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Break the chain of terror and violence
Akahata editorial

Four years have passed since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks against the United States, Two hijacked airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington's suburbs, and another one crashed in Pennsylvania. About 3,000 people, including several Japanese, were killed in the crashes. The tragedy was remembered at memorial events in many places.

Terror attacks that indiscriminately take the lives of many citizens are crimes that cannot be condoned under whatever pretexts. The 9/11 attack was not only on the United States but the entire international community wishing for peace and order in the world. Eliminating terror is a fundamental condition for humanity to continue to live in peace.

Not in hatred or vengeance

How can we eradicate terrorism? Can we achieve it with military force that creates unbridled hatred and vengeful emotions? The sequence of events in the last four years clearly provides the answer.

The U.S. Bush administration attacked Afghanistan militarily alleging that the country was sheltering the masterminds of the terrorist attacks, and caused the fall of the Taliban regime. However, the masterminds are still at large, while the U.S. forces in Afghanistan are continuing their cleanup operations. Many innocent citizens have been killed in this war.
Military force can not eliminate terror.

Andrea Leblanc, who lost her husband in the Sept. 11 attack, this past summer took part in a peace walk from Nagasaki to Hiroshima honoring "the unknown civilians killed in war." She stressed that those who lost loved ones have chosen not to rouse hatred. She said that distrust and hatred will only produce more violence. The end to terror should not be sought in vengeance but in breaking the chain of violence.

Law and rationality are necessary to eliminate terrorism. To achieve this, it is necessary to capture the suspects of the terror attacks, identify their organizations and supporters, and to bring them to court so that they be punished under the law. The international community must unite around the United Nations, the U.N. Charter, and international law.

Instead, the United States rushed from its retaliatory war against Afghanistan into the preemptive war against Iraq.

The U.N. Charter prohibits U.N. member nations from attacking other countries if they have not been attacked. The Iraq War is a lawless war of aggression invoking the U.S. preemptive strategy. It has destroyed the international peace and the unity of the international community in its effort to eliminate terrorism.

The Bush administration launched the war against Iraq by condemning Iraq's former Hussein regime for posing "threats" by maintaining weapons of mass destruction and for having relations with Al-Qaeda. These charges later turned out to be false based on U.N. and U.S. investigations.

It was the United States that opted to invade Iraq without a United Nations Security Council resolution and in defiance of widespread international criticism, only increasing the threat of further terrorist attacks.

Even in the United States, 54 percent of the respondents in a Gallup poll said that sending U.S. troops to Iraq was a mistake. Cindy Sheehan, whose son died in Iraq, said that the U.S. president's lies have caused her son's death. She asks how many more deaths the meaningless war will claim. Her call for an immediate acknowledgement of the mistake and pullout of troops from Iraq is supported by many families of soldiers who are in Iraq.

Return to peace

The lawless use of force in the name of U.S. President Bush's "war against terror" will help escalate terror and violence. The essential factor in eliminating terrorism is international compliance with peace based on the U.N. Charter. -- Akahata, September 12, 2005