Tiller's killing was terrorism
It was intended to frighten American doctors into refusing to perform abortions and it is, sadly, working. Terrorism, as I understand it, is a pattern of violence aimed at implementing policy changes through fear, intimidation and violence. So it’s clear to see that the systematic and frequent attacks on abortion clinics and doctors represents a terrorist movement in the United States.
What is painful to see however, is how the right wing responds to such things. The titular link leads to a sample of one such response. An army recruiter was killed by a young Muslim who was seeking revenge for the things America has done to Muslims. Here is the great, pitiful shame of the right wing. They are willing to call this revenge killing a terrorist act but unwilling to admit that Tiller’s murder was terrorism. They’ve got it exactly backwards. The young Muslim murderer was not attempting to control U.S. policy via fear and intimidation, he specifically admitted that his motivation was revenge. That makes his despicable act murder, not terrorism.
Yet the right wing is enormously willing to call it terrorism, because it involved a Muslim lashing out against the U.S. Sad isn’t it? For them Christians are not, and cannot be, terrorists. Worse, they simply want to claim that Obama has failed to defend us from the terrorist threat, that his policies have “weakened” our nation. They want to prove Cheney right and will latch on to the flimsiest evidence in order to do so. The right appears to have lost touch with reality, not that that’s anything new.
-cyranicles
