The New Terrorists?
Posted: Thursday, June 11, 2009
by Michael Ramzy
delusionthread.com
When I was younger and in the Middle East I remember the airplane hijackings and it was always
the same: 'take me to Cuba', or 'take me to Beirut'. The fact I lived in Beirut at the time didn't concern me much since I was very young and when you're young you really don't think of things the same way as the rest of the world. I would see the news and watch the airplane (always Pan Am or TWA) sitting on the tarmac of some airport and the commentary would be very subdued and there was a sense of tension in the air: would the terrorists let the hostages go? Would the pilot fly to Cuba or Damascus? What would happen next?
As I got older the airplane hijackings abated somewhat as airport security increased and it frankly became almost impossible to bring a gun on board. I was older but still young enough to realize there were bad people out there, misguided individuals who decided it was their right to impress upon everyone else their narrow view of the world through violence. The term 'terrorist' was used strictly for airplane hijackings or bombings in the Middle East. It was a given the hijackers were of Arab descent, and it was a given these hijackers would rather blow themselves up than negotiate.
Then I came to America.
The hijackings disappeared (it seemed) as American news tends to be a little short on world information, preferring instead to report on sexual preferences of certain minorities and dysfunctional movie stars. I grew up not really thinking of terrorism even though civil war raged in Lebanon and the Iran-Iraq war took thousands of lives. Still, I was in America as an American and was sheltered.
Then September 11th happened.
The hijackers were all Saudi, all Arab, and all Muslim. This was reported accurately and the hysteria which followed was understandable. Terrorism was back in the news, and it seemed something we as Americans had to deal with. And we did, in our way, try to deal with it.
And then, something happened. The term 'terrorist' was starting to disappear from our vocabulary, to be replaced by 'enemy combatant'. These enemy combatants were not terrorists, apparently, but were just misguided people who had lost their way. And they were not Arab any longer, nor were they Muslim. They were just . . . people.
And then a doctor was killed.
Suddenly, the term terrorist was given new life. This story broke the same week as the story of an Arab man who gunned down two soldiers in front of a recruiting station. The abortion doctor was killed by one man who had a wish to harm one doctor, and the recruiting station murders were performed by one man who had a wish to harm as many soldiers and people as possible. The fact he was Arab and a Muslim was curiously absent from the initial reporting, and the fact he had been trained in Yemen, the 'Terrorist Proving Ground', was also omitted. He was not called a terrorist at all, in fact, in the beginning.
And yet, the man who killed the abortion doctor was called a 'domestic terrorist' from day one. Killing one person does not make you a terrorist, I don't think. Killing a couple, while trying to kill several, does.
Is this media bias or is it something more, something deeper? When is a man killing one person considered more dangerous than a trained terrorist from Yemen killing soldiers in front of a recruiting station? Any killing is wrong, and the idiot who killed the abortion doctor should get everything he deserves, both from God and the law. Yet please, do not compare the two. To do so is to elevate the killing of a doctor and lower the (almost) mass killing of soldiers.
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)"The abortion doctor was killed by one man who had a wish to harm one doctor,"...I don't think that statement is accurate at all. Abortion doctor murderers intend, quite literally and to the sense of the word strike terror into the hearts of doctors everywhere. In fact, the suspects very own words were that more killings were forthcoming:"Scott Roeder, the suspect in the shooting death of George Tiller, a doctor who provided late-term abortions, said Sunday there will be "similar events" around the country as long as abortion is legal." - statement to the APRoeder is a terrorist. I don't know that there was ever such a narrow definition of "terrorist" that it should apply only to radical Muslims,nor should there be. Observe Christian terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.
During an historical period there tended to be an aggregate of plane hijacks by terrorists of Arab Muslim descent, so that necessarily covers all forms of terrorism? In every other case where the intent of murder is to inflict terror to effect one's personal belief system on the public, you have a terrorist.Anonymous RexI stand corrected. I think my point is that this story about this abortion doctor superceded yet another story about 'tradional' terrorism. Kind of makes me wonder why this story about the doctor has so much coverage when we're fighting two wars and of course the all-encompassing 'war on terror' (which is technically a misnomer). I still think there is an underlying theme to this reporting, though, since the right (in this case the extreme far-right) has been labeled 'terrorists'. I just don't see the comparison, yet technically there is a case to be made for it.Thanks for the comment and for reading.
I think the speculation of media bias is a little paranoid. There was a long record of threats that the media had nearly instant access to in Scott Roeder's case. Even the guy's ex-wife came out quickly with the statement that one of the reasons she left him was his radical beliefs and his mental imbalance. Combine that with his history of threats and it's easy for anyone to see he's a domestic terrorist.The recruiting station murders on the other hand were performed by someone without a record, a person completely unknown to the media and the locals. How could the media know he was Arab or trained in Yemen? It took a day and a half to uncover these facts, which I think is pretty quick.Someone without a record performing a double-murder should still have trumped the other story. I know, I know, I always laugh at media bias yet in this time of war I should think there would only be one motive for killing soldiers at a recruiting station. Sorry, I guess I'm just delusional, yet I think we as a society are too tired of limiting the word 'terrorist' to Arabs. The man who killed the abortion doctor wanted to kill many more, perhaps (although that is just bravado, I think) and said there would be more killings forthcoming. Perhaps he believed it, yet since 1972 (Roe v. Wade) there have been how many killings such as this?And although it is truly abhorrent, I still cannot seem to compare the two since then why not compare a white man lynching a black man? Is that terrorism? He would obviously want to kill many more, right? What about the man who kills the gay person? Would he be limited to killing just one? The fact he wanted to kill more, does that make him a terrorist?Some questions for all of us, I am sure. I guess I opened a can of worms here.Thanks for reading and commenting.
Hey Mike good article that makes us think a little! As for bias in the media, of course there is. Ask a newspaper writer or journalism professor if there is bias in the media. Honest ones will tell you of course there is. There shouldn’t be, and good professors teach their students to be fair and balanced and get both sides of a story and verify. However, bias is there, to the left and right and all over the place. Whatever a reporter’s editors or managers bias may be may reflect in story content and coverage. The bigger question I guess is how prevalent is it and is it getting better or worse? Now that is an article for another day! Good reading—thanks.
You're right, although I really try not to think of bias. I just can't get over the amount of play this story had received. Thanks as always for reading and commenting.
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