Angela Bacca

The media-created controversy that has been plaguing Barack Obama has swirled further out of control as his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, attempts to publicly vindicate himself.

“You cannot do terrorism on other people and not expect it to come back to you,” he said yesterday.

Why are these words so inflammatory, and who exactly is offended? (I don’t really have an answer, because it seems as if television pundits are the only people who really care).

Well, Wright is right. However, he is right in that our definitions of terrorism are extremely misconstrued.

When Osama bin Laden was an ally of America’s in the 80s, he was not a terrorist. After September 11, he is terrorist #1. Has Al Qaeda changed since then? No, but they have been redefined as terrorists simply because they attacked us.

When Israel attacks the Palestinians, they are simply defending themselves, and we send aid and nukes. When the Palestinians are hit by American bullets and attack back, they are terrorists.

“…The [American government’s] official approach to terrorism is a posture of inconsistency, one which evades definition. I have examined at least twenty official documents on terrorism. Not one offers a definition. All of them explain it polemically in order to arouse our emotions, rather than exercise our intelligence”-Eqbal Ahmad, from “Terrorism: Theirs & Ours”

You cannot fight a war on terror without first choosing who the terrorists are. If you ask an Iraqi they might just say that we are. Americans are encouraged to be passionate jingoists whose patriotic duty it is to support our government’s actions and not question them.

Warfare is a primitive means of diplomacy, and it is unrealistic and unsustainable for the future. Warfare for any reason is terrorism, because innocent people die, go hungry, are pushed out of their homes, or are caught in the fire. The definition of at terrorist is simple, it is one who makes any one else live in terror. The war on terrorism starts here.