From Central Asia to Mesopotamia to the Eastern Coast of the Mediterranean, the United States — the world’s sole superpower — and its proxies continue to actively wage military warfare on Brown peoples of the impoverished world in the name of Freedom, turning our globe into a place of increasing economic disparity in the process. The government calls this, its latest belligerency, the “War on Terror.” Despite the official government claim that militant Islamists hate us for our “Freedom” (to buy what we can’t afford and be blamed for our own oppression), I think most of us know, at least on some level, that the United States is partly responsible for the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11. Now, I’m not arguing that 9/11 was an inside job or that Bush and Cheney knew about or even planned the attacks. To do so would be to absolve Al-Qaeda of its guilt, not to mention let the Democrats off the hook. Rather, I’m arguing that deliberate U.S. foreign policy has created the conditions that make such violence inevitable.

Since the government does not work for the people but rather for big business (hence the world capital-ism), it should come as no surprise that on the international front neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are seriously considering complete withdrawal from Iraq or Afghanistan, not to mention severing ties with the Israeli apartheid government (President Carter’s word, not mine) or empowering the marginalized at home or abroad.

Let’s make no mistake about it: it is not for Freedom or Democracy that we are plunging entire nations into chaos. It is, as it has always been, for money and power.

Need proof? Consider the case of Mohammed Mossadegh, the democratically elected Iranian prime minister who nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later, British Petroleum or BP) and was promptly overthrown by the joint British-US Operation Ajax in 1953. Need more? Let’s not forget the case of Jacóbo Arbenz, the democratically elected president of Guatemala who began implementing agrarian reforms to empower the peasantry and was subsequently overthrown, in 1954, by a CIA-orchestrated coup. More yet? There’s also Salvador Allende, president of Chile, who was democratically elected for his moderate socialist platform and ousted on (ironically) Sept. 11, 1973 in a coup planned a right wing faction of the Chilean military and, once again, our good friends at Langley, Va.

Is the United States government then the protector of true democracy or the protector of the capitalist class’ own economic interests? Indeed, Freedom is a farce, a guise employed by the elite class to sell imperialist wars to the people of the United States.

The U.S. support of the many undemocratic monarchies in the Muslim world also illustrates this point. The governments of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, both U.S. allies, are reactionary monarchies. In addition, the U.S. supported the secular dictatorship of Saddam Hussein for eight years during the Iran-Iraq war before turning on its ally when Kuwait began drilling for petroleum underground at an angle that crossed the border into sovereign Iraqi soil. “Far fetched,” you say? I recommend The Fire This Time by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark who explains this backstabbing as a part of the U.S. agenda to prevent a regional power (i.e. Iraq or Iran) from rising to hegemony and hiking oil prices — no doubt what any democratic nation would do.

In two of the above four cases, the then-U.S. presidents were Democrats (JFK and LBJ). Thus it becomes apparent that the problem is endemic to the U.S. system, and we cannot blame the Republicans for everything after all.

To properly understand militant Islamism, and thus the falsehood of the War on Terror, this newest form of terrorism must be placed in the proper context: contrary to the official history, Brown and Black peoples have never complacently accepted the logic of European ideology. Rather, they have resisted — as they continue to do — the genocidal violence of the West and the patronizing arrogance with which it attempts to justify itself. One cannot justify the murder of millions.

If we simply turn off CNN or BBC, which dilute and manipulate the message of the Al-Qaeda, and listen to the unabridged version, we see that Islamist militants do not hate us for our Freedom; rather, they hate the U.S. for the mass murder of Muslim of all ages, colors and creeds. They hate the U.S. for supporting repressive monarchies and the Jewish apartheid state. They hate the U.S. for constructing military bases on holy Muslim soil. In fact, some of the largest military bases in the world are not on U.S. soil to defend us, but on the Arabian Peninsula to defend U.S. oil interests.

In the words of Mr. bin Laden, himself: “Why did we not attack Sweden?” The answer is obviously because Sweden does not fight wars of aggression or prop up puppet governments.

Come this November, when the minority of U.S. citizens who vote will decide between the Republican and the Democratic presidential nominees, the question should not be, “Who are you voting for?” but, “What difference does it make?”

Because both the Democrats and the Republicans work for the same oil companies, defense contractors and the investment bankers who finance them, the answer is, “It doesn’t.”

As Hip Hop M.C. Talib Kweli says:

“You try to vote and participate in the government/

But the motherfucking Democrats are acting like Republicans.”

Evan Baker-Smith is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at ebsmith@cornellsun.com. Illuminating Egalitarianism will appear alternate Tuesdays this semester.