The following is an article sent in by our assistant editor Cameron Ruiz who is an undergraduate student here at WIU-QC. Any student is able to send in content to be published on The Edge. We believe in the freedom of ideas, and the intellectual development that comes when we read articles that may or may not correspond with our view of the world. If you are a student who would like to submit an article, please email me, Dan Dankert, at dm-dankert@wiu.edu. 

I am sending a link to an article that brings much-needed attention to a facet of American terrorism, imperialism, and flat-out savagery and disregard for humanity that goes unreported in the mainstream media and therefore out of the public consciousness. But it desperately needs attention. Every day I look at this website (Antiwar.com) and more often than not there is a reporting of a US airstrike killing civilians in the Middle East and each time I see it I think to myself, “we just created more individuals that want revenge on the West”, or as we in the West like to refer to them as, “terrorists.”

For those of us in the United States, maybe it would better help us to understand this issue by channeling our understanding of our beloved Star Wars franchise. Don’t get me wrong, I love Star Wars and that is exactly why I am using it as an example of how a “terrorist” is created. It’s pretty easy, all you have to do is imagine the United States military and political machine as the Empire, with it’s immense military power, its vision of domination and control, and an oppressed population seeking to bring it down. There is a scene in A New Hope where Luke Skywalker rushed back to his home on Tatooine to find his innocent aunt and uncle burned to a crisp following an attack by imperial storm troopers. This is an iconic scene and a major turning point in the trilogy because this is the exact moment Luke channels his anger and sadness at the insidious killing of his innocent family members by devoting his life to the force and challenging the cruelty, the oppression, and the violence of the Empire. When you think about it, it’s not too much different from a young man in Afghanistan who comes back to his home to find it destroyed along with the remaining members of his family while the roar of a US fighter jet leaves the scene. I am in no way condoning acts of violence or terrorism, but I do think it is important that we attempt to understand a perspective that is different from our own. If that means for a brief moment suspending current belief systems, ideologies, or what we’ve been force fed through the media and school system, then so be it.