Fear Of Terrorism?

The risk of being killed in a terrorist attack in Canada is sort of like the risk of being killed in a car accident. We know that all of us who drive are at a theoretical risk every time we're out. We know that there will be deaths - we don't know when or to whom they will happen - we know that we are all potential victims. In fact, in 2011, over two thousand Canadians died in traffic accidents and in 2010 there were 1.24 million such deaths world wide.

We also know that as a practical matter we will never get the number down to zero. There will always be accidents, and there will always be the possibility it will be us who are in them. No-one can keep us, nor do we really demand that the government keep us, totally safe from any possibility of crashing. So what do we do to deal with this massive threat to our personal lives and security, this recurring, year after year, senseless, cowardly (that's the word you use about all terrorist attacks, even if it involves a shoot-out with police and the terrorist dying) brutal death toll? How do we cope when faced with meaningless, violent, death that could come to anyone of us or our families every day?

Well, we take reasonable precautions, like not driving in really bad whether, not driving drunk, obeying traffic laws and being careful. We also ensure that if something happens, there are effective responses. There are ambulances and hospitals and police and health care and the courts, if they are necessary. And what else do we do? We go on with our lives. We don't panic, arm ourselves, demand a police officer ride with us everywhere we go, or give up our right to gps units and Tim Hortons travel mugs. We continue to drive, go places, see people, do things. We live with the risk.

Same with the risk of being mugged, killed in a drive-by shooting, targeted by the mafia, having a heart attack, your house catching on fire, or nuclear war (which is still a threat). Let me repeat: a) take reasonable precautions, b) establish effective responses should they be needed, c) get on with your life.

The Canadian police -national, provincial, and municipal - despite all their numbers and funding and authority, cannot protect you or me from the risk of murder or assault. Murders and assaults happen everyday in Canada. To someone. Maybe next time it'll be you. Why do we demand a higher security, a more extreme and frightened response, to the risk of a terrorist assaulting you than a mugger, street gang, drug addict or friend of the family assaulting you? Is it that gang murders generally happen in gang neighbourhoods and terrorist seldom target poorer areas? Is it that terrorists are somehow in league with foreigners? The guns are out there, circulating around the world, and we all have causes we are willing to kill for. It's a globalized world. We can no longer fight our wars exclusively in other people's countries. The shock of the Paris attacks is that it is not a story of the French invading and colonizing and bombing people in Africa - that would be normal and just one if those things countries do - the terror part is that the killing happened in Paris: we are not even safe in our own cities! Welcome to the world.

You are not safe in your city from dying early because of air pollution, being hit by a bus, being shot for your purse, being raped, being beaten up for money, being murdered by your spouse, or the many other much more likely things to happen to you. You don't walk in bad neighbourhoods at night unless you have to (and many people have to). You don't leave your drink unattended at a bar (but you still go out with friends). You look both ways before crossing the road (but people still get hit).

When it comes to death by terrorist, it's different. They are a group, a mass, a people, a country, a type, religious or ethnic. They must be destroyed, all of them...because terrorism is not just a threat to you or me individually, terrorism is an affront to our power as a nation. To our rightness and justness. You being killed in a drive-by sucks for you but says nothing about us as a people. Terrorism provokes our sense of outrage because it strikes at our sense of self, as a nation. How dare someone hate us? How dare they act on that hate? How dare they think that they can just kill our citizens the way our citizens kill others of our citizens? What kind of evil people would see us as the enemy? Don't they know who we are? We're on the side of the angels. God loves us especially. We never did anyone any harm. We're the good guys. Terrorists commit the sin of hating who they are supposed to love, whereas we only hate the people we are supposed to hate.

We have good reasons for our violence (see the bombing of Libyan cities to protect civilians...and where do most civilians live? In cities). Terrorists are evil because they kill for the wrong reasons. Who really cares if there are American bases on Muslim holy ground? That's a stupid reason to kill. Regime change in a foreign country - now that's a proper reason to kill. Why doesn't everyone see that? Why do other groups insist on killing for what they think is important? Ultimately, what the world needs is to be more like us, for our priorities to be everyone's priorities, all territory to be our territory, for everyone to value only what we value. Why can't the terrorists see that?

Paris, Terrorism, Islam, and You and Me.

Once again terrorists have struck at a Western city, and once again it is Paris. And yes, the terrorists have been identified as Muslim and members of the violent and aggressive Islamic State. There, I've used the words 'terrorists', ''Muslim' and 'Islamic' all together. No-one can say I'm soft on terrorism.

But if the problem is Islam, if there is something intrinsic and essential about being Muslim that is causing the violence, then there are only two solutions. Either convert every Muslim to some other religion: Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism (or atheism) even by force, or alternatively, kill them all. If you want to only kill the extremist Muslims, then you are admitting that not all Muslims are responsible for violence and so the problem cannot be Islam but something added to it in this particular case

Islam is not the problem. Yes, it can be used to motivate or justify violence, but so can democracy, patriotism, capitalism, revenge, pride, nationalism, language, loyalty, even love can motivate violence (love of country, love of fellow soldiers, love of royalty). The problem is not the reasons people give for committing violence, it is the willingness with which people commit violence, the readiness with which we are willing to kill.

There really is a moral equivalency between our side killing them and their side killing us. As outraged and grief-stricken we feel at the Paris killings, that is how outraged and grief-stricken Yemenis feel when we bomb their families. Ask yourself whether you would rather live in Paris today, after 120 people out of a city of. Million were murdered by a handful of terrorists, or live in Baghdad during the American invasion, when by December 2005 just one US air force wing had dropped five hundred thousand tons of explosives on Iraq. Think there was anybody terrified by that?

We all assume that the cause someone kills for is what's important, rather than the fact that they are killing, period. Since we only kill for reasons that are important to us, our violence is always justified. Since the enemy kills for reasons that are not important to us, such as getting foreign troops out of Saudi Arabia (bin Laden's reason for 9/11), they are always wrong. If the reasons they killed for were important to us too, then they wouldn't even be the enemy, they'd be allies or surrogates.

It is wrong to blame religion for causing violence, but it is right to criticize religion for not ending violence. How would the US fight any of its wars without faithful, God-fearing, peace-loving, Jesus followers ready to kill and torture and bomb others? The difference between a US bomb killing a family of Iraqis and an ISIS gunman killing a family of Parisians is that in one case we agree with the cause and in the other we don't. Both groups are just as dead. If we didn't believe that what we kill for is more important than whether or not we kill at all, if we didn't believe that the things we value are worth killing for and the things they value are so clearly not worth killing for, well, then, what would we do? How could we function? How would we be able to fight wars at all?

Blame religion for not making every violent, war-like, hate monger on whatever issue and on all sides (including ours) ashamed to open his or her mouth. Complain that religion has not been effective enough in bringing peace to wars fought for other things. It has not made enough people better enough to stop this shit from happening again and again. But then, what has? Maybe we need stronger, better, more positive religion. Maybe, if we are religious people, we should be calling out our leaders and brothers and sisters. When you think of all the reasons people kill each other: domestic abuse, drug deals, money, territory, revenge, anger, and yes, God, maybe the problem isn't religion. Maybe it's people.

What is Remembrance Day? Really?

November 11th is Remembrance Day in Canada, a day set aside every year to celebrate the making of war veterans through our past wars and to encourage our young people to become veterans themselves in our future wars. I know that's not what they say it's for. They say it is to 'honour' the people who fought in our wars. What makes fighting in a war honourable? Certainly not bravery, enemy soldiers were just as brave and we are certainly not celebrating them. Not patriotism; Nazi soldiers were no doubt patriotic, as patriotic about Germany as ours were about Canada. Not self-sacrifice, since both sides sacrificed, died, were wounded. For that matter, most of the people who die in wars now are civilians, and Remembrance Day is definitely not about remembering or honouring them. Civilians killed in war aren't even people, they're not even soldiers, they are 'collateral damage', and certainly there is no day set aside to think about them.

Patriotism is not a virtue, neither is bravery or sacrifice or loving your spouse or your children or being loved by your parents, because those things apply to both sides in any conflict and if we admit that the Taliban were fighting for their country, were brave, skilled, loved their families and left widows behind them when we killed them, well, it sort of makes you question how honourable killing them really was. Our soldiers deserve our gratitude because it is they who fight and not us. In fact, they are fighting for us. And by 'us' I mean the Prime Minister.  The PM said "bomb Libya" so our troops bombed Libya. If the PM had said "bomb Sweden" our troops would have bombed Sweden. Our fighting men and women are thankfully free from ever having to consider the moral implications of whether or not they should bomb Sweden - their moral choice is made when the sign up: follow every legal order.

Fighting the Taliban wasn't necessary to protect any Canadian rights or territory; we invaded their country, they didn't invade ours. The Afghanistan mission was a failure anyway; we neither caught nor killed Osama bin Laden there, which is why we went in the first place. But, and here's the point, given that the Canadian government was going to send X number of Canadians to war there, I am very grateful that I wasn't one of them. Therefore, although I honour our veterans, I do not honour them for what they have done, because war is largely immoral, inhumane, unChristian, and unjustified - war is never the last option, you always have the option of doing without whatever the war is over. I don't honour them for what they are, because what they are is being played for suckers by politicians who wouldn't declare war in the first place if they didn't figure their political objective was worth the cost of a certain number of our soldiers dying. I honour our fighting men and women because when our soldiers go off to battle irrelevant enemies in far away places, as ordered by whatever politician happened to get 38% of the vote in the last election, it saves me from having to go to jail for refusing to wage war myself.

If a veteran on Remembrance Day ever took a young person aside and said, "Listen, I've been to war. If anyone every tries to send you to one, for God's sake don't go. Refuse. Go to jail. Face a firing squad. Don't believe what they tell you. There's always another way," then I might be happy. Just one. But you can't expect that, because that would invalidate the veteran's own value as a veteran, which is based on war being a good, noble, heroic, necessary, honourable, Godly thing.

If I approached you to donate to end world hunger, you might think it was wishful thinking, that there will always be hungry people, that ending hunger would cost too much, that it is impractical - but you still might donate. If I told you I was working to create a world without war, what would you do? We all know what we are willing to sacrifice to win a war. What are we willing to do to not have wars?