The Augusta Chronicle We agree with those who say, reflectively, that the shocking Oklahoma beheading late last week was not an act of terrorism. But we differ with those who say, reflexively, that it had nothing to do with Islam. We subscribe to the general definition of terrorism being ‘the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.’ We would simply add that terrorism also generally targets innocent civilians. Accused Moore, Okla., murderer Alton Nolen had no such apparent political aims. Instead, he appears to have been motivated by having been fired from the plant, where he then allegedly beheaded one woman and may have beheaded another were it not for a reserve officer with a gun. In that way, yes, this is a case of workplace violence. But to try to plaintively deny the connection to radical Islam is to deny reality at the point of a knife. He may have been motivated by a workplace grievance, but what he did was inspired by radical Islam’s hatred and Stone Age-bloodlust, particularly for those of other faiths. It’s so much malarkey. If someone is inspired by something to commit an act, or commit it in a certain way or for a stated reason, then that something is necessarily an integral part of the act.If the killer believes it’s part of the motivation, it simply is. Who is anyone else to say it isn’t? The same can be said of the terror group ISIS. No amount of politically correct nonsense changes this. It may feel good to try to dispel that unpleasant truth ‘“ of radical Islam’s footprint in this travesty on the red soil of Middle America ‘“ up until, that is, the knife is at your own throat. Another dimension of this horrific crime is that others at the plant were fortunate that someone there took a gun to a knife fight. It just so happens the hero in this case, Vaughan Foods executive Mark Vaughan, is a reserve sheriff’s deputy. But in truth, it could have been anyone with a concealed weapons permit. Another inconvenient truth: Gun ‘control’ would only have disarmed a law-abiding citizen in such an incident. The need to confront unpleasant truths was forcefully driven home in a very few words in the movie Dr. Zhivago. Omar Sharif’s title character was frustrated at a communist apparatchik’s denial of the presence of typhus or starvation in revolutionary Russia. ’That seems to give you satisfaction,’ the party official tells Zhivago, of his finding of starvation. ’It would give me satisfaction to hear you admit it,’ he responds. ’Would it? Why?’ ’Because it is so.’
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