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November 29, 2001
Robert Fisk
We Are the
War Criminals Now
November 28, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
A
Continuum of Terror
Patrick Cockburn
Tribal
Council:
Don't Blame It All on Taliban
Robert
Fisk
At
Last, The Truth about the Sabra and Chatila Massacres
Harry Browne
The Bill of
Rights:
They Threw It All Away
Sunil
Sharma
Suffer
Palestine's Children
November 27, 2001
Paul Coggins
Kafka and
the Patriot Act
Tariq
Ali
Tigris
and Euprhates
November 26, 2001
Robert Fisk
Blood and
Tears in Kandahar
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Boeing's
Sweet Deal
CounterPunch Wire
Human
Rights Abuses and
Nuke Waste Shipments
Alexander
Cockburn
Harry
Potter and Terrorism
November 25, 2001
Ralph Nader
The Crisis
in Leadership
Sam Bahour
Israel's
Choice
November 24, 2001
Patrick Cockburn
He Who
Has
the Guns Rules
November 23, 2001
Phyllis
Pollack
Long
Live The Clash
Cockburn/St. Clair
The Press
and
the Patriot Act
November 22, 2001
Oscar
Gonzalez
A
Homeland Thanksgiving
November 21, 2001
CounterPunch Wire
Rep. Chambliss
Calls for Arrest of Every Muslim That Enters Georgia
Tom Turnipseed
Broadcasting
and Bombing
David Price
Academia Under
Attack
Molly
Secours
Modern
Day Witch Trials
Tariq Ali
Killing
Mr. Biswas
November 20, 2001
Sam Bahour
Plain
Truths About Palestine
Michael Ratner
Moving Toward
a
Police State
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
November 19, 2001
Edward
Said
Suicidal
Ignorance
November 18, 2001
John Farley
Shame on You,
Chelsea!
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November
29, 2001
Defining Terrorism
By Phillip Cryan
"Terrorism" may be the most
important, powerful word in the world right now. In the name
of doing away with terrorism, the United States is bombing Afghanistan
and talking about possible attacks elsewhere. Political leaders
from many countries are at once declaring support for the new
U.S. war and seeking to re-name their own enemies as "terrorists."
According to polls, many people in the
U.S. believe that war on the al'Qaeda network is justified in
retaliation for the September 11 attacks on New York City and
Washington, D.C. The defined enemy of the U.S. military campaign
has not, however, been just the people responsible for the September
11 attacks, but "terrorism" in general. The U.S. has
declared a "War on Terrorism"--a war which also includes
as enemies, as President Bush has made clear since his first
public address on the afternoon of the 11, "all those who
harbor terrorists." What exactly do these words, "terrorism"
and "harboring," mean? What definitions are we using?
Legal definition:
seeking international consensus
The difficulty of answering this question
was stated concisely in a recent New York Times article: "immediately
beyond al'Qaeda, the high moral condemnations of global terrorism
rapidly become relative, and the definition blurred." The
international community has been actively seeking consensus on
the definition of "terrorism" for many years, to no
avail.
Twelve separate international conventions
have been signed, each covering a specific type of criminal activity
seizure of airplanes, political assassination, the use
of explosives, hostage-taking, etc. Broad ratification of these
treaties has been difficult to achieve; and the more fundamental
issue of creating a comprehensive, binding international convention
against terrorism has been set aside, after repeated efforts,
as practically unresolvable. As the UN puts it, "the question
of a definition of terrorism has haunted the debate among States
for decades."
One of the points of heated contention
in this debate has been whether the term "terrorism"
should apply to the actions of States in the same way that it
applies to the actions of non-State groups. It's easy to see
why this question would be so contentious: whatever one's overall
view of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, for example, it's pretty
easy to admit that unjustifiable acts of terror and murder have
been committed by both sides. Should the two sides be
held equally accountable, even though one is an already-recognized
State and one is a national liberation movement? These kinds
of questions have been repeatedly raised as will be described
below not only in regard to the Middle East but in regard
to State-sponsored acts of terrorism throughout the world.
Since international consensus has been
so difficult to reach, for the purposes of this brief discussion
of terrorism and "harboring" I'll use the U.S. FBI's
definition: "Terrorism is the unlawful use of force or violence
against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government,
the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance
of political or social objectives." How does such a definition
line up with the goals and strategies of the emerging "War
on Terrorism"?
Justice
How does a definition of terrorism, such
as the FBI's, get applied? Who has the authority to judge what
counts as "terrorism" and what doesn't? Is there
a level playing field, internationally, for the persecution of
terrorists?
A recent comment made by Syria's Information
Minister, Adnan Omran, frames these problems in a provocative,
yet also precise and urgent, way: "The Americans say either
you are with us or you are with the terrorists. That is something
God should say." The original title given to the U.S. military
campaign in Afghanistan "Operation Infinite Justice"
seems to confirm Omran's concern. President Bush has indeed
stated, in his address to Congress, that "Every nation,
in every region, now has a decision to make: either you are with
us, or you are with the terrorists." Is our government
in fact equating its judgments, policies, and military actions
with the meting out of God-like "infinite justice"?
If so, what kind of moral blamelessness do we ground such authority
in?
A brief review of some U.S. political
and military interventions over the last few decades reveals
just how far we are sadly, tragically as a nation
from having the kind of virtue and integrity required to wage
such a war with a clear conscience and certainty of purpose.
Following the FBI definition, our government has repeatedly,
in country after country, used "force or violence"
"unlawfully," "to intimidate or coerce a government,
[a] civilian population, or [a] segment thereof," in order
to achieve "political or social objectives." I will
mention only a few examples.
Terrorism
and "harboring" of terrorists by the U.S.
U.S. intervention in Nicaragua provides
an astounding, but by no means extraordinary, example. First,
some background: by 1934, when the authoritarian Somoza regime
was established, the U.S. had already occupied the country militarily
on at least four different occasions, established training schools
for right-wing militia, dismantled two liberal governments, and
helped to orchestrate fake elections. In 1981, the CIA began
to organize the "Contras" many of whom had already
received training from the U.S. military as members of the Somozas'
National Guardsmen to overthrow the progressive Sandanista
government. In other words: the CIA "harbored," recruited,
armed and trained the Contras, in order to "coerce"
and overthrow a government, and terrorize a people, through violent
means ("in furtherance of political [and] social objectives").
U.S. intervention went well beyond "harboring," however,
in this case. In 1984, the CIA mined three Nicaraguan harbors.
When Nicaragua took this action to the World Court, an $18 billion
judgment was brought against the U.S. The U.S. response was
to simply refuse to acknowledge the Court's jurisdiction.
Another striking example of U.S. terrorist
activity was the bombing of a suburban Beirut neighborhood in
March 1985. This attack which killed 80 people and wounded
200 others, making it the single largest bombing attack against
a civilian target in the modern history of the Middle East
was ordered by the director of the CIA (William Casey) and authorized
by President Reagan. Another U.S. attack on civilians, the 1986
bombing of Libya, is listed by the UN's Committee on the Legal
Definition of Terrorism as a "classic case" of terrorism
on a short list that includes the bombing of PAN AM 103,
the first attempt made on the World Trade Center, and the bombing
of the Oklahoma City Federal Building.
Other instances of U.S. support for,
or direct engagement in, terrorist acts include:
- overthrow of the democratically elected
Allende government in Chile in 1973--leading to widespread torture,
rape, and murder by the military regime, and the termination
of civil liberties
- extensive support for a right-wing junta
in El Salvador that ended up being responsible for 35,000 civilian
deaths between 1978 and 1981
- assassination attempts, exploded boats,
industrial sabotage, and the burning of sugar fields in Cuba
- the training of thousands of Latin American
military personnel in torture methods at the School of the Americas
- providing huge quantities of arms--far
more than any other nation-- to various combatants in the Middle
East and West Asia
- and massive support, in funds and arms,
for Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians.
The rationale provided for many of these
interventions in those case where a rationale was in fact
provided was the "war on Communism." This often
served as an alibi, however, for the protection of economic interests:
unrestricted access to oil and other natural resources for U.S.-based
(and other "First World") corporations.
Double
standards
U.S. officials successfully pressured
the UN to impose sanctions on Libya for its initial refusal to
extradite Libyan agents implicated in the PAN AM 103 bombing;
but they (U.S. officials) have consistently refused to extradite
U.S. citizens all of whom have ties to the CIA charged
with acts of terrorism in Costa Rica and Venezuela (including
blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976). We have provided no support
for attempts to bring Augusto Pinochet (the Chilean military
dictator responsible for the atrocities described above) to justice
probably not only because our own government was so heavily
involved in his rise to power but also because the prosecution
of such an obvious State-terrorist would open the door, legally,
for the likes of Henry Kissinger and Oliver North to be tried
for having ordered terrorist acts.
The double standards at play, the hypocrisy
and bad faith involved, in calling for the world to decide whether
it is "with us" or "with the terrorists"
should by now be fairly evident. To use President Bush's terms,
our nation has -- tragically -- in reality championed "Fear"
and suppressed "Freedom" in a great many countries,
for millions of people. We have been directly responsible for
acts of terrorism, and for the "harboring" of terrorists,
on an almost unimaginable scale in terms of human death and the
creation of fear. When Green Berets trained the Guatemalan army
in the 1960s leading to a campaign of bombings, death squads,
and "scorched earth" assaults that killed or "disappeared"
20O,000 -- U.S. Army Colonel John Webber called it "a technique
of counter-terror." This comment can serve as a reminder
and warning for us now--not that there are not real terrorist
threats to our national security, but that we have to be incredibly
careful about how we define terrorism, who defines it, and what
tactics are used to uproot it. There is something truly chilling,
as the Syrian Information Minister pointed out, in the apparent
consensus within the United States that we stand for "Freedom"
and all that is "Good" in the world, and that we are
somehow entitled and equipped to mete out "infinite justice."
Blowback
As most of us have read at some point
in the last few weeks, our current attacks on the Taliban and
al'Qaeda are complicated, politically and morally, by our military
and economic support for the Mujahideen war against the U.S.S.R.
in the 1980s. We provided over $7 billion in arms and funds,
plus training supplied through the Pakistani intelligence agency.
The lesson: lines of distinction between "Good" and
"Evil" are dramatically more blurred and complex than
President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld, and most voices in the media
seem to want us to think. U.S. funding, training, and supply
of arms literally, U.S. harboring of terrorists were
a crucial part of what enabled the Taliban to come to power in
Afghanistan. This is what military analysts call "blowback."
A less frequently discussed but equally
important instance of blowback is the U.S. role in Iraq. Throughout
the 1980s, the U.S. actively supported Iraq as an ally against
Iran and as a potentially profitable future source for raw goods
and market for exports. Though the U.S. government was clearly
aware of Saddam Hussein's extermination of Kurds and his development
of military and chemical weapons capacity (there is ample documentation
of the extent of U.S. leaders' knowledge ), the U.S. continued
to support Hussein's government with billions of dollars in export
credit insurance. This situation only changed when U.S. oil
access was threatened (by the invasion of Kuwait). Up until
then, no matter how extreme the fiscal duplicity, military build-up
or outright genocide committed by Hussein's regime, U.S. officials
urged "hard-headedness" and a recognition of Iraq's
strategic and economic importance as an ally. Again, this brief
outline of a piece of recent history complicates the current
situation enormously: how can Hussein be "Evil" and
"a terrorist," and we "Good" and the world's
defenders of "Freedom," if we funded him through many
of the atrocities he's committed, fully conscious that he was
committing them? As with Afghanistan, a short memory on our
part, together with a preference for black-and-white thinking,
are likely to prove responsible for yet more suffering and violence
now and down the road.
The situation in Iraq is perhaps more
complex and tragic than any other, in terms of the U.S. role
past and future. U.S.-imposed sanctions (almost every country
in the UN opposes them) against Iraq have so far led to the deaths
of approximately one million people. Two Assistants to the Secretary-General
of the UN responsible for humanitarian aid to Iraq have resigned
in protest, calling the sanctions "genocide." Our
government is waging a methodical, hugely violent, daily war
against the people of Iraq attacking civilians in numbers
that grotesquely dwarf the horrific tragedies of September 11th.
When asked in 1996 what she felt about the deaths of 500,000
children caused by the sanctions, then-Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright replied that it was "a very hard choice,"
but, all things considered, "we think the price is worth
it." (It is worth pausing here, for a moment, perhaps,
to try to take in the reality of such a statement.)
Language's
dangers
In a world of such extreme violence,
hypocrisy, and moral ambiguity, we need to be careful about whom
we listen to, whom we believe, and whose wars we fight.
The term "War on Terrorism"
has been quickly picked up by political leaders seeking to advance
a host of different agendas domestically and internationally.
The phrase is likely to be with us for some time (Secretary
Rumsfeld has described the war as "sustained, comprehensive,
and unrelenting"), used as the justification for all sorts
of military, political, and economic interventions abroad
not to mention the removal of civil liberties at home.
Some examples of international uses:
- Russia has been seeking, since September
11, to cast Chechen rebels as terrorists, and Georgia as a terrorist-harboring
State, in order to legitimate its use of violence in those two
arenas.
- In mid-October, the U.S. sent military
advisers to the Phillipines, to assist the government in what
it describes as a campaign against Muslim "terrorists."
- A Heritage Foundation report named Iraq,
Iran, Syria, Sudan, and Libya as States which need to be "put
on notice . . . that they will not escape America's wrath if
they continue to support international terrorism."
- Colombian army officials switched, within
just a few days of September 11, from calling the FARC and ELN
rebels "narcoguerrillas" to calling them "narcoterrorists."
- Francis X. Taylor, head of the U.S.
Department of State's Office of Counterterrorism, recently stated
that these Colombian groups will "get the same treatment
as other terrorist groups," including "where appropriate
-- as we are doing in Afghanistan -- the use of military power."
- The ongoing U.S. policy toward Colombia
-- "Plan Colombia" -- involves chemical warfare, just
what we fear so greatly now in this country: crop-duster planes
spray broad-spectrum herbicides onto the Colombian countryside
and the people who live there, leading to widespread illness,
displacement, and hunger (as a result of the destruction of food
crops).
- Ariel Sharon has stepped up campaigns
against Palestinians. The Israeli Cabinet, in blunt and ominous
language, has issued statements like the following: "Failure
to meet these demands . . . will leave us no choice but to view
the Palestinian Authority as an entity supporting and sponsoring
terror, and to act accordingly."
- China is expected to use the justifying
rhetoric of the "War on Terrorism" to further crack
down on Uighur Muslims, Tibetans, and Taiwan.
Final remarks
On October 4, Amnesty International published
a report on the tightening of security in the wake of September
11. In the report, Amnesty observed that "some of the definitions
of terrorism under discussion are so broad that they could be
used to criminalize anyone out of favor with those in power."
We must be careful with definitions; we must know what we mean.
When asked to define "terrorism," Sir Jeremy Greenstock,
the British diplomat charged with leading UN efforts to combat
terrorism, replied: "What looks, smells, and kills like
terrorism is terrorism." It is, simply, not that simple.
Such oversimplifications and appeals to "obviousness"
are not only inaccurate but profoundly dangerous, as the Amnesty
International report suggests. And clear delineation of definitions
will become increasingly complicated and difficult to achieve
over time, as more governments and special interests seek to
advance the policies they favor by calling them "attacks
on terrorism."
Who are we, the United States, in the
end, to tell the world what Good and Evil are, after our history
of unlawful violence, double standards, and outright engagement
in acts of terrorism? President Bush's explanation for anti-U.S.
sentiment -- "These people can't stand freedom" --
is ludicrous, deplorable: it grotesquely misrepresents the realities
of current world politics and the history of 20th century U.S.
foreign policy. In light of that history, and of the fact that
the definition of "terrorism" has been debated without
resolution for decades, it is our responsibility as U.S. citizens
and as human beings to think carefully, long and hard and well,
about this war, to notice and question each use of the word "terrorism"
that we come across and to educate ourselves, and one another,
about the reality of suffering in the world in which we live--its
causes, and ways to uproot them. CP
Phillip Cryan
works for the Pesticide Action
Network of
North America, challenging U.S.-funded "Plan Colombia"
aerial
herbicide fumigations in Colombia. He received a BA in English
from UC-Berkeley. He is part of the Buddhist Alliance for Social
Engagement and the Zen Hospice Project.He can be contacted at
phillipcryan@mindspring.com
SOURCES:
"Definitions
of Terrorism," The United Nations Office for Drug Control
and Crime Prevention, l on October 9, 2001;
"The
algebra of infinite justice" by Arundhati Roy, on October
17, 2001; "Democratic Gains Falter With Tighter Security
in Central Europe" New York Times October 4, 2001;
"America Strikes Back: Looking Ahead" by Kim R. Holmes,
The Heritage Foundation, October 8, 2001;
"International
Terrorism" by Stephen Zunes, on October 15, 2001;
"A Growing List of Foes Now Suddenly Friends" New
York Times October 5, 2001;
"Iraqgate:
Saddam Hussein, U.S. Policy and the Prelude to the Persian Gulf
War, 1980-1994," Digital National Security Archive,
on October 15, 2001;
"Legal
Definition of Terrorism," GA: Legal Committee, on October
9, 2001; "Conventions
Against Terrorism," The United Nations Office for Drug
Control and Crime Prevention, on October 9, 2001;
"The Challenges of Alliance With Russia" New York
Times October 5, 2001; "Terrorist
Threats Against America," testimony by Francis X. Taylor
to the Committee on International Relations, on October 11, 2001;
"U.S. Interventions
in Latin America" by Mark Rosenfelder, on October 15,
2001;
"Lessons
from History: U.S. Policy Toward Afghanistan, 1978-2001"
by Reyko Huang, Center for Defense Information Terrorism Project,
on October 15, 2001;
"U.S. May Use Military in Hemisphere" Associated
Press October 16, 2001;
"Defining
'Terrorism'" by Nick Cooper, on October 15, 2001.
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