Last week’s terror attacks in Mumbai were a tragedy of epic proportions — the targets were high class hotels and other western institutions with Brits, Americans and Jews being the main targets of the Islamic terrorists. In a sense, this was India’s 9/11, just like London and Madrid have their own horrific incidents of Islamic terrorism. As the dust settles, the obvious question is asked: Why? The answer should be: Because there are evil people in this world who do evil things. Once again, though, people say it’s just payback for the crimes the West has committed.
This is unfortunately not a new phenomenon. Americans as a people constantly like to blame everything but the actual cause. Too fat? It’s the fault of McDonald’s. Too thin? It’s society’s fault. We sue for any and every reason under the sun. This investment in not blaming people for their actions becomes a serious security threat once it starts being used in the context of political violence and terrorism. Why is it that no one has enough of a pair to just say, “Evil people did evil things. They would have used any excuse to kill.” Instead we get the “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” B.S. that typically spews forth from every politician. No one in the Taliban or al-Qaida makes excuses for our actions; they call us The Great Satan.
If there is one thing that I will miss about George W. Bush, it’s that he did not buy into this stupid moral relativism that has plagued the national discourse on terror. George W. Bush called it as he saw it: black and white, a fight of the good against evil, because we are the good guys and they are the bad guys. People immediately cringed at the sound of “good vs. evil” because it wasn’t sensitive or politically correct enough, but as Dubya put it: “If this isn’t good vs. evil, then what is?”
The terrorists are evil; they do not exist in the gray murkiness of moral relativity. Where is the moral relativity in wanton destruction and cold-blooded murder? Try to explain to the orphaned son of the Chabad rabbi and his wife that the people who killed his parents were someone else’s freedom fighter. The people of the United States cringe at the thought that we might have made one the terrorists in Guantanamo Bay uncomfortable for an afternoon. What about our soldiers in Iraq? Afghanistan? Do you think that the Taliban cares about human rights? Torture is the routine among the people we are fighting and yet we still try to make them out as something other than the monsters that they are. They may have wives and they may have kids, and everyone’s got parents, but that doesn’t make them any less of the very worst that humanity has to offer.
I saw hope on the eve of the State of the Union address when President Bush declared the Axis of Evil because it looked to be the start of a new way to look at terrorists: as terrorists. On 9/11, the Republicans blamed the Democrats, the Democrats blamed the Republicans and Michael Moore blamed President Bush. Why is it that we can’t just blame the people who slammed the damn planes into the World Trade Center? Why can’t we blame the people who plant the bombs and fire the guns and kill people? I refuse, as a person and as a proud American citizen, to take any responsibility for a terrorist’s actions. I know people will argue that it is a complex political situation and that the policies of the United States precipitated the actions of these people, and it will be argued that they don’t have any other options for fighting back.
There is no meeting halfway with Death to Israel, Death to America, Death to the West or Death to the infidels.