For 17 years, Planet Earth has survived with constant acts of terror, real and threatened. The most devastating attacks came on September 11, 2001 when the World Trade Center was destroyed and the Pentagon damaged. Except for the terrorists who died, all those who perished in the attacks were murdered. The United States embarked on a policy of revenge that knew neither time limits nor boundaries. Murder is one way of saying death and sometimes so is revenge.
A century ago the official policy of the United States was to isolate itself from the Great War, which began in 1914. Washington profited from the selling of armaments to the Western Allies for three years before entering the conflict in 1917. The incident that figured most prominently in drawing Washington away from its isolationist position was the sinking of the liner Lusitania by a German submarine. Of the 1,201 lives lost, many were American. For many years the official version of sinking was characterized as a barbaric act of terror.
In 1972, researcher and author Colin Simpson wrote a true account of the life and death of the great liner. Lusitania was built under subvention. The British government contributed to her construction costs and naval architects influenced her design. The Cunard line, in return, agreed, in the event of war, she would be turned over to the Royal Navy to be fitted out as a fast auxiliary cruiser. The liner was a compromise, part floating palace and part ship of war. With her high superstructure and narrow beam, she was so unstable that with even a small degree of list, her lifeboats could not be launched successfully.
When the war began, only gun rings had been fitted before she was returned to commercial service in the role of a fast blockade runner. As such she carried a variety of war materials as well as soldiers in civilian dress. Under international law she carried contraband and was a legitimate target for the German Navy. The innocent passengers who died when she went down died by accident. The term “collateral damage” had not yet been coined. Afloat, she had been an asset as a blockade runner. At the bottom of the ocean with drowned Americans on board, she became a propaganda asset.
In WWII, citizens of Coventry, and the great cathedral there, were also victims of their country’s wartime strategies. British Intelligence had broken the German military codes. To aggressively defend Coventry might reveal to the Germans that their codes were no longer secret. Coventry was not warned. No defending aircraft were sent aloft. People in Coventry, without their prior knowledge became human sacrifices.
“Terror bombing” began during the Spanish Civil War and escalated throughout WWII to the massive casualty counts of Rotterdam, Warsaw, Dresden and Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
The Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 was not a terror bombing. It was directed at naval and military targets. It was the legitimate business of warfare. People who wear the uniforms of armed forces are expected, ultimately, to kill and be killed. On both sides of an international conflict, the dead are called heroes.
We don’t know how many people perished in “ethnic cleansing” in the Balkans or in the “surgical strikes” in Syria. Changing descriptive terms can’t change the reality of death. “Killed in action” is an honest term. It means what it means. The casualties of terror attacks are not willingly at war with anyone. Like Lusitania’s innocent passengers, they are people in the wrong place.
Killing and caging terrorists will not bring an end to terrorism. The only way to end it is by removing the conditions in which it is spawned.
