular beliefs may have contributed to atrocities, but unlike these other examples they were not the primary factors. If belief or non-belief only need be contributing factors to credit them for crimes, we could also look at religious persons who committed crimes against humanity that weren’t closely motivated by or connected to faith.

Doing so makes faith guilty of any crime committed by a person of faith. And why not? If the False Cause Fallacy can be applied to atheists it can just as easily be applied to theists! (Same with the Poisoning the Well Fallacy: these atheists were evil, so atheism is evil; these people of faith were evil, so faith is evil.)

The Ottomans committed genocide against the Armenians from 1915-1922, killing 1.5 million, 75% of the Armenian population. Prime Minister Mehmed Talaat was its principle architect, and because he was a Shia Muslim it must have been a belief in a higher power that enabled him to carry out this act. The Rwanda genocide of 1994 was not a religious conflict, but some Catholic faith leaders participated — a crime the Pope apologized for this year. Their belief in a god must be credited. Radovan Karadžić, president of Republika Srpska and a Serb, orchestrated the genocide of Muslims and Croats in 1995, during the Bosnian War. He saw his deeds as part of a “holy war” between Christianity and Islam. Would he have refrained from mass murder had he been an atheist? Would the old butcher Christopher Columbus? Would King Leopold II of Belgium? This Catholic monarch was responsible for the deaths of perhaps 10 million people in Congo. “I die in the Catholic religion,” he wrote in his last testament, “and I ask pardon for the faults I have or may have committed.” This game can be played with anyone in human history, from the Christian kings, queens, traders, and owners who enslaved 12-20 million Africans (which killed millions; see Harman, A People’s History of the World) to the Christian presidents of the United States who intentionally bombed millions of civilians in Vietnam.

One could make the embarrassing argument that those who committed such evils were not actually believers in God (a “secret atheist theory”). Yes, it is difficult to know an historical figure’s true thoughts. But one could just as easily pretend Stalin and others were secretly believers. We have to use the evidence we have.

So you can see how the legitimacy of casual connections is highly important. One who doesn’t care about the strength of such connections could easily attribute Hitler’s crimes to his belief in a higher power! (One could then argue Hitler’s belief was far more dangerous than Stalin’s atheism, as Hitler oversaw the deaths of 11 million noncombatants, versus Stalin’s 6 million — in the decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, researchers have determined the death toll estimate typically associated with Stalin, 20 million, is grossly inaccurate.) It is illogical to blame secularism for being anything more than a contributing factor to Stalin and Hitler’s actions in the same way it is illogical to blame faith for being anything more than a contributing factor to the Armenian, Congolese, or other genocides committed by religious persons. There are many events in history with faith as a primary cause, like the Inquisition, but it cannot be said the Holocaust and the Russian purges were primarily caused by atheism.

Third and finally, one could refute the notion atheists are worse people using scientific research. Children from nonreligious homes were actually found in a 2015 study to be more generous than those from religious homes. A “Good Samaritan” study found religiosity does not determine how likely people are to lend a helping hand. A study on cheating found that faith does not make one less likely to cheat. A 2014 study showed secular and religious people commit immoral acts equally. Some atheists trumpet the fact they are underrepresented in U.S. prisons, but shouldn’t due to the fact atheists are predominantly educated, middle-to-upper class whites, a group that is itself underrepresented. Similarly, some point out nations like the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Japan, and others have some of the highest rates of atheism and lowest rates of crime in the world, but this should be avoided as a False Cause Fallacy as well. These nations are likewise disproportionately wealthy and educated — low crime rates and atheism are byproducts; they likely do not have a cause-effect relationship (but at least those worried about society falling into chaos and crime as atheism spreads can rest easy).

So is the belief in relative, godless morality so much more dangerous than the belief in objective, God-given morality? In practice, it appears not. The capacity for horrific actions in secular and religious people seems equivalent. Same with kindness and other positive actions.

From a theoretical standpoint, however, there are two facts that make relative morality better. They help explain why atheists are not worse people than believers.

First, objective morality has a glaring flaw: it cannot be known. Just as one cannot prove the existence of the Christian deity, there is no way to definitively prove that Christ-ordained right and wrong exists or is the objective standard humanity is meant to follow. Why not Islamic right and wrong? Because one can’t prove which set of ethics is actually objective and god-decreed, each simply becomes one option among many and thus we have to choose among them (it’s quite relative!). Even if you believe in objective morality, there’s no way to actually know what it is. The person of (any) faith thinks he knows but might easily be wrong. “I’ve looked at her with lust in my heart, I’ve done wrong.” Well, perhaps not. It could be the higher power that actually exists doesn’t believe in thought crimes. Saying we should try to follow an objective morality, offered by a particular religion, is not particularly compelling. One cannot know for certain that a religion is true, nor that objective morality is true, nor what it says. Even within religions, the objective standards cannot be fully known — you may know not to kill, but the bible offers no guidance on many ethical issues, such as the age of consent for sex (probably a good thing, considering when it was written). Relative ethics can of course be fully known because we create them for ourselves — and we all know relative morality exists because different individuals, societies, and time periods have different values.

Second, relativity allows us the freedom to make our ethics better. I understand why people of faith see a risk in humans deciding what’s right and wrong, but religion clearly isn’t any better in terms of danger to others (if you ask me why it’s because religion is man-made, so it all makes sense). We have gods saying all sorts of things are right: killing homosexuals, those who engage in extramarital sex, and people who work on the Sabbath (Old Testament); enslaving people and oppressing women (New Testament); waging Jihad on nonbelievers and cutting off body parts for crimes (Qur’an). Well, perhaps humans would like to base what’s wrong on what actually causes harm to others, not what insults a deity, which makes all that killing and maiming wrong and makes things like working on the Sabbath, homosexuality, and sex outside marriage (and porn, masturbation, smoking weed, etc.) ethically permissible. We have the ability to continue to improve our ethics to a point where fewer people get killed for nonviolent “crimes.” Relative morality allows us to move past the absurdities and barbarism of ancient desert tribes. We’ve been very successful at this.

Yes, it also allows us to return to barbarism, with no thoughts of angry higher beings to stop us. Faith-based appeals can prevent barbarism too (“I can’t kill, I’ll go to hell”). But at least we’re free to move in a more positive direction if we choose. Religion doesn’t really offer that. God’s word is perfect and is not to be altered or deviated from; it has been set for thousands of years. Being paralyzed by religious ethics keeps us stuck in the dark ages, from oppressive Islamic societies in the Middle East and Asia to the lingering hysteria in the United States over homosexuality, which is a very natural trait of the human species and other lifeforms. Progress on such matters requires putting aside ancient faith-based ideas of right and wrong (Americans were no longer allowed to execute homosexuals after 1786). The more humanity does so the more safe and free each of us becomes.

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Ben Carson Does Not Do Unto Others

Posted on by under Politics

Ben Carson said in September 2015, “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation,” suspicious of any faith that is “inconsistent with the values and principles of America.” These words exploded in his face, plunging his presidential campaign into a firestorm of criticism from liberals and conservatives alike.

He quickly amended his comments, explaining that he meant he couldn’t support a Muslim candidate who hadn’t “renounced the central [tenet] of Islam: Sharia Law,” under which “homosexuals–men and women alike–must be killed. Women must be subservient. And people following other religions must be killed.” But he acknowledged “that there are many peaceful Muslims who do not adhere to these beliefs” he could support if they repudiated these edicts.

The plot thickened on October 3, when, after the nonprofit Council on American-Islamic Relations called for him to pull out of the presidential race, Carson sought revenge by pushing the I.R.S. to rescind the nonprofit’s tax-exempt status, claiming it violated rules about interfering in a campaign.

Come on, Ben. Your position can be dismissed as absurd the moment you remember that to be an ethical person, you must hold yourself to the same standards you hold others. You must give others the freedom you desire for yourself. The Golden Rule, some call it, a simple idea that is found in virtually all major world religions.

In Christianity, it’s found in the book of Matthew: “Do to others what you would have them do to you.” In Islam, it’s in the Hadith: “Not one of you truly believes until you wish for others what you wish for yourself.” Far older than either of these are the words of Confucius, who said in the Analects, “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.”

If one were to suggest a Christian shouldn’t be president, or a black man shouldn’t be president, Carson would call this what it is: bigotry, hatred, ignorance. It’s amazing a black man is saying something like this. How long ago was it that whites could openly say a black man shouldn’t be president?

And if Christians, most of whom don’t take these laws seriously anymore, do not have to publicly renounce the Old Testament before getting Ben Carson’s support, why should Muslims who don’t take the Koran’s nastiest laws seriously have to?

The fact that extremist Islam is a much greater threat to humanity today makes no difference in terms of ethics. If more Muslims take primitive laws seriously than do Christians, the Golden Rule remains unchanged. Were Christian oppression and terror a greater threat, and Islam the main religion in the United States, peaceful Christians would still wish to run for office without fear of a witch hunt, of Islamic politicians trying to weed out Christian candidates like Ben Carson who have yet to condemn the Old Testament.

Also, one wonders if Carson would approve of a Muslim candidate fighting to see a Christian nonprofit taxed because the nonprofit called for the candidate’s withdraw after anti-Christian remarks.

Simple role reversal is not difficult. Neither is a cursory examination of U.S. laws specifically designed to protect people from the kind of discrimination Carson envisions.

When asked if he thought Islam was compatible with the Constitution, Carson said, “No.” True, edicts about killing non-believers and homosexuals and such would violate Constitutional law, but so would any requirement of religious confession or renunciation. Article VI of the Constitution notes, using several absolutes, that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office.” True, Carson was simply speaking of who he would personally support, not explicitly calling for such an official test. Yet if one can recognize when someone else’s views do not reflect the spirit, and letter, of the Constitution, one should just as easily be able to recognize when one’s own views make the same mistake.

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Snowden

Posted on by under Politics

Edward Snowden wants to come home.

The former National Security Agency analyst says he has volunteered “many times” to cut a deal with the U.S. government that would allow him to return to the U.S. from Russia in exchange for a reduced prison sentence. “So far, they’ve said they won’t torture me,” Snowden said, “but we haven’t gotten much further than that.”

Snowden faces up to 30 years in prison for exposing details of the NSA’s massive domestic spying program two years ago. The intelligence files he leaked to the press revealed the government was keeping records of nearly 2 billion phone calls, text messages, and emails every day. The Patriot Act of 2001 opened the door to this sort of program.

Despite the fact that some Americans labeled Snowden a “traitor,” a massive public uproar against the government spurred by Snowden’s revelations pushed President Obama to terminate the spying program in June 2015.

Yet the charges against Snowden remain, charges filed under the old Espionage Act, used in World War I to throw critics of the war in prison.

The U.S. is willing to cut a deal with Snowden, but it remains to be seen what sort of reduced sentence the government will accept.

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U.S. to Russia: Bombing the Middle East Only Creates More Terrorists

Posted on by under War

On October 2, 2015, Russia began dropping bombs in Syria, which has been engulfed in civil war since an uprising against brutal Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad began in 2011. Over 210,000 have died, and millions of refugees are fleeing to Europe.

Russia claimed to be targeting the Islamic State (ISIS), the extremist group that’s taken over large parts of Syria and Iraq, but the U.S. quickly accused Russia of focusing more on anti-Assad forces (which the U.S. is supporting) than ISIS (which the U.S. is bombing). Russia supports Assad, in the same way the U.S. has spent a century aiding the most murderous dictators in the Middle East and around the globe.

In reality, ISIS is an anti-Assad force, just one the U.S. doesn’t fund and arm. ISIS policy is to overthrow Assad and take the rest of Syria. So the Obama administration is both supporting and bombing anti-Assad forces, insisting it supports only “moderate” rebels.

But a classified Pentagon report from August 2012, exposed this past May, revealed the U.S. supported AQI, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other extremist groups in their fight against Assad (this was later acknowledged by the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency). The report predicted these extremists would combine to form something like the Islamic State, helpful in “unifying the jihad” against Assad, but warning it could “create grave danger” to the region. The military decided to continue supporting the extremists despite this risk.

The U.S. instantly condemned Russia for getting involved, declaring the deaths of civilians under Russian bombs “will only fuel more extremism and radicalization.”

The Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, while insisting U.S. drones were far more accurate than Russia bombers and thus didn’t kill as many innocents, said, “We believe if you inadvertently kill innocent men, women and children, then there’s a backlash from that…. We might kill three and create 10 terrorists. It really goes back to the question of are we killing more than we’re making?”

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Russia was “pouring gasoline on the fire,” warning the bombings would “backfire.”

These were all said with straight faces. If only they were honest warnings against making the same mistakes as the U.S., rather than an unhealthy mix of hypocrisy, historical amnesia, and nationalist lust to control global events. Everything the officials said was true, they just don’t believe it applies to the U.S.

Yet without question violent U.S. foreign policy creates new terror groups. The bloody U.S. bombing and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, which killed over 1 million people, attracted terrorists from throughout the Arab world, some of whom formed Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which later formed ISIS.

After September 11, 2001, intelligence officials warned the Bush administration that violence would breed more enemies. According to foreign policy intellectual Noam Chomsky (Hopes and Prospects), a Pentagon advisory panel, referring to a quote from Bush, said, “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather they hate our policies.” A CIA official in charge of tracking Osama bin Laden called the U.S. “bin Laden’s only indispensable ally” because how our wars fueled extremism.

Abu Musab Al-Suri, an Al-Qaeda strategist, said “the war in Iraq almost single-handedly rescued the jihadi movement.” Acting CIA director Mike Morell said in last month that Al-Qaeda’s “great victory” was the spread of its ideology in the last 14 years.

Looking back even further, bin Laden, originally waging jihad against the Soviets occupying Afghanistan in the 1980s, declared war on the U.S. after U.S. military interventions in the Middle East in the 1980s and 90s.

In his 1996 “Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places” and his 2002 “Letter to America,” bin Laden gave his justifications for violence: U.S. military bases near Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, U.S. support for Israel, the massive death toll of innocent Muslim civilians in Somalia, Lebanon, and especially Iraq during and after the 1991 Gulf War (over 500,000 Iraqi children under age 5 died as a result of economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after the Iraqi army was driven from Kuwait; U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Madeline Albright infamously said, “We think the price is worth it”).

Bin Laden wrote in 2002, “Why are we fighting and opposing you? …Because you attacked us and continue to attack us…. [Y]our forces occupy our countries; you spread your military bases throughout them.”

The rest of the story is easy enough for Americans to remember: Al-Qaeda bombing the World Trade Center, American embassies, and an American warship in the 1990s, and finally the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001.

This backstory does not serve to justify the atrocities committed by Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the like. It illustrates the cause-and-effect relationship of foreign military intervention and terrorism, how violence creates more violence.

Bombing Middle East nations, supporting brutal dictators, and aiding certain factions in a civil war could very well lead to Russia’s own 9/11.

And as for the U.S.? The day after it condemned Russia’s attacks, the U.S. bombed a hospital in Afghanistan, killing 22 people, including three children.

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