Eco-Terrorism and Final Fantasy 7

So I was thinking about Final Fantasy 7, one of my favorite games; and found myself contemplating something that I often think about when I reminisce about FFVII.  It is the interesting fact that the protagonists are terrorists.  AVALANCHE, the group that the player controls, is blatantly a terrorist organization.  When playing the game, the you plant bombs and blow up buildings, make assassination attempts, and routinely have to run and hide from law enforcement.  This feels like it might be a politically incorrect theme politically incorrect in this decade, especially the because the terrorists are heroes of epic proportions.  

So where do I stand on this whole topic of FFVII putting terrorism in a positive light?  I thinks its a great concept that might have been shot down is FFVII had been made in the year 2002.  After all, the Sons of Liberty were a terrorist organization and its perfectly fine to celebrate them in this country (I learned that from an awesome lecture I attended my senior year).  I think it's important to note that the kind of terrorism in FFVII is not really "911 terrorism" but really more along the lines of eco-terrorism.

Eco-terrorism is something I find to be really intriguing.  For one, loss of life is something that eco-terrorists work to avoid, just like AVALANCHE does in FFVII.  However, the FBI points out that their actions certainly can be dangerous enough to inadvertently take a life.  This reminds me of how the bomb AVALANCHE plants in FFVII is a lot bigger than the group planned for it to be.  Anyways, eco-terrorism is among the top domestic terrorist threats in the United States, and eco-terrorism has some significant advantages over terror networks such as Al-Qaeda that makes them such a unique breed of terrorism.  For starters, people can sympathize with them due to the fact that many people may agree with eco-terrorists motives of preserving the planet and the aforementioned fact that they try to avoid taking lives.

The real advantage that eco-terrorists have is that they do not need to operate in a network.  There is no need for coordinated attacks because their objectives are simple and individual cells can plan their attacks on their own.  This level of independence makes eco-terrorists hard to track down due to the lack of communication between cells.

Personally I don't have an opinion either way on the activities of eco-terrorists because even though I don't believe in reckless vandalism, I also think that too many people turn a blind eye to how they treat their planet.