It's 'accidental' in the same way a piss drunk driver kills someone accidental. Is gross and willful negligence that results in death still murder?
This is a good point, but it ignores the fact that all war produces atrocity. There is no such thing as a good war, like those we see on TV. In real life, they are universally disgusting. There is no way to divorce warfare from collateral damage.
The problem is that sometimes countries are forced to engage in war. I would say the US is now reaping what it had sown during the 70's and 80's, but that doesn't change the fact that the West is now in a position where it is forced to defend its populaces from religiously motivated militants. As soon as that became the case, nations like the US became obligated to engage in warfare. (The first duty of any legitimate government can be argued to be protection of its people. All other legitimacy can be argued to derive from that.)
Of course, the US wasn't trying to end or "fix" the problem, just contain it. We in the West just don't have to stomach to do all the dark things that full commitment to a war would entail.
I say this as an opponent of the wars we had in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Western terrorism arguably scarier, beucase these are not brainwashed, back-water extremists, but the cold and calcuated attacks by western educated elites. Look at how the U.S bombed that hospital killing many innocent men, women, and children.
1, What are you supposed to do when people who plan, organize, and commit mass murder hide amongst civilians? 2. How are you supposed to be sure what looks like a hospital is indeed that? 3. How are you even supposed to know what every structure at location X or location Y (as indicated from raw intelligence reports) is supposed to look like? "Raw intelligence" the stuff that authorities are often forced to act on when dealing with evens that short term are notoriously hit or miss. 4. How are you supposed to be sure you wont harm anyone innocent when you don't have access to good enough information and when the technology doesn't allow the destruction of only a single room in a whole building? 5. And what if you do know there are many civilians in the building you're thinking about blowing up but there is a veritable Hitler in there too? You can't wait for him to leave. Maybe you're confronted with a life or death deadline, or maybe you have all the time you need but know that you loose people like this if you try to keep track of them after they leave.
Also, what about the war in iraq and dubyas Weapons of Mass Destruction? Was that just another innocent accident with well-intentions? Of course, not.
Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. But your certainty in the lack of information is no more valid than those who are certain in the existence of a god they've never met.
I would say the odds are it was based in negligence. Humans are negligent all the time, they are stupid all the time, they act on things they think they know when they're really just ignorant, they look for the facts to prove their prejudices, but very few Humans wake one day saying "today is a good day to murder people in cold blood."
Anyone who believes America is intervening in the middle-east with a heart of gold is naive as fuck.
You're creating a straw man argument, there. No one (at least not Harris or Chomsky) is in any way saying that the US government is or was acting with a heart of gold. To argue against that position as if it's a claim Harris has made is entirely disingenuous.
Harris has, on the other hand, argued that powers such as the US and Israel do not implement all the military horrors at their disposal whilst Islamists do. He's argued that even Israel has shown a level of restraint that Hamas lacks. Now, if you want to rebut arguments like that (arguments Harris has actually made), by all means, please do. There are plenty of ways to go back and forth on that perspective. But, please, don't reduce a debate with nuanced perspectives on both sides to one of black and white. It's thinking and rhetoric like that which is utterly ruining American politics and governmental effectiveness.
Politics is the religion of the modern age. While many are no longer fooled by false spiritual claims, too many of us continue to assert false certainty in areas for which we have little more than dogma.