 
                        20030101.00

                  Learning from Terrorrism

     Perhaps one of the greatest rewards of being a
physician (in the days before physicians had become business
men providers and corporate employees) is that one trains
himself to confront illness, disease, and death, with
understanding, knowledge and a measure of equanimity. One
has the opportunity and the ability to learn from malady, to
learn from catastrophe, in order to be able to deal with it
more effectively, if not in order to be able to deal with it
at all.  In the process one learns to become non judgmental:
one no longer stigmatizes disease as evil, one no longer
believes that the patient is possessed by demons.  Issues of
good and evil have been exorcised from consideration.

     Now it seems to me that there is nothing unique or
exclusive in the physicians task confronting disease.  The
analogy between the ills of the human body and the ills of
the body politic is sufficiently close that one may
postulate a physician's view of political events of
political disorder, malaise, and specifically a physician's
view of terrorism.  One then begins to understand terrorism
much as one understands cancer or stroke.  Concomitantly one
obtains a clearer understanding of oneself and of ones
society.

     The first step is to disabuse oneself of the notion
that terrorism is evil and concomitantly of the notion that
oneself or ones nation is righteous.  To refrain from
stigmatizing terrorism as evil by no means is the same as
glorifying terrorism as some kind of good.  Similarly to
refrain from glorifying ones society as good is by no means
to stigmatise it as wicked.  The consequence is merely to
remove the discussion from the sphere of moralizing.  For as
long as one moralizes, one cannot understand.  One
understands only to the extent that one enter into the
mindset of the terrorist, and to say that he is evil is to
preclude understanding him. When one understands, good and
evil lose their meaning.  So long as good and evil are
compelling, one does not understand.

     A bit of historical perspective will help.  The
resistance during WWII, the plot to assassinate Hitler,
assassination by means of unmanned aircraft, state sponsored
terrorism, the activity of the belligerents in WWII or in any
other war, the bombing of Coventry, the Blitzkrieg, the
battle of Britain, the revenge on Luebeck, the destruction of
Dresden, how should war be distinguished from terrorism?
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One refers to
violence as terrorism when one is threatened by it.

     To the terrorists whom we threaten, we ourselves appear
as the terrorists.

                         * * * * *
Copyright 2005, Ernst Jochen Meyer

Copyright 2005, Ernst Jochen Meyer
