The trouble with terrorism is that it works

Who would have imagined, a mere eight years after the terrorist attack on the twin towers, that America would inaugurate a President named Barak, Husain Obama? It took two hundred years to elect a Catholic in the person of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. A Jew, despite the strong Jewish presence in government and the media has yet to be elected, but a black man with a Muslim/ Arabic name is elected, twice, by one of the world’s most xenophobic electorates.

What is that all about? Is it perhaps appeasement, disguised as liberal all- accepting democracy? How and why is popular sentiment often swayed toward the viewpoint of those who perpetrate acts of terrorism upon a public that would be horrified if they realized that they have been swayed by the atrocious acts of their enemies?

Worldwide, we are witnessing the growing sympathy the mainstream media have for the viewpoints of terrorists. Writers and reporters wish to believe that they always take the side of the underdog, championing the oppressed and downtrodden. Does this identification with the underdog predispose them to taking the side of the terrorist who often projects a victim status?

Is it as subtle as this, or is it in fact that the media are the most timid and easily terrorized sector of democracy?

How do we explain the current condemnation of the state of Israel for retaliating against showers of rockets by pinpoint air and artillery strikes on the perpetrators? Israel’s actions have been labeled disproportionate by the very people, and their allies, who had no problem dropping nuclear devices on an enemy, who posed absolutely no threat to their homelands at the time.

The fire bombing of Dresden as retaliation for the blitz against London was cheered. When Britain was subjected to a rain of V1 rockets, she sent thousand bomber raids into Germany to destroy cities regardless of civilian casualties.

The double standards are the hallmark of people who themselves have been terrorized into attempting to appease a dangerous and bloodthirsty foe in the hope that they will not be eaten by Winston’s crocodile themselves.

It is not only in the Israel-Palastinian and the US-Muslim conflicts that we see this sympathy for the devil.

In South Africa , the media made a saint out of the terrorist leader Mandela.