Friday evening I was in the middle of writing a blog post about photography when my social media feeds began to fill with posts about an active shooting incident in Paris. As the situation escalated, I lost all interest in writing. Instead I spent the next several hours glued to the television, flipping between CNN and MSNBC to follow breaking news updates as the carnage unfolded.
To me, the difference between warfare and terrorism is the difference between a scheduled boxing match and randomly walking up to an old lady at the mall and punching her in the face when she’s not looking. Warfare is a scheduled event, for lack of a better term. Two entities, be it religious factions, countries, or large coalitions — agree to do battle. There are rules. “We agree to only shoot these people, in these places.” But as we have all unfortunately come to understand, with terrorists, there are no rules. There are no gentlemen’s agreements to be made with terrorists.
I only know a little bit about ISIS or ISIL (or Daesh, as they are sometimes referred to). I read about their caliphate declaration on Wikipedia and how their goal is to “continue to seize land and take over the entire Earth.” My dad has a theory that if spiders were the size of dogs, they could not co-exist with human beings. Either the spiders would have to go, or we would. I think the same rule applies to ISIS. When an organized group of terrorists has announced their plan is to take over the earth, it seems like the unstoppable force will eventually meet the immovable object. Both cannot succeed.
The attacks in Paris were attacks on freedom. Specifically, “soft targets” (groups of unarmed civilians) enjoying food, sports, and music were slaughtered. I find the targeting of non-combatants cowardly, but the targeting of people enjoying art downright despicable. If we are not allowed to enjoy the fruits of this world without being persecuted and attacked by others that do not agree with us… what is left? I have always stood behind “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” (which may or may not have actually been said by Voltaire). Along those same lines, I believe people should be able to enjoy anything that does not harm another person. I am all for other people enjoying types of music, art, books and films that I do not care for. Variety is the spice of life, after all. It is this freedom of choice that makes the free world free, and when a group comes along that declares violently that other people shall not have this right… we both cannot exist.
I cannot help but think that eventually these fighters will arrive on our shores. Several of the targets in Paris, including a professional sporting event and a concert, are places where Americans are not allowed to carry weapons. I am afraid that attacking those types of locations here would have similar results. ISIS will never attack a gun show here in the Midwest. If and when they do attack on American soil it will be against unarmed and unsuspecting civilians. And it will be terrible.
Also credited to Voltaire…”Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities”
Unfortunately notion of civil gentlemen’s agreements in war died centuries ago. Global politics is definitely uglier than we like to admit to ourselves. There have been plenty of examples in the past century where the supposed good guys have wantonly targeted civilians.
The Iraq War, Operation Rolling Thunder in North Vietnam, the Korean War, the firebombing of Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, plus many other cities and obviously the two atomic bombs that targeted population centres. There were an incomprehensible number of non-combatant deaths directly resulted from these actions. Sadly in war nations usually only attempt to lessen civilian casualties when they feel they have the upper hand.
During modern interventions we tend to focus on the deaths of soldiers and westerners but pay little attention to local non-combatant deaths resulting from the operations. Generally western lives are perceived to be more valuable than others. Where the more foreign the victim the lesser the loss. The political and media apathy to the ISIS bombings in Beirut that occurred just prior to those in Paris is a recent example.
But to be frank as western civilians we are privileged, but also isolated and mostly sheltered from the world’s ills. Those are things I feel are often forgotten by many after these kinds of tragedies. Despite the paranoia, I image the vast majority of people still feel safer living in the west than elsewhere. Certainly compared to those civilians who live in a country that has been singled out for political military intervention or targeted covert operations. As statistically we’re westerners are more likely to be victims to an “act of god” such as weather or a natural disaster than to one of terror or war.