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The Oxymoron War on Terror – The Greatest Hypocrisy of Our Time

Monday, January 30, 2017 1:49

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(Before It's News)

January 30th, 2017

By Ethan Indigo Smith

Contributing writer for Wake Up World

Terrorism [noun]: The unlawful use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.

War is politically motivated violence. War is, therefore, terrorism, enshrined in the law of one warring party.

By its definition, war threatens and enacts violence on behalf of the State, for its own benefit, at the expense of the lives and livelihoods of countless others. And yet we have come to accept their invasion, their suppression, and even their deaths as necessary to our lives — to our sense of peace. So we occupy lands, we kill leaders, we overturn cities in the hunt for weapons that don’t exist — and all because the lawmakers who decide which violent acts are “war” and which are “terrorism” tell us such violence is necessary to achieve peace.

So, remind me again… Who are the terrorists? Who are the war heroes, and who are the war criminals? How do we discern military from militia? Do we really believe peace can be achieved by declaring war on war itself?

The greatest hypocrisy of our time.

The world’s political institutions — from the U.S. to Russia, from Israel to ISIS — seek to gain and maintain power through the use of violence, terror, and military coercion. In fact we live in a world where legally-sanctioned acts of terrorism are carried out more often than illegal terrorism — but, as they are conducted within someone else’s borders, in someone else’s homeland, we separate ourselves from this reality, in a dissonant attempt to protect ourselves from it.

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