Gwynne Dyer: "De-contextualising" Chechnya

[reprehensor]

"De-contextualising" Chechnya

What would we do without Richard Perle, everybody's favourite
neo-conservative? It was he who came up some years ago with the notion
that we must "de-contextualise terrorism:" that is, we must stop trying to
understand the reasons that some groups turn to terrorism, and simply
condemn and kill them. No grievance, no injury, no cause is great enough
to justify the use of terrorism.

This would be an excellent principle if only we could apply it to
all uses of violence for political ends -- including the violence that is
carried out by legal governments using far more lethal weapons than
terrorists have access to, causing far more deaths. I'd be quite happy,
for instance, to "de-contextualise" nuclear weapons, agreeing that there
are no circumstances that could possibly justify their use, and if you want
to start de-contextualising things like cluster bombs and napalm, that
would be all right with me, too. But that was not what Perle meant at all.

Perle was speaking specifically about Palestinian terrorist attacks
against Israel, and the point of "de-contextualising" them was to make it
unacceptable for people to point out that there is a connection between
Palestinian terrorism and the fact that the Palestinians have lived under
Israeli military occupation for the past 37 years and lost almost half
their land to Jewish settlements.

Since the Palestinians have no regular armed forces, if we all
agree that any resort by them to irregular violence is completely
unpardonable and without justification, then there is absolutely nothing
they can legitimately do to oppose overwhelming Israeli military force.
"De-contextualising terrorism" would neatly solve Israel's problem with the
Palestinians -- and it would also solve Russia's problem with the Chechen
resistance, which is why Russian President Vladimir Putin was so quick to
describe the rash of terrorist attacks in recent weeks, and above all the
school massacre in Beslan last Friday, as "a direct intervention against
Russia by international terrorism."

more@link