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Why Terrorism Works
Irwin N. Graulich-
Tuesday 30th Sep 2003
Stop thinking like a Westerner and you will begin to understand terrorism. There was virtually no guilt trip for destroying the great cities of Nazi Germany, Japan or Korea, including the unfortunate victims of war known as "innocent civilians." Once upon a time democracies knew their enemies and were able to determine general target locations.
There was no moral problem with bombing Berlin, Dresden, Hiroshima or Nagasaki, although they resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties. Yet today, when 5 civilian deaths are produced in Iraq or 2 Palestinians are wounded by rubber bullets, the event becomes a worldwide tragedy. Even worse, the targeting of a Hamas terrorist has become synonymous with assassinating a head of state. Why?
How did terrorism manifest itself into freedom fighting and what are the reasons it has emanated from the Muslim world? When a once great civilization and religious culture fails miserably, it has only 2 choices. Go out of business or delude itself into believing it has not failed at all, by producing a new false reality of physical strength and spiritual greatness. Thus terrorism was born to compensate for a hatred of the good and successful, who are also superior in virtually every way. Muslim religious leaders are its major proponents because they see the flaws and fraudulence of their own belief system which is a frightening concept.
The previously mighty, powerful Arab and Muslim world has fallen into the dustbin of history. It no longer produces anything of value, wisdom, discovery or progress. Those amazing Arabian armies of the desert have been reduced to the laughing stock of West Point studies, with the six strongest Arab nations together being totally decimated by a tiny Jewish nation of largely Yeshiva boys.
Furthermore, this little Jewish state has become one of the leaders in scientific and technological breakthroughs, while the countries that retain a good portion of the world's oil wealth have trouble building a shopping center. Israel is a hard enough pill to swallow, but America's success cannot even fit into their mouths.
As Western democracies progressed into the 21st century, much of Arab/Muslim civilization reversed course back into the 16th century. No more great Muslim warriors; no more medical breakthroughs; no more beautiful writings. The development of modern warfare has made every Arab and Muslim country the "butt" of military jokes. The well known videotapes of large battalions of soldiers crying and surrendering to the Israelis waving their hands in the air, or the "brave, great" Iraqi soldiers giving up to journalists during the Gulf War have become embedded into everyone's mind, especially fellow Muslims. Their dignity was destroyed and thus terrorism was born. However, there is something wrong with a mentality that is embarrassed because a tyrant like Saddam was defeated.
Terrorism is a type of warfare where the perpetrators can truly never lose. Since terrorists are made up of many independent cells and events, there is no unified army to defeat and no flag to surrender. Even more incredible, the supportive local populations who most certainly have knowledge of or harbor them, become innocent civilians. Bomb factories, young men living in apartments with AK-47's and no jobs, people shooting rockets and machine guns blasting; yet the neighbors know nothing. Give me a break!
The brilliance of terrorism is that it separates the population from its army so that the foundational populace is absolved of any sins. And thus you can now have a nation like Iraq being separated from Saddam's Baathist regime in which the Iraqis bear absolutely no responsibility, except for 55 people in a deck of cards. Unfortunately many Iraqis were part of the problem, but terrorism and a terrorist dictatorship has allowed them to hide. This strategy also entitles troublemakers to blame their rescuers for the entire predicament. Throw in the term "occupation or occupier" into the mix, and the total responsibility is cast on the morally decent savior, America.
Terrorists have become great public relations propagandists. Unfortunately, wars throughout history have produced many civilian casualties. That is the nature of the beast. While innocent women and children were certainly killed in Allied bombings over Nazi Germany, the ultimate blame for their deaths was always understood to be Hitler and his evil henchmen. Leave it to the geniuses of "the religion of peace (sic)" to develop a new tactic that makes every Muslim an innocent civilian.
Fighting terrorism has led to an immoral concept--the fighting of a compassionate war. Such an idea is a moral outrage. The nature of war and victory is to totally defeat the enemy and create an atmosphere of fear so that they do not rise up and shoot your soldiers or blow up UN officials having meetings. Of course, a moral nation does its best to minimize civilian casualties. However, terrorists have an uncanny ability to rewrite moral battles into genocidal atrocities like Jenin.
Blaming decent democracies is the foundation of terrorism. Because no Arab or Muslim nation is a capitalist democracy where people can feel proud of their accomplishments, terrorism and the lies associated with it are designed to make their populations feel good. It was obvious that America would become the target of terrorism after Israel. After all, America and Israel are, according to the Islamic world, the only countries stopping world domination of Islam.
The Arab and Muslim populations are desperate to believe that they have not lost every war, that they are not weaker than the Americans or God forbid the Israelis. That is why they believe the big lies. According to Adolf Hitler, you heart and your mind have to be open to believe, which is why there can be a museum in Cairo, Egypt dedicated to the Egyptian victory over Israel in the Yom Kippur war.
America and Israel, represented by Christianity and Judaism, are the moral mirrors held up to the face of the Islamic world. They see our successes and our decency. They see how American soldiers treated Iraqi soldiers who were wounded. They see how some Palestinians are treated in Hadassah hospital and how a modern Israeli society has been built in only 55 years. America and Israel are just too superior morally, intellectually and technologically. No one could be that good or successful.
Arafat, bin Laden, Saddam, the Ayatollahs, Assad, the Saudi ruling family, et. al. must all be saying, "We Muslims look like jerks. Let's destroy those despicable, morally high Jews and Christians. They make us all look bad. Wait, we cannot accomplish this goal. Let's use terrorism; it seems to be working."
Irwin N. Graulich is a well known motivational speaker on morality, ethics, Judaism and politics. He is also President and CEO of Bloch Graulich Whelan Inc., a leading marketing, branding and communications company in New York City
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