Tuesday, September 12, 2006

WIT?

What is Terrorism?

When an Arab flies a plane into a building he is a terrorist.

When a Palestinian lets off a bomb in an Israeli restaurant he is a terrorist.

When an American pilot dropped a bomb that destroys a village in Afghanistan, because someone said a member of Al Qa’ida was there, the people would have experienced a moment of terror before they were pulverised to dust. But the pilot is not a terrorist?

When an Israeli pilot dropped a half-ton bomb on an apartment building in Beirut, the people hiding within would have experienced a brief moment of terror as they were crushed to death. But this is not terrorism?

In all four cases, the victims experienced terror. In each situation innocent people died. So terrorism is not defined by terror. Nor is it about the killing of innocent people.

Terrorism is often just a label that we put on those we perceive to be our enemies.

We have always given labels to our enemies, because it is hard to fight hard against “people”. The First World War was fought against “Huns”. In the Second World War we battled the “Nips. In Vietnam we fought against “Gooks”. Now we are fighting against “Terrists”.

Give them a label, and it will be easier to hate them. We don’t have to love them.

If we are serious about following Jesus, we will have to learn to love our enemies.

If we loved our enemies we would not give them labels that dehumanize them and make it easier to hate.

If we loved our enemies we would try to understand what motivates them. Calling them “mad” is a cope out. Calling them religious nutters does not help (many people would put that label on us). If we loved our enemies, we would try to understand what motivates an educated young man, with all of life before him, to kill himself for his cause (I am serious about my cause, but I am not sure if I would die for it). We might find that he sees the world differently from the way that we see it. We might even start wondering why he sees it that way. Who knows were that would lead.

It might even lead to more love and more peace.


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3 comments:

Bob Robinson said...

I agree with you in principle. We DO have the tendency to dehumanize our enemies. This makes killing them so much easier!!

There is a certain group of people who are correctly deemed "terrorists." Terrorism is the practice of attacking whoever happens to be in a target location (drug stores, shopping malls, tall office buildings) for the purpose of striking terror in civilians. Terrorism has no respect for the right to life of noncombatants. In order to guard a clearly defined line that protects the right to life during war, we cannot let ourselves (or our government) to get fuzzy on the definition of terrorism. Some will label any rebels against government as "terrorists," but rebels or guerrillas or revolutionaries are not terrorists unless they indiscriminately attack civilian targets to strike fear into a population.

Terrorists are peculiarly evil and must be clearly understood as such.

Ron McK said...

Bob
Thanks for the clarity.
Ron

Wessel said...

but then it's left to the man in action to label his violent action either as an act of war, terror or for that matter desperate stupidity. If someone holds every civilian responsible to some mistreatment towards him he won't see his action as just spreading terror but fighting for a cause.

what comes first? the wish to spread terror, or the cause people are willing to give their life for and may hold every civilian in some spot responsible for it?

The difference remains difficult to put I think... probably real terrorist only exist in flat-character movies.