Terrorism for Everyman
Is America losing the will to fight?
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, June 17, 2005 12:01 a.m.
As far as I can tell, this is the recent news out of Iraq:
Yesterday: "Six U.S. Servicemen Die in Iraq Violence."
Wednesday: "Surge of Violence Leaves 52 Dead in Iraq."
Monday: "Iraq-Bombing Update: Additional Bombings, Death Toll 10."
It is possible to extend this headline exercise of Iraq news to the horizon. As a physical principle no less established than the second law of thermodynamics, U.S. opinion polls in June outputted these headlines and stories:
June 12: "A Growing Public Restlessness: The June [Post-ABC News] survey found that 58% of its 1,002 respondents now disapprove of the way Bush is handling both the economy and the situation in Iraq.
June 11, AP: "Only 41% said they support Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, also a low-water mark." The "war," of course extends no further than these bombing reports.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the maestro of the Iraqi civilian slaughterhouse, has produced a steady shower of human blood, and as often happens, blood has been a public-opinion downer. Perhaps in his next life al-Zarqawi can come back as an American marketing consultant. Having established there is a U.S. market for American-associated death in Iraq, such as the front page of the Yahoo! news portal, al-Zarqawi is supplying it with daily product. The up-or-down polls he reads are his profit-and- loss statement.
The June ABC-Washington Post poll asked: "All in all, considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war with Iraq was worth fighting, or not?" 58% said No.
Precisely what conclusion is one expected to arrive at from any of this? If George Bush had never invaded Iraq, none of this would be happening? Or, if we removed our troops from Iraq, these bombings would stop? Or perhaps they will still be bombed, but we in the U.S. will not likely experience anything very bad?
If we removed our troops from Iraq, the terror would not stop. But the U.S. news of innocent civilians blown up in Iraq would move to the unread round-up columns. Then, in a way, the phenomenon of terror would indeed shrink--to this:
December 2004: A powerful explosion ripped through a market packed with Christmas shoppers in the southern Philippines yesterday, killing at least 15 people and injuring 58.
According to the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (established after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing), there have been about 8,300 terrorist bombings in the world the past 10 years. They have killed more than 10,000 human beings and injured--often appallingly, one assumes--some 43,000 people. (There are separate tallies for arson, kidnapping, hijacking, etc. September 11 is listed as an "unconventional attack.")
May 3, 2002: A bomb attack on a church in western Colombia has left at least 60 civilians dead and about 100 others injured. Officials are blaming FARC guerrillas for the bombing.
Before September 11 happened in the United States, and ever since, factions with grievances have been blowing up unprotected people going about the act of daily life--shopping, praying, taking their children to school, laughing with friends, burying the dead--all over the world. Places where the sudden cloudbursts of blood don't always merit our front pages include Spain, Colombia, Israel, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Northern Ireland, Russia, Afghanistan, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Egypt and elsewhere.
July 7, 2004: At least five people were killed and 11 wounded when a suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber blew herself up inside a police station in the Sri Lankan capital.
Living in the U.S., one could make the cold-blooded calculation that 21,000 dead and 55,000 injured from all terrorist acts over 10 years is a drop in the bucket and that the war in Iraq has mainly increased the rate of death. This may be true. But if as many suicide bombs went off in Manhattan as have gone off in Israel, Manhattanites would have demanded martial law and the summary execution of suspects on street corners. Their greatest goal in life would not be, as it is now, the closing of interrogation rooms on Guantanamo but instead the erasure of terrorists hiding across the East River.
Feb. 9, 2005: A car bomb exploded near Madrid's main convention center, injuring 43 people, hours before Spanish and Mexican leaders were due there and after a warning from the Basque separatist group ETA. It was the worst blast in the Spanish capital since last year's March 11 al Qaeda train bombings.
No matter how fat the diet of stories about Iraq suicide bombings or Gitmo shoved down our throats and no matter how many distraught opinion-poll results come back up, no serious person can allow post-9/11 American security to be reduced to that.
The death march of homicidal zombies in Iraq is trying to push us toward accepting the idea that acts of unrestrained violence against other human beings is now a normal part of politics. It is not normal. Any civilized person should want to resist the normalization of civilian killing as a political act--whether in Iraq, Spain, Indonesia or Kashmir.
These matters have been at the heart of John Bolton's marooned nomination to the U.N. Mr. Bolton's adversaries criticize his impatience with large bureaucracies tasked to the war on terror, such as the State Department, and worry he won't respect the U.N. "system."
The U.N. itself has never been able to even agree on a definition of terror. A high-level U.N. panel bluntly concluded last year: "Lack of agreement on a clear and well-known definition undermines the normative and moral stance against terrorism and has stained the United Nations' image."
Little wonder, then, that our own news coverage of these repeated slaughters of civilians in Iraq also lacks any normative or moral context unfavorable to the perpetrators. And little wonder that in such a world the only "side" many people in the U.S. feel comfortable with is heading for the exits.
Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com. |
