Stop thinking like a Westerner and you will begin to understand terrorism.
There was virtually no guilt trip for destroying the great cities of Nazi Germany, Japan or Korea. Once upon a time democracies knew their enemies and were able to determine general target locations. There was no moral problem with bombing Berlin, Dresden, Hiroshima or Nagasaki, though the actions resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties. Yet today, when five civilians are killed in Iraq, or two Palestinians are wounded by rubber bullets, the event becomes a worldwide tragedy.
Even worse, the targeting of a Hamas terrorist has become synonymous with the assassination of a head of state. Why?
How did terrorism transform itself into freedom fighting and what are the reasons it has emanated from the Muslim world? When a once great civilization and religious culture fails miserably, it has only two choices. It can go out of business ? or delude itself into believing it has not failed at all by producing a new false reality of physical strength and spiritual greatness.
The previously mighty Arab and Muslim world has fallen into the dustbin of history. It no longer produces anything of value or wisdom and is a stranger to the spirit of discovery and progress. Those amazing Arabian armies of the desert have become the laughing stock of West Point studies, with the six strongest Arab nations together being totally decimated by a tiny nation of Jews.
Furthermore, this little Jewish state has become one of the leaders in scientific and technological breakthroughs, while the countries that retain a good portion of the world’s oil wealth have trouble building a shopping center.
As Western democracies progressed into the 21st century, much of Arab/Muslim civilization reversed course back into the 16th. No more great Muslim warriors; no more medical breakthroughs; no more beautiful writings. The development of modern warfare has rendered Arab armies the punch line of military jokes.
The videotapes of large battalions of soldiers crying and surrendering to advancing Israeli forces and of Iraqi soldiers giving up to journalists during the Gulf War have become embedded in the public mind – especially among Muslims themselves. Their dignity was destroyed and thus terrorism was born. Of course, there is something seriously wrong with a mentality that sees embarrassment in the defeat of a tyrant like Saddam Hussein.
Terrorism is a type of warfare by which the perpetrators never lose. Since terrorists are grouped together in independent cells and defined by random atrocities, there is no unified army to defeat and no single flag to capture. And the supportive local populations, who most certainly have knowledge of or harbor the terrorists, become innocent civilians as soon as reprisal appears imminent. (Bomb factories, young men living in apartments with AK-47’s and no jobs, hoods shooting rockets and blasting machine guns blasting – yet the neighbors know nothing. Give me a break.)
The brilliance of terrorism lies in the fact that it separates a population from its army so that the populace is absolved of any sins. Terrorists have become great propagandists.
Unfortunately, wars throughout history have produced many civilian casualties. That is the nature of the beast. Innocent women and children were killed in the Allied bombing of Nazi Germany, but the ultimate blame for their deaths was always understood to belong to Hitler and his evil henchmen. Leave it to the deep thinkers of the ‘religion of peace’ to develop a tactic that makes every Muslim an innocent civilian.
Fighting terrorism has led to an immoral concept – that of ‘compassionate war.’ Such an idea is a moral outrage. The reason for going to war is to totally defeat your enemy and create an atmosphere of palpable fear so that he does not rise up and shoot your soldiers or blow up UN officials.
Yes, a moral nation does its best to minimize civilian casualties. Terrorists, however, have the uncanny ability to reconfigure moral battles into genocidal atrocities, as they did last year in Jenin.
Blaming democracies is the foundation of terrorism. Because no Arab or Muslim nation is a capitalist democracy where people can feel proud of their accomplishments, terrorism and the lies associated with it are designed to make the populace feel good.
Arabs and Muslims are desperate to believe that they have not lost every war, that they are not weaker than the Americans or, Allah forbid, the Israelis. Which is why they believe so strongly in the big lies – why they avidly read and reread the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and why they erect a museum in Cairo dedicated to the Egyptian ‘victory’ over Israel in the Yom Kippur war.
America and Israel, represented by Christianity and Judaism, are the moral mirrors held up to the face of the Islamic world. They see our successes and our decency. They see how American soldiers treated Iraqi soldiers who were wounded. They see how Palestinians are treated in Hadassah hospital and how a modern Israeli society has been built in a mere fifty-five years.
Arafat, bin Laden, Saddam, the Ayatollahs, Assad, the Saudi ruling family, must be saying to themselves and to each other, “We Muslims appear backward and foolish. Let’s destroy those despicable Jews and Christians. They make us all look bad. Wait, we cannot accomplish this goal through economic competition or conventional warfare. Let’s use terrorism; it seems to be working.”
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