"Terrorism"
David P. Barash and Charles P. Webel -
14 November 2001
http://www.tni.org/wtc/documents/webar.htm
Here is a radical proposal. Let's write "terrorism" instead of terrorism and "terrorist" instead of terrorist. It may be jarring to see these all-too-familiar words in quotation marks, so let us be clear: by making this suggestion, we do not seek to minimize the horror or the wrongness of actions, which - as in the attacks of September 11 and the subsequent usage of anthrax as a biological weapon - qualify as crimes against humanity. Rather, we suggest that Americans might be well-served by introducing greater historical and cross-cultural sensitivity into their thinking. After all, the troublesome fact is that one person's "terrorist" is sometimes another's "freedom fighter," and that governments may legitimately differ about which nation or regime may be a "state-sponsor of terrorism."
Since the awful, tragic events in New York City and Washington D.C., there has been much discussion of whether the United States is at "war," but essentially no serious questioning of what constitutes a "terrorist" or what constitutes "state-sponsorship of terrorism." To many Americans, it seems self-evident, but this kind of unexamined certainty is precisely what should be avoided in today's complex, interconnected world.
"Terrorism" is a vexing term. According to Title 22 of the US Code Section 2656 (D): "The term 'terrorism" means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated by subnational or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience." It is also as old as human history. "State-sponsorship" of "terrorism" is even more imprecise and debatable. For example, to most Palestinians and many Arabs, Israel is, almost by definition, a "state sponsor" of "terrorist" actions by its armed forces against Palestinian civilians, while to the current Israeli government and many Israelis, most if not all actions of Palestinian resistance to Israel-- from rockthrowing to car bombing-- are "terrorist" acts, condoned if not "sponsored" by Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian authorities.
The common denominator among perpetrators of acts deemed "terrorist" may be that in today's world, "terrorists" are groups of individuals, or even state actors, who may feel militarily unable or unwilling to confront their perceived enemies directly and who accordingly use violence or the threat of violence against non-combatants to achieve their political aims. Such tactics date back at least two thousand years, to the knife-wielding "zealots," Jewish "terrorists" opposed to the Roman occupation of Palestine. "Terrorism" is also a contemporary variant of what has been described as guerrilla warfare, notably anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist struggles for national liberation conducted during the late 18th and early 20th centuries, especially against the British and French empires.
Prior to the U. S. Civil War, militant abolitionists such as John Brown were considered "terrorists" by many Americans, especially in the South. During the 1940s, Menachim Begin - who subsequently became Prime Minister of Israel and a close ally of the United States - headed a militant, "terrorist" Zionist group known as the Irgun; this organization conducted numerous acts of violence, primarily against British-occupied Palestine, which included the notorious bombing of Jerusalem's King David Hotel, a civilian target. Yasir Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, has similarly been denounced (in the West and in Israel) as a "terrorist"; among "moderate" Palestinians, he is widely regarded as a heroic leader on behalf of Palestinian self-determination. During the 1980s, the United States government sponsored the Nicaraguan contras, considered "terrorists" by many pro-Sandinista Americans, but designated "freedom fighters" and "the moral equivalent of our founding fathers" by President Ronald Reagan.
Insurgents in Sri Lanka known as the Tamil Tigers are denounced as "terrorists" by most Sinhalese, but supported - sometimes revered - by many Tamils. The government of Pakistan, which criticized the recent "terror" attacks on the United States as "un-Islamic," has long been believed to sponsor violent "freedom fighters" in Kashmir ... who are "terrorists" to the government of India. The Irish Republican Army is widely regarded in Great Britain as a "terrorist" organization, yet many Irish Catholics consider this group laudably patriotic, and much of its funding has come from donations raised in the United States.
According to Osama Bin Laden, in a 1998 TV interview with the American Broadcasting Company, "Americans are the worst terrorists in the world." Following the attacks in New York City and Washington DC, President George W. Bush announced that the United States "would make no distinction between terrorists and the countries that harbor them." For many frustrated, impoverished, infuriated people - who view the United States as a terrorist country - attacks on American civilians are justified in precisely this way: making no distinction between a "terrorist state" and the citizens who aid and abet that state.
There are also levels of "terrorism," ranging from threats to individual security to the global existential threat posed by the very existence of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. There is state and state-sponsored "terrorism" in addition to "terrorist" groups, as well as government-created "counter-" and "anti-terrorist" agencies and operations. What seems particularly novel, and terrorizing, about this state of affairs in the early 21st century are their global scope, and the suddenness and lethality of such actions, as well as the vulnerability of even the most technologically sophisticated and militarily advanced societies to unanticipated and often indefensible acts of political violence.
Political violence has long been sanctioned as a "legitimate" tool of "self-defense," both by regimes seeking to preserve their power and by their opponents. And this violence has often been declared by its victims to have been of "terrorist" origins. The differences between the political violence used by Jewish opponents of the Roman occupation of Jerusalem two millennia ago and contemporary Arab actions against Israel and the country perceived to be its chief "sponsor"-- the U.S.-- lie in the magnitude of the violence deployed by state and non-state actors against civilians, the weaponry employed, and the furtive nature of many of those actions. But the avowed rationale for engaging in, and defending against, violence and anxiety-inducing threats of violence to non-combatants has remained constant throughout history, namely to defend oneself, family, and freedom against "enemies" perceived as a mortal, even an "evil" threat to everything one holds near and dear. America's current "war against terrorism" and the violent and nonviolent opponents of this "war" might be viewed in this light.
Ever since Jonathan Edwards pronounced the United States the "new Jerusalem," and a "light unto the nations," the US has basked in a kind of self-declared exceptionalism, the confidence that it had something precious and unique to bestow upon the world. At the same time, Americans tend to imagine themselves as partaking of a kind of universalism, such that the way they see others is the way everyone else sees them (and of course, the way those others really are). And so, it is shocking when Americans find that they are not universally loved, and that, on occasion, those seen by most Americans as "terrorists" are perceived otherwise by other people.
To be sure, the horrible events of and since September 11 and have been widely -although not universally - condemned. And we have no doubt that (from our perspective) they warrant the term "terrorism." We add quotation marks nonetheless, to remind ourselves that even in the harsh and, one might think, clarifying light of terrible happenings, things are not as simple as they might initially seem.
Dr. Charles P. Webel is a professor of Peace Studies at the University of California at Berkely. Both he and David P. Barash are co-authors of the forthcoming "Peace and Conflict Studies" to be published by Sage Publication in 2002.