The Right State

How do you define terrorism? Last week a lone gunman walked into a women’s Jewish center killed one and injured five others. While shooting his victims, he was shouting that he was a Muslim-American and was mad about Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.

Let’s see, Osama bin Laden attacked the US because of US presence in Saudi Arabia. That was terrorism. The US Embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania are bombed in 1998, that was terrorism. In 1995 several US servicemen are killed in a bomb attack on the National Guard center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that was terrorism. And there are many others, bombs, shootings, stabbings, beheadings, etc. which were all considered terrorism. So why is it when a Muslim man starts shooting unarmed Jewish women, why isn’t that terrorism? It seems that law enforcement is desperate in describing the shooting as a hate crime rather than terrorism.

The man accused in the shooting rampage at Seattle’s Jewish Federation office last week was charged Wednesday with nine felony counts, including aggravated first-degree murder and violation of the state’s hate-crime law.

“Make no mistake, this was a hate crime,” King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng told a news conference. “The attack on these women was an attack on the Jewish community, not only in Seattle but throughout our nation and the world.”

This is like déjà vu all over again. Are we in the middle of the Clinton administration where every act of terrorism is treated as a crime? How are we ever to finish the fight in the Global War on Terror if we can not call these acts what it really are, acts of terror?

Cox and Forkum nail this issue square on the head.

Tags: Terrorism //