Infoshop.org

With the tragedies of September 11, 2001, where terrorists attacked and destroyed cherished symbols of America, it became apparent that these acts were yet another example of the proverbial "chickens coming home to roost." In other words, U.S. foreign policy decisions over the decades have finally come back to kill Americans in the home country. The military experts call this phenomenon "blowback."

"the unintended consequences of policies"
-- Chalmers Johnson

"The chickens come home to roost"
--Malcolm X, at the time of the Kennedy assassination.

Blowback Strikes [September 18, 2001 / Counterpunch]
I was reminded of the horror I felt when I learned about how the Shah of Iran was installed in a U.S. sponsored brutal coup that resulted in the deaths of over 70,000 Iranians from 1952-1979. And the continuing shock as I learned that the Ayatollah Khomeni, who overthrew the Shah in 1979, and who was the U.S. public enemy for decade of the 1980s, was also on the CIA payroll, while he was in exile in Paris in the 1970s.

Symbols of oppression
The harder and more crucial question is why. Why does the US continue to be a target for Islamist attacks? The US marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, the World Trade Centre in 1993, the al-Khobar bombings in 1996, the USS Cole bombing last year, what is it about the US that makes it a magnet for Muslim militants?

U.S. War on 'Terror' Faces Weight of History
As Americans struggle to come to terms with the ``why?'' of Tuesday's devastating attacks on New York and Washington, a number of experts on Islam point to what they see as decades of neglect and misguided U.S. policy toward the Muslim world.

Americans Feeling the Effects of 'Blowback' [2000]
Our intelligence agencies--the CIA and its rivals in the Pentagon--have a history of creating neologisms to describe our world that cover up more than they reveal. There have been lofty coinages like "host-nation support," meaning foreign countries pay to base our troops on their soil, and military jargon like "low-intensity warfare" that repackages the most brutal strife in antiseptic language.

Blowback [1996]

The CIA poured billions into a jihad against Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, creating a militant Islamist Abraham Lincoln Brigade believed to have been involved in bombings from Islamabad to New York. Is Bosnia next?

Sen. Orrin Hatch on CIA-backing of Bin Laden: "It was worth it"
From the 1998 MSNBC report.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/190144.asp

Indeed, to this day, those involved in the decision to give the Afghan rebels access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry continue to defend that move in the context of the Cold War. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee making those decisions, told my colleague Robert Windrem that he would make the same call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do subsequently. "It was worth it," he said.