11 September 2001, New York, Washington, Pennsylvania
And a
peaceful decade thereafter? Is my memory that short or had there been no
spectacular terrorist attack in Europe since then until last Friday? Until I
went to bed on Friday around half past nine p.m., no news from the radio turned
on had reached me. The tidings I woke up to yesterday were at first more
horrible than when the whole picture of the massacre sank in.
In terms of
scale and atrocity of the attacks in Paris compare to acts of violence
committed in Madrid and London, but one difference deserves to be noted. In
Paris victims were folks who sought entertainment, while in Madrid and in
London the fatalities and the wounded were public transport passengers. As I
attempt to put the attacks into psychological perspective, I wonder whether who
terrorist target to kill, instils more or less fear into the society. Commuting
to work or school or moving around the city is one of down-to-earth, repetitive
everyday activities one cannot avoid. Going to a concert hall or sitting about
outside cafeteria is what one associates with pleasure, breaking away from and
forgetting for a moment about the daily grind. Would you suffer more if you
realised you could be murdered by terrorist on your way to work or when you go
out to relax?
When it
comes to pure politics, the attacks will quite likely stoke up anti-migrant
sentiments across Europe and send support for xenophobic right-wing lunatics on
the rise. Those urging to close borders and stem the uncontrolled flow of
migrants will not necessarily become more audible, but more will listen to
them. A cool-headed analyst would remind you the 9/11, Madrid and London
attacks were carried out well in advance of wave of migrants at the gates of
Europe. Countries becoming targets of terrorists have one thing in common –
they have got involved into the war against terrorism.
A
noteworthy question which naturally comes up in such circumstances is how to
crack down on ISIS, the vengeful and vindictive enemy. The simplest solution
which comes to mind is dropping a nuclear bomb on the territories of Iraq and
Syria controlled by ISIS. Simple solutions, however, tend to be silly and do
more harm than good. The example above has two primary drawbacks: firstly,
nuclear bombing would involve deaths of thousands of innocent civilians (not
yet killed or driven out by the ISIS soldiers from their homes), secondly it
would trigger brutal retaliation, conceivably even a doomsday. ISIS is not
confined to territories it controls but has its envoys spread far and wide
across the world and ready to hit no matter how high the price to pay would be.
The most reasonable way to combat ISIS would be, in my opinion, to cut them off
money they rely on to come by. Let’s face it. ISIS lacks natural resources it
could sell, it also does not produce anything, it can only destroy, but in
order to get hold of the weapons and keep control over its territory it needs
financial resources from the outside. The only question is who their sponsors
are and what their reasons behind supporting ISIS are.
Is it (yet
another) the end of the world as we know it? After a much more dazzling 9/11
attacks the world looks broadly the same as before them. The main observable
difference are the meticulous security controls on the airports, for many
passengers being a pain in the arse and oddly enough not abided by in many less
civilised airports, as evidenced by the recent tragedy in Egipt.
The world
needs to face several challenges with terrorisms coming to the fore as one of
the core perils to the Western civilisation in the 21st century. We need to
live with it and carry on, otherwise terrorists will win the most important
war, the psychological one. I remember well how may parents were scared in
March 2004 (it was during my first school year of commutes to Warsaw), when
trains exploded in Madrid and many feared that trains of Warsaw underground
could also be attacked, since Poland had sent its army to Iraq and Afghanistan…
There’s no other way than coming to terms with a risk of being killed by a
terrorist, which is anyway probably lower than the chance of being killed in a
traffic accident.
Dedicated a
few hours of the weekend to the New Employer, with nothing in return. More
reflections on this next week…
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