Unless of course one has been living in a medically
induced coma, we all know the events that transpired in Paris most recently in
the last few weeks. The world reacted accordingly with cries of condemnation
with 1.7 million people marching in solidarity alongside the French and quite
rightly so!
Since then there has been the inevitable yawn laden
speeches by numerous world leaders, terrorist experts, media reps and varying
other archetypes lending their opinions and two cents to the debacle unfolding
before us.
Throughout these moments I began to speculate as to what
exactly this is really in aid of; firstly of course I must stress that I too do
not condone violence in any form unless of course it is in the parameters of legitimate
self defence; however, whilst it may also be note worthy to point out, there
was no necessary cause to attack civilians over what was simply a joke, or more
specifically a cartoon, but, whilst it is one thing to say one does not condone
violence, it is quite another to blame the behaviour of hornets when they sting
you, for you having kicked their nest, knowing full well how they will react in
the first place.
What do I mean by that? Well, it’s pretty simple, what we
are observing here is the West kicking the hornet’s nest of the East and then
the West blaming the hornets of the East for retaliating and stinging the
West. Terrorism and Islamic extremism is
heralded by persons that are quite frankly a different form of human wildlife;
BUT a form of human wildlife that through varying methods of criminal
activities are utterly loaded with endless monetary funds, have access to
lethal weaponry and are able to educate themselves with the required expertise
to utilise said weapons in broad daylight with military precision, in this
case, with the armaments of two machine guns, an RPG launcher, knives and
pistols. Hmm, yay international security!
These people can also radicalise our teenage sons and
daughters via a well known social media platform called Twitter, so much so,
that they end up jumping on flights to the Middle East and next thing the
parents know is that their now radicalised sons & daughters are on TV
chanting “Death to the West” and/or “Allahu Akbar” (means Allah is awesome - in
case you were wondering!).
They also rose up, unexpectedly so, in Iraq and
Afghanistan, now called IS (Islamic State) which is pretty much Al Qaeda
version 2 and have cemented themselves as one of the most feared terrorist
organisations ever to come out of the Middle East since the Hezbollah.
And to top it off, these new forms of human wildlife love nothing more than to kick off about something and do so in the form of murderous activities; be that of detonating bombs, murdering civilians or beheading soldiers in the street (Lee Rigby).
So cometh to the question, are these the forms of human
wildlife that we really want to be antagonising, especially when we all know
full well what form that reaction to said antagonism will be delivered? In the
name of Freedom of Expression apparently, the answer; is YES!
Now, before you leap up on an accusatory soap box and
defile me with the charge of being a terrorist sympathiser (by the way I am not)
let me tell you a story to which you will hopefully see how silly you are...
One day a snake climbed up a tree and got hopelessly
stuck, soon after a human comes walking by and notices the snake,
“Help me down I am stuck.” Said the snake.
“Not a chance,” replied the human, “I know what you’ll
do, you’ll bite me and I will die.”
The snake pondered this for a moment and said,
“I solemnly swear I will not bite you, please help down
from this tree.”
The human still not convinced repeated the concern, to
that again the snake countered by making the same promise, some time passes and
eventually the human gives in and helps the snake down.
But not two feet from the ground the snake whips around
lunging at the human, taking aim and landing an agonising bite injecting its
poison; in the human’s dying breaths,
“I helped you; you promised you wouldn’t bite me.”
To which the snake replied...
“You knew what I was well before you decided to help me!”
To that, the snake slithered away and the human slowly
died.
The moral of the story in this modern era is this, we are
the ones kicking the hornet’s nest and giving rise to the snake to behave as it
does then point accusatory fingers back at the aggressor, quite rightly so as
their actions are abhorrent, but, we have to ask ourselves, how many more
innocent lives have to be lost? NOT just because we believe in a different
faith, but because we on this occasion deliberately antagonised the aggressor.
That is the truth and it cannot be avoided.
It can be argued that these Terrorists would kill for any
cause, yes that is true, but why should we risk more lives by handing them even
more reasons?
It is not my aim to appear to be leaping up on the high
horse of morality to win an argument but I personally count myself lucky to
live in a society where I can blaspheme, insult my country’s premier or call a
religious salesperson an asshole for aggravating my hangover on a Sunday
morning, but if I come rolling out from the happy nightclub of life, drunk and
high on the liberty but see a guy clearly angry and swearing at the world the last
thing I would do is wind him up to the extent he/she enacts violence against me
because in all realistic acknowledgements, I started it!
Yes indeed the terrorist actions in Paris were wholly out
of proportion, I don’t need the brains of an archbishop to work that one out,
but, we know what terrorists do, we know what they think, how they think it and
how they act out those thoughts; for me the answer is quiet clear, kick the
hornet’s nest, get stung, end of discussion.
Thank you for reading.
