Here's another post from my personal blog. This one is about 3 years old, written for a previous anniversary of the 9/11 attack...
There's been some lively and well thought out discussion associated with the recent posting i made regarding my opinion of the underlying factors that have led to the world's current problems with terrorism from Moslem fundamentalists. It has been interesting to see what some of my friends and associates think on these topics. I believe that i've generally made the point i was going for in the original post, but some of the comments imply to me that i should clarify one specific belief i have regarding responsibilities and cause and effect in this area.
I distinguish between the common psycopath and a terrorist. The psycopath is a defective individual who never has any real grasp of normal, positive human relationships. He/she may perpetrate terrible atrocities against the target of her/his insanity, but he/she is seldom motivated by any political beliefs and he/she almost always works alone - or at most with one or two like minded people.
A terrorist, in contrast, is almost always part of a larger organization that has clearly defined political goals, usually relating to a desire to throw off the shackles of a real oppressor. He/she may have a family and, except for the path he/she has chosen to fight against someone or something that he/she thinks is evil, he/she may otherwise live a normal life with friends and family members who may or may not also be a part of the organization.
If the oppressor has an extreme edge in military capability, some of the oppressed people will deduce that they cannot win their freedom from oppression by following the internationsl rules of military combat so they decide to resort to terror as a policy of engagement. There may be other organizations in her/his society that share a desire to throw off the same opporessors but who do not want to attain that goal through terror. The terrorist therefore is someone who has chosen to ally her/himself with one of the organizations that has made a consious decision to employ acts of terror as a part of their overall strategy.
In my mind, simply belonging to one of these organizations doesn't make one a terrorist, though it does make her/him a supporter or sympathizer and thus partly culpable for any acts of terror commited. To me, however, it is only when one actively participates in an act of terror that the label terrorist truly applies to a person. I know that some others don't agree with that distinction, but it is my view on the matter.
So, based on the above i see three steps in the creation of a terrorist.
#1. A group of people determine that they are being oppressed by another group who have a superior military capability.
#2. Some members of the oppressed group decide that acts of terror are a legitimate way to fight that oppression and form an organization whic advocates resistance via acts of terror.
#3. Some members of that organization commit acts of terror against people that they believe are representative of their oppressors.
Going backward, my take on the responsibilities here are:
#3. Those who participate in acts of terror are criminals and should be treated accordingly. Nothing, no matter how horrible or ongoing, perpetrated upon one group of innocent people justifies any member of that mistreated group from perpetrating yet another atrocity on other innocent people.
#2. Those who play upon their fellow sufferers to be the instruments of their own hate and frustration but who are themsleves not willing to participate in such actions are a special kind of evil. They take the shared frustration of their fellow sufferers and purposely focus it to encourage them to commit acts of evil against innocent people. They are guilty of committing crimes against both their oppressors and their fellow sufferers. They should be treated accordingly.
#1. This is where i think most people who are members of the 'oppressing' culture prefer that the analysis stop, because it becomes a bit less comfortable to admit that they do have a hand in starting this chain of events. It's much easier to demonize an entire group of people, like the Palestinians, the Basque separatists, or the Irish, than it is for the people who are exploiting/mistreating/disenfranchising them to look at the world through the eye of their victims and give up whatever benefits they are enjoying from the oppression.
America didn't start the oppression of the middle eastern cultures that continues today. We inherited that dishonor from the British and French, who began it during their days of world colonization, but we have done an exceptional job of carrying on their selfish tradition. If you aren't aware of the history of this matter, you owe it to yourself and your conscience to spend a bit of time studying the treatment of the middle eastern region by western powers in the last few hundred years, and to pay special attention to the more recent role that the US government has played in installing and supporting cruel, repressive regimes in this area, such as the Shah of Iran, the Saudi royal family, and Saddam Hussein.
And while you're at it, look over the history of Israel and the Palestinians, because that subject is another major factor in the way that the Moslem world views the US. Europe's treatment of the Jews throughout history inspires a lot of sympathy from me for that people and an understanding of why they need a homeland of their own. But taking the homeland of the Palestinian people to provide that home, their subsequent mistreatment by the Israeli government and the support of the US government for that mistreatment, and... for that matter... their similar misuse by other Moslem nations as political pawns are no less of atrocities.
Most Americans lump all Moslems together as if they are all one people and one culture. It should not be a surprise that in turn the members of those cultures lump all of the western powers who have a multi-century history of mistreating them together. Claiming that "they hate us because they hate our freedom" is more comfortable than realizing that the majority of them who do hate us do so because in their eyes 'our' hands have long been part of denying them their own freedom, but that's the historical fact of the matter.
No one forces anyone to be a terrorist, no matter how a reader here may think that i'm somehow trying to say otherwise by the 1-2-3 sequence i outlined above. I feel that those who commit acts of terror against innocent victims should be ... as i regularly put it... shot in the head. I have a similar punishment in mind for those who incite others to acts of terror against innocents. But i also know that only a psycopath decides to go around senselessly murdering innocent people without any cause, and that most of the terrorists in the world today are not psycopaths in the clinical sense of that term. They feel that they have a cause and that the cause is just.
When terrorism exists, root it out and eliminate it... but do so in a way that does not take innocent life in the process. IMO, Israel has been very careless in that regard for most of its history, as has the US these last few years in Iraq. Unless we try to understand the sense of oppression that starts the whole process and address its causes, killing today's terrorists ... especially in a haphazard manner that doesn't concern itself with collateral damage... will mostly serve as proof that their cause is just to the next set of terrorists that spring up in their place.
