Hold Fast To Your Beliefs: We are leftists because, at the very core of our values, lies an unshakeable belief in the worth of every human-being, and in the right of every human-being to live his or her life free from exploitation and violence. That the world is so full of these evils must never daunt us, nor persuade us to abandon love for hate; justice for revenge.
TERRORIST ATTACKS – like the one that left 129 Parisians
dead on 13 November 2015 – leave many leftists in a quandary. Most of us are
only too aware that one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom-fighter.
We hesitate to join in the outpourings of outrage and sympathy because we are
appalled by, and want no part of, the extraordinary hypocrisy in which these
events are shrouded.
Scores of men, women and children are killed and maimed by
terrorist attacks almost every day in the countries of the Middle East and
Africa, and yet they merit only a few words in our news bulletins and
newspapers. Certainly, nobody thinks them worthy of front-page treatment. Nor
do we see significant public buildings lit up in the colours of their nation’s
flag.
This is because there is an unacknowledged hierarchy of
significance at work in the newsrooms of the West. People of colour; followers
of non-Christian faiths; citizens of nations with which our governments are not
on friendly terms: the violent deaths of such people are almost never accorded
the same degree of significance as the deaths of Westerners.
If I belonged to one of these “less significant” groups, I
would find it extremely difficult not to brand the actions of Western editors
racist.
Because even the term “terrorist attack” carries blatantly
racist overtones. In Western ears, it conjures up images of bloodthirsty
organisations with outlandish names like Boko Haram, Janjaweed, Hezbollah and
ISIS. It is much less common to hear the term linked to the actions of the
armed forces of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the other
Western powers. Terrorists wear turbans and carry Kalashnikovs – not smart uniforms
and M-16s.
And yet, since the end of the Second World War, the armed
forces of the United States, advised and assisted by its intelligence and
security agencies, has been responsible for the deaths of millions. The
unrelenting air assault on North Korea (over 700,000 sorties between 1950-53)
is credited (conservatively) with at least a million civilian deaths. Twice
that number of civilians are estimated to have been killed by the American
armed forces in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia between 1965-75. US inflicted
civilian deaths in Iraq 2003-2014 are put at well over 600,000.
In 1996, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Madelaine
Albright, was questioned by Lesley Stahl, of CBS’s 60 Minutes, about the
human consequences of the sanctions imposed by the US on the regime of the
Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein.
“We have heard that half a million children have died. I
mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price
worth it?”
To which Albright responded,
“I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we
think, the price is worth it.”
Those who wonder how a group of young men can fire their
automatic weapons into a crowded theatre should, perhaps, contemplate the
effect of Ambassador Albright’s words on the parents and siblings of those
500,000 children.
The temptation which confronts so many on the Left is to
advance these bleak statistics as some form of justification for the actions of
non-state terrorists around the world. It is a temptation we must resist. That
we learn the fundamental moral precept “two wrongs don’t make a right” at our
parents’ knees, does not make it any the less true.
The appropriate moral response to the deliberate killing of
innocent human-beings can never be the deliberate killing of innocent
human-beings. If we are outraged by the callous indifference of Madelaine
Albright, we must also be outraged by the pitiless brutality of the Islamic
State’s jihadis in the Bataclan Theatre.
Nor is it appropriate to downplay the horror and heartache
of Parisians who have lost loved ones simply because our news media has failed
to highlight the horror and heartache of those who have suffered similar loss
in other parts of the world.
We are leftists because, at the very core of our values,
lies an unshakeable belief in the worth of every human-being, and in the right
of every human-being to live his or her life free from exploitation and
violence. That the world is so full of these evils must never daunt us, nor
persuade us to abandon love for hate; justice for revenge.
Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Tuesday, 17 November 2015.
