The dawn of a new They

Tony Deyal

PRESIDENT JOHN Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) had been warned that Dallas was like a lunatic asylum, pure nut country. According to Great American Anecdotes by John and Clair Whitcomb, "It was the kind of place where newspapers ran full-page ads maligning the President on the day of his arrival. But Kennedy ignored the naysayers". According to the Whitcombs, Kennedy's feeling about the whole thing was, "If they are going to get me, they will get me even in church".

They did not wait for church. They got him in Dallas. John's brother, Robert Kennedy, had also pointed out the impossibility of avoiding 'they'. Later, Robert said, "If they want to get me, they'll get me. They got Jack". John and Robert's brother, Ted, had said, "They're going to shoot my ass off the way they shot Bobby."

THEY has become an ominous word. Outside of the hallowed halls and warm precincts of safety and comfort, they lie in wait. THEY is a conspiratorial word. Jackie Kennedy, en route to the hospital in Dallas, cried, "He's dead, they've killed him ­ oh, Jack, oh, Jack, I love you."

There is a they in the life of everyone. Even though there are times when we don't know who they are, or given their numbers, what or which of the many theys it is, we still know enough to call it a they. Paul Wilkinson, writer on terrorism, has said, "Fighting terrorism is like being a goalkeeper. You can make a hundred brilliant saves but the only shot that people remember is the one that gets past you."

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, this was the shot heard around the world. While we are still trying to find out who they are, we will never forget the enormity of what they did. The world has changed since the Kennedy days.

Seventy-six-year-old Richard P. Pavlick was incensed. He thought that John Kennedy had bought the election. He waited outside the gates of Kennedy's Palm Beach, Florida, mansion intending to drive his car into JFK's on a suicide/assassination mission.

Pavlick had seven sticks of dynamite wired to a switch in the car. However, on that day, in December 1960, as Kennedy was about to head off for church, his wife Jackie, his little daughter Caroline, and a nurse with baby John Jr. in her arms, came out smiling and laughing to bid JFK goodbye.

The would-be suicide bomber was so struck by the scene, he said, "I decided to get him at the church or some other place." Fortunately, he was picked up by the police before he could get Kennedy.

Sirhan Sirhan, assassin of Robert Kennedy, repeated, "By the way I want to get one thing straight. I didn't know he had so many children. I didn't know he had so many children."

The times have changed and, as Willie Nelson sang prophetically, "It is the time of the preacher, In the year of Oh One, The shooting has started, And the killings begun."

Death is no longer personal. As one Belfast resident said, "It's not the bullet with my name on it that worries me. It's the one that says 'To Whom It May Concern'."

The world will no longer be the same. The quality of mercy is not evident. The milk of human kindness has evaporated. It is the time of seek and destroy, hunter and hunted, kill or be killed.

Terry Waite, who was held hostage in Lebanon, said, "The terrible thing about terrorism is that ultimately it destroys those who practise it. Slowly but surely, as they try to extinguish life in others, the light within them dies."

Unfortunately, it did not die soon enough. While the rest of the world weeps tears of sadness, in the Palestinian camps there are tears of joy. From the viewpoint of the victims and most of the world, the suicide bombers who guided the planes into the Towers and the Pentagon were misguided. From the viewpoint of those who live in the perpetual squalor of the refugee camps, those who died fighting the cause are heroes of a holy war who will take their rightful place in heaven among the chosen few.

There is a perpetual source of supply of suicide bombers as there is a perpetual source of supply of arms and ammunition. For every action there will be an opposite reaction, unequal and escalating in intensity. In the end, one must choose one's own position. Regardless of what America has done, terrorism has done worse. Like Albert Camus, I have always denounced terrorism. I must also denounce a terrorism which is exercised blindly, in the streets of Algiers for example, and which some day could strike my mother or my family. I believe in justice, but I shall defend my mother above justice.

Tony Deyal was last seen agreeing with the philosopher, E.M. Cioran, who says, "The fanatic is incorruptible; if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster."

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