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The Real Threat To Terrorism, Part I

© lawhawk

In the last several weeks, we have seen the effects of terrorist attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Irish car bombs killing innocent civilians and Palestinian gunmen killing Israeli settlers on the West Bank.

What do these all have in common with each other? These acts of terror are conceived and carried out by dedicated and even fanatical followers of certain beliefs or traditions. Their base of power arises from the conflict that they continue to propagate by their actual acts. Terrorism has a long and storied history, down through the ages where assassins would kill kings and infiltrate city defenses to make the populations cower in fear.

What is sometimes forgotten in the midst of the violence is that sometimes the terrorists of yesterday become the heros and leaders of the present. The Boston Tea Party - an act of symbolism and defiance of the British Government by those who opposed the tax on tea can be classified as a terrorist act. Some of those involved went on to become members of the Constitutional Convention and even President of the United States.

In Israel, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir were members of the Stern Gang and Irgun who sought to oust the British during the Mandate period prior to 1947. They were responsible for killing dozens of British soldiers and civilians, not to mention untold numbers of Arabs. These men went on to become prime ministers of Israel - with Menachem Begin signing the historic Camp David Accords which brought peace between Israel and Egypt.

The Palestinian Authority Chairman, Yasir Arafat, has a similar past. As head of the Fatah faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, he was ultimately responsible for the terrorist attacks on Israel, US and several Western European countries for over 20 years. Now he is working towards the ultimate goal of creating an independent Palestinian nation in the Middle East.

This brings me back to the original point of what is the real threat to the terrorist organizations. It is peace. Terrorists thrive on conflict and the inability of nations and individuals to solve their differences in a peaceful manner. They have a stake in the outcome because if peace occurs, they lose their mandate to affect the outcome. Bombings give them legitimacy and force nations to deal with their issues and can bring about change. Once those issues are dealt with, however, the terrorists are forced to either give up the use of force or must alter their goals to legitimize, in their eyes, the continued use of force.

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