Think
of the terrorist as a cancer cell that might help to reframe, lf not answer,
the agonized questions we keep asking ourselves. What constitutes a terrorist?
What madness, what violent range, can cause human being to turn himself? Into a
bomber, killing himself along with his targeted victims, as well as innocent
bystanders? What chemistry of misplaced idealism of reutilization of spirit can
create? Such a fury in the blood? More importantly, how do us the civilized,
the law abiding, protect ourselves from such an implacable nemesis?
Such
question has been asked before and will now be asked again with renewed
urgency, is the terrorist Insane? ·If so, how do we defend ourselves against
his Insanity? Is he a self-styled martyr seeking self actualization?
Conventional
methods of defense armaments and stringent anti-terrorist laws don’t seem to
work. If anything, they make matters worse. Whether it is Palestine, Sri Lanka,
New York City, Kashmir and now Karachi. The fireball of terrorism seems able to
erupt at will and if seemingly quenched in one spot, it bursts out another with
recrudescent ferocity, No “Enduring Freedom" no National Missile Defense,
no USA Patriot Act can provide a remedy for terrorism. And the more
technological advanced and interlinked the global community becomes, the more
vulnerable it is to terrorist attack. The World Trade Center holocaust was
directly aided and abetted by high density sky scraper architecture; the
Anthrax scare by the development of the virus by US laboratories in the 1950s.
Terrorism
is not born in vacuum. We breed the terrorism we suffer, as we breed the
disease of cancer in our bodies, Cancer, like cancer disease, is a life style
manifestation. We cause our own cancer by creating a life style, an environment
that is carcinogenic. We smoke, we drink, Increase our stress loads, then when
the Big C hits us, we wonder why. How could it happen to me?
Think
of terrorism as the political equivalent of cancer. If the International
community has, In various trouble spots, created an environment where
Individuals or group have In fact or perception been Increasingly marginalized,
politically, socially, or economically, It has laid the foundation for the
genesis of ideological cancer cells, which will grow, and spread, and
metastasis and spring up In unexpected parts of the world: stamp it out In
Afghanistan, it can flare In Jerusalem, of Chechnya or Washington or London or
Karachi.
Like
medical cancer, terrorist cancer can metamorphose into different terrorist From
of the same disease. The links between different terrorist groups In different
parts of the world and with ostensibly different agendas is well established.
lf terrorism is Indeed a life-style disease, neither the political equivalent
of the scalpel or of chemotherapy, nether military action nor draconian
legislative counter assault will be of much help. Unless the disease is
surgically rooted out In It’s entirely --- a near Impossibility considering the
collusive nature of the quarry--- It will crop up again. Chemotherapy in the
from of ordnances like USA Patriot, will only circumscribe democratic space
without enhancing security.
Prevention,
by way of life-style adjustments and regular checkups, is said to be the best
cure for medical cancer. Those responsible for the health of our polity might
do worse than take a leaf of such prescriptions. Go beyond the symptoms, find
out what you Live so as not to encourage the growth of the disease. Have your
check-ups, gather Intelligence, and take appropriate remedial action in the
affected area. Most importantly, change the conditions which cause such
malignant growths, like the light against cancer, the flight against the big
“T” requires courage, stamina, the capacity to withstand pain and, most of all,
faith. Faith that we can beat it because we must. For lf we don’t, it will beat
us, by turning us Into Itself.
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