What exactly is the Difference?
Allow me to pose a question here. It may be rhetorical, but perhaps there is an answer.
Example #1:
Just after sunrise, a nondescript van pulls slowly up to the front gate of a small appartment complex. In 12 units, there are a total of 44 people. Men about to go to work, children getting ready for school, some elderly retired folks. The driver of the van guns the engine and drives through the gate. A security guard fires a few rounds at the windshield, but it's all just too fast and too chaotic. The van blows a tire as it hits the broad stairs at the main enterance, but it's momentum carries it up the stairs and through the door. For a brief moment, nothing happens. Then, in an enormous blast, five hundred pounds of high explosives detonate, shattering the morning quiet and collapsing the front of the building. Fourteen people are killed outright. Another eleven will die of their injuries or be found dead in the rubble. All are injured, traumatized, heartbroken with their losses and physically broken by the pain.
Example #2:
Just after sunrise, in the same small appartment building. Sixteen thousand feet above, an F-16 orbits, the pilot inputting target coordinates into the Weapons/Fire Control System. A suspected terrorist operator is in a house just behind the appartments. Ground control has determined that they can accomplish the mission safely. The pilot releases a 500 pound JDAM precision guided bomb. No one can say why - maybe the coordinates were wrong, maybe one of the chips in the electronics was faulty, maybe it was nothing more than a wayward gust of wind - but the bomb overshoots its target and punches through the main enterance to the appartments. Fourteen people are killed outright. Another eleven will die of their injuries or be found dead in the rubble. All are injured, traumatized, heartbroken with their losses and physically broken by the pain.
Now to the question. Why is example #1 terrorism? Or more importantly, why is example #2 NOT terrorism? How can there be any difference?
Terrorists are not identified by color, religion or on who's behalf they are killing innocents. Terrorists are the people who commit terrorism. Nothing more, nothing less...
Signposts at the end of Democracy's Paved Road
I've been looking at events a little differently these days. I've been observing global geopolitics like I was watching a movie that somebody had already told me the ending, and I've been trying to spot the little signs that point to the denouement. Two more years under Bush/Cheney will certainly destroy the America we love, as represented by the Constitution they are ignoring and undermining. So like a miner a hundred years ago, I'm watching for the canary to fall off her perch - events that point to the sad, brutal ending I am now convinced is upon us.
Political leaders always lie. We know that. And to a politician, everything is political. We know that too. These are the facts of American Politics that have made us cynical, that give us 30% voter turnout. But politicians have always been willing to play the game, to conceal their mendacity, give their lies a cover of righteousness, put on a show of doing good for their country and their constituents. As the old saw goes, putting lipstick on the pig. When democratic societies cross the threshold and become authoritarian or even totalitarian police states, the first giveaway is the leadership ceases to pretend.
At the point where the political leadership no longer feels compelled to conceal or obfuscate their lies and criminal acts, it is an indication that the system of checks and oversight built into their political system has been compromised or undermined to the point where they no longer feel it poses any threat or risk to their actions. And by acting blatently, uncaring that their actions are apparent to their citizens as exactly what they are, they are telling us that we are no longer a democracy. That the Constitution is void, and the rule of law is ended.
I give you
Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, US Navy. A brave, honest man who has served his country with distinction for 18 years. As an attorney for the US Navy's JAG, Cmdr. Swift was appointed to represent
Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the former driver for Osama bin Laden, being held in Guantanamo as an enemy combatant. When he was assigned to the case, Swift was told that the only plea he would be allowed to enter was guilty. But Swift was honest, a true American who had taken an oath to defend the Constitution, and he wasn't going to sit by and watch them trash everything he believed America stands for. Concepts like fairness and the right to challenge your detention in court still meant something to this particular military lawyer. So he defied the political leadership and sued his Commander in Chief. The case went to the Supreme Court, and in defiance of the worst authoritarian impulses of our civilian leadership, the court
ruled in Hamdan's favor.
Now in another time, Mr. Swift would be honored for his service and rewarded for the tremendous ability he showed in doing his job so well. This is no longer that time. Fast forward to October 8th.
Charles Swift was passed over for promotion. Now understand how egregious this is. This man is acknowledged as one of the great lawyers working today. The Navy has given him many awards and decorations. Indeed, the civilian National Law Journal listed Swift as one of the top 100 lawyers in America. His promotion to Commander was a "Slam Dunk" if there ever was one. And of course, under the military's "Up or Out" policy, he now will have to leave the Navy.
My mom had an expression she liked to use. "Cutting off your nose to spite your face". In it's petty, childish lashing out at someone who defied them, the administration is not only denying the Navy of one of it's most accomplished and professional JAGs, but they are blatently announcing they no longer feel the need to put any lipstick on the pig. It is the smaller events that signal larger changes. We may, someday, look back on this blatent, obvious punishment of a good American for his dissent from the approved line and say-that was the day America perished...
