One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

by Omar El Akkad

Maybe this extreme reluctance to acknowledge, let alone study, the kaleidoscopic pathology of terror isn’t just driven by the oft-stated fear that to try to understand something is inseparable from pledging allegiance to it. Maybe the real fear is that, when one begins to consider the root systems of small-scale, sometimes state-supported, but often stateless evil, there’s an obligation to apply the same rigor to the large-scale machinery of imperial evil. And in doing so, one might find that what drives and absolves the state of so much evil isn’t the fear that not doing so will allow some terrorist to destroy the fabric of free society. But rather that the evil itself is necessary to the system it protects. That in the end there is no international rules-based order, no universal human rights, no equal justice for all, simply fleeting arrangements of convenience in which any amount of human collateral is deemed acceptable so long as it works in the empire’s interest.