There existed “civilization” and an irredeemably violent creed bent on destroying it. This civilizational paradigm emerged in the ideological engine that drove the War on Terror, summoning Americans living on the nation’s margins, like John, to be sent to a foreign land as fodder for a baseless fight. Fodder in the name of “freedom” that marches like empire, and from the vantage point of the millions of Muslims who have died in its name, “democracy” that strikes like terror.

XREF: Connects to post-9/11 discourse critiques and the notion that counter-terror ideology recapitulates imperial frameworks.

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamopho…, loc. 234