Avoiding Responsibility

For those that don't know, I have recently returned to uni to study for my Masters in Law in Glasgow. One of the things I love about studying (besides the beer) is the mixing that goes on after classes. Being that this is a post-grad course, there is a very interesting mix of people in the group.

We have 4 Nigerians, 3 Greeks, 1 Spaniard, 1 Brazilian, 1 Englishman, 1 Ghanian, 1 Austrian, 2 Indian, 1 Pakistani, 1 Bruneian, 1 Egyptian, 1 Saudi, 1 Jordanian, 1 Italian, 1 Indonesian and me, the token Aussie. Which makes for an interesting debate when we get onto topics such as terrorism like we did today.

What was said during the class was all very respectful and dignified, as one should expect from a room full of legally-trained individuals. I use that term, rather than 'lawyer' because each person's legal experience range from those like me who have never practised, up to and including a judge. It was after the class that a smaller group of us retired to the cafe for what turned out to be a more heated and probing dicussion.

As it turns out, each one of us has been touched, either as a citizen of a nation, or personally, by terrorism in recent years. The Spaniard had a friend who was injured in the Madrid bombings. The Indonesian's father was a prosectuor involved with the Marriott and Bali bombings. The Italian had been an avid supporter of Berlusconi's decision to send troops to Iraq, until he saw how Giuliana Sgrena was nearly executed by US forces after spending 2 months as a hostage. The Englishman's brother-in-law was on one of the other platforms at Aldgate during the recent bombings. The citizen's of my country have been targetted twice by bombings, the most recent only 4 days ago. One of my friends is helping her best friend cope with the loss of her mother who was killed in that incident.

Each of us had our own views on this very sensitive subject, but we did reach a consensus: the world is NOT a safer place since Messrs Bush, Blair, Berlusconi, Howard et. al. began their alleged 'War on Terror'. The only consequence so far has been the loss of innocent civilian lives, massive increase in returns for shareholders in military-support organisation, and a dramatic curtailment of the liberties that we are supposed to be safe-guarding.

I have held my piece on this issue for over 3 years now, but now I am angry. Really angry. When the US invaded Afghanistan to rid the world of Al Quaeda, I was in two minds about attacking a sovereign nation, but at least they were going after the real terrorists. Now it seems they are just flailing about madly, trying to figure a way out of their mess so that history will regard them as decisive leaders, rather than myopic, self-serving imbeciles. I don't care whether they honestly believed that they were doing the right thing - they did the wrong thing, and I, and history, will judge them accordingly. They cannot claim that we have the benefit of hindsight - we told them that they didn't have WMD's. We told them that innocent people would be killed. We told them that it would quagmire. And they didn't listen to us. And more innocent civilians have to die for their mistakes.

Enough! Deal with the real issues! Terrorist groups can only survive with the support of their communities. Build up those communities, provide people with real opportunties to shelter, feed and educate their families, and watch those same people ostracise and eradicate those elements from its midst. This is the way to defeat terrorism.

Just ask the Irish how they did it!