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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels April 23, 2004 The facts point to the terror of terrorism When a person detonates a bomb they are wearing and kills and maims dozens (or hundreds) of innocent unarmed civilians, I call that person a terrorist. When a person hijacks a plane and drives it into a building full of civilians, I call that person a terrorist. When a person places bombs on a train full of commuters, I call that person a terrorist. When a person takes a theatre full of civilians hostage and murders them indiscriminately, I call that person a terrorist. When a person launches an attack from a school, or a hospital and hides amongst an innocent civilian population, I call that person a terrorist. When a person kidnaps aid workers, journalists, or missionaries and kills them or threatens to do so unless their demands are met, I call that person a terrorist. When US, Coalition, European, Philippine, Indian, or Israeli armed forces inadvertently cause civilian casualties while fighting against or hunting down terrorists because those terrorists callously and cowardly hide amongst innocent populations, I cannot equate that loss of life with the loss of innocent life deliberately taken by terrorists. Isaac Walker makes no such distinction. Mr. Walker's disdain for Israel and for his fellow American citizens who support Israel is such that any effort on the latters' behalf to point out obvious bias in mainstream media are cause for his umbrage. And his condemnation of U.S. aid to Israel utterly fails the reality test. Without U.S. aid Israel long since would have been wiped off the map by an Arab world dedicated to its destruction. Mr. Walker's logic, if one can apply that term to an obviously bigoted perspective, is such that one would believe that the Arab world's conflict with modernity and the pluralist tolerance it engenders is wholly a result of acts perpetrated against Islam by Israel and the west. The Taliban's destruction of centuries old Buddhist statues, the religious based conflicts in Chechnya, Kashmir, Israel, East Africa, and the Philippines, and Arab world's utter failure to embrace free markets and democracy are all expressions of its insular, intolerant, hegemonic world view born of centuries of domination not by colonial or neo-colonial powers, but its own Ulemas and Mullahs. A terrorist is a terrorist. Those who are unwilling to use the word, whether an individual or a media giant, are furthering the terrorist's cause through a tacit acceptance of the terrorist's premise. Shame on you. Bruce S. Klein Ashland DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams