War on Terror ideology recruited marginalized Americans as cannon fodder for empire

Evidence

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. And fodder that would be left for dead in Iraq, or a slowly dying veteran who would become my friend. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 234

Categorization

• SEED: The inverse framing — democracy that strikes like terror from the Muslim vantage — could anchor an essay on how the same war reads from both sides.