Terrorists

Getting into my car I heard, “Deborah, haven’t seen you in a while,” and turned to see an old schoolmate standing there. For a moment I thought to make a quick exit, this woman never escaped our common New England Puritan background and “unpleasant” would be a generous description of her nature. She is intelligent, proud and stern, with a smile that seldom graces her face and never finds her eyes; people of proper breeding and stature do not smile, dontchya know. Having been raised in a Boston Blue Blood family while sporting the wrong last name myself (a drop of heathen blood to tarnish the “superior” genes), I have made a point of smiling whenever possible – smooths the road for most and irritates the hell out of those who thinks “proper breeding” is something to be applied in the bedroom as well as the stable, and I do so enjoy irritating anyone with that outlook toward humanity. I know; I know . . . It’s wrong, but I have never smoked, seldom drink, don’t do drugs . . . A woman needs some kind of vice to entertain herself with; that is one of mine – irritating well bred people.

But this morning I was seeing an opportunity to do some research: Just what is it that those who have no sense of compassion, who take a rigid stand in favor of the most draconian and destructive of immigration enforcement methods tell themselves to justify their position? It’s baffled me; I can’t find any logic to such an approach and here was a woman I knew would see things in exactly that light, better yet, her husband is from Europe and as dour and hard as she is so what better way to pick up the international justification for a mentality that I find impossible to comprehend?

Instead of tossing her a polite greeting and fleeing the way I normally do, I leaned on my open car door and engaged her in conversation, starting with asking how she was doing selling her house and gently leading into what I really wanted to know. Once I got there I poked around her head a bit, popping the discussion from one continent to another, and found one word that, in her mind, justified anything that any government might do to oppress anyone, even its own citizens - and that word was “terrorists.” It was a bloody mantra for this woman; to her it explained any and all violations of human rights or individual liberty, though interestingly, when she said the word there was no hint of fear in her voice or demeanor. Instead everything about her froze – her rigid face becoming nearly mask-like in its loss of human expression, probably similar to the expressions that originally inspired the first creator of the zombie movie genre.

If I didn’t know the woman I might have been lured into believing that “terrorists” really were, in her mind, a valid reason for such an ungenerous attitude, but she has always been that way. Long before 9/11 my husband and I tried to visit with her and her husband and for the first time ever in our collective years of meeting and getting to know people we went away in complete agreement that we never wanted to repeat that experience; this couple turned negativity into an art form that they then molded and polished to a high sheen – 9/11 just gave them a hook to hang their hat on. But there it is . . . The word is “terrorist.” That’s the justification, that’s the excuse, and . . . Okay, knowing that is about as useful as a fried egg on a leaking radiator; this kind of person is not one whose mind will ever be changed. Really, does it matter what someone like that thinks as long as there are enough laws and adequate enforcement to make sure they can’t carry those thoughts out? Well yeah, I think it does – consider this: ‘People like that influence other people and those other people are the ones who are influencing politicians and you know – what these folks are saying in private is not necessarily what they are saying in public. So all that whackadoodle stuff you’ve heard muttered off in the bushes somewhere about “terrorist cells” just south of the border – all that stuff you’ve thought was too weird to even address . . . Ya might want to rethink that. There are people listening to that. They aren’t taking it out into the open much, but when you chat them up in private, it’s right up there at the top of the list of reasons to dig in their heels and get as low and mean as they think they can socially get away with.

I’m not saying there is no such thing as terrorists, but if we’re going to be dealing with such a word so liberally and it’s going to be used to mold our policies, it would be wise to know its history. There are news clips available from the beginning of WWII of Nazis on their push eastward where they are shown in Lithuania rounding up Jewish “terrorists” and marching them off to be shot at mass grave sites. That word has a long and sordid past. It is a legitimate word, terrorists do exist and they are a danger, but when “terrorists” become the reason for committing acts of terror it’s time to step back and take a hard look at what is really going on and that is beginning to happen in some of our government policies, both in international matters regarding regimes we do not like and in domestic affairs such as immigration enforcement.

You’ve all read my comments about my friend, Audrius Kazenas, now on his third year of immigration detention. Well he’s fought terrorists back in Eastern Europe. The end of the Cold War brought about a number of excuses for such activity. I like what Audrius wrote on the topic of terrorists. He said: “I have great respect for the job that DHS was created to do. I don’t think that there is justification for targeting unarmed civilians for whatever reason, people who do that are terrorists, regardless to their personal loss or suffering. And if you resort to terror in retaliation to terror, you are terrorist, just like the guy that you are trying to get. You are not “avenger” or “freedom fighter” just because other guy came up with this first.”

Those words are from a man who has dealt, face-to-face, with real terrorists in the past and who is personally familiar with some of the worst; too bad DHS does not have as much respect for the job they were created to do as Audrius does. If DHS did, then maybe we would see fit to properly handle all terrorists instead of killing some while financing and protecting others; maybe we could stop thinking that “terrorists” lurk behind every bush on the Mexican/American border; and maybe we would not have to use that word over and over again to justify continuing violations of our most precious rights. Or imagine this: Maybe then the words “with liberty and justice for all,” could return to meaning something. Just sayin’ . . .