Tears falling on Muslimeen

One could more readily understand a terrorist’s motive, however much one disagreed with them — if his acts were directed against the military or against armed police. While no revolt or violent defiance of law and order can be condoned, this would at least have some character of openly declared warfare. As it is though, most present day terrorism involves the jeopardising or actual deaths of innocent civilians as was witnessed in our own country 15 years ago.

Nothing can justify that. But terrorists become so obsessed by their supposedly righteous cause — so eaten up by their grievances, that all moral judgments are excluded from their thinking, which, is the worst form of perverted arrogance. They do not resort to terrorism out of desperation as their apologists claim, but because its methods appeal to their own warped characters. They are not selfless heroes, but criminals.

On the contrary, the weight of historical evidence shows that terrorism rarely succeeds in its ultimate objectives. When ordinary people are the main victims, as in North and South America, England and Northern Ireland, the terrorists alienate sections of the population who might otherwise have had some sympathy for their aims.

This is exactly what the Muslimeen has done. Tears are falling on them.

They have put this country 50 years backwards. But governments have a duty to protect human lives, which may add to the controversy over its decision on how to deal with terrorism.

The terrorism adopted by these would be social revolutions that the Muslimeen initiated was self defeating, because it lost them whatever public sympathy their idealistic objectives might have once had.

HARRY P T CHARLIE

Princes Town