Terrorists vs. Freedom Fighters
Mary Madigan
Immediately after 9/11, Reuters decided to ban the use of the term "terrorist" or "terrorism" to describe the slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians:
Stephen Jukes, the wire service's global head of news, explained his reasoning in an internal memo: "We all know that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word terrorist..To be frank, it adds little to call the attack on the World Trade Center a terrorist attack."He called this a "value neutral" approach.
This value neutral approach, the idea that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" has been used by many who really do believe that George Washington=Abu Abbas. After all, they say, both were fighting an established state, both used violence. What’s the difference?
Using this value neutral approach, all violence, including wars fought to defend against oppression and genocide, are equivalent to terrorism.
Using common sense, anyone knows that the value neutral approach is amoral and stupid. But it took a French philosopher, Andre Glucksman, to explain why. According to Glucksman, one man's terrorist is not another man’s freedom fighter. War is bad, but genocide is worse. He says:
"…what do extremist ideologies like the communism or Nazism of yesteryear and the Islamism of today have in common? After all, they support ostensibly very different ideals – the superior race, mankind united in socialism, the community of Muslim believers (the Umma). Tomorrow, it could be altogether different ideals: some theological, some scientific, others racist. But the common characteristic is nihilism."The nihilistic philosophy that a certain group of terrorists/oppressors can do whatever they want to "save" their society will eventually destroy the society. Glucksman calls this "belligerent hubris"The root element is the attitude that anything goes, particularly when with regard to ordinary people: I can do whatever I want, without scruples. Goehring put it like this: my consciousness is Adolf Hitler. Bolsheviks said: man is made of iron. And the Islamists whom I visited in Algeria said that you have the right to kill little Muslim children, in order to save them."
Wherever you go, this belligerent hubris is considered lethal. In the huts of the Amazon, young men are taught to conquer this capacity for excessive violence. You can fight together, but you cannot fight in any way that comes to hand, and you don’t set out to fight just anyone. The same idea occurs in the teachings of the Greeks, the paidera. All European education is based on the same principle.All European education used to be based on that principle. The indigenous tribes of the Amazon know that terrorism is taboo but now France and the UN do not.
Most people are repulsed by terrorism for the same reason we’re repulsed by cannibalism and incest. It’s taboo, a crime against humanity, abhorrent because it can destroy a whole community, not just individual lives.
Society can survive war. War follows the established rules. Resistance movements target enemy combatants and their infrastructure. Resistance movements like the American Revolution don't destroy a society. They can create a better society.
In contrast, terrorists target toddlers and genocidal dictators target thousands of unarmed civilians. They don’t do this because they’re following rules, they’re doing it because they want to do it and no one will stop them.
A society built on terrorism or genocide becomes a culture of death. We saw what life was like under Taliban rule. We saw Palestinian society under Arafat, we see the genocide and slavery in the Sudan. If we decide to let Hezbollah have political power, we'll see the same effect in Lebanon.
So why do the world’s media outlets and the UN use the value neutral approach? Stephen Jukes of Reuters says it best:
"We're trying to treat everyone on a level playing field, however tragic it's been and however awful and cataclysmic for the American people and people around the world," Jukes says in an interview.The value neutral approach is the media and the UN’s way of saying that they’re scared of terrorists - which common sense told us already.Besides, he says, "we don't want to jeopardize the safety of our staff. Our people are on the front lines, in Gaza, the West Bank and Afghanistan. The minute we seem to be siding with one side or another, they're in danger."
"We target civilians, etc., because we are powerless. We cannot match the [Israeli] [American] war machine so we must put pressure on it any way we can."
This is a bogus argument as well, because throughout civilized [sic] history, grossly oppressed groups -- far worse off than Palestinians in their refugee camps or Gaza, to use one example -- took a moral stand and did not lash out at innocents. Think of most of the history of the Jews in Europe, right up until the end, African slaves in North America and their descendants in the South and elsewhere -- many others come to mind.
The apology for terror is no more than a (highly ironic) mirror image of the pacifism of Ghandi -- and probably its bastard stepchild, too.
This is also a bogus argument because they choose to deliberately target civilians. Resistance groups like the American revolutionaries targeted enemy combatants, not the marketplace. These groups cared about winning the general population's hearts and minds because they hoped to establish a democracy.
Terrorists are fighting to establish oppression. They don't care about winning hearts and minds because they plan to rule through fear. That's why terrorists kill their own people too. They're not just trying to frighten us, they're trying to scare everyone.
It works on the pacifists - and the press...
Then they complain when someone steals their car.
End Message
51% of Democrats believe that Americans are in some way responsible for 9/11. That’s why I don’t vote for them. I’m not a Democrat or a Republican, I’m just anti-terror.
Reuters is not being “nice”. They called Timothy McVeigh a terrorist. As Stephen Jukes said, they use the value neutral approach because they’re scared of terrorists. Apparently, Palestinian terrorists and the Islamic paramilitaries who are camped out in most European cities frighten the Reuters crew. Islamist paramilitaries forced Dutch MP’s like Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders into hiding, it is a threat.
The terrorists in Iraq are, for the most part, not Iraqis. The Iraqi people despise them, they run out into the streets to cheer when "insurgents" are killed and they spit on their bodies. They storm the streets by the thousands to protest terrorism. Despite this, the press contintues to ignore these protests and they continue to call those foreign terrorists "Iraqi insurgents".
The Press is about as far from nice as it gets.
Then they would not say 9/11 was necessarily bad, only that it happened. The recent Tsunami was not good or bad, it just was. The Holocaust was not good or bad, it's just a historical event. What happened at Abu Graib could not be called prisoner abuse as that would be making a value judgment.
I’m unconvinced.
Yes, saying only nice neutral things about terrorists will certainly ensure our safety, because terrorists are well known for their discretion and careful screening of suicide bomb victims based on past ideological stances. All those dumb dead people should've just been nice to them and they wouldn't have gotten themselves blown up.