This is the toxic tribalism that repeats itself over and over throughout the west. Western victims are mourned and humanized, while victims of western violence are invisible and thus dehumanized. Aside from being repugnant in its own right, this formula, by design, is deeply deceptive as propaganda: it creates the impression among western populations that we are the victims but not the perpetrators of heinous violence, that terrorism is something done to us but that we never commit ourselves, that “primitive, radical and inhumanely violent” describes the enemy tribe but not our own (It’s the same tactic that explains why we hear so much about American journalists imprisoned in adversary nations such as Iran and North Korea, but almost nothing about Muslim journalists imprisoned for years without charges by the U.S. Government: thus deliberately creating the false impression that only those Bad Countries, but not us, do this).

—Glenn Greenwald
The Key War on Terror Propaganda Tool: Only Western Victims Are Acknowledged