Legitimate Targets

Two days back, the wife of a terrorist leader was captured by the Lebanese armed forces. This came three days after the wife and child of another terrorist leader were captured by the same army. Whether this says something about their intelligence source or is pure dumb luck is another matter; what came after these arrests is what is really amusing.

The latest arrest was of the wife of a regional al-Qaeda commander who is apparently very upset about this particular development unlike al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIS), another terrorist group, who didn’t even blink at the arrest of one of his wives and a child.

The al-Qaeda guy however, lost his cool and declared every woman, child and man in Lebanon legitimate targets for his terrorist operation. He demanded his spouse be released or the holding forces be ready to face his mighty wrath that would befall anyone within the blast radius of his ‘holy’ bombs.

Commander, with all due disgust, allow me to explain how you’re just stating something that is so passé that even the guy sending your message to the army is chuckling at your naivety.

Image Courtesy: Google Images.

Did you really not blow up innocent people before this? Have you never sent suicide bombers to blow up a busy marketplace or a place of religious worship before? Do you not already have the blood of innocents on your hands and on your soul? Have you not blackened your heart with the funeral fires of thousands of people who died because of your fight for ‘God’?

How can you say that these innocents are legitimate targets now? Was massacring them illegitimate before? Then why did you do it? Do you deny it? No? Why am I not surprised?

How do you expect God to be proud of you when you try to forward your vested interests in His name? You do not want people to fear God, you want them to fear you. You want to give reason to your madness and so you keep telling yourself, your mindless followers and the world that what you’re fighting for is a ‘holy war’ and not to make yourself king of the mountain.

You are no better than the ‘legitimate’ dictators, both, ruling and deposed. In fact, at some level they are better than you because they make no pretence of the fact that they want power. You cower behind your imaginary excuses and the lie atop the bodies of the slain with a ‘legitimate’ reason.

You talk of legitimacy? You have no right. Your wife is probably safer in the army’s hands than are the possibly hundreds or thousands of women that your brainwashed ‘holy warriors’ have raped and murdered to satisfy their ‘holy’ selves. You cannot speak of legitimacy. The very word is dishonoured by being present upon your tongue.

The only thing legitimate by human standards is for you and others like you to hang for your crimes against mankind.