[symple]

It’s an easy way to absolve a nation of guilt if you negate any examples done during war. Our bombings in North Vietnam were entirely immoral and are not less so because we were at war. Though no actual declaration of war was made. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was made up to justify enlarging the war. Does McNamara’s Morons count in your mind as an example? Maybe not since that was done to our own people.

Nevertheless, you should read up on the history of our shenanigans in Latin America. One example: while Americans didn’t do the actual killing and torture of Catholic priests and nuns our proxies did. You should also read up on things we funded the Iraqis to do in their war against Iran. Paying someone to do your dirty deeds is just as bad as doing them yourself. We did shoot down an Iranian airliner and later promoted the captain of the ship. We weren’t at war with Cambodia but did terrible things to that country during the Vietnam war. Bay of Pigs.

Look at who we funded and ended up enabling to gain control of Afghanistan during Soviet Union’s involvement there.

[ethanbond]

Regardless of the ultimate moral judgment, it is obviously not the case that a bunch of civilians dying during warfare is the same as an attack committed solely to target civilian populations during peacetime.

Even granting the premise of “paying is equal to doing,” none of your examples are anything like 9/11. The defining characteristics of 9/11 are obviously these: peacetime, intentionally targeted at civilians, killed a large number of civilians.

The best way to absolve a country of guilt is actually to make divorced-from-reality equivocations so that every less than ideal outcome looks equally evil, equally preventable, etc. The US has done plenty of truly atrocious stuff overseas and at home, silly arguments like “the US committed decades of 9/11-style acts” is counterproductive if your mission is accountability.

[symple]

War is the ultimate act of overt violence. Discounting examples from war is strange. What does it matter to the victims if a piece of paper somewhere declares it a war?

I can’t point to a single act that satisfies your criteria. The U.S. does not wage peacetime violence in the same way that terrorist groups do. We prefer to do the damage over time. We prefer to avoid headline capturing violence. But the victims don’t care and the point I made is not diminished by this. Our reaction to 9/11 was an overreaction. Lots of places have been devastated by U.S. actions and those people haven’t had similar overreactions.

2000 people weren’t killed in a single day in Nicaragua in the 80s. We did it over time and in a sustained way. The Nicaraguans don’t obsess about how this changed the whole world or desire to go on a 20 year killing spree in reaction to what we did.