10-19-01, Voice in the Crowd, 785 words
Walk in a Terrorist's Shoes
By Pete Chaney
IPS Features
The Indians had a saying that you had to walk a mile in another man’s moccasins to know him. That makes sense.
But how in the world could a sane, God fearing American
walk in the shoes of a middle east terrorist and his fanatical belief in
receiving heavenly reward for mass destruction of human beings?
It is almost beyond the scope of an American to begin to understand.
The American culture is based on concepts far removed
from the lifestyle of the Taliban and their ilk. Our system of laws came from the old English strength of the
Magna Carta. Our religious concept,
while guaranteeing freedom of worship or non worship to everyone, was based on
the morals of the New and Old Testament, the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on
the Mount.
Many Americans are of Irish descent.
That should make their culture easier to understand.
But most can’t visualize the ongoing civil strife there between those
of Southern Ireland and the English, between Catholics and Protestants.
Some years ago I interviewed a young man we’ll just
call Mike. He was an Irish
immigrant who became an American citizen and earned an engineering degree.
When the subway work was being done around Washington, DC, he was
involved. He had served in Korea in
the American army.
But his heart belonged to Ireland.
He was a member of the Irish Republican Army.
Especially 30 years ago, the IRA was active in terrorist activity.
They bombed buildings. They
launched assassination attempts at the British royalty.
No question about it. They
were terrorists. Yet, Mike was a
friendly family man, the kind of guy you would enjoy having as a neighbor or at
a community cookout.
I tried to understand him.
“It’s a war going on,” he explained.
“We don’t have an army to fight the British who occupy our land in
Northern Island. All we can do is
engage in guerrilla warfare. Our army is underground, so to speak. We haven’t the force to meet them on the battlefield.
Our only tactic is to bomb them and create terror until they give us back
our country.”
Mike was a walking history of Ireland.
Oliver Cromwell. Potato famine. He
felt the British had sought for generations to exterminate the Irish people.
His hatred was deep rooted. So
was his dedication. He said that in
Northern Ireland Catholics were second class citizens, not allowed to hold
certain jobs.
That was decades ago.
The unrest is improved but still present in Belfast, ready to erupt at
the slightest provocation. Would it
help if someone from London tried to walk in Mike’s shoes?
Or for Mike to walk in theirs?
We can’t defeat or even engage in combat with the
Islamic terrorists until we understand them.
One man recently bought a Koran to find the answer.
He quoted the passage which said a woman must be obedient and even beaten
if necessary. Everyone saw the TV
coverage of an Afghanistan Muslim beating his wife with a rod.
Such behavior is so far removed from American morals
that it’s beyond conception. But
we have to try.
First step is to acknowledge is that the terrorists
believe to the core that they are in the right, that God or Allah is on their
side. They believe that we are the
infidels who must be eliminated. To
them, they are engaged in a guerrilla war against more powerful enemies.
They haven’t the army, navy or air force to meet the non-believers on
the battlefield. Their weapon is
the fanaticism of suicide bombers who will sacrifice their lives for their
cause. And they rely on our morals.
They send a “bomb” in the form of a hijacked
airliner against us. We send bombs
back at them. They send biological
warfare against us. What do we do?
It would destroy our own morals if we stooped into this sort of attack.
Our ultimate weapon may be communication, showing them
what we and our beliefs are like. And
we can show them we want to understand what they believe.
America has been big enough to afford different cultures
and various religions from snake handlers to Buddhists.
The world is smaller now. We
have to have room for all faiths and cultures, as long as it doesn’t use
violence and terror to force others to believe as they do.
Communism may have been contained by the threat of
missiles and nuclear weapons. But
that didn’t defeat it. Communication
did. Those under the heel of a
restrictive system saw how the rest of the world prospered under free
enterprise. Let our enemies see
what it’s like to live free. They
will defeat their own system.
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