Interesting reading...
I've been pretty busy recently with school, but I wanted to post up an interesting little clip from my terrorism readings:
Ramzi Yousef: “You keep talking about collective punishment and killing innocent people. . . You were the first one who killed innocent people, and you are the first one who introduced this type of terrorism to the history of mankind when you dropped an atomic bomb which killed tens of thousands of women and children in Japan and when you killed over 100,000 people, most of them civilians, in Tokyo with firebombings, you killed them by burning them to death. And you killed civilians in Vietnam with chemicals, as with the so-called Orange agent. You killed civilians and innocent people, not soldiers, in every single war you went to. You went to war more than any other country in this century, and then you have the nerve to talk about killing innocent people. And now you have invented new ways to kill innocent people. You have so-called economic embargo, which kills nobody other than children and elderly people, and which, other than Iraq, you have been placing the economic embargo on Cuba and other countries for over thirty-five years. The government in its summations and opening statement said that I was a ‘terrorist.’ Yes, I am a terrorist and I am proud of it. And I support terrorism so long as it was against the United States government and against Israel, because you are more than terrorists; you are the one who invented terrorism and [are] using it every day. You are butchers, liars and hypocrites.”
Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy then replied-effectively telling Yousef to take his nihilistic rage and shove it: “Ramzi Yousef, you claim to be an Islamic militant. Of all the persons killed or harmed in some way by the World Trade Center bomb, you cannot name one who was against you or your cause. You did not care, just so long as you left dead bodies and people hurt. Ramzi Yousef, you are not fit to uphold Islam. Your God is death. Your God is not Allah . . . You weren’t seeking conversions. The only thing you wanted to do was to cause death. Your God is not Allah. You worship death and destruction. What you do, you do not for Allah; you do it only to satisfy your own twisted sense of ego. You could have others believe that you are a soldier, but the attacks on civilization for I which you stand convicted here were sneak attacks which ought to kill , and maim totally innocent people. . . You, Ramzi Yousef, came to this country pretending to be an Islamic fundamentalist, but you cared little or nothing for Islam or the faith of the Muslims. Rather, you adored not Allah, but the evil that you yourself have become. And I must say that as an apostle of evil, you have been most effective.”
Taken from The Lexus and the Olive Tree
I just thought that it was an interesting interaction. Not going to throw my political thoughts into it, I just thougth that it was an interesting exchange worth reading. For those that don't know, Ramzi Yousef has been tied to both the 1993 World Trade Center bombings and has major ties to Islamic radical groups.