Page 39 - Only Love Can Defeat Terrorism

attacks aimed at defenseless people:
"Researchers have glimpsed aspects of [the

terrorists'] psyches. Most prominent among these
is their capacity to view their victims as things, as
objects, as statistics that, they hope, will show up on a
casualty list.
"They don't want to experience their victims as human
beings, as they would a friend or loved one. Rather, they

strive to view them as pawns on a political chessboard.
Consequently, from their own vantage point, terrorists
don't perceive themselves as killing ‘people.' In order to
slaughter with ease and callous indifference, they
mentally dehumanize us into ‘targets' ... Their ‘cause,'
whatever it may be, is sufficiently sacred, noble or
desperate that it justifies the carnage they instigate ... For
most terrorists, their chief interest resides in effects, not
persons ... They are after ... the impact of the massacre, not
the experience of the massacre itself. Terrorists want to
murder hope, or a way of life, or the spirit of a group of
people or an entire nation. They destroy human beings
because they believe doing so is the fastest and most
direct route to that goal." 11

Philip Chard draws our attention to a most important
matter; that terrorists feel not the slightest pang of remorse at
the death of others. On the contrary, the more they can kill,
the more successful they foolishly consider themselves to be,
and they rejoice in that fact. Such ill minds can quite happily
shoot innocent people and bomb small children. For them,

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