This is an old exercise, in a Sept. 12 sense of "old," but a worthwhile one and I recently was reminded that it's worthwhile.
Members of my family flatly declare half the statesmen in American history to be terrorists. I suppose the other half escape censure only because my family can't remember their names. But this part of my family always is fuzzy on the details. It was asserted this weekend with the utmost certainty that Eisenhower ordered his CIA to topple the democratically elected government of Zimbabwe -- a country that never bore that name until a decade after Ike was dead, and which during his presidency was a self-governing colony under the British Crown known as Southern Rhodesia.
I generally say nothing during these interminable afternoons of agitprop. What would be the point? To discuss or debate, you have to have a shaving of common ground to stand on -- like living on the same planet, where Southern Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1979, not 1949 -- or having reasonably proximate definitions of "terrorist."
TERRORIST: One who seeks to achieve a political end primarily by using violence against civilians and non-combatants, with the primary aim of creating a psychology of fear and an awareness of threat in the body of people the terrorist wishes to manipulate for the sake of the political goal.This seems to me a fair start; suitable for conversation, but not legally rigorous. When I read some people's attempts at definition, they seem to be carefully worded to group together only certain people or causes that the writer dislikes, and to exclude others he favors. Mine's not meant to be like that. It can include statesmen and military leaders. The Allied area bombing campaigns against Hamburg and Köln and other German cities in World War II, for instance, fit the definition. The original "terrorists" -- the rulers of France during the Revolution in the mid-1790s-- are still included in my definition.
But attempts to define terrorism tend to run into the same problems. For instance, the restriction to civilian victims allows for slipperiness: The al Qaida cell that attacked the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen were attacking an entirely military target, and thus were not behaving as terrorists by my definition, but I have no trouble thinking of them as terrorists, and they certainly behaved like it in other times and places without any conscious modification in their goals. Certainly their attempt against the Cole was not meant to scuttle the U.S. Navy, but to make the American people fear them.
Some defenders of the Sept. 11 terrorists point out that the Pentagon was a "legitimate military target," but overlook the 64 passengers on American Airlines Flight 77, who were not. Nor were they collateral damage: the intent was to kill them spectacularly.
Nor does my definition resolve or attempt to resolve the Islamist claim that every American taxpayer, and every Israeli citizen is, de facto, a combatant.
What about assassinations? An assassin who simply kills a politician to stop up his voice, or to avenge some perceived wrong, isn't being a terrorist. He's just an assassin. But if he kills with the intent of intimidating this leader's following, or discouraging any future leader from pursuing the course that ends in this killing, then that is a terrorist's motive. But how can you separate them in any one vicious mind? Or, to take another example, how do you weigh the degree of motivation in the Dresden firebombing: the city was an important transit point for the German war effort, yet the bombing was done in the terror-from-the-skies model.
Some people define terrorism to include property attacks. I chose not to. It's certainly true that the destruction of the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe would have a crushing psychological effect on France, even if no one was killed in the process. But to include all property as potential targets of terrorism seems to be defining the word down too severely. I think "eco-terrorism" needs a new name and a new category.
"Primarily" and "primary" are key words in my definition. Some people deliberately omit any notion of intent, the better to paint all state violence -- and U.S. military action in particular -- as "terrorism." I find that disingenuous. Certainly a state military action can be terrorism. To this day I cannot determine whether Sherman's march through Georgia had sufficient strategic military purpose, balanced against the intended psychological damage to the South, to escape the label "terrorism." But colateral damage is not terrorism, and what separates a Hellfire missile seeking an al Qaida leader and a suicide bomber in a Tel Aviv bus is not that they're merely different delivery systems.
Terrorism has other characteristics, but they are secondary, not essential to its definition. Yet they are helpful in separating it from violence that is not terrorism. It is least effective against totalitarian regimes. The Nazi terror in Russia actually backfired, and turned the Russian people, many of whom at first welcomed their release from the Soviet yoke, into partisan opponents of the Germans who ensured their defeat in Russia. The Allied bombing of German cities, meanwhile, made no appreciable difference to the end of the war. There was no way for the terrorized populace to express itself against its rulers. The Nazi V-rocket terror attacks on London in 1944, however, almost broke the will of the British.
Another inevitable result of terrorism is that by nature it depends on the free flow of information, and especially media images, to give it strength. It exploits the media as a disease exploits the respiratory system.
Marc at American Future has an excellent post on the legal and legislative context of the NSA wiretaps issue. I recommend it, and I can add nothing to the thoughtful work he's done there. But he introduced his post with two examples of recent words from the kind of Americans who were made uncomfortable by Sept. 11, I suppose because it revealed starkly that there are organizations with the will and the ability to kill great numbers of us, and, by golly, defending ourselves with force might be the order of the day after all.
One is a blogger named Glenn Greenwald, who uses a comparison Marc correctly identifies as "specious:"The total number of Americans killed by Islamic terrorists in the last 5 years ? or 10 years ? or 20 years ? or ever ? is roughly 3,500, the same number of deaths by suicide which occur in this country every month.Must we go through this again? Yes, and the number of college students killed by National Guards at Kent State was less than the number that dies that year from alcohol overdoses. And more blacks in the South in the 1920s died from food poisoning than from lynching. Yes and all those Jews incinerated at Auschwitz would be dead by now of old age anyhow. So these things weren't real problems, right? Just exaggerations trumped up for some political purpose.
That people are foolish enough to write this way shows they haven't really thought about terrorism. One of the secondary characteristics of it is the indignity: The indignity of being its victim. The soldier in battle kills you before you can kill him. The mugger may kill you for your money, to the terrorist, you are irrelevant. You have nothing he wants but your life. It's been noted before that there's a perverted quality of art to terrorism; it contains many elements of theater, and the essential players are artist, audience, and medium. The dead are just props. The essential connection is between the terrorist and the audience who will be psychologically traumatized.
Terrorism's victims are taken to death with full human deliberation and will and craft. But they are essentially taken at random. Sometimes, even it is their innocence that dooms them. They cannot negotiate release, and nothing they could have done in their lives would avoid this outcome. They are not hostages in any sense. They are living corpses waiting to be arranged for the camera in the most dramatic poses. It is the ultimate objectification of human life.
Yet idiots persist in comparing the number of humans slain by terrorist hands to, say, the number of victims of lightning strikes.
The best definition of the difference between terrorism and war/resistance came from the philosopher Andre Glucksman who said:
"…what do extremist ideologies like the communism or Nazism of yesteryear and the Islamism of today have in common? After all, they support ostensibly very different ideals – the superior race, mankind united in socialism, the community of Muslim believers (the Umma). Tomorrow, it could be altogether different ideals: some theological, some scientific, others racist. But the common characteristic is nihilism."
"The root element is the attitude that anything goes, particularly when with regard to ordinary people: I can do whatever I want, without scruples. Goehring put it like this: my consciousness is Adolf Hitler. Bolsheviks said: man is made of iron. And the Islamists whom I visited in Algeria said that you have the right to kill little Muslim children, in order to save them."
"..because Man is human: therefore, he can be civilised, even if he can’t read or write, because he can master this hubris. Wherever you go, this belligerent hubris is considered lethal. In the huts of the Amazon, young men are taught to conquer this capacity for excessive violence. You can fight together, but you cannot fight in any way that comes to hand, and you don’t set out to fight just anyone. The same idea occurs in the teachings of the Greeks, the paidera. All European education is based on the same principle."
"Indeed, all civilisations have two essential taboos in common: the taboo on ‘total sexuality’, the incest taboo, different in individual cases, but ubiquitous, and the taboo on violence. You are not allowed to succumb to ‘absolute violence’. You have to master that hubris in one way or another. In every civilisation you can find the mastering of these two absolute, destructive impulses."
:::
Human civilization survives because most people are able to suppress their appetite for extreme, random violence (or belligerent hubris). Terrorists and genocidal totalitarians, like the Nazis and the Islamists, don't supress these impulses.
A society can survive lighting strikes, car accidents and war. A society can survive, and even thrive as a result of war or resistance action. But the destructive impulses of totalitarianism, genocide and terrorism will ultimately destroy a society. That's why these random destructive impulses have always been, like cannibalism and incest, taboo.
I will submit my opinion on a three of your points very briefly. You speak of targeting individuals who speak to their followers. Is that person saying "Defend your country, family and society" or is that person saying seek out out your enemies, kill his people, his animals and sow his fields with salt? Targeting the first is terrorism, the second self-defense.
Was Shermans march to the sea terrorism? It, in and of its self was not. The destruction of a self designated enemy's infrastructure and ability to wage war is not terrorism however undoubtly there was incidents of terrorism conducted during that operation.
Is it terrorism to target enemy civilians during a declared state of war? Depends on who they are and what they are doing. If Japan had been knowing and able to attack the civilians at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge it would have been a legimate act of war. Had they attacked the civilians at Taos or Santa Fe, it would be terrorism.
My opinion only
The definition of 'terrorist' and 'freedom fighter' have been thrown around lately, and despite angry words to the contrary, I think they're often hard to seperate (depending on the situation).
A perfect example is american agression against Cuba, where CIA helped plan assasinations, bombings and uprisings against Castro. These attacks were surely designed to terrify the socialist leadership, and by your defintion 'terrorism'. But at the same time, mostly undertaken by local groups fighting to remove socialism. I would argue some FF, some terror.
Or lets take the Chechnya conflict. Surely, the acts by Checnya lately are terrifying and quite obviously terrorism. But it comes in the middle of a war in which Russia has bombed chechnyan cities into the ground (which are fighting for their own nation). So which is the act of terrorism, and which is the act of retaliation? I would argue both are sickening terrorist acts, designed to use death of innocents to terrorize their opponents. Of course, both sides are too angry to see it that way.
There are a million of these stories; and we are all biased by who we are, and which side we trust. I would argue that 'terrorist' becomes a difficult label not from actions, but because of the modern incindiery nature of the word.
note: sometimes I compare 9-11 to car crashes or such not because 9-11 isn't important, but because I think we(our nation) needs to sit down, take a deep breath and think hard about our long term objectives; and not always react in the fury of the moment (or avoid taking planetrips).
>>TERRORIST: One who seeks to achieve a political end primarily by using violence against civilians and non-combatants, with the primary aim of creating a psychology of fear and an awareness of threat in the body of people the terrorist wishes to manipulate for the sake of the political goal.
This seems like a fine definition. The full implications of this definition can have very interesting effects, however.
The Palestinian Authority election is finally over, The election results are in. The votes have been counted and tallied. And the winner is Hamas, one of the world's leading terrorist organizations. The world is "shocked" and "stunned" at this victory. The political analysts are now grappling with the obvious question, "How can the United States backed "Roadmap to Peace" be implemented with such a group at the helm"?
As Jews we are not "surprised" at the outcome of this election. As a matter of fact, we are shocked that the world is shocked. We are not living in perpetual fantasy, convincing ourselves that the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians want peace with the State of Israel. Their words and actions have been crystal clear for many years. They will not renounce violence to achieve their ends. They clearly and unequivocally call for the total annihilation of the Jewish State. They spell it out for us in neon lights, and yet we remain blind to their true ambitions. Between their well funded propaganda campaign, their active recruitment of suicide bombers and their ability to win the hearts of their people, they know they are winning their war for the "liberation of Palestine".
Immediately following their victory in the polls, Hamas leader Mahmoud A-Zahar said, "The armed struggle will continue, and it will cause Israel to make great concessions, and will change the way Egypt and Jordan relate to Israel as well."
And for those that believe that Hamas is committed to the principle of democracy and can work within the mainstream political framework, it is imperative that we take a closer look at the history of Hamas and their track record.
Hamas was founded by Islamic militant extremists in the Gaza Strip in 1988, shortly after the first intifada broke out. The word Hamas is an acronym for the Arabic words for "Islamic Resistance Movement." The organization is devoted chiefly to the obliteration of Israel. Its charter states, "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." The charter further states, "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."
Hamas is responsible for 24 murders before the Oslo Accords, 156 more before the Oslo War began in September 2000, and at least another 377 since then - a total of at least 557.
The organization's first mass attack was a car bomb that blew up at a bus stop in Afula in April 1994, murdering 8 and wounding 51. Among the most horrific Hamas attacks were the following:
22 people murdered and 56 wounded in a suicide bombing attack on the No. 5 bus on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv in October of 1994.
26 murdered by suicide bomber on a #18 bus near the Jerusalem Central Bus Station in February of 1996.
16 murdered in the Machane Yehuda open market in Jerusalem in a double suicide attack in July of 1997.
23 dead and 115 wounded when a Hamas suicide bomber blew himself up on a No. 2 bus line coming from the Western Wall in Jerusalem in August of 2003.
45 murdered within the space of five days in March 2002: a suicide Hamas terrorist blew himself up in a Haifa resturant, killing 15, and another one did the same in the Park Hotel in Netanya during a Passover Seder, murdering some 30 and wounding 144.
The ten worst Oslo War Hamas attacks, in which a total of 186 were murdered, also included the following:
June 1, 2001 - Dolpinarium in Tel Aviv, 21 murdered - mostly new-immigrant teenagers from the Soviet Union.
August 9, 2001 - Sbarro's Pizzeria in Jerusalem, 15 murdered
December 2, 2001 - Haifa bus, 15 murdered
May 7, 2002 - Rishon Letzion hall, 16 murdered
June 18, 2002 - #32 bus from Gilo, Jerusalem 19 murdered
March 5, 2003 - #37 bus in Haifa, 15 murdered
June 11, 2003 - #14 bus, Jerusalem, 17 murdered
And the list goes on.
With a history that is replete with such actions, how can any clear thinking, rational person actually believe that Hamas is dedicated to democracy. We all know that the United States is dedicated to the belief that they can convince blood thirsty terrorists that peaceful and civilized democratic processes are the way to go. Now that the results are in, the Bush administration has egg on their faces. The Washington Post reported early this week that the U.S. had, relatively secretly, spent $2 million in recent weeks to promote Fatah, the party that would ostensibly carry out and abide by the US backed, "Roadmap to Peace."
So much for attempting to co-opt democracy at work.
And what do the leaders of the Israeli government have to say? Just prior to the PA elections, the Herzilya Conference was held in which Israeli lawmakers set out policy statements. The entire gamut of leaders, from Olmert to Netanyahu, (who purport to be "right- wingers") all present plans in which further territorial concessions would be made to the Arab enemy. If the truth be told, there is no clear and distinct delineation of "left" and "right" wing parties in Israel anymore. The entire mainstream Israeli political system is handing over a victory to Hamas by stating their willingness to make even further painful compromises and concessions.
Let us face the tragic facts. The Arabs do not want peace with us. How much clearer can they make it. We cannot convince them to make peace through handing them our G-d given land over to them. The mentality of the Arab enemy is different than ours. They interpret concessions and compromises as signs of weakness and they prey upon it and have even more contempt for us. They know that their war for statehood is predicated on relentless murderous attacks of innocent Israeli citizens and Jews worldwide. We reward them for their heinous murders by giving them even more land and greater economic incentives.
What nation in the world rewards violence with gifts and expressions of compromise?
The answer is clear, however we close our eyes and hearts to it. The answer is to turn our hearts to Hashem and to be as dedicated to carrying out the precepts of His holy Torah. The answer is to cry out and cleave to the Almighty G-d of Israel. The answer is to purge the Arab enemy from out midst and to treasure the land that the Lord our G-d gave to us in His compassion and mercy. The answer is to be dedicated and committed to our faith and to have the courage to see the truth and act upon it.
We are living in precarious times. We have a choice at this juncture of Jewish history. We can become Jewish lemmings and participate in our own collective suicide by continuing on the path of concessions and more forced evacuations of Jews from their homes or we can raise the gauntlet and put an end to this madness. We have in our ability to be the harbingers of the final redemption. We must only fear Hashem Yisborach and not the nations of the world. We must know that when we deal with our enemies according to the commandments of the Torah that Hashem will be at our side and never leave us. He is our strength, savior, and shield and will deliver our enemies into our hands if we only believe in Him. Only through Jewish strength and power and the willingness to have complete Emunah and Bitachon (faith and trust) in the Almighty G-d of Israel can we emerge victorious.
Let us remember the words of the sweet singer of Israel, King David who said, "The will of those who fear Him He will do; and their cry He will hear, and save them." (Psalm 146)
Fern -- it is my understanding that the Kadima strategy was to:
A. Withdraw to "defensible" borders and achieve complete seperation from Palestinians.
B. Force the Palestinians to fight among themselves (which is already happening) by giving them their own defacto state by unilateral Israeli action.
C. Prepare for war at any time; be prepared to deal with the Palestinians not as occupiers but as say, the Egyptians or Jordanians in 1967.
This doesn't seem unwise though yes as you say Palestinians drew the wrong conclusions.
Back on topic? Terrorism seems a Nechayev phenomena. Dosteyevsky was a prophet.
Fern:
The Palestinians have been force fed Death to Israel since 1948 (Death to Jews much earlier). It is being taught in schools. There will be no change for twenty years after this has stopped.
The rest of the world is not deluded when they work with the Palestinains. They are willingly complicit because the very thought of action to change the Palestinians is an anathema to them.
Letting Arafat back into Palestine was the worst thing that could have happened. There were political forces at work in Palestine which could have moved the Palestinians on to a better status. Arafat's return removed the liberals and coopted those who would have been credible alternatives.
Israel is its own problem as well. When a vast number of Israelis believe in negotation at any cost there can be no united front against Palestinian terrorism.
callimachus,
while im not sure i agree with every detail, Id like to thank you for a very thoughtful post.
Inherent in the idea of real terrorism is the retaliatory limitations it imposes on the State-victim.
In other words, terrorists cannot be States, or State officials acting on behalf of the State. Terrorists, true terrorists, belong to sub-national organizations. (It's pertinent to note that when a State borrows the tactics of terrorism--and here I am talking about Iran and Hamas--effectiveness is diminished because clear, classical remedies are open to the victims.)
Terrorism is a system problem. Its essence must be defined with this in mind. While tactical and political observations are relevant, they cannot be exhaustive for our purposes. Interactive dynamics must also be studied. That means the nature of the victim (State, vicariously through its citizenry), and the remedial freedoms available to it (non-classical responses), must be included in our definition.
To Fern:
While I agree with your observations that the concessions have emboldened the Palistinians and other Islamoterrists, I find the end of your post to be equally distasteful. So on the one side we have religous zelots quoting the Koran and on the other side you recommend waging war based on the the Torah.
Great.
So its "our religion makes us right" on both sides. Personally, I find anyone citing religion as a just cause for war to be anathma.
"The Nazi V-rocket terror attacks on London in 1944, however, almost broke the will of the British."
Huh?
I think your definition is too narrow.
Terrorism is simply "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion" (Mirriam-Webster).
Terror is "a state of intense fear" (ibid.)
Dictionary.com provides a more current definition:
"The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
On this basis, I don't think you can arbitrarily discount "property" violence or distinguish "threats of violence" from actual acts, because the end goal, the creation of terror for some purpose, is the same.
"Another inevitable result of terrorism is that by nature it depends on the free flow of information, and especially media images, to give it strength. It exploits the media as a disease exploits the respiratory system."
In that case, doesn't it seem obvious that part of the solution would be to ignore terrorist acts as much as possible? Simply because amplifying their effects is serving their cause, is it not?
Following this logic, every time the media or politicians or bloggers talk about 9/11, the threat of Al Qaeda or Osama (either side of the political aisle), they are doing the terrorists work for them. That does not make them terrorist themselves, just unknowing (perhaps) enablers.
Perhaps that is part of what Glenn Greenwald is trying to say by his comparison, and you are both, in fact, on the same side of this issue, separated only by an imaginary ideological boundary whose very presence impedes our ability to successfully repel terrorist threats.
Because those on the receiving end of terrorism are simply incapable of reciprocating in kind. We cannot successfully apply the tools of the terrorists to deter terrorists...the unilateral fear of the unknown (they know exactly where we live and how to scare us, but we have no idea where they are) is the key resource in creating true terror.
Because those on the receiving end of terrorism are simply incapable of reciprocating in kind. We cannot successfully apply the tools of the terrorists to deter terrorists...the unilateral fear of the unknown (they know exactly where we live and how to scare us, but we have no idea where they are) is the key resource in creating true terror
You can't fight terror with terror, but it's not true that we don't know where Islamist terrorists live. It's a fairly interconnected worldwide organization.
The financial branch is located wherever the Saudis are, mostly in Riyadh, London, Virginia and Geneva.
The paramilitary branches are in the tribal areas of Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Hamas' Palestine, the janjiweed in the Sudan, al Qaeda members in Yemen.
The mosques that support terror groups in Europe, Asia and South Asia are fairly well known by local intelligence agencies and police.
We know where they live, we know their daily routines, but we choose not to anything about them. I have no idea why. Maybe, instead of trying so hard to know our enemy, we should try to understand ourselves.
Mary:
We do nothing about a lot of them because our laws do not allow prosecuton and deportation unless you can prove criminal intent.
Are we at war with the terrorists or not?
If we're at war with them, civil laws don't apply to enemy combatants. If we're not at war with them, then we probably need to ask ourselves why.
Mary:
1)Let me put it this way: what do you think would happen if Venezuela kidnapped Pat Robertson overnight and tried him for instigating violence against Chavez? S#*t would absolutely hit the fan.
If we start eliminating people in different countries, not only are we going to piss off a lot of countries that are helpful in the GWOT, we're going to turn quite a few of them into martyrs. Moderates who thought the guy was a little nuts before are going to say "Maybe America is as dangerous as he said..."
1)there's a difference between saying I really, really dislike this guy and an actual death threat. In the US you need to find someone guilty by court of law, and that requires the threat. Otherwise, we're arresting people by heresay (which is bad for everyone).
Sometimes meteors fall out of the sky, and sometimes they smash into peoples cars or houses, and sometimes those people are terrorist organizers or enablers. If i had my way there would be some nasty meteor activity over the Middle East for a few months. Im pretty certain a little paint thinner can get red white and blue off a missile casing.
alchemist,
There's a difference between how one treats fellow citizens one is sworn to protect, who live under a system of mutually accountable law with dependable enforcement... and war with those who seek to kill those fellow citizens we are sworn to protect, in an environment with no ultimate enforcer but one's own efforts, and facing countries who for reasons of collaboration, corruption, or sheer incompetence choose not to deal with these terrorist organizations and organizers.
Most people other than members of the Democratic Party understand this.
The real world is an interesting place. You should visit, sometime.
Been there, didn't like it (j/k).
Here's the deal: I'm all about eliminating terrorists. No problems there. I'm all about shutting down systems that funnel money to terrorists. Also no problem. If these people are in Europe, find the information you need and put them on the terrorist watch list. If you can, convince these countries to arrest them (which they are doing more often, as long as you don't import them to Uzbekistan without charges).
Outside of western civilization it gets more difficult. Do you know how many people fund terrorism? Do you have any idea of the large number of mosques that call for violence against the united states? Do you really think you can kill all of them? Do you really think you can wipe out the ruling party of Saudi Arabia and no one will notice?
Look, we have the best military in the world. But it's not designed for assasinating thousands upon thousands of people. If it was, don't you think Bush would have tried it by now?
alchemist, in order:
And all the moral arguments and distinctions I expressed in #18 still stand. People who choose to be at war with the USA, and commit acts of war in defiance of all laws, conventions, and honor need to reap the consequences. When enough do, the idea will lose a lot of its appeal and they will go bother easier targets. But that will be Europe's problem.
Since substantial blocs within Islam have made the choice for war with... well, damn near everybody it seems but the USA in particular, the answer to your question "how many is enough" is "when enough of them think it is." That is an unsatisfactory answer, but in war it is the only answer one ever gets.
During the American civil war, the answer ended up being "about 40% of the military-eligible young men in the enemy society." And the war would have gone on longer, except that some guy named Sherman decided to wipe out the ruling class in a very prominent subset of the problem. People noticed, and drew appropriate conclusions, and suddenly sending all those other young men to die didn't seem quite as exciting any more.
And when terrorists are operating unmolested outside of real civilization, sorry, that isn't a "get out of jail free" card. To shelter or tolerate those committing acts of war is to invite acts of war in return. States that don't like those consequences can change their behaviour.
Do you have any idea of the large number of mosques that call for violence against the united states? Do you really think you can kill all of them? Do you really think you can wipe out the ruling party of Saudi Arabia and no one will notice?
If we're going to treat the support of terrorism as a legal/civil problem, then we have absolutely no way of stopping people outside of our jurisdiction from funding the terrorism that targets our families and our children. Which is why treating terrorism as a civil problem will never work, and why it has never worked in the past.
Look, we have the best military in the world. But it's not designed for assasinating thousands upon thousands of people.
So, what you're saying is the army needs a redesign, to allow it to effectively target and assassinate the terrorists wherever they are. That does sound like the best solution to the problem. We probably already have the technology, we just need to work on the intelligence-gathering.
I think it gets more difficult than that.
we're not only talking about redefining America's military, we're talking about completely redifining America's role in the world. As the public stands right now, I think American's see our role as a protector of democracy. The american public is more than willing to strike at a defined threat (for example: anyone working under Bin Laden). And I think the American people are willing to go anywhere in the world to see that happen.
However, if we start going around the world assasinating people at will, we are going to destablize more goverments than we are going to save. And maybe some of these goverments deserve to be destabilized... but no 'freedom or democracy' are going to come from those actions.
Furthermore, no goverment in the eastern world will work with America anymore if we seem unconcerned about the effects our actions have on their nation. If we do not tread carefully, we will end up breeding more hate and violence trying to abate the problem.
I am not pretending to have the answer. I'm not saying that we shouldn't capture or kill as many terrorists as we can. At the same time, Israel has been trying to stop terrorism this way for 30 years, and it hasn't stopped the problem.
TERROR CONFERENCE HELD AT GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
BY: FERN SIDMAN
In the midst of much controversy and after weeks of planning, preparation and debate, administrators and organizers have put the final touches on the Palestine Solidarity Movement Conference to be held at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. The conference is expected to have 500-600 attendees. Georgetown has resisted calls from pro-Israeli activists to cancel the conference on the grounds that the conference promotes terrorism. The conference is being hosted by a campus group called Students for Justice in Palestine.
University President John J. DeGoia said at a meeting with students last month that university-sponsored groups like SJP have the right to host peaceful meetings on campus regardless of their viewpoints. The PSM has received criticism from some groups for advocating divestment of US business investments in Israel and for its' members reluctance to openly condemn Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens.
According to a letter published in The Washington Post (February 12, 2006) from two noted academics, Eric Adler and Jack Langer, they assert that the PSM certainly is controversial and also dangerous.
"The purported aim of the PSM is to encourage divestment from Israel. To this end, its conferences boast a cavalcade of anti-Israel speakers whose speeches often degenerate into anti-Semitism. At the 2004 conference at Duke University in North Carolina, for example, keynote speaker Mazin Qumsiyeh referred to Zionism as a "disease." Workshop leader Bob Brown deemed the Six Day War "the Jew War of '67." Not to be outdone, Nasser Abufarha praised the terrorist activities of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The PSM maintains that it is a separate organization from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which sends foreign students to the West Bank and Gaza to foment anti-Israeli sentiment. All the same, the two groups seem to have intimate ties. At the 2004 PSM conference, for instance, the International Solidarity Movement ran a recruitment meeting called "Volunteering in Palestine: Role and Value of International Activists."
In that session, the organization's co-founder, Huwaida Arraf, distributed recruitment brochures and encouraged students to enlist in the ISM, which she acknowledged, cooperates with Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Another co-founder, George Rishmawi, told the San Francisco Chronicle in a July 14, 2004, news story why his group recruits student volunteers.
"When Palestinians get shot by Israeli soldiers, no one is interested anymore," he said. "But is these foreign volunteers get shot or even killed, then the international media will sit up and take notice."
The group got its wish in 2003, when ISM member Rachel Corrie 23, was killed while trying to block Israeli bulldozers from demolishing Palestinian houses in Gaza. The Israelis said the houses were covering tunnels used to smuggle weapons to Hamas.
In another letter published by Lee Kaplan of Front Page Magazine, it states, "Please note the following recruitment and training seminar given at this event this Saturday to be hosted by Huwaida Arraf and Joseph Carr. Titled, "Supporting Palestinian Non-Violent Resistance to Occupation: Volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement."
The above session will be to recruit students to go to the West Bank and stand as human shields for terrorists and stone throwers who will attack the Israeli army, try to remove the Security Fence built to keep out terrorists and to interfere with checkpoints set up to interdict suicide bombers. In addition, Israel recently deported all Jews from Gaza last year, and 98 percent of the Palestinian population in the West Bank is under Palestinian Authority.
"Occupation" at this conference refers to Israel's existence as a Jewish state, albeit a pluralistic democracy and ally of the USA, and calls to end Israel's "occupation" are in fact calls for the end of Israel. The Conference seeks to do this also by openly promoting the Arab League boycott of Israel that is illegal under US law. Please note that Noura Erekat, another guest speaker at this event, has openly stated in e-mails that Israel within 1948 borders is "occupied Palestine."
It is now a matter of record that the Palestine Solidarity Movement, also known as the International Solidarity Movement, has contacts with Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) as defined by the U.S. State Department. The fact that the collaboration is nonviolent may not matter, as US law prohibits any material support (other than medical supplies and religious items) to Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
There is no question that the Palestine Solidarity Movement calls for the complete eradication of the State of Israel. If there is one thing you can say about Hamas is that they are honest. Unlike the other “Palestine” oriented organizations who couch their rhetoric is more palatable or subliminal ways, Hamas states their truth and the other “Palestinian” organizations feel the same way, but don’t have the courage to say it, in the fear it will alienate their Western supporters, particularly liberal, leftist Jews.
Here is what Hamas had to say this week. The Hamas web site this week presented the parting video messages of two Hamas suicide terrorists, according to Palestinian Media Watch. The first said: “We are a nation that drinks blood, and we know that there is no blood better than the blood of Jews. We will not leave you alone until we have quenched our thirst with your blood, and our children’s thirst with your blood.”
The second said: “We will destroy you, blow you up, take revenge against you, [and] purify the land of you, pigs that have defiled our country.” Let’s not kid ourselves. Fatah, Hizbullah, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, and other more upscale intellectual Palestinian organizations concur with this vociferous, vitriolic, hate filled speech. When are we going to get it? THEY DON’T WANT PEACE !!!
The issues surrounding the controversial conference to be held at Georgetown University are not about free speech, but rather, about a conference which promotes terrorism. Any conference which seeks to, “recruit students to go to the West Bank and stand as human shields for terrorists and stone throwers who will attack the Israeli army, try to remove the Security Fence built to keep out terrorists and to interfere with checkpoints set up to interdict suicide bombers”, is plainly advocating terrorism.
President Bush stated during his recent State of the Union address that if people are talking to Al Qaeda or promoting terrorism, he wants to know about it. This conference is a platform for all kinds of Islamic terrorists to promulgate their beliefs. Of course, they are organizing this conference under the banner of “academic freedom” and “freedom of speech”. How easy it is to whitewash terrorism under such innocuous labels. This conference deserves to be condemned by all those who claim that global terrorism will not be tolerated or supported.