I’m going to ask this out loud because someone has to, and I’m tired of waiting for someone else to do it. This isn’t rhetorical. I don’t do gotchas and I don’t do bait. I’m asking this as a serious inquiry, using the same definition we apply to everyone else. No exceptions, no exemptions, no special pleading. Before you answer, I want you to sit with the supporting evidence I’m about to lay out before you. Engage your critical thinking. Use your discernment.
Then ask yourself the question: Is the United States a terrorist organization?
The U.S. State Department defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.” The broader federal definition under 18 U.S.C. § 2331 includes acts that “appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or “influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.”
Read that back. Slowly. Out loud if you have to.
So what does it mean?
It means I had to sit with it for a minute. Because when I ran that definition against the actual record, the supporting evidence is obvious.
The Things We Did
We firebombed Dresden and Tokyo. Hundreds of thousands of civilians. Single campaigns. Japan attacked a military installation. We responded by burning civilian cities to the ground. Tokyo alone, one night, one firestorm, 100,000 dead. Germany was already losing. We bombed Dresden anyway. The stated justification was “infrastructure.” The actual mechanism was mass civilian death and we knew it going in.
We dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki — not military installations. Cities. Civilian populations. Japan was already sending surrender signals through back channels. The Soviet entry into the Pacific war alone may have ended it. But, we dropped atomic bombs anyway on two cities we’d deliberately left unbombed, so we could measure the damage cleanly. Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t military targets. They were a demonstration. Our government called it “necessary.”
We carpet-bombed Cambodia in secret. Cambodia didn’t attack us at all. They were neutral and weren’t even in the war. Nixon and Kissinger bombed them anyway, in secret, without Congressional authorization, with falsified military records to cover it up, because North Vietnamese supply lines crossed their territory. The bombing radicalized the survivors, destabilized the country, and created the conditions for the Khmer Rouge genocide that followed. An estimated 150,000 killed in the bombing alone. The U.S. called it “strategy.” Kissinger got a Nobel Peace Prize.
We funded and trained death squads across Latin America through the School of the Americas. We overthrew democratically elected governments in Iran, Guatemala, Chile — because their economic policies threatened U.S. corporate interests. None of them attacked us. Every single one of them was minding their own business trying to govern their own country. Mosaddegh nationalized Iranian oil. Árbenz redistributed unused land to Guatemalan farmers. Allende was democratically elected. We removed all of them. We installed what came after… the Shah, the juntas, Pinochet. We trained the people who ran the death squads, the disappearances, the torture programs, through the School of the Americas. The threat wasn’t to American safety. It was to American corporate interests. We called it “democracy promotion.”
9/11 was real. The attack was real. Nearly 3,000 people died and the grief was real. And then we used that grief as a blank check. We built a torture program — black sites, waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, rectal feeding — and aimed it largely at people who had nothing to do with September 11th. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s own report said so. We called it “enhanced interrogation” because we needed the language to not match the action. Nobody went to prison. The architects got book deals. We called it justice.
But, I’ll also say this, the official 9/11 narrative has questions attached to it that the government spent twenty-five years trying to keep buried. The 28 pages on Saudi government connections were classified for over a decade. I’m not telling you what to conclude. I’m telling you to go look. Use the same discernment you’re using right now.
We drone-strike wedding parties and call it collateral damage.
In Yemen, a U.S. strike hit a procession of vehicles. At least 12 dead. Yemeni investigators concluded they were wedding guests. The U.S. said they were al-Qaeda militants. They were not.
In Nangarhar province in Afghanistan, a 2008 strike killed roughly 47 civilians — the majority women and children — traveling to a wedding. Not a military convoy. A wedding procession.
“Collateral damage” is the official framing. It means the civilians weren’t the intended target, so it doesn’t count the same way. That phrase is doing an enormous amount of work. We invented that language specifically so we wouldn’t have to say what we did. We killed people on their way to celebrate a marriage. We called it an “acceptable loss.”
Then we stayed for the oil.
Run that back against the definition. “Acts intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.” Tell me where the line is.
The Hypocrisies
We designated Iran a state sponsor of terrorism for funding proxy militias that destabilize regional governments. We have funded proxy militias that destabilize regional governments on every inhabited continent. We sanctioned Russia for invading a sovereign nation in violation of international law. We invaded Iraq on fabricated intelligence, killed an estimated 200,000 civilians, and sat before no international tribunal. Nobody was sanctioned. Nobody was tried.
We called the Taliban terrorists for harboring the people who attacked us. Then harbored Luis Posada Carriles, who bombed a Cuban civilian airliner and killed 73 people, for decades. Granted him asylum. Let him die a free man in Florida in 2018.
We call Hamas a terrorist organization for targeting civilians. We supply the weapons currently being used to level hospitals.
The through-line isn’t complicated.
Now the Iran war. In 2018, Trump tore up the Iran nuclear agreement. The IAEA had verified Iran was in compliance. He tore it up anyway.
In 2025, both sides came back to the table. Six rounds of negotiations. Omani mediation. Both governments calling the talks constructive. A sixth round was scheduled for June 15th. Israel struck Iran on June 13th. The U.S. bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities eight days later. Trump had posted that morning that the U.S. remained committed to diplomacy.
In February 2026, they tried again. Oman reported significant progress. Iran agreed to degrade its nuclear stockpiles. Two days later, the U.S. and Israel launched a larger campaign and killed Iran’s supreme leader and several members of his family.
We call Iran a state sponsor of terrorism for funding destabilizing proxies.
Run that back.
Violence that serves American interests gets a different name. Intervention. Liberation. Counterterrorism. Strategic necessity. Violence that threatens American interests is terrorism. The definition is positional. Not moral… Never moral.
So.
Is it? By the definition we apply to everyone else?
100%.
The United States meets the criteria, politically motivated violence against civilian populations, used to coerce governments and populations, carried out by state agents and state-funded proxies. Repeatedly. Across decades. Across continents.
The question was never whether America has done monstrous things. The record answers that. The question is whether we are willing to apply consistent language to consistent behavior or whether we’re going to keep insisting the rules only count when we’re the ones enforcing them.
Because by the definition we wrote, the one we apply to everyone else without hesitation?
We qualify.
I’m not asking you to hate this country. I’m asking you to see it clearly. Discernment isn’t disloyalty. Applying consistent standards isn’t treason. The most patriotic thing you can do right now is refuse to let the people in power decide which atrocities count and which ones don’t. They’ve been making that call for a long time. Look at what it’s cost.
I think this is a question many of us are asking.
The definitions are written by the victors. So due to a clever definition, we are not "terrorists". We are not subnational noncombatants. (I suspect that the US definition has been repeatedly changed in order to prevent definitional "blowback").
But yes we are the baddies and yes we commit clear war crimes. As Mearsheimer said a few days ago, on Nuremburg terms, our leaders would all hang. On multiple counts each.