I wrote an article the other day that asked a pretty straight forward question: What do you think the US response would be if terrorists smuggled in a nuclear weapon into New York and set it off killing tens of thousands of people.
The responses were quite surprising. Hardly anyone actually answered the question. I was interested in hearing various response scenarios. Instead, the comments area got filled with people preemptively blaming the whole thing on the United States. Apparently, in the eyes of some people, there is no deed too terrible that the US doesn't deserve it.
You can almost imagine the kind of thinking that resulted in the holocaust. The holocaust in Europe occurred because the general population in the areas it took place in did nothing to prevent it. More recent historians have made the case that the general population had slowly concluded that "the jews" had it coming. That this was all retribution for a whole host of perceived injustices.
In the mind of some, for instance, various vague acts by the United States serve as ample justification for the wholesale murder of Americans by Islamic terrorists. When I asked what those acts were in another article, the answers included "The Bay of pigs invasion, Interference in Chile, support of Israel". Ah, yes, I can see the connection between Cuba and Islamic terrorists flying air planes into the WTC in an effort to murder as many Americans at once as possible.
Psychologically, this holocaust-like mentality is pretty easy to demonstrate. If you reverse the scenario, the US still remains the bad guy. For example, if the US response after 9/11 was the wholesale destruction of Islam, the US remains the bad guy. None of them say "Well, they deserved their destruction!" When Americans die wholesale, they say "Ask yourselves why they hate you" If the US retaliates for a very specific murderous act in kind, they don't say to the targets of this wrath "Ask yourselves why they hate you." No matter what the scenario is, the US is the bad guy.
If you hate something enough, you can justify any heinous act. Those who hate the United States are able to justify virtually any horrific act done to Americans. Yet, without a trace of irony, can turn around and passionately argue how wrong it would be to respond in kind. Americans, in their view, just need to accept that they're part of an evil nation and suck it down until Karmic retribution has been completed.
Which is, of course, absurd and contrary to human nature. If someone comes up to you and pops you in the nose and kicks you in the groin, your first reaction is not going to be to think about why you deserved it. Similarly, one is not going to look fondly at someone claiming to be your friend who explains that you really deserve to get beat up by this guy because you slighted him indirectly in some unintentional way long ago. In the real world, if someone comes up and physically assaults you, you're likely going to have to fight back.
I suspect some people would find it absurd if I wrote "Perhaps those abused POWs in Iraq need to ask - why did their guards hate them?" Because that's how absurd most Americans find the suggestion that 9/11 or some hypothetical future nuclear terrorist attack was our fault.
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