What is a Terrorist?

March 14, 2010

Many believe only people from the Middle East are terrorists, saying “ Not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslim”. They claim racial profiling will identify them and keep us safe. But it's just not true.

Certainly, the majority of terrorists have been from the Middle East and Muslim as evidenced by the damage they did in 1993 and 2001. They even have a name, Al Qaeda.

What too many fail to see is that racial profiling while working some of the time does not work much of the time. There are home-grown terrorists in our own country who do not look like the ones who destroyed the towers in 2001.

This is a fatal ignorance in our approach to terrorism because we cannot ignore domestic threats and threats from countries with populations who look like most white Americans.

Here are two recent examples how we are blind to reality:

Joseph Stack, a middle aged white man hated the U.S. government, especially the IRS so he flew his small plane into an office building in Austin, TX and killed one person. He was most certainly a terrorist but many just think he was simply a mentally deranged person.

John Bedell, another white man also hated the U.S. government so he attacked the Pentagon and shot two people. To many he was just another deranged white guy but not a terrorist.

The definition of a terrorist is a person who kills and terrorizes to achieve political goals.

Because of their political motivations to attack and destroy the U.S. government, Stack and Bedell were domestic terrorists. They were terrorists, whether they acted alone or in a conspiracy with another person or a group such as a political party or religion.

But why are we so blind to reality?

When conservatives, tea baggers and racists look at those two white men, they see people not much different than themselves in appearance and political ideology. It is a reflection they don't like it so they heap scorn on Muslims and point their fingers at others to deflect suspicion from themselves.

Many of the people who rant against the U.S. government are encouraging violence and the overthrow of the American government. They use Constitutional protections of free speech and religion to continue their attacks. This is not right and it is un-American.

They can be legitimately called terrorists because they knowingly use mentally unstable people to become their weapons of destruction and terror to meet their political goals.