Occhidiangela,Nov 4 2005, 11:53 PM Wrote:I've been dealing on and off with the so called "war on terror," or rather, the Modern/Western civilizations attempts to deal with Muslim terrorists since 1983.
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Hi,
"Modern/Western civilizations" dealt with the same 'terrorists' before 1983 (whatever milestone that date marks for you) in a quite different way, i.e. supporting the regime of two shahs that had broadly lost contact to their 'subjects'; delivering weapons (poison gas, too) and economic aid to Saddam after the 79' islamic revolution in Iran; watching him slay Irans for 6 years then changing sides and supplying Iran with weapons which were paid by money spend in the Iran-Contra Affair 1986; and so on.
Question is:
What makes a terrorist a terrorist?
That he spreads terror? The U.S. did that repeatedly, as did Germany etc. So that 'cannot' (can it? think about it) be a valuable definition.
That he kills civilians? Please don't get me started. Again Germany, Turkey (The Osmanic Empire) and the U.S. spring to mind.
That he kills because he believes his religion tells him to? Explain the 'axis of evil' to me. Also keep the crusades in mind.
That he works in an underground network of drugs and weapons? Again, I will mention the Iran-Contra Affair.
That he is willing to die for his motives? Must people are willing to die for something.
I'm beginning to think: what really makes a terrorist a terrorist is the lacking support of a strong government. Maybe of a G-8 state. The terrorist as well as some big states often enough have some very weird perceptions of the world. Yet they don't have a powerful legitimate base to back it up. That's why they are then hunted down over the world.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't do anything about assaults. But I'm saying that it is often (no, not only sometimes) very very hard to judge who is more at fault.
Greetings, Fragbait
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