You gotta wait for it to be declassified. Syria was likely CIA funded. Same with Libya. Just wait a bit. It all comes out after everyone's stopped caring.
Are you speaking about Syria and Libya today that was a result of the Arab Spring in multiple Arab countries, which took everyone including CIA by surprise? Do you really believe the CIA is capable of something on that scale?
Syria is just as complicated if not more so. It turned into a proxy war between the US and Russia and don't forget ISIS and the many different factions who have received funding from multiple sources.
How many people have been killed in the US this year causing and because of the protests at the hands of government and extremists? I don't think we'll be getting a NATO bombing anytime soon. I also can't picture that happening in Nigeria.
If it took the CIA by surprise, why were Syria and Libya on the short list of countries that General Wesley Clark identified as regime change targets in 2007, three years before the Arab Spring?
Because that's a wish list vs. a "we assume this will happen/are actively working on it list"? I'm pretty sure the CIA also shortlisted every Eastern Bloc state in the 80s for regime change. Doesn't mean the SU fell because of the CIA.
It also acted as a starting gun for every other country on earth to create and/or massively expand their cyber warfare capabilities. Sparking a new arms race for the 21st century, normalizing acts of (cyber) aggression against foreign infrastructure during peacetime.
Assuming the conventional wisdom about the event is accurate:
A state military attacking a perceived threat to the national security of that state (while at the same time doing its damndest to make sure nobody knew about it) is pretty clearly outside the definition of terrorism. It fits squarely into espionage / warfare.
None of the terrorism boxes get ticked. It wasn't a splashy, overt thing meant to instill fear. It wasn't carried out against emotionally-charged targets attempting to incite, nobody claimed credit, etc.
Everything adverse that happens is not terrorism. The term has kinda worn itself out, which is bad, because that word invokes a whole bunch of executive power shifts.
Well, a lot of the turmoil in the Middle East is at least partially (I'd argue mostly) to blame because of the US.
Al Qaeda was trained by the CIA. I think it's relatively accepted that there were no WMDs in Iraq, so that entire invasion/war could be classified as terrorism. There are countless drone strikes with civilian casualties around the world. Whether or not you agree with why we did it, the CIA is credited with Stuxnet (it's terrorism even if you think this is one of the "good" ones).
There are certainly more, but let's not pretend like the US isn't intimately involved in directly inserting itself into international affairs illegitimately.
You should read your links and learn the differences between middle eastern extremists groups. The mujahideen are not Al Qaeda. Most people say the Taliban are trained by the CIA. But even that’s not technically correct. Taliban are also not Al Qaeda.
"Haqqani - one of bin Laden's closest associates in the 1980s - received direct cash payments from CIA agents, without the mediation of the ISI.
"This independent source of funding gave Haqqani disproportionate influence over the mujahideen."
"Haqqani and his network played an important role in the formation and growth of al Qaeda, with Jalalhuddin Haqqani allowing bin Laden to train mujahideen volunteers in Haqqani territory and build extensive infrastructure there."
From a more extensive page linked from there:
"Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, an associate of Bin Laden's, was given visas to enter the US on four occasions by the CIA [...] Rahman was a co-plotter of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing."
"Afghan Arabs 'benefited indirectly from the CIA's funding, through the ISI and resistance organizations [...] at an estimated cost of $800 million in the years up to and including 1988'"
"The Guardian alleges that the CIA helped Osama bin Laden build an underground camp at Khost, which bin Laden used to train Mujahideen soldiers."
In a 2004 article entitled "Al-Qaeda's origins and links", the BBC wrote:
"During the anti-Soviet war Bin Laden and his fighters received American and Saudi funding. Some analysts believe Bin Laden himself had security training from the CIA."
"Two-time Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto said Osama bin Laden was initially pro-American [and] Robin Cook, Foreign Secretary in the UK from 1997–2001, wrote, 'Throughout the '80s [Bin Laden] was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis'.
And what do the Saudis have to say about it?
Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia stated (in the wake of 9/11):
"He [Osama bin Laden] came to thank me for my efforts to bring the Americans, our friends, to help us against the atheists, he said the communists. Isn't it ironic?"
A war that was started on incorrect pretenses is not the same thing as terrorism. Among other things, the US did not deliberately target the Iraqi civilian population, and made their best efforts to avoid civilians being harmed. The US provided substantial reconstruction aid to Iraq to help undo the damage of the war afterward - more than $60 billion.
However, it's hard to avoid there being some undesired casualties in war, especially when the the fighters on the opposing side are using guerilla tactics and hiding within the civilian population, such as deliberately fighting, sniping, or using mortars from within what are otherwise civilian compounds, or even mosques, forcing the US to either ignore the attacks (unacceptable) or respond and attack mosques and civilian compounds.
All of our soldiers are unformed, with a flag, and follow rules of engagement that involve not attacking anyone except positively identified targets (i.e. observed holding weapons). Terrorist groups operating in the middle east wear no uniform and exploit our rules of engagement by attacking, dropping their weapons before the coalition can respond, then pretending to be civilians. Even though they're the only men-of-age in an area from which an attack just took place, since they stashed their weapons somewhere, the rules of engagement mean that our troops can't do much if they didn't observe a person holding a weapon.
Uniformed soldiers fighting other uniformed soldiers is different than terrorists that attack civilians or soldiers and then hide, pretending to be civilians.
The Iraq war was started on pretenses that we now know are false, but let's not conflate that with groups that deliberately target civilians (with suicide bombs in shopping centers), or conduct attacks even on military facilities and then pretend to be civilians when pursued for a counter-attack.
> Among other things, the US did not deliberately target the Iraqi civilian population, and made their best efforts to avoid civilians being harmed.
Maybe for the second Iraq war, but for the first one that's bullshit – before the first Iraq war, Iraq was the richest third world country. The US bombed it back to the stone age, using more bombs than were dropped on Germany during WW2, hitting civilian infrastructure like water treatment plants, which then resulted in the following years in hundreds of thousands of dead children.
