No Floor

Terrorism has its roots in a peculiar sort of narcissism. Terrorists seem to believe that whatever sort of grievance they have against the world (or some of the people in it) is much more important than any sort of civilization. In order to advance their cause, there are no limits on their behaviour.

I was thinking of that when I read about the medical doctors who conspired to blow up Glasgow airport and certain well-populated areas of London. Doctors!

Presumably, they swore an oath to only help and never hurt. They are, again presumably, well educated. And yet they somehow decided - in a group - to commit mass murder. Clearly, civilization is too much and much too good for the likes of these creatures.

And again when I read about the standoff in Pakistan where radical Islamic militants are using women and children as human shields, the thought occurs: "is there no floor to the behaviour of these people?"

I mention civilization, because I believe there is a generally understood meaning to the term, however vague it may be. The idea of civilization is that humans need to act in accordance with certain very basic but important rules in order to live together. Without these rules, we devolve into an animalistic state of fighting constantly for personal survival.

No society countenances theft, or murder, though both are defined differently in different places and times. Children and non-combatants are not to be intentionally harmed or killed. There must be an attempt to be fair to all adults and respect a set of laws. Again, these ideas can be defined with legitimate differences in different societies, but those societies that do not enforce them are not civilized.

Certainly radical Islam and the barbaric law of Sharia are not civilized. And they prove it day in and day out. They do not have the necessary societal components to be considered among the family of nations.

But then, when you consider the actions of Georgie and his radical Junta, are they any better? Certainly, the Islamists must be jealous of the body count of innocents that the US has racked up in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands are needlessly dead because of the crazy dreams of American NeoCons.

And, in using torture and illegal detention, the rule of law is eliminated. The attempt at fairness has ended. The floor - the lowest depth we will sink to - has fallen away.

It's a startling thought to be able to argue that the actions of the United States can be compared to the actions of international terrorists and radical Islamists, but can there be any doubt?

How is it possible that the Junta has been able to recruit so many agents who are happy to pull on the jack-boots? That keeps me up at night - that there are thousands of military personnel and other (FBI, CIA) agents who have been eager to toss away every form of civilized law and obey the extreme un-American orders of this government?

Because if they'd had the guts to resist or resign, the damage might have been mitigated. If the corporate fat-cats had said: "thanks for the right to despoil the earth for profit and carry away all the tax dollars we want, but it's not right. We're Americans too."

But no. Like the enemies we've helped to create around the world, we no longer have any limits on our behaviour. We've fallen under the narcissistic spell that says: "your plight is unique, so you don't have to limit your behaviour in any way."

We didn't found the country like that. We didn't beat the British Empire, the Third Reich, Imperial Japan, and the Warsaw Pact like that. Our accomplishments have been made as a civilized country. Only our great failures have come when we've turned our back on civilization.