A Quote by David Livingstone
Terrorism is a word with little content - it is a label for brutalities committed by ‘the enemy’, and from which one’s own acts of destruction are exempted. It is an inchoate and emotionally laden concept, a semantic mirror of our dishonesty and a repository for everything about war that we would like to disavow. Making a sharp distinction between war and terrorism is at best a self-deceptive game.
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Since war itself is the most extreme form of terrorism, a war on terrorism is profoundly self-contradictory.
One might have thought the world would stop ascribing moral equivalence between acts of terrorism and acts of punishing terrorism. It has not happened that way.
Beyond the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important, is the fact that war in our time inevitably results in the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a 'war on terrorism' is a contradiction in terms.
I condemn everyone and anyone who commits acts of terrorism. And Hamas has committed acts of terrorism.
To a degree, the West is reaping what it sowed from a major strategic blunder in the aftermath of 9/11 - the entire concept of a war on technique, that is, terrorism. Defining the enemy when fighting a concept was impossible.
So our own actions sometimes have undermined our safety, in our efforts to fight terrorism. The only way this can work is if we are aligned with liberals, with moderate Muslim forces. But if our war on terrorism is seen - as it is seen by many Muslims - as a war on Islam itself, it's very hard for us to have Muslim alliances, because America and the West have become so toxic.
Mr. Speaker, I agree with those who say that the Global War on Terrorism is actually a Global War of Ideas and that terrorism is one of the tactics used in that War.
The catch-all phrase "the war on terrorism", in all honesty, has no more meaning than if one wants to wage a war against "criminal gangsterism". Terrorism is a tactic. You can't have a war against a tactic. It's deliberately vague and non-definable in order to justify and permit perpetual war anywhere and under any circumstance.
American credibility in the war on terrorism depends on a strong stand against all terrorist acts, whether committed by foe or friend.
A war against terrorism is an impracticable conception if it means fighting terrorism with terrorism.
War is a lie. War is a racket. War is hell. War is waste. War is a crime. War is terrorism. War is not the answer.
It's a nonsense assumption that you can get rid of terrorism with war. Terrorism is taking the lives of innocent people to gain your objective. War is basically the same thing on a larger scale.
I think we should be organized in something called an Alliance Against Nuclear Terrorism. In the same way that NATO was the great alliance of the Cold War and served a great purpose then, we need now, in the war on terrorism, a new alliance, the mission of which would be to minimize the risk of nuclear terrorist attacks, and the members would agree to sign on to the gold standard.
Ours is an age in which thousands are driven daily from their homelands by the unforgiving brutalities of war, terrorism, political oppression, starvation, disease, economic piracy, and the relentless suffocation of that singular breath which makes human beings individuals.
Islamic terrorism is not common crime but an act of war. Jihad is war. For the Jihadi it is a war; we must also accept it as such. Home grown Muslim militants must be treated, not just as enemy combatants but as traitors.
There are two kinds of terrorism. Rational terrorism such as Palestinian terrorism and apocalyptic terrorism like Sept. 11. You have to distinguish between the two.
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