ISIS, Terrorism and the Real War
Numbers have relevance,
but they don’t have blood. For some of
us, numbers are enough. For others,
well, we need to put some meat on the mathematical bones. So, I ask a question.
What
percentages of murders occur during the commission of some other criminal
act? These would be murders that occur
during a robbery, a break in, a mugging, etc.
They might be accidental, incidental or incorporated in to the plans for
the predatory crime, but they are not the goal of the crime. The answer is 10%.
That
leaves 90% of all murders (either spontaneous or deliberate) that have no
purpose other than to end a person’s life.
Whether we are talking about the foul scum that enter a church, a
theater or a school to kill as many innocents as are within reach, the cool
plotting of a spouse killer, or the emotional response of a woman who has been
hit one time too many, 90% of all murders are done for one reason only: to
eliminate the presence of another human being.
Someone
angers you, so you kill them. You feel
they have wronged you, you kill them. A
person defies your authority--dead. Your
world is made unquiet and your egocentric thinking makes you feel justified in
killing to restore equilibrium. To any
normal person such behavior is heinous, but there is abnormal thinking out
there.
There
was, of course, a time when self-administered justice was the norm. In the cave we settled things directly. But cave families turned into clans and clans
turned into villages, towns, cities and nation-states. In each case, as communities grew they
developed a group ethos that substituted criminal justice for individual fiat.
Most
of us are grateful for this criminal justice system. When our baser selves want gain, advantage or
revenge we are constrained by the reality of what would happen to us if we give
in. This gives us the pause we need to
let our better selves show us a moral as well as a practical reason to
conform.
But
what happens if the justice system is weak, ineffectual, biased or
nonexistent? What happens when we become
our own moral authority? It is then, in
that instant, we become slavering beast.
There
are two forms of this bestiality. On a
micro scale we end up with Lizzie Borden and her 40-wack axe. On a macro scale we see those who are skilled
at manipulation trolling the shallow pools of the emotionally dysfunctional to
snare, fashion and exploit an army of violent zealots. Apocalyptic Islam as practiced by ISIS and
its various, loosely affiliated jihadists, fits this pattern.
Writing
in Scientific American Michael
Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine
(and no conservative!), says, “Many American liberals and media pundits have
downplayed their [ISIS ’s] religious motives.” He then quotes Donald Black, author of “The
Geometry of Terrorism” (and likewise no conservative), “Muslim terrorists
should be taken at their word that their movement is Islamic, anti-Christian, and
anti-Jewish. Would we have said that the
violence used by Protestants and Catholics during the Protestant Reformation had
nothing to do with religion?”
As
we approach this Independence Day we have disaffected losers lining up to do
the bidding of masters who actually do
want to create chaos, destroy the world’s major religions and return us to 7th
century criminal justice. For someone to
reject this idea is to reject what these groups themselves have said.
To
fail to accept the reality that Christians and Jews are under murderous attack
is to indulge in childish utopian fantasies.
Sometimes
you have to fight to keep the faith.
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