Tuesday, March 25, 2003

Terrorism vs. Terrorism There are some intriguing undercurrents in the news reports that I wish I could document more completely.   The upshot is the façade of American morality and invincibility may be very thin indeed.   One report compared the experience of the people of Baghdad to the terrorist strikes in New York on Sept. 11th.  Somehow, the picture of burning buildings is much more mixed in the minds of many Americans.  Shots of burning buildings do not evoke universal joy anymore.   Outside the propaganda bubble in the U.S., most of the world is equating the destruction wrought by America in Iraq with destruction wrought by terrorists.  Dead innocent people don’t come back to life, no matter how many times their killers say it was an accident, a mistake, collateral damage etc.   Every death arouses rage and enmity.  So it is that Arab kids killed by Israeli’s are accepted as mistakes because the army didn’t intend it, but Israeli kids killed by suicide bombers are innocent victims of barbarous terrorism.   By reducing the definition of terrorism to motive alone, the U.S. is standing on a very slippery slope.  It is the logic that justifies destroying the village in order to save it, it is the logic that will use nuclear weapons to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians, in order to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.  For the dead, the logic doesn’t matter.   The basic anti-war argument is that unless you or others are directly attacked, there is no circumstance that justifies unleashing war.  In this case, only in the propaganda bubble, where lies are accepted as truth, do people believe that Iraq is connected to the Sept. 11th attack.  The rest of the world sees this destruction for what it is: terrorism, pure and simple.   I don’t think our efforts to bring democracy to Iraq by means of terrorism will be any more successful than Osama bin Laden’s attempts to destroy the West by terrorism.  It is a dead end, and our commander in chief has so little respect for human life that he is not troubled by it.  After all, if it is God’s will that Iraqi’s should die and America fulfill its destiny than why should a mere leader ask questions.   The founders of this country were men who questioned everything, and who by means of these questions came to their love of liberty and hatred of tyranny.  We are now ruled by a man who questions nothing, and is blindly leading us to political, economic, and moral disaster. 6:10:02 PM   comment []

© Copyright 2003 Toby Sackton. Last update: 4/2/2003; 11:23:16 PM.