Sunday 4 June 2017

Terrorism: Cause, effect and the clarity of thought.


Is this the dark side of the moon? 




Terrorism. 

The act of instilling fear in a population and/or its leaders to bring about your own ends, be they political or otherwise. The aim is to be as divisive as possible, creating "in fighting" in your target population thus preventing a coherent response, and effective counter action. 

Strategically the perpetrators don't want an effective response mounted against themselves for obvious reasons. So they create straw man arguments and deflect the investigation into their motives  by pledging false allegiance to ideologies other than their own. 

To vilify an entire faith for the actions of its extremists is not only wrong, it is precisely what the perpetrators wish to achieve. 

Extremism begets extremism. Be that dressed up as Muslim, Christian, Jewish or anything else you care to mention. 

Historically being wary and fearful of those who are different to us has lead the human race to labour under the yoke of bias. 

I wonder when are we going to start calling spades what they are and stop using the euphemisms like "manual labour single person digging implement" 

Humans, or if you like "mankind", has ultimately caused this cycle of violence many many times by virtue of his own blindness. 

We will only ever eradicate the effects if we deal with the cause. 

Throwing up more boundaries, and hiding behind walls be they cyber or otherwise will change nothing and save less. It merely perpetuates the "us and them" that began this in the first place. 

Forget euphemisms like left or right wing for a moment. Consider common human decency and integrity. Compassion for ones fellow humans. 

As I have written before "war" can be thought of as the failure of politics. Thus any politician who jumps towards a war footing too readily probably isn't a very good one. 

The US elected a buffoon who believes nothing and cares only about his own self aggrandisement. He is just as much a preening peacock of a man as the tin pot dictators of the African countries who adorn their chest with a rack of medals they never won . 

Except much more powerful, and infinitely less predictable. 

The UK currently is vulnerable. It stands isolated, since its uneasy initiation of divorce from the EU and the unpalatable relations with the peacock leave it with an uncertain future. A future the direction of which we are about to decide in a few short days. These attacks therefore destabilise the process, which in all honesty is probably their point, regardless of who the perpetrators are. They will almost certainly influence the outcome.

So politics at this point isn't about where whatever country you happen to live in ends. It has become something of a global knife edge. Deportation and retaliation will remove the problem. not solve it.  Like the many headed hydra of legend, the beast will return more powerful and dangerous than before. Even Hercules needed help to kill the beast, to cauterise the wounds and prevent regrowth... 

So before getting fearful & angry. Instead of throwing blame and insult and accusation, calling for security measures and yet more protection...bigger walls and more division, we need to THINK!

It is the one thing, the one ability, that right minded people have over perpetrators of these actions.

I hope mankind learns to use that ability, and apply it, before its too late. 




A philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war
Ludwig Von Mises


Made you think?..

No comments:

Post a Comment