Straight talk on the threat of terrorism by Ilana Freedman

GERARD GROUP INTERNATIONAL INC

Straight talk on the threat of terrorism

By Ilana Freedman

When we watched the first war in Iraq unfold on television from the comfort of our living rooms, we felt safe because the war was so far away.

When the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks dissolved into violence that spawned horrific terrorist attacks and predictable military responses, we shook our heads but still felt ourselves safe because the conflict was so far away.

When two suicide bombers used a small explosives-laden boat in a Yemen port to blow a 40-foot hole in the side of the USS Cole and murdered 17 US sailors, we were shocked and saddened, but we still felt safe. Yemen was so far away.

Then, when four planes shattered a perfect autumn morning, flying into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and into a desolate field in Pennsylvania, we were shocked, we wept and felt violated.

But over time, we willed ourselves to think that maybe it was, after all, just a one-time event. We began leaving our fears where we keep our memories and once again we began to feel safe.

So when the conventional war in Iraq turned into a nightmare of terrorist attacks against hundreds of civilians as well as against our own troops, we wept for our fallen young men and women, but we still felt safe in our homes. Iraq is, after all, so far away.

We keep the mean and the ugly away from our door by giving it names we can live with. We favor euphemistic terminology to reference some of the most egregious issues in our world today. We talk about "insurgents" and "militants," for example, to describe killers of civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Israel. These are gentler, kinder words to describe those who are anything but gentle and kind.

The Merriman-Webster dictionary defines "insurgent" as "a person who revolts against civil authority or an established government; especially : a rebel not recognized as a belligerent." But a recent New York Times article described as insurgents the men who were flooding the town of Ramadi in Iraq, attacking from mosques and booby-trapping heavily traveled streets. An AP article described a "bomb-making factory where insurgents prepared roadside explosives and car bombs that have killed hundreds of Iraqi civilians and US troops."

Insurgents? Hardly. These are cold-blooded murderers, killing indiscriminately with car bombs and IEDs (improvised explosive devices). These are the men who brutally murdered Margaret Hassan, a woman who devoted her life -- and gave her life -- for the Iraqi people. They subjected her to weeks of physical and psychological torture, and then ended her life with a bullet to her head while the video cameras rolled.

These are men who savagely saw off the heads of living people and videotape their actions so we can witness the depth of their depravity, even as they claim holy prerogatives in the name of a vengeful god. But they are not holy warriors, nor are they "insurgents" or "militants." They are terrorists and murderers. They are deeply and irretrievably evil.

They do not fight to defend their homes or their communities. On the contrary, they victimize the communities in which they live or which they take over. Aware of the ethic that drives Americans to protect civilian life, they wage fierce battles from the safety of schools, hospitals, and mosques, where they hide behind their own people, the children, the sick, and the faithful, who become their human shields. Their treachery against their own people has been responsible for many hundreds of civilian deaths since the American invasion in March.

Their actions have excluded them from what we know as the civilized world. Calling them anything other than what they really are -- depraved, cold-blooded murderers -- not only minimizes the horror of their actions, but increases the danger to us all by seeming to rationalize that which by any civilized standard is inexcusable.

We Americans let ourselves be fooled by comforting language. We prefer to see the world through eyes that are d and protected from the horror and insanity that prevails in other parts of the world. We allow ourselves to feel safe because it is all happening... so far away.

But last week, the images came just a little bit closer to home. And the danger becomes more difficult to gloss over it. Theo Van Gogh, a controversial Dutch film-maker, was murdered -- ritually slaughtered -- in broad daylight on an Amsterdam street for daring to comment through his film on the plight of Moslem women.

Van Gogh was shot, stabbed, nearly decapitated, and left in the street with a five page note bearing Koranic s "pinned" to his chest by a large hunting knife buried to the hilt. This did not occur in the Middle East, nor in Africa or Asia. It happened in Europe, a place a little closer to ours, both in culture and geography, in one of the most western and liberal countries in the world.

If we gloss over this, too, if we disguise this hideous murder in euphemisms and deny the threat that continues to spread throughout the world, we will continue to ignore a danger that we have the ability to conquer if only we have the will to do so. And the first question we must ask ourselves is: are we still so safe, because even Europe is so far away?

We need to accept that the danger is real and that it is coming closer. We need to look at our world with greater clarity. We need to call the enemy what it is, even if doing so makes us uncomfortable, even if it makes us face some difficult truths about the world.

9/11 was a wake-up call. The alarm keeps ringing, and we dare not push the snooze button and go back to sleep.

(Ilana Freedman is a specialist in counter-terrorism and Managing Partner of Gerard Group International LLC. She welcomes your comments at ilana@gerardgroup.com.)

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