A terrorist is dead. Ok, the world’s most famous and hated terrorist is dead. Justice has been served – the taker of innocent lives has had his own life taken from him. But it doesn’t mean that the world is any safer or that we can sleep any easier.
Osama Bin Laden and other leaders of terror are merely the sparks that ignite a long line of kindling to the final fire. The sparks can be banned and eliminated but as long as there is kindling the possibility of fire remains. And no one can be safe.
Franz Kafka said “So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.” What is simple is true. It is hunger and want and need that drives one man to hate another. We become our destructive best when we feel we have nothing left to lose. When we have no homes to protect, no means to educate or feed our children, no voice that can be heard....what options are left?
Options. Do terrorists have any? We ask terrorists many things – we question their humanity & sanity rhetorically through media and probe details of operations and agendas more physically through torture. But does anyone ask the other pertinent questions – what were his options? Did he have alternative means of providing for himself and his family? If he did, what prevented him from resorting to them?
Why would a 12 year old boy become a suicide bomber? Is it the hunger in his stomach that craves such a final satisfaction? Or are there multiple stomachs that will only be fed with the price of his blood? Or is it the intense propaganda of those who have known deprivation intimately and are skilled in exploiting it?
We can kill terrorists. We cannot kill terror. It comes from the fire of hatred that is perpetually burning in different corners of the world. It is fuelled by prejudice, discrimination, exploitation, greed, revenge, ignorance, manipulation, differences of attitude & lifestyle....but the kindling is always the same – poverty.
Friday, May 6, 2011
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