Monday, February 22, 2010

it's all about perspective

perspective evidently has a huge impact on what you know, how you know it and what you believe. i always try to be open to other perspectives although sometimes its just so hard to understand the other side. but i was listening to the BBC news a couple of weeks ago and i remember hearing an update on the fight against terrorists. i don't remember what the news was exactly but it went something like this

"British and American troops in Iraq have successfully blown up a known terrorist hideout, destroying the building and killing several civilians. This was in response to the death of the five CIA agents who were killed by terrorists last week."

terrorism is defined on dictionary.com as

–noun
1.a person, usually a member of a group, who uses or advocates terrorism.
2.a person who terrorizes or frightens others.

and in the oxford dictionary as

• noun a person who uses violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.

this makes me wonder, i'm not condoning the acts of terrorists by any means at all, but if we have defined terrorism as frightening others and using violence for political advancement then how can we say that what we are doing is not terrorism? yes, the 'terrorists' may have killed many more innocent civilians but even the word 'more' is too much of a subjective statement to mean anything.

what are the justified reasons for the 'war in iraq'? is america fighting to protect their access to valuable oil? yes. are they fighting to protect their economic interests in the region? yes. are they fighting in retaliation? yes.

personally, i do not understand, why any of these reasons should be inflicting so much damage to people other than maybe the owner of the land which the oil is found, and the people collecting the oil themselves.

obviously i do not understand the 'war in iraq' to the degree that i should in order to evalutate it properly but how can we expect them to not retaliate the way they do when we attack and bomb their people? yes they may be fighting for something we don't believe is right, but what proof do we have that they are wrong? is it not their own perspective, their own ethics and morals? i assume to them, we are completely wrong.

all that i can say is that if you were blowing up my people, i'd certainly try and blow up yours.

who are the real terrorists here?

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