Wilson Xie
087779B12
T7
War and Violence-Terrorising Terrorists
Wars use to be full-blooded confrontations between various groups of people. According to Dictionary.com, confrontation can mean, a meeting of persons face to face. Yet in the wake of September 11, the issue of a more insidious and subversive warfare has confronted the globalised world. The world has come to face the reckoning of a form of warfare known as terrorism.
The prevalence of any form of media in countries have no doubt enabled easier access to global news. The inter-connectivity of this world is a by-product of globalisation. Stock markets are updated instantaneously, news reports are beamed live via satellites, one can find even pinpoint the weather conditions of a foreign country three days in advance. There is a need for “local” knowledge, “local” because the world is but a globalised village.
Yet it is this advent of media that has exacerbated the issue of terrorism. The haunting images of a man leaping off the Twin Tower and the chaos and destruction portrayed by images of the aftermath of the bombing at Ground Zero has no doubt been plastered into the minds of civilians around the world. More recently, reports of the London Tube bombing generated huge concerns and interest worldwide. While we as civilians are alerted to these acts of terror, it is the knowledge of such events that have imbued us with a constant state of fear. A certain aphorism, “ignorance is bliss” can perhaps be paradoxically true in the post 9/11 world.
It would be naïve to assume that terrorism only originated in the post 9/11 era, Terrorism was already threatening to boil over in the 1990’s with the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway and the Oklahoma bombing, both taking place in 1995. Yet the message of terrorism hit home only during the September 11 events due to various reasons. Firstly, the unsurpassed damage created during the attack brought attention to terrorism. Furthermore, America, the world’s sole mega-power was deemed to be invincible. Thirdly the strategic choice of hitting the World Trade Centre which was a symbol of strength(economic) and freedom, hit a nerve with the American public. Lastly, terrorism gained a place in America’s budget considerations when the State announced its “War on terrorism.” It is this war on terrorism that has made USA justify its highly publicized war on Afghanistan and Iraq.
The butterfly effect whirls into full-blown motion in our closely-knitted “global village”. Just after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, a oil crisis surfaced globally. A contributing factor is growing unrest in the Middle Eastern countries which is the world’s largest old producing area. Countries around the world felt the reverberations of the effects of a war. The hardest hit are middle-income families that find it hard to buffer inflation due to the oil crisis.
Life has also been significantly harder for Muslim minorities living in Western countries. While perpetuators of the 9/11 attacks did so in the name of Jihad or holy war in the name of the Islamic faith, these radicals make up an extremely small minority among the followers of the Islamic faith. Yet Muslims find themselves on the wrong end of xenophobia, more so after the attacks. In 2006, the marginalisation became even more blatant when Dutch government banned the wearing of the Burqa in public.
The threats of this era are real as reported by the media. Yet the fearful climate must be attributed to our own humanly responses to such a threat. How should the media report about acts of terror and reassure citizens at the same time? Can the government withhold facts from us while contriving methods to suppress terrorism? And if so, what are the repercussions when the beans are spilled. The role of media as a bane or boon with regards to terrorism can only be further pondered upon at such a point in history.
