American troops’ bombing and killing is called operation Iraqi Freedom, and they are “our allies.” Iraqi jihadists’ kidnapping and beheading is labeled as inhumane and nasty, and they are “terrorists.”
A month ago, Chechen jihadists murdered more than 300 children in Beslan. They are ‘terrorists.” Since 1991, Russian troop have murdered more than 40,000 Chechen. They are “our allies.”
So, the term “terrorism” means “violence we don’t support.” Perhaps sawing a person’s neck with a knife is crueler and more unacceptable than killing people by bullets and bombs. (Because it’s too “uncivilized”; and it’s easier for us to feel how the hostages feel…unless you have survived a gun shot and bombing not long ago).
Oddly enough, to many of us, it seems that the death of thousands of Iraqi civilians is just a statistic; the death of foreign hostages in Iraq is a tragedy.
Does the label, and the term “terrorist” guide us or blind us to understand this conflict? Or it just makes us become more ignorant of the cause and effect, thinking they simply need to be fought and destroyed because they are terrorists?
Please stop using “terrorist”. You can call them by its proper name; say Islamic fundamentalists, kidnappers, or monsters, but not a meaningless, and absurd word – terrorist.
The real problem facing Iraq now is not security, but what makes jihadism so appealing to so many young Iraqis and why? Recruiting and training more of Iraqi soldiers and policemen won’t work, but create another police state. The only way to solve that is through negotiation, just like British government and IRA. If they don’t negotiate, they let the hostages and Iraqi civilians rot.
If people keep neglecting the factors that make jihadism thrive and let the bombing and occupation remain, we are doing exactly what Osama Bin Laden wants us to do…
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