Terrorist attacks are not just something you see in the news and think ‘oh dear’, they are happening much closer by. I had lived in Leeds at the time of the 7/7 London bombings and the following week I went of a school trip. After I’d got back I found that a house up the road from mine was roped off with police standing guard 24/7. My parents told me that it was one of the suspected places where the bombs had been made and they had evacuated for a few days whilst I’d been away for the whole area to be searched. This at least showed me how terrorism can affect normal people’s everyday lives.
9/11 and the 7/7 bombings are just two examples of many terrorist attacks. From the records on the online Terrorism Research Centre, numerous terrorist attacks happen daily around the world. Terrorists do not think themselves as terrorists but as ‘rebels’ and ‘liberators’ and believe that they are fighting for a greater cause, but at the cost of thousands of innocent lives? Is driving planes through important buildings, killing thousands of people, going to help you achieve a new Islamic caliphate, as al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden seemed to think? But did that not simply mark the beginning of the War on Terrorism? All through history there have been examples of terrorist attacks. The Black Hand Group believed assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand would unite Bosnia with Serbia, but what really happened? Did it not simply lead to the break out of the First World War? There is yet to be a terrorist group whose popularity increases after an attack, nor has there been one whose aims have been achieved through violence. In fact each terrorist attack have only strengthened people’s unity against terrorism and made people more and more determined not to give in. A survivor of the 7/7 bombings said: “I am angry at the sick black-hearted nutters who planned and executed this. The murderers wanted to have the effect of people being scared to go in buses and trains. They wanted tourists not to come, people to be scared, terrorized. They know it won’t work. I want life, not death; peace, not war; multiculture, not monoculture.”
Religious terrorism is only one type of terrorism. People here in Northern Ireland are all familiar with nationalist terrorism. Between 1969 and 2001 3,523 people have died as a result of nationalist terrorism, 1,855 of which were civilians. Shooting someone simply because they believe in being governed by a different government, or even worse, just because you think they believe in a different government? Surely not! Furthermore, large numbers of fatalities happened because the victim was at the wrong place at the wrong time – innocent passers-by lose their lives because others are fighting over whether to be governed from London or Dublin. Is that worth the lives of over three and a half thousand people?
Terrorism tears families apart and causes immense grief and anger amongst normal people. In 9/11 alone there were 2976 fatalities. People have their loved snatched away from them. Those who argue
‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ obviously don’t hear or see the parents grieving for their children, husbands mourning for their wives, women longing for their husbands, little kids crying for their mums and dads. Is that what freedom really is?
Terrorism simply does not work. The horrific attacks only have opposite effects. Apart from killing innocent people, they leave many more injured, out of which many are left permanently disabled. They call that fighting for the greater good? How can one sit down and plan out the deaths of thousands of people, just because they are of a different religion, or might believe in something different from you? Is it not crystal clear that terrorism cannot be justified? Or rephrase that and ask yourself this question instead: can slaughtering innocent people ever be justified?
