Are Terrorists Not Human Beings?

Osamu Ichiyoshi

2007/9/22　

The 21^st century opened with the terrorist attacks to the world trade center in New York and Pentagon in Washington, D.C. It is now seven years since then. During this period the associated powers led by the USA attacked Taliban regime in Afghanistan and then Iraq with the cause of destroying the hidden weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Bush, president of the USA, Mr.Blair, prime minister of UK, Mr.Koizumi, prime minister of Japan shouted in one voice for such slogans as “fight against terrorism” and “international solidarity” to promote the war. As a result, the security conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the latter in particular, has much deteriorated. The “wrong” air attacks by the USA military often kill or hurt not only the local residents but also soldiers of the allied forces. Some of the allies have already left from both battle grounds. The prospects of the wars are now totally unclear including the very objective of those wars.

President Bush changed his slogan to “expansion of democracy in the Middle East” as the possibility of finding the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq became slim. If so, Quwait and Saudi Arabia, which are ruled by some families would have to be democratized first of all. Mr. Bush calls Hamas who gained an overwhelming victory in the general election in Gaza Strip “terrorists groups” and refuses to hold any talks with them, which seems to be a clear logical inconsistency against his “democratization of the Middle East” policy. Iraq, Syria and Iran are at least formally democratic countries where the governments are elected by the people. The reality may be far from true democracy yet, but I believe Mr. Bush should understand the democratization is a fundamental social change that took many generations in the history of the western world all the more because I hear Mr. Bush majored in History in the university.

I am afraid the wrong policy of the USA led by President Bush has worsened the social situations at home and abroad significantly. They should have concentrated to Afghanistan after the fall of Taliban; to generate a powerful state military combining the local warlords into the central government, establish the nationwide networks of communication and transportation, and rebuild the ruined industry. The Taliban prisoners should have been promptly put into trials and released after completing their terms. Then Afghanistan would have been much more democratized by now. Holding them in Guantanamo base in Cuba for years without trials simply deepens the hatred of their families at home against the USA and makes the matters only worse.

A critical mistake by Mr. Bush is his very short stay in Baghdad airport to dine with USA soldiers and his hasty departure from Iraq right after the fall of Baghdad. At that time the people of Iraq fully welcomed the US soldiers as liberators. If Mr. Bush had walked in the main street of Baghdad, talked and shook hands with the people, then the whole atmosphere, hope of the people for the future and the subsequent course of the history would have been quite different. Mr. Bush compared Iraq to Japan after the second world war, but his policy was totally the opposite. General MacArthur promptly sent the combat troops to home and formed the GHQ with civil staffs and retained the Japanese governmental systems to govern Japan indirectly to work out his mission to democratize Japan after the war. Mr. Bush, on the contrary destroyed the local government systems and put Iraq under the direct USA military rule. President Roosevelt had a Japan expert team established right after the break of the war to gather experts on Japan, give them extensive training of the Japanese language and culture and gave stages of activities for the Japanese Americans. The programs have born rich fruits; many great Japanologists as D. Keane, R. Benedict, E.O.Reischauer, E.G. Seidensticker and many others. The Bush regime, on the contrary, instead of promoting Arabic studies, discriminated against Arabic people and their culture.

For the past 6 years under the name “fight against terror” such illegal operations as telephony eavesdropping have been conducted by the government. Here I make a question; Are the terrorists not human beings? During the Japan-China war in the former century those who fought against Japan were called horse bandits. The most powerful of those were the red army who were called red bandit from Japan side. From Chinese side the red army was People’s Liberation Army and the soldiers were brave patriots. Twenty years ago President Reagan called the anti-government guerrillas in Nicaragua “freedom fighters”. Anjukon who assassinated Ito Hirofumi, then governor of Korea annexed to Japan was only a terrorist from Japan side, but he was none other than a true patriot from Korean side. Hamas in Palestine is defined as terrorists by Israel and the USA, but it is the Palestine people who elected them as their representatives. I think it is natural Palestine people continue fight against Israel as long as their lands are being occupied. The same will apply to the occupation of Golan Heights. The Israelis neglect the opposition of “the international society” to keep expanding the colonies in the west bank of Jordan River, which I think well justifies the fighting of the Palestine people regardless of the means. Such illegal activity continues with only the support of the United States so will do the struggle of the Palestine people. So long as the USA unfairly keep supporting Israel, so will do the terror against USA by Al-Qaeda. The USA bears the history of conducting the greatest ever occupation of the lands and ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Americans. The history of USA viewed from the side of the indigenous Americans, Mexicans, Hawaiians, Spanish, Central and South Americans is more imperialistic than democratic. I think the USA should be more humble and help Israel avoid committing the same errors.

Thus there is no absolute definition on terrorists. The terrorists so called by the USA are heroes for the other people. Human beings all fear death. Leaving family by death is such a sorrow beyond expression. We should take time to imagine what sorrow and despair hold them behind the terrorism simply labeled as “suicide attacks” by the news media.

The fundamental cause of the conflicts is, from the above reasoning, the unreasonable belief in the power. The state that appeared with the civilization is essentially a power structure to rule the people. Through thousands of years of history, democracy has been established in many advanced countries. But even today, the belief in the power is still powerful. In order to rationalize the power all sorts of myths were created by the scholars serving the rulers. The authority based on those myths is the main source of the power. The legitimacy of the power of the Emperor ruling over Japan was theorized by Kojiki and Nihonshoki, official history documents completed in the 8^th century, on the decision made by the assembly of the gods who lived in Takamagahara Plain . The process of the Japanese state formation is depicted in the myths how the “heavenly” gods conquered the “earthly” gods. Even in the modern absolutism ages, the power of the kings ruling the state was based on the dogma that the power was bestowed them by God as if their own bodies symbolically expressed by the famous Louis 14’s statement “I am the state”. Such dogmatic theories no longer stand today. Why? Because the highly developed information and transportation networks today have shrunk the world into the size of the “global village”. The emperor stayed behind a screen in the court so no subject could see the emperor in person. For ordinary people the emperor was never to be seen hence referred as “the highness above the clouds”. Such a distance between the people is essential to sustain the above mentioned myths, is now hard to be kept in the global village.

The bases for the state power today lies in the control of the information, hiding the truth or leaking wrong pieces of information which the mass media readily spread as news. Owing to the media control by the USA military in Afghanistan and Iraq, there were few news from the front areas and many pieces of news were in retrospect nothing more than jokes; huge purchase of Uranium by S.Hussain from Africa, the evidence picture of a biochemical weapon which later found to be just a truck, British government’s statement that Iraq could start biochemical war in just 40 minutes, and so on. Additionally the public apprehension was enhanced and the public opinion was misguided by the power serving (and hungry) scholars who authorized such lies of the governments. I feel those governments, the mass media and the scholars must bear responsibility for their deeds. The human damage caused by the USA military is beyond appraisal. I hope Mr. Bush after finishing his term, shall go to Iraq to find out what results have been caused by his decision.

Based on the above consideration, I believe the world peace should be based on the principle “The terrorists are also human beings.” Their human rights must be well protected, their crimes should be clarified and fairly judged in the court and they should be promptly released after serving their sentences. I propose the following steps to prevent abuses of the power by the states, straighten the mass media controlled by the power and empower the information system so the truths prevail over the false power.

[1] Realize a universal communication system where anyone can broadcast nationwide and hold conferences from anywhere,

[2] Conduct conferences of the common people using the above universal communication systems

[3] Strengthen control of the people over the politics and eventually evolve to the Direct Democracy

In the conventional political struggle the victor gains all and the loser loses everything. If you listen to a political debating on the TV, you will find the debater insists what he says is just right and what his opponent says is just wrong. Once labeled as a terrorist, he is not treated as a human being. Thus everybody is obsessed by fear and the competition for military expansion never stops. Human beings are afraid of unknown beings. If people talk each other, they will come to some understanding in the end however different their positions may be at the beginning. Thus with the system that would enable everyone to have his/her voices reach the whole nation, terrorism would naturally disappear. Terrorism occurs as a last resort after desperate situations with a strong sense of powerlessness and forlorn hope. With the communication network that would offer any one the access for easy nationwide broadcasting and discussions and with respect of human rights even for the enemies and fair justice in the court, then the terrorism would naturally cease to occur.

As such a universal communication system I propose Direct Satellite LAN which is an integration of the Internet and Direct Satellite Broadcasting. For more details, please see the following URL.　http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~kaorin57/

The states were historically formed in some developed stages of the civilization as a power structure to rule the people and maintain the order of the society. The state necessarily took pyramidal structure in the societies with under-developed communication and transportation networks. With the industrial revolution such pyramidal structure has lost its feature and the society developed democracy through the history from feudalism to absolutism, then through citizen revolutions and American Revolution to the representative democracy. Today even the representative democracy has come more or less to its limitation. That is, the powerful controls the mass media with money, to allow manipulation of information by the government and misguiding the public opinion by the power hungry politicians and scholars. Then the voices of the weak, the poor and the minorities are neglected. So called “national interest” is too often nothing other than “private interests” of the powerful. Under the slogan “fight against terrorism” far greater destruction and infringement of the human right continue by the state terrorism.

The above reasoning shows that the society needs to develop a universal communication network that enables public access for the people to exchange views among the whole nation and strengthen their participation into the political processes to straighten the shortcomings of the indirect democracy and eventually evolve into direct democracy. If even terrorists have full protection of their fundamental human rights and access to the universal communication network with full freedom of speech, then terrorism itself will be extinguished. As the Japanese contribution for “the fight against terrorism” in Afghanistan is being discussed in the diet, we must think and rethink how we can truly contribute for the world peace.

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