I Know why the Terrorists Terrorize (Part 3)

Continued from Part 2

The social causes of terrorism are aggregated by the historical situations of the Middle East. The political destruction the Islamic World has faced are due to a wealth of reasons, and only some of which will be discussed. Much of what I say here is drawn from the book Crisis of Islam by Bernard Lewis. I have written a review on that book if you would like to check it out. The political chaos in the Middle East today is due to both interior and exterior reasons, and all too often the Middle East fails to recognize the problems it has created for itself while the outside world fails to recognize the problems it has created for the Middle East. Both of these forces have worked to destroy the political, social, economic, academic, and cultural fabric of a civilization equally rich in history and tradition as ours.

We can empathize with the problems the Middle East has unwittingly been forced into, but we must caution ourselves from forgetting the problems it has caused on its own. We must also caution ourselves from removing the blame of terrorism from the perpetrators to the victims, like America. Certainly, this country has seriously failed in Middle Eastern foreign affairs when it comes to the field of terrorism, but we cannot forget who did the bombing on whose soil.But that was before the real warring started. The real warring started with our 43rd President, and I’ll talk about him later.

The real warring started when Britian betrayed the Arab nations . The real warring started when France and Britain occupied the Arab states. The real warring started when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, or when the United States supported Saddam Hussein. The real warring started was when the United States supported a coup in Iran, or when Nasser came to power in Egypt.  These things that happened in the Middle East, that traumatized the masses  and angered the intellectuals, are what brought the violence and the despair in the region. The regimes that oppress the people of that world day by day are practically puppet regimes implemented by western powers.

And thus the terrorism took root. It took root in an anti-western ideology that stemmed from the oppression of regimes and colonial powers. The soviets invaded Afghanistan  – and lost -,  and collapsed soon after. This wasn’t all too correlated, but the masses of the middle east saw that as the hidden power of its people. These strong armed, violent revolts brought down a superpower, in their mind. USSR was a paper tiger, in their perceptions. The US has now inherited that role. As we have adopted a new idol of the “other”: Islam, to replace Communism, the Middle East has adopted us as the enemy likewise. We are wrapped in a chaotic, complicated world, in which we adopt a dualistic worldview just to satisfy our simple minds. The Axis of Evil that Bush so delightfully remarks about, is nothing but scared nations trying to survive in a chaotic world of dangerous bullies. Thus they bully their people, an d load themselves with weaponry and military strength in the hopes of survival. We as a nation eliminated Iraq, one of the three nations of the axis. It is not surprising North Korea and Iran are attempting nuclear weaponry: for fear of elimination too.

The warring continued when we bombed Iraq day after day, massacring hundreds of thousands of people just like us. We criticize the Boston Bomber’s face on the Rolling Stones Magazine, and yet we turn a blind eye when Bush shows up in our newspapers and our books. The warring continued when we bombed Afghanistan day after day, massacring just like we did before. The warring continued when we drone attack Yemen and Pakistan day after day, killing teenagers as “collateral damage” for their parents. The warring continues day after day. The terrorist ideology is like the Greek Hydra: every one of them we kill a number grow in his place. We must get to the root of the ideology, this anti-Western contempt, and fix that, for a long term solution. Else we are just beating around an ever growing burning bush.

How we deal with the people around us is how they deal with us. To treat Muslims as crazy and their regimes as hostile is for them to treat us likewise and for them to become hostile. To be hypocrites day after day by preaching democracy while funding dictatorships isn’t something no one realizes. The people of the Middle East remember the coup in Iran, or the support of Saudi Arabia, and the current lack of action in Syria. When we terrorize people, they terrorize back. Sometimes worse, with more violence, and more ruthlessness. In our own interests, we must stop. We cannot kill ideology with bombs – only with ideology. We terrorize them day after day, and they terrorize us likewise. That is why the terrorists terrorize.

Continued with Part 4/4.

In light of Trayvon Martin

The tragic case of Trayvon Martin we’ve all heard about has spurned an extraordinary discussion on the inner racial tensions in this country. The President himself highlighted this point in his speech, but I wish he emphasized how the law played out in this case. The trial went on for over 4 weeks, and the jurors that heard it spent 14 hours discussing it behind close doors…who else has spent that much time with it? Every one of the jurors came back with the same decision: innocence for Zimmerman. There simply wasn’t enough evidence, and I liked how one person I heard said it: every witness to the case is either dead or biased. That in itself also highlights something that no one seems to be talking about: the failures of the American court system. Granted, I’m no lawyer, and one of the prosecutors of the case in a press conference admitted the mistakes of our system, but defend it as the best in the world. I think I could agree with that. How to fix a system where so much bias exists is a challenge, and I wouldn’t know where to start to accommodate for the failures of man. On an off note, the jury system is something that has also always baffled me. I certainly wouldn’t trust the justice for the death of my child to a random selections of six Americans…would you? But then again, would I trust justice to some old white guy that has never been out of a gated community in his life if I was from the hood? That’s another challenge for our system.

 

But back on to race: how important is it, really, to this trial? I find it difficult to believe that Zimmerman just shot Martin because he was black. Certainly, Zimmerman profiled him. He followed him, and the phone tapes show that he was an obvious racist. But what happened that night is speculative, and the thousands of protestors around this country have probably no better speculations than me. I think it much less fair to call out the jurors as racists. The prosecutors spent some serious time picking 3 of those jurors…why? Those prosecutors weren’t stupid. They had reasons. The media probably won’t just say, because when does the media ever explain things properly? That said, I don’t think protesting the trial changes anything at all. The protestors need to ask themselves: does screaming and flailing your signs around on the streets change racial tensions? There are better ways that they should involve themselves with. The justice system has decided, and there isn’t much else it can do.