Three years later, the number of people “against us” around the world has grown exponentially. In ruling out the peaceful settlement of disputes in Iraq, Palestine, and elsewhere, American policies legitimized and provoked terror. In pursuit of these objectives, the United States turned to force, rushing to war in Iraq and condoning, if not supporting, draconian Israeli policies in Gaza and the West Bank. He saw a free Iraq serving as a catalyst for peace in the region, setting in motion progress toward a truly democratic Palestinian state. In the aftermath of 9/11, the president told the world you are either “with us or against us.” He then offered a far-reaching moral vision for the Middle East with democracy as the core ingredient. Originally intended for internal use only, blowback increasingly characterizes global reaction to Bush administration policies in and out of the Middle East. Chalmers Johnson’s excellent book, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, helped popularize the term. Blowback is a term invented by the Central Intelligence Agency to describe the unintended consequences of policies kept secret from the American people.
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