You want the ugliest truth? America’s war on terror was never a war against terror. It was a war to reserve terror for itself. To monopolize it. Centralize it. Legitimize it. Brand it. Then criminalize every retaliatory language that might emerge from the ruins it created. That is why Washington never really wants terror eliminated. Terror justifies budgets. Terror justifies bases. Terror justifies surveillance. Terror justifies dependency. Terror justifies the endless American right to arrive anywhere on Earth and call itself necessary. The empire does not fear terrorism. It fears competitors in the business of fear. And that is why it must always remain the largest supplier.

They are terrified of the idea that America might be the villain. Not because it is impossible. But because it would mean they cheered for the villain. Paid taxes to the villain. Saluted the villain. Raised children under the villain’s flag. So they protect the myth. Because the truth would shatter their reflection.

When Eisenhower was asked why the United States did not allow the 1956 Vietnamese reunification elections agreed upon at Geneva, he answered with unusual honesty. He said that if elections were held, Hồ Chí Minh would win with approximately 80 percent of the vote. So they cancelled the elections. Think about that every time an American politician talks about "spreading democracy." They cancelled the democratic election because the "wrong" person would win. They then spent the next two decades killing people to prevent the government that would have been democratically elected from taking power. And they called the other side anti-democratic. This is not ancient history. This is the logic that still governs every "democracy promotion" operation today. Democracy is acceptable when it produces the "right" results. When it does not, you cancel the election, back a coup, fund the opposition, impose sanctions, and call the government that the people actually chose a "dictatorship." Vietnam exposed this logic completely. Not with arguments. With history. With the receipts.

They keep mistaking Iran for a state. It is not just a state. It is a civilization with nerves of steel and memory older than their empires. You do not frighten a people who have already buried kings, invaders, sanctions, and lies. You only remind them who they are.

The American public is not simply lied to. It is tiered. One layer gets comfort. Another gets confusion. Another gets fear. And all of them together create compliance. The suburbs get stability. The poor get chaos. The racialized get surveillance. The migrants get cages. The rest of the world gets drones. And then the whole machine calls itself freedom.

Burn Dimona, burn.

Let's talk about the American soldiers for a moment, because this point is always avoided. They weren't all demons. Most were nineteen years old. Most were poor. Most were drafted, meaning they had no choice. The military took working-class kids, Black kids, Latino kids, kids from rural towns who had never left their counties, and sent them to the other side of the world to fight a war their government lied to them about. And still, Vietnam defeated them. Not because Vietnamese fighters were superhuman. But because they were fighting for something real. Their land. Their families. Their right to exist without foreign soldiers on their soil. The Americans were fighting for an abstraction sold to them by politicians who kept their own children safely in universities through draft deferments. Dick Cheney had five deferments. Joe Biden had five deferments. Donald Trump had five deferments. The men who sent the poor to die had made very sure their own sons would not be among them. This is why they lost. Not because of hippies. Not because of media coverage. Not because of political constraints. Because you cannot sustain a war where the powerful send the powerless to die for reasons even the powerful don't fully believe. Vietnamese fighters knew exactly why they were in those tunnels. The American soldiers, many of them, didn't know why they were in that jungle. That asymmetry of purpose is more decisive than any asymmetry of weapons. And when those soldiers came home, broken, traumatized, addicted, America discarded them. The same government that sent them offered them nothing. They slept on streets. They died by suicide in numbers that exceeded combat deaths. America didn't just lose to Vietnam on the battlefield. It lost to Vietnam and then destroyed its own army afterward. That is not a superpower functioning as advertised.

Every American invasion begins with the same lie: This one will be quick. This one will be clean. This one will restore order. Then comes the body count. The amputees. The funerals. The flags folded over boys who died for someone else’s profit. And the soft, pathetic voice of empire asking how this could have happened again.

The United States called Vietnamese resistance fanaticism because it could not comprehend a people fighting for something other than money, prestige, or imperial reward. That is the deepest weakness of empire. It thinks everyone has a price because it has one. So when Vietnam kept fighting through bombs, poison, hunger, and death, America could only interpret that through pathology. Madness. Extremism. Brainwashing. No. It was called loving your country more than you fear their weapons. And that remains one of the most dangerous forces on Earth.