Expected English Precise for CE-2015

[waqarsalman]

Expected English Precise for CE-2015

The attention we give to terrorism often seems disproportionate to its real importance. Terrorism incidents make superb copy for journalists, but kill and main fewer people than road accidents. Nor is terrorism politically effective. Empires rise and fall according to the real determinants of politics — namely overwhelming force or strong popular support-not according to a bit of mayhem caused by isolated fanatics whom one would take seriously enough to vote for it. Indeed, the very variety of incidents that might be described as “terrorism” has been such as to lead critics to suggest that no single subject for investigation exists at all. Might we not regard terrorism as a kind of minor blotch on the skin of an industrial civilization whose very heart is filled with violent dreams and aspirations. Who would call in the dermatologist when the heart itself is sick?
But popular opinion takes terrorism very serious indeed and popular opinion is probably right. For the significance of terrorism lies not only in the grotesque nastiness of terrorist outrages but also in the moral claims they imply. Terrorism is the most dramatic exemplification of the moral fault of blind willfulness. Terrorism is a solipsistic denial of the obligation of self-control we all must recognize when we live in civilized communities. Certainly the sovereign high road to misunderstanding terrorism is the pseudo scientific project of attempting to discover its causes. Terrorists themselves talk of the frustrations which have supposedly necessitated their actions but to transform these facile justifications into scientific hypotheses is to succumb to the terrorists own fantasies. To kill and main people is a choice people make, and glib invocations of necessity are baseless. Other people living in the same situation see no such necessity at all. Hence their are no “causes” of terrorism, only decision to terrorize. It is a moral phenomenon and only a moral discussion can be adequate to it.