On Blowback

Blowback is a term originating from within the American Intelligence community, denoting the unintended consequences, unwanted side-effects, or suffered repercussions of an overt or covert operation that fall back on those responsible for the aforementioned operations.

Couple of times a year or less, there's a terrorist attack against the West, usually in Europe but occasionally spanning the globe, including lone wolf attacks in America. These are invariably carried out by solo terrorists or small cells of like individuals. They mostly have a common thread: hatred of the West for waging war on Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa. And wage war we do sending tens of thousands of murderous bombs on imagined bad guys each year, killing thousands of innocents as well as intended targets, in violation of the Nuremberg prohibitions against criminal war and without any semblance of sanity. Just yesterday, the US admitted that 'opps', one of its bombs offed one hundred civilians in Mosul, But you'll never hear any US agonizing lamenting the horror we visited upon dozens of families there. These atrocities occur much more frequently than the blowback from the folks we inspire to inflict revenge.

Our responsibility for 'blowback' attacks goes beyond inspiring them. We create the training ground for these perpetrators to plan there attacks. Salman Abedi, the 22-year-old son of Libyan immigrants, who killed 22 concert-goers in Manchester, UK, was the product of the US and UK overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya. He was living in a radicalized Muslim neighborhood in Manchester, having returned to Libya several times after the overthrow of Muamar Gaddafi, where he came under influence of previously outlawed and fiercely suppressed radical jihadist groups, which our criminal intervention in Libya gave free rein to operate. Libyan strongman Gaddafi warned Europe in January 2011 that if they overthrew his government the result would be radical Islamist attacks on Europe. European governments and their US puppet masters paid no heed; but now have to mop up blood and body parts in Manchester, a result of inevitable blowback.

That's blowback. Besides ending the West's slaughter of innocents over there, ending our perpetual wars could end the slaughter of innocents via blowback over here.