(MintPress) – For many throughout the world, terrorism has come to define their lives. In 1998, al-Qaida bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Naomi Kerongo, a Kenyan trade official at the time, spoke to the United Nations in 2008 about the toil the attack took on her: two years in a mental hospital, the loss of her job and home and the general sense of destitution she fell into. “Nothing can take us back to the day before the bomb blast,” she said.
In October 2009 in Islamabad, a terrorist bomb tore through a United Nations agency building. Tahir Wadood Malik — whose wife, Gul Rukh, was caught in the blast — recalls his story to Common Ground News:
“Upon reaching the medical centre, I stood surrounded by chaos, until a doctor took me to a gurney covered in a white sheet. Lifting it, I saw the face of Gul Rukh, drawn of all colour, lifeless.
“As I stood there, numb and glued to the floor, I heard a scuffle. Looking up, I saw a hospital staff member pushing a television camera man away from near where I was standing. He’d been filming the chaos in the hospital as well as my reaction, and I realised that I had become the nameless, unknown face on the television that was shocked and stunned from the carnage of a terrorist attack. I was that ‘common’ Pakistani no one really wanted to see.
“Before midnight, the burial was done and people had dispersed. I was left alone to brood and to feel angry, depressed and drained, unable to think clearly about what had happened.”
In a recent report, the Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Terrorism Index showed that the level of terrorist attacks globally has plateaued since a rapid increase in attacks from 2002 to 2007. Al-Qaida-claimed attacks have fallen to 1 out of 4,564 in 2011. The U.S. was listed 41st in 2011 among nations for the numbers of terrorist attacks that affect American interests; Iraq came in first.
From 2002 to 2009, Iraq, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan led the field in the numbers of terrorist attacks, according to the Global Terrorism Index. In 2011, 91 percent of all terrorist attacks succeeded, with most targets being private citizens and property, police, government installations and businesses. Military installations and personnel were only targeted 4 percent of the time.
In 2011, 7,473 people died from terrorist attacks. Another 13,961 were wounded.
Two different questions arise from all of this.
In 2002, the U.S. led the Global Terrorism Index, with a terrorism index of 7.93 (the GTI is based on a weighted scoring system that considers the total number of incidents, fatalities and injuries in a region that are terrorism related and the sum of all terror related property damage). In 2003, the U.S. came in second, with an GTI of 7.24. In 2004, the U.S. came in 12th, with a GTI of 6.57. In 2011, the U.S. came in 41st with a GTI of 3.57. Is the War on Terror actually working, or is this proof that terrorism is a direct reflection of a nation’s foreign policy?
More dauntingly, two cases of domestic terrorism point to a telling realization about how Americans react to terror. The movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colo. polarized and gripped the nation like few things before it, but the massacre at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin failed to register at the same level, even though a shooting at a place of worship would seem to be more audacious and emotion-inducing. Is terror relative? Can the pain and trauma of those we cannot relate to be justifiably discounted, and at what point does this double standard diminishes us as a people?
The ‘War on Terror’
“Osama, baah!” Bashir roared.
“Osama is not a product of Pakistan or Afghanistan. He is a creation of America. Thanks to America, Osama is in every home. As a military man, I know you can never fight and win against someone who can shoot at you once and then run off and hide while you have to remain eternally on guard. You have to attack the source of your enemy’s strength. In America’s case, that’s not Osama or Saddam or anyone else. The enemy is ignorance. That only way to defeat it is to build relationships with these people, to draw them into the modern world with education and business. Otherwise the fight will go on forever.”
—Greg Mortenson, “Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time”
A particularly bad joke goes like this: “One day a man went to the doctor complaining of pain in his shoulder. The man says, ‘Doc, it hurts every time I lift my arm.’ The doctor looked at the man, wrote a prescription, and sent the man on his way. The prescription says, ‘Stop lifting your arm.’“
The U.S. relationship with terrorism is similar to this joke, and is just about as funny.
According to the Global Terrorism Index, most terrorist attacks are related to some wide-reaching conflict. Rarely does a terrorist attack happen without some form of rationale. In the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, al-Qaida cited America’s alliance with Israel and the U.S.’ presence in Saudi Arabia (the U.S. was in Saudi Arabia at the agreement of the Saudi government) as direct reasons for the attacks.
During the years cited in the Global Terrorism Index as being the most terrorism-active for America, the U.S. was most active in fighting the “War on Terror,” a series of international conflicts designed to supposedly attack major terrorist organizations in Afghanistan, Iraq and throughout the globe. This global effort targeted Iraq (a country later proven to be a victim of terrorism and not a sponsor), removed its rightful government and replaced it with a government barely capable of keeping its distinct populations at peace, all seemingly so that the Bush administration could push through a suite of domestic programs that many consider to be a grave violation of civil liberties.
These programs included the USA PATRIOT Act — which expanded the Treasury’s authority to regulate financial transactions, broadened the discretion of law enforcement for detaining and deporting immigrants accused of terrorist acts and expanded the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism (which allows for the implementation of USA PATRIOT Act provisions against American citizens); the Protect America Act of 2007 — which removes the warrant requirement for surveilling foreign intelligence targets; Total Information Awareness — which was a 2002 agenda item proposed to track and monitor asymmetric threats to U.S. national security (it was later defunded as is, but its programs were either renamed or reclassified and many are in operation today); and the expansion of the NSA electronic surveillance program.
In addition, during times that the GTI rated America as being highly terrorism-active, the United States was involved in the militaristic imprisonment of many terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay — many of whom received demeaning treatment and repeated torture (despite the Geneva Convention specifically banning torture). To many in the Islamic world, the United States is the greatest producer of international terror, and many states and organizations have chosen to react directly to this perceived threat.
Ultimately, terrorism is a response from a people to strike back at a perceived injustice. The differentiation between a military action and a terrorist attack lies in the viewer and the viewer’s perspective. For many, the word “terrorist” is a derogatory term. It forces a classification of a person’s or organization’s action into good or bad. Take for instance the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On multiple occasions, the Israeli government called Hamas and the Palestinian Authority terrorists. At the same time, Hamas and the PA have called Israelis terrorists for shelling their settlements in Gaza and the West Bank.
Reuters has made this distinction part of their stylebook:
“Throughout this difficult time we have strictly adhered to our 150-year-old tradition of factual, unbiased reporting and upheld our long-standing policy against the use of emotive terms, including the words ‘terrorist’ or ‘freedom fighter’.
“We do not characterise the subjects of news stories but instead report their actions, identity or background. As a global news organisation, the world relies on our journalists to provide accurate accounts of events as they occur, wherever they occur, so that individuals, organisations and governments can make their own decisions based on the facts.”
In Bruce Hoffman’s “Inside Terrorism,” Hoffman states that “terrorism is a pejorative term. It is a word with intrinsically negative connotations that is generally applied to one’s enemies and opponents, or to those with whom one disagrees and would otherwise prefer to ignore. (…) Hence the decision to call someone or label some organization ‘terrorist’ becomes almost unavoidably subjective, depending largely on whether one sympathizes with or opposes the person/group/cause concerned. If one identifies with the victim of the violence, for example, then the act is terrorism. If, however, one identifies with the perpetrator, the violent act is regarded in a more sympathetic, if not positive (or, at the worst, an ambivalent) light; and it is not terrorism.”
Ultimately, the root of ending any conflict lies in understanding. While there are some in this world who seek “to watch the world burn,” for most, what we would call “terrorism” comes from years of being trivialized and marginalized. In seeking a world that is safe from random violence, we must work to encourage peace, not just react to strife.
Iraq is currently the most terrorist-active region in the world. In this area, three distinct ethnic groups are trying to vie for power in a post-American occupation Iraq, and conflicts stemming from this cycle of heightened emotions are regularly emerging. Al-Qaida-backed insurgents and loyalists from Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party are striking at the Shiite majority-backed Iraqi government toward destabilizing and toppling the government. As of Nov. 20, between 109,845 and 120,021 civilians were killed in the insurgency, according to the Iraq Body Count Project. Strife among the Shiites and the Sunnis, as well as an extremely corrupt government, is among the rationale for this instability.
In the War on Terror, the cause of the terror was the war itself. Funny how that works.
A story of white and brown
This leads to an important question: Is the way this country perceives terrorism racially-biased? During the Aurora shooting, while the entire country grieved the terrible tragedy that happened so unexpectedly, no one accused the shooter of being a terrorist, even though his actions were an act of terror. Meanwhile, at the Sikh temple shooting (which was a clear act of racism), there was no great national outcry, and it was generally felt nationally that this was a contained situation, despite the shooter being white.
In his essay for the Awl, Jay Caspian King addressed this seeming contradiction:
“The story of Wade Michael Page, the man who apparently killed seven people and wounded three more at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, does not screech to a halt when a forty-year-old white supremacist starts stockpiling weapons. We can do the math behind Page’s killing spree through the same pathways with which the greater American public—however bull-headedly—processes terrorists. A man gets caught up in an ideology of hate. He decides to act on this ideology in the most horrific way possible. Point A leads directly into Point B and although Point B is horrific, it is something we have grown to understand. Who, when first hearing of the news, didn’t assume the killings were an act of racial hatred? Who didn’t start to piece together the turbans, the brown skin, the epidemic of post-9/11 violence that is under-reported, or at least never has all its incidents connected? Because the logic of Oak Creek can be traced to an endpoint (even if the logic is wrong) and because that endpoint only implicates a small percentage of Americans, the story of the massacre at Oak Creek will be, by definition, exclusionary. It will be “‘ragic’ and “unthinkable” and ‘horrific,’ but it will not force millions of Americans to ask potentially unanswerable questions. It will not animate an angry public. Chick-fil-A will outlast Oak Creek as a source of indignation.”
Since 9/11, terrorism has been defined in a very narrow definition: Islamists attacking innocent Americans. Organizations such as the FBI, U.S. Army, CIA and even the NYPD have spent excessive amounts of money and manpower in perpetuating this myth. However, in 2012, as it has been for many years since 2002, non-jihadists (including white supremacists) made up the majority of terror-related defendants in the U.S., according to CNN. There is no one common ideology or profile for a terrorist.
Prior to 9/11, the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building was the most prevalent example of domestic terrorism in modern day. Timothy McVeigh, a young, inoculate-looking white man — prior to a decade of indoctrination — represented the reality of terrorism: Anyone can be a terrorist. Since 2000, membership in white supremacy groups has risen 69 percent, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. According to the FBI, bias-based crimes against religious groups rose nearly 3 percent from 2005 to 2010 to an all-time high. Despite this, conservatives continue to reject right-wing extremism as a source of domestic terrorism.
It is an indictment that many in this nation remiss to consider a terrorist that looks, talks, acts and dresses like them, but that is the reality. Prior to the tragedy in Oak Creek, Wis., most Americans would have related to the killer and not the victims. This is disturbing, as the same group of people would likely grow concern or even complain about a turbaned man on their plane and not the potential killer sitting next to them.
Consider this scene from “A Man for All Seasons”:
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
In flattening so many laws in pursuit of the “terrorist,” we have conditioned ourselves to look past the dangers at our own front door. It compromises us all when we see the terrorist that reminds us of us, and choose to look away.