Civilian Culpability

Conversation about terrorism is starting to have a distinctly dangerous note. I’ve heard people half-jokingly (but only half) say that terrorists should all be killed and since their not about to crowd together and stand still while we take aim, we should just nuke the those who harbor them to solve the problem once and for all. A slightly more rational view holds that civilian casualties are a somewhat regrettable necessity in our conflict with terrorism, but this view is a development from a not-so-uncommon mistake—rooted in racism– which assumes that the people in countries harboring terrorists are somehow culpable for their crimes.
While it’s true that many of the people in these countries are sympathetic to the terrorist cause, they are not completely responsible for acquiring these beliefs. In Lebanon the Hezbollah owned a private network and were free to broadcast the information that promoted their view and mindset. Can we blame the Lebanese for listening? While many people don’t bother to consider it, the same sort of thing goes on in Canada with our news agencies. While they avoid overt lies it is common practice to influence how the story is interpreted to better correspond to the beliefs of the news agency reporting it. It does not matter whether the story relies on testimonials from experts, interviews with the public or analysis of the bare facts; it still contains as much influence from the interviewer as the interviewee and we are often guilty of the same sin of unreflective acceptance about what we’re told. The information proffered by Hezbollah’s network may not have completely reflected the truth but it is understandable that the Lebanese people could be misled.
But is it reasonable to blame people in environments like this for forming mistaken beliefs? Perhaps we believe that if they just started thinking for themselves they’d soon figure out that something was wrong with their beliefs. After all, surely they must wonder why the whole western word seems to be allied against them. But a quick view into western history proves that we are willing to act in a similar fashion. It’s a curious sort of fairytale-belief that holds that the ideals espoused during the French revolution were commonly understood by the average citizen. Probably the truth is that the average person had a deep seeded sense of injustice and came to blame it on the method of governance. The reaction to this sense of injustice was not calm, rational and peaceful; rather the bloody revolution proved how far western people are willing to go in reaction to a perceived injustice. So consider the plight of the average citizen in a country like Lebanon. Just next door there resides a wealthy neighbor, loved by the superpowers and possessing enough military might to annihilate any opponent. Would it seem fair that they should prosper while the Muslim countries decay? …and what reaction should we expect to this sentiment? If people really are all the same we cannot expect better behavior from them than we get from ourselves.
I’m not defending their right to terrorize, but these “crazy Arabs” are reacting in a manner that strikingly resembles scenes from both our past and present and we therefore cannot in good conscience hold ourselves in higher regard. I think this tendency to convince ourselves that the civilian casualties in these countries are tolerable comes from our self-deceptive ability to disassociate from them. While cultural and historical influences prevented the current terrorists from developing here, nothing but a birth lottery made it the case that it happened to Middle-Easterners and not us. Because people can be blamed for the choices they make but not their environmental circumstances, blaming these people for the terror problem isn’t fair. A civilian death is not any less tragic because they live in a country half ruled by terrorists. There is the same deeply rooted injustice inherent in even their accidental deaths. Killing the militants is necessary, but each time a civilian is killed it is just as tragic as when an Israeli or American dies.