By now everyone has heard of the story of 24
year old James Holmes, who killed 12 people and injured 58 in a mass shooting
in Aurora, Colorado. One could write a whole essay on all of the different
issues this shooting involved: gun control, mental health issues, family
values, etc. But I’m only going to talk about one aspect of it, one aspect that
only a few people are talking about, and one aspect that really annoyed me more
than any of the other lame and stupid arguments made about the other issues.
I’m
going to compare that story, with another story that didn’t grab a lot of
headlines at all, so I’ll explain that one in a little bit more detail because
readers may not be familiar with it.
The
other story is about 22 year old Ulugbek Kodirov, an Uzbek man who came over to
the United States to study medicine at Columbia University. Kodirov was found
guilty of threatening to kill the president, providing material support for
terrorism, and possession of an illegal firearm. He was sentenced to 15 years.
What
do these two stories have in common? My problem with them is what they have in
common. In a nutshell, the first story is a clear act of deliberate terrorism,
yet no one is calling it terrorism, and the second story is an act of
legitimate war, as outlined by humanitarian law, historical development of man,
and common fucking sense, (but apparently that’s too much to ask people to have
now in days), yet everyone is calling it terrorism.
Before
we get into this discussion, a simple definition of terrorism will help us
understand why the media, and the vast majority of the American people, are so
wrong in this analysis.
Terrorism: 1. systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve some goal, and
Terrorism: 1. systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve some goal, and
Terrorism
doesn’t have to be about politics, it sometimes is, but it isn’t always. Our
media wants you to think that terrorism is always about politics, because that
serves their narrative and political goals. But terrorism can be about
religion, race, or in Holmes’s case, just because he was an asshole who thought
he had a crappy life and wanted a lot of attention. Another definition, the one
I like to use, simply says that terrorism is the killing of unarmed
civilians for a purpose. Could be any purpose.
So
clearly, Holmes fits both definitions of being a terrorist, yet NO ONE in the
lamestream media is calling him a terrorist. Why? Because it would disrupt
their narrative that only Muslims and Arabs are terrorists. So they just don’t
mention it. They never mention his ethnicity or his religion. But if a Muslim
or Arab did the exact same thing, people would be trolling all over the place
“All Muslims are terrorists, Islam is an evil religion that produces violence
and hate, Islam is the reason why he did this!!” And all the usual xenophobic
shit. If a black person happened to do the exact same thing, people would be
trolling “All black people are gangster thugs! His race is the reason why he
did this! Black people are pathetic lowlifes!” And all the usual racist shit.
But
since it was a white Christian who did this, people say he was just “mentally
disturbed,” a “lone wolf,” and “doesn’t represent true Americans.”
Now
that we’ve established that Holmes is indeed a terrorist, let’s move onto the
Kodirov case. He wanted to kill the president, a man who has the power to send
the nation to war, has the power to send in elite military units, (like Seal
Team 6), to anywhere in the world to kill anyone he deems is a terrorist. The
president is the leader of this country, heck, one of his titles is the
“Commander in Chief.” By all respects, a legitimate target of war if you wanted
to fight against the United States. Then why are we calling Kodirov a
terrorist, when he wasn’t targeting innocent civilians, he was targeting
members of the government!
Think
about it, let’s reverse the scenario.
Say an American wanted to kill Muhammad Omar, the leader of the Taliban.
Omar has the power to send the Taliban to war, send in teams of Taliban
soldiers to do a sneak attack. He’s their leader. By all means, a legitimate
target of war. Would we call that American a terrorist? Of course not!
This
is the sickening double standard that I am so fucking tired of. Americans think
that any attack on them at all, no matter what crimes they did to get people
pissed off at them, is a terrorist attack. An attack on American soldiers,
mercenaries, government personal, it’s all terrorist attacks according to them.
But
Americans are not doing this by accident, they are doing this on purpose to delegitimize
a Muslim’s right to self-defense. I talked about this in my previous post. Many
Americans look at Muslims as being sub-human, therefore, they do not enjoy the
right to self-defense. So the U.S. can invade Iraq on false premises, set up a
corrupt government, kill a bunch of civilians on purpose, rape them, torture
them, etc etc. But that’s all fine for many Americans, nothing wrong with that,
nothing terrorist related at all. But as soon as some Iraqis fight back against
the illegal foreign occupation, killing Americans soldiers, not Americans
civilians mind you, then the Americans get into a tizzy, calling these
insurgent attacks “terrorist attacks.”
Let’s
finish this up by getting back to Kodirov. He was going to attack the U.S.
government because of the things that the U.S. government has done. He wasn’t
planning on attacking U.S. civilians for what the U.S. government has done.
That would be terrorism. Lastly, people are calling him a terrorist, when
all he did was words, no action at all. He didn’t even wound or kill
anyone. Yet, because he is Muslim, people are going around calling him a
terrorist. And Holmes, who actually killed 12 people and wounded dozens more,
is not a terrorist, according to the lamestream media and the majority of
Americans. That’s fucked up, that’s really fucked up.
So,
bottom line is: Holmes is a terrorist, Kodirov is not, he’s an enemy combatant.
The
Young Turks actually put up a video that is talking about this very issue. I
always enjoy watching this show. Here is the clip:
(Picture of Kodirov is from the Huffington Post).
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