Terrorism is the unlawful use of intentional violence to achieve political aims, especially against civilians. The definition of "terrorism" is a subjective matter. The difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is a matter of perspective, it all depends on the observer and the verdict of history. Professor John Bolt described it by saying: When our guy kills in battle, he’s a freedom fighter; when our enemy does, he is a terrorist. Similar acts get different labels depending on who is doing the labeling. See also Good vs Evil.
If terrorism means the unlawful use of intentional violence to achieve political aims then it also means that all aggressive wars and regime changes waged by the Anglo-American elite are acts of terror. Most scholarship on terrorism tends to ignore state terrorism by Northern democracies, focusing instead on terrorist threats to Northern interests from illiberal actors. The book accounts for the absence of Northern state terrorism from terrorism studies, and provides a detailed conceptualisation of state terrorism in relation to other forms of state violence. The book explores state terrorism as used by European and early American imperialists to secure territory, to coerce slave and forced wage labour, and to defeat national liberation movements during the process of decolonisation. It examines the use of state terrorism by the US throughout the Cold War to defeat political movements that would threaten US elite interests. Finally, it assesses the practices of Northern liberal democratic states in the 'War on Terror' and shows that many Northern liberal democracies have been active in state terrorism, including through extraordinary rendition.
Samuel P. Huntington said that Western intervention in the affairs of other civilizations is probably the single most dangerous source of instability and potential global conflict in a multicivilizational world. One of the main reasons for the increase in terrorism globally are the many aggressive interventions of the western power elite related to power in countries all over the world. It is no secret that the US is involved in state-sponsored terrorism. In 2007 William Eldridge Odom wrote: As many critics have pointed out, terrorism is not an enemy. It is a tactic. Because the United States itself has a long record of supporting terrorists and using terrorist tactics, the slogans of today's war on terrorism merely makes the United States look hypocritical to the rest of the world. See also United States and state terrorism. If fear is a political tool then it shouldn't come as a surprise that terrorism is a political tool as well. An extremely powerful one.

In this picture Zbigniew Brzezinski, second from right, joined top-ranking officials from past administrations at the White House in 1981 to endorse President Ronald Reagan’s bid to sell Awacs radar planes to Saudi Arabia. Left of Reagan we see Henry Kissinger, a very influential foreign policy adviser who was also a frequent member of the Bilderberg Conference and the Trilateral Commission. Zbigniew Brzezinski was an important foreign policy adviser for the Anglo-American power elite who co-founded the Trilateral Commission. He is known to have been personally involved in funding the terrorist organization Mujahideen * which would later evolve into al-Qaeda which would be held responsible for the September 11 attacks. It was part of Operation Cyclone from 1979 to 1989. In an interview on 13 June 1997 Brzezinski said: We were actively and directly supporting the resistance movement in Afghanistan, the purpose of which was to fight the Soviet army. * * In an interview in January 1998 being asked whether he regretted anything about his involvement in supporting terrorism and secretly luring the Soviets into a war in Afghanistan he said: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? This is the mind of the power elite concerning terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic and they don't care for all the civilian casualties along the way as long as they gain power.

The Taliban was a terrorist organization which violently oppressed Afghan people. Before it became Taliban it was the Mujahideen which was supported by the United States in the fight against the Soviet Union. US interest in Afghanistan had to do with Texas oil company Unocal which was one of the key players in the CentGas consortium, an attempt to build the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline to run from the Caspian area, through Afghanistan and probably Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. One of the consultants to Unocal at that time was Zalmay Khalilzad, former US ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations. He was a proponent of US global leadership and in 2014 investigated for alleged money-laundering through his wife's bank account in Vienna, Austria. Assistant Secretary of State Robin Raphel stated in September 1996: The Taliban control more than two-thirds of the country, they are Afghan, they are indigenous, they have demonstrated staying power... It is not in the interests of Afghanistan or any of us here that the Taliban be isolated. * Robin Raphel is also linked to propaganda firms like Cassidy & Associates and USAID which heavily promote US interests in the world. At the time of writing she worked for Nichols Liu *, a multidisciplinary government contracts law firm. In 2014 she was investigated for espionage *.

In April of 1997 the Taliban launched a major offensive ... General Malick, tricked the Taliban and managed to capture almost all of their frontline troops, along with most of their heavy weaponry. It was an utter disaster for the Taliban. The road to the capital, Kabul, was wide open. The Taliban were totally vulnerable and could have easily been wiped out. ... but before the anti-Taliban forces could strike, Assistant Secretary of State Rick Inderfurth and American U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson flew to northern Afghanistan and convinced the anti-Taliban leadership that this was not the time for an offensive. Instead, they insisted this was the time for a cease-fire and an arms embargo. This clearly was a statement of U.S. policy.
In 1997 the Taliban could have been easily defeated, but it was prevented by the US elite. In 1997 a US diplomat told Rashid: the Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did. There will be Aramco [the former US oil consortium in Saudi Arabia] pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that. The US elite supported Taliban in order to further their own interests in Afghanistan which aroused an already suspicious Russia and Iran, which became even more convinced that the CIA was backing the Taliban. Dana Rohrabacher later said: The Pakistanis began a Berlin-like airlift to resupply and re-equip the Taliban, obviously financed with Saudi money. If I knew of this massive resupply effort, certainly the Clinton administration officials who had set up this scenario knew about it.

The resentment of many Pakistanis for the US support of Zia-ul-Huq and for Pakistan's US-directed intervention in the Afghan civil war is typified by the following comment from a Pakistani journalist: "What handsome revenge for America's debacle in Vietnam was the savaging of the Soviet bear in Afghanistan. A handful of Pakistani generals enriched themselves during that momentous struggle. But what did the country get? Guns, violence, drugs and a sea of refugees. All the glory America's, all the recurring costs Pakistan's. Anyone could be forgiven for thinking that history is being repeated." ... The truth is, in US government circles it is viewed as a plus that basic democratic rights have already been suppressed prior to Pakistan being used as a staging ground for an unpopular attack on Afghanistan. Following meetings with government and security officials over the weekend, Pakistani authorities let it be known that they will deal harshly with future anti-US protests.
It is no secret that Pervez Musharraf was a corrupt dictator supported by the United States. The elite of the United States, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia supported the Taliban because it was in their interest.

Ahmad Shah Massoud was a freedom fighter who fought the Taliban. In 1997 there was a good chance to eliminate Taliban, but Robin Raphel told Massoud to surrender to the Taliban. Obviously the United States power elite were not happy with Massoud. In early 2001 Massoud addressed the European Parliament in Brussels asking the international community to provide humanitarian help to the people of Afghanistan. He stated that the Taliban and al-Qaeda had introduced "a very wrong perception of Islam" and that without the support of Pakistan and Bin Laden the Taliban would not be able to sustain their military campaign for up to a year. He warned for Bin Laden from Saudi Arabia, the world's foremost sponsor of Islamic terrorism, and a friend of the United States who according to Massoud's intelligence was preparing a large-scale attack on US soil. On September 9, 2001, two days before the 9/11 attacks, Massoud was assassinated.

In this picture former National Security Advisers meet with President Barack Obama in 2010. Seated at the table, from left, are Brent Scowcroft, Bud McFarlane, Colin Powell, Dennis Ross, Sandy Berger, Frank Carlucci, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, co-founder of the Trilateral Commission. Colin Powell is the criminal best known for selling the Iraq War with fake evidence. These are the kind of people surrounding the US president.
In June 2015 The White House proposed a major program to train and arm moderate Syrian rebels, in a significant expansion of the U.S. role in a civil war that officials fear is bleeding into Iraq and across the region. In July 2015 Barack Obama said we will do more to train and equip the moderate opposition in Syria. So how should we interpret "moderate opposition"? In 2015 Judicial Watch reported that Internally, events are taking a clear sectarial direction. Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [Al-Qaeda Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria. The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition [to the Syrian government] while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime. "Moderate opposition" turned out to be "terrorist organizations". Here we see again how the power elite twist and turn words in order to fool the masses into supporting their cause. Obama is also known for his initially secret CIA torture programme which he cleverly labeled "enhanced interrogation techniques" which made torture sound good. He is also known for his CIA drone strike policy which involves so-called double-tap drone strikes by which a target is bombed, then waiting for 5 to 20 minutes, often while first responders arrive, and then bombing the target a second or third time.

According to Seumas Milne: For the past year, US, British and other western forces have been back in Iraq, supposedly in the cause of destroying the hyper-sectarian terror group Islamic State (formerly known as al-Qaida in Iraq). This was after Isis overran huge chunks of Iraqi and Syrian territory and proclaimed a self-styled Islamic caliphate. ... A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts — and effectively welcomes — the prospect of a "Salafist principality" in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the "major forces driving the insurgency in Syria" — and states that "western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey" were supporting the opposition's efforts to take control of eastern Syria. ... That doesn't mean the US created Isis, of course, though some of its Gulf allies certainly played a role in it — as the US vice-president, Joe Biden, acknowledged last year. But there was no al-Qaida in Iraq until the US and Britain invaded. And the US has certainly exploited the existence of Isis against other forces in the region as part of a wider drive to maintain western control.
The declassified DIA document * reveals that the West supported the terrorist organizations which fought against the Syrian government in order to topple it and install a puppet government.
Syria is a sovereign nation with a sovereign government which is befriended with Russia. It has all right to be so. Of course the western power elite want to eliminate any government that is not in line with their agenda. Hence regime change. Islamic State did exactly what the Anglo-American power elite had in mind for Syria and therefore they supported it.
Interesting to note is that Islamic State never attacked Israel, it's number one enemy. And even after it accidentally did attack an Israel Defense Forces unit why did ISIS apologise to Israel? * And why did US intelligence warn ISIL terrorists before destroying their oil trucks? * And why was ISIS armed with so many US weapons? *
In October 2015 BBC reported that the result is a splintered Syrian opposition, the growth of the Islamic State group and a humanitarian disaster stretching across Europe. *

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An interesting viewpoint about the war in Syria by journalist Eva Bartlett who was actually there in Syria were it happened, unlike most western journalists.

Far from being “the West’s ally in the War on Terror,” Saudi Arabia is in reality the largest exporter of Wahhabism—the severe, ultra-conservative sect of Islam that is both Saudi Arabia’s official religion and the core ideology for international terror groups such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Boko Haram.
It is no secret that Saudi Arabia is the world's foremost sponsor of Islamic terrorism. It is also a very good friend of the Anglo-American power elite since the discovery of oil there. ISIS is financially supported by primarily Saudi Arabia but also Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, strong allies of the United States. Saudi Arabia is also known for its human rights abuses. But who cares about that when money can be made from it?

On 20 March 2018 Trump said that the United States has a zero tolerance for the funding of terrorists, noting that Saudi Arabia has been working very hard on that. He referred to Iran which he calls the world’s leading sponsor of terror. The United States is of course enemies with Iran. In the photo president Donald Trump shows a chart highlighting arms sales to Saudi Arabia, one of the world's largest exporters of Islamic terrorism, during a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office of the White House. Concerning the September 11 attacks 15 of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia, but that obviously doesn't mean anything to the president of the USA. At a commemoration of these attacks in 2017 he said The terrorists who attacked us thought they could incite fear and weaken the spirit. Those who try will soon join the long list of vanquished enemies who dare to test our mettle. Everybody knows that Iraq and Afghanistan had nothing to do with the 9/11 Attacks, but the US invaded these as part of their lucrative war on terror. In the meantime America is complicit in war crimes in Yemen *. The Intercept reported that a highly classified document produced by the French Directorate of Military Intelligence shows that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are overwhelmingly dependent on Western-produced weapon systems to wage their devastating war in Yemen. Many of the systems listed are only compatible with munitions, spare parts, and communications systems produced in NATO countries.

False flag describes covert military or paramilitary operations designed to deceive in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities, groups or nations than those who actually planned and executed them. ... In its most modern usage, the term may also refer to those events which governments are cognizant of and able to stop but choose to allow to happen, as a strategy to entangle or prepare the nation for war.
A false flag attack is an age-old tactic which derives its name from the sea war tactic of deceiving the enemy by sailing under a flag that gave the impression of neutrality or friendship. False flag attacks are acts of terror masterminded by powerful people and then blamed on their perceived adversaries in order to destroy these adversaries and strenghten their own position of power in the world. Because the public is generally opposed to war the power elite who benefit from war sometimes use false flags in order to persuade the people to support their desired war or economic sanctions against their targets.

According to expert Hermann Göring:
Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
Gustave Le Bon, an expert of mass psychology, said:
Thousands of isolated individuals may acquire at certain moments, and under the influence of certain violent emotions - such, for example, as a great national event - the characteristics of a psychological crowd. ... Whatever strikes the imagination of crowds presents itself under the shape of a startling and very clear image, freed from all accessory explanation, or merely having as accompaniment a few marvellous or mysterious facts: examples in point are a great victory, a great miracle, a great crime, or a great hope. Things must be laid before the crowd and their genesis must never be indicated. A hundred petty crimes or petty accidents will not strike the imagination of crowds in the least, whereas a single great crime or a single great accident will profoundly impress them.
After such an event the responsible power elite offer a solution in the form of for example extreme security measures or they start destructive economic sanctions or get approval for their desired war. The sheeple will be in shock and awe and under stress and fear more easily accept their leaders to change existing laws or implement new ones which would otherwise not be accepted. Terrorism as a tactic. It is known that the military and intelligence agencies have authority for black operations and black propaganda and thus also for false flags. Some well-known examples of recent false flags are the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in order to involve the US in WWI, the Reichstag Fire in order for Hitler to take power, Pearl Harbor in order to justify US involvement in WWII, Operation Gladio to terrorize Europe, Operation Northwoods in order to start war with Cuba, Gulf of Tonkin Incident to intensify war in Vietnam, the 9/11 Attacks in order to implement the Patriot Act and start the endless War on Terror. Most likely also the MH17 disaster in order to justify destructive economic sanctions against Russia and possibly a war.

This enlarged conception of the "war on terrorism" allowed the Bush administration to shift the focus of the American response from the al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan to the "axis of evil" countries that had essentially no connection with mega-terrorism, but definitely obstructed the American espousal of global dominance as a goal to be actively pursued.
The so-called War on Terror started after the September 11 Attacks in 2001. The Anglo-American power elite had ignored warnings and had extensive foreknowledge of the coming attacks. This fact alone proves these attacks were a false flag event because the elite simply let them happen. By letting those attacks happen they gave themselves the justification to start their so-called War on Terror by which they invaded parts of the world unrelated to those attacks, but which were rich in resources or in any other way geopolitically important.
Over 940,000 people have died in the post-9/11 wars due to direct war violence. An estimated 3.6-3.8 million people have died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting. Over 432,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the fighting. 38 million — the number of war refugees and displaced persons. *
Howard Zinn said that this war amounts to a gross violation of human rights, and it will produce the exact opposite of what is wanted: It will not end terrorism; it will proliferate terrorism. Neta C. Crawford said that Current U.S. policy and practice in the counterterror war are not just. Professor Robert Jensen wrote: The war on terror ... has taken far more innocent lives ... without making the U.S. public any safer. It is an aggressive war waged for the interests of the elite. If its goal is to end terrorism then the war on terror is a complete failure. But most likely that never really was its goal...

Shortly after the September 11 Attacks in 2001 US president George W. Bush said the following: We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.
Can it get any more hypocritical than the president of the United States? Here the president again makes use of polarization. Saudi Arabia is the world's breeding ground of islamic terrorism. Most of the September 11 attackers were Saudis. But the US did not invade Saudi Arabia, not even question it. It invaded Iraq which had nothing to do with it and killed 100,000s of innocent Iraqi civilians whose family members and friends will surely not become better friends with the West. The United States were founded by means of terrorism and genocide. There are no indigenous American indians left because they were all slaughtered.

On 7 January 2015 twelve people were killed by Islamic terrorists at the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The popular slogan "Je suis Charlie" was adopted by so-called "supporters of freedom of speech and freedom of the press." Of course the world's leaders took this opportunity to try to present themselves as something they aren't.
Jeremy Scahill reacted: This is a sort of circus of hypocrisy when it comes to all of those world leaders who were marching at the front of it. Every single one of those heads of states or representatives of governments there have waged their own wars against journalists.
Patrick Henningsen commented: In terms of free press, authoritarian and oppressive regimes around the world have done far more to censor the world's journalists, overall, than religious extremists. But that's not stopping some of the very perpetrators of this state censorship from joining the millions-strong unity march. ... What was designed as a globally syndicated kumbaya moment, instead gave off the distinct odeur of shameless political opportunism, in what can only be described as the world's biggest-ever photo-junket for what can only be described as some of the world's most unpopular leaders decked-out in $5,000 suits, camel hair overcoats and hipster glasses.

It's not just the blasphemy, it's the hypocrisy. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press? The "crème de la crème" of the western political elite was of course on the frontline at the Republican marches, right in front of the many cameras of their own western media. The march of the leaders was a staged event presented to the world as something it wasn't *. See also Tom Clark's The Lie Behind the Timeline: How 2015 Was Framed.
The Charlie Hebdo march was a march of hypocrites. The propaganda march could be seen on all mainstream media channels. Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not invited so he invited himself, a great opportunity to bolster his "great reputation". He and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas exchanged their typical dirty looks, like little kids. Jean-Claude Juncker was also present, promoted to president of the European Commission after making Luxembourg a tax haven paradise for the super-rich. Of course many other European leaders of some of the world's major arms producers were present to "keep the peace" between Netanyahu and the other clown. Always politically correct Angela Merkel is inbetween trying to look human. Germany sold submarines with nuclear capacity to Israel not long before this event. Germany probably still feels guilty for the extermination of Jews during World War II and tries to compensate for it by selling Israel some war material so its sick psychopathic elite can exterminate more Palestinians and threaten Iran to make the Middle East a better place, right? Much more can be said about these self-styled "fighters for solidarity" but the point has been made.
Can it get any more disgusting than this?