The Perpetual War on Terrorism

The United States defines “terrorism” under the Federal Criminal Code. Chapter 113B of Part I of Title 18 of the United States Code as:
"..activities that involve violent or life-threatening acts that appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.

Israel’s recent response to Hezbollah’s capture of 2 Israel soldiers was to commit such “terrorism” when it took Hamas leaders prisoner and threatened them with prosecution and then unleashed massive air strikes against Lebanon that destroyed roads, the Beirut airport, private homes, government offices, power stations, water plants, a designed assault to destroy Lebanon’s infrastructure which displaced over half a million people from their relative peaceful existence and destroyed what they knew as “life” forever before the army invaded a sovereign nation.

I was thinking about doing a more thoroughly researched post for a particular perception of Israel’s recent act of terrorism in Lebanon in response to the acts of terrorism committed by Hezbollah, in response to Israel’s last act of terrorism in response to Hezbollah’s prior act of terrorism in response to….ad nauseam.

The historical details of who did what and when or why and dismiss all the self serving rationalizations created to convince man to accept killing as a way of life and on a level well beyond those required for mere survival are of no importance in and of themselves. Man waging war on man is a tribal trait that predates its modern day manifestations in today’s right wing governments of Iran and Israel and the right wing government in the world’s only super power that stirs this caldron of carnage.

The moral code preached by each of these monotheistic combatants is that violence begets violence yet thousands of years later, it is violence that is practiced to perfection with precision bombing but not always that precise. Don’t we have sufficient statistical data which to analyze and safely conclude that there is an excessively high probability that violence in response to violence only results in more violence?

When “staying the course” in Iraq or Palestine or Lebanon means intimidating civilian populations, and influencing a policy by mass destruction, assassination, and kidnapping the unavoidable conclusion is that the “war on terrorism” only perpetuates “terrorism” when the participants engage in acts of “terrorism” while waging this war. Isn’t it time to “question the course” by asking whether or not we live a life that requires a new way of living?