Rogue Terrorism Bad, State Terrorism Good

     President Obama has vetoed JASTA, the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, brought about by strenuous efforts on the parts of families of 9/11 victims who seek to sue the Saudi Arabian government for alleged participation in the 2001 terror attacks.
     The Saudi government has lobbied, successfully, to prevent Obama from signing the legislation.  They've threatened financial punishment.  Their position in the Middle East as an adversary to Iran no doubt influenced Obama.  As with police departments who kill people without sufficient cause and then cover up the true circumstances, the Saudis have secrets about 9/11 to hide.  Why else would they react with threats of heavy financial punishment against the United States, if previously withheld information, like the unpublished "twenty-eight pages" of the 9/11 Report relating to Saudi Arabia, were released?  There's talk now that these pages will be released, though in what form remains to be seen.  Redacted text points not just to names needing to be kept secret for unknown purposes, but also to possible crimes covered up by governments and their intelligence agencies.
     Perhaps they just mollify 9/11 families, an unwise-to-offend group, but Hillary Clinton, we're told, would sign JASTA if she were president.  Donald Trump says he would, too.  What's wrong with them?  Don't they realize a massive state can't operate by doing the will of its people?
     The House and the Senate (comprised of those who represent the people) have approved the legislation.  Right wing hardcase, Senator John Cornyn, said he looks forward to Congress overriding Obama's veto, "[to] provide these families with the chance to seek the justice they deserve and send a clear message that we will not tolerate those who finance terrorism in the United States."
     I think he meant "...against the United States," not "...in..."
     Cornyn, like many politicians, speaks of sending "a clear message," but by his words doesn't make the message clear.  Based on past American actions in "fighting terrorism," the message is a bloody one, of the "shoot first, ask questions later" variety, an in-the-moment practice familiar to numerous police departments when dealing with Black citizens.
     Killing is policy.  If Cornyn and his Legislative Branch colleagues truly seek to be intolerant of "those who finance terrorism in the United States," as he put it, they seem oblivious to their own vote to send Saudi Arabia a billion dollars worth of arms so that this suspicious, albeit anti-Iran, government can continue its obliteration of Yemenis in a lopsided war supported by most Arab nations and the United States, led by the man who doesn't want the desert Kingdom upset with us.
     Israel, too, receives three and a half billion dollars a year from the United States, taxpayer-provided, as ordinary Americans help Netanyahu kill Palestinians.  Blood money, indeed.
     Surely, despite what Cornyn was clumsily trying to actually say, the U.S. government and military finance terrorism, and practice it.  In 2003, to give one example, the propaganda lead-up to "Shock and Awe," the intense bombing campaign near the beginning of the Iraq War, was meant to put the Iraqi population, government, military, and civilian, on edge, and in fear.  Spreading fear with political intent is terrorism.  American news networks assisted the spread of "Shock and Awe," creating an eager sense in the U.S. of watching a hungry tiger about to pounce on a rodent.
     Using U.S. drones over Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq, is state terrorism.  Rogue terrorism, committed by non-state groups, is a practice condemned often as "evil" by state terrorists like Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Henry Kissinger.  It's like a parent, pissed off at his teenager, saying, "You didn't ask my permission to borrow my car."  Terrorism must be practiced in a certain way, by nations only.
     The real reason Obama vetoed the bill isn't because he wants to kiss Saudi royal ass.  He's mainly concerned about the blowback that could result, wherein diplomats and servicemen may be subject to future lawsuits, with JASTA as a precedent.  He, as would any other president of either party, seeks to prevent American foreign policymakers (including himself) from being legally vulnerable to foreign nationals who have suffered at the hands of those making and enacting U.S. foreign policy.
     Early in his first term, Obama made it impossible for anyone in the Bush administration to be prosecuted for war crimes.  Obama is hardly a left-winger.  I suspect, too, he anticipates also receiving legal coverage from his successor for his war crimes.  As an aside, I saw a still photo of Michelle Obama, smiling brightly, hugging George W. Bush at a recent event they both attended.  Killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis after lying about weapons of mass destruction doesn't seem to prevent the current First Lady from enfolding a mass murderer in her arms.
     Her husband's demonstration of his priorities by vetoing JASTA, screwing the families of those killed on 9/11, reveals the realities of the compromises in decency made by those who achieve the presidency: a job fit in these war-driven times for contemptible hellbound shits.

                                                                             Vic Neptune