Let's consider how the US government defines terrorism. Inherent in these definitions are clues to part of the problem we face as a people with this "war on terror."
The FBI defines terrorism as "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."
The key word in the FBI definition is "unlawful," not "coerce" or "intimidate" since governments, as well as terrorists, use force. It isn't violence, intimidation, or coercion per se that makes something terroristic: it is whether or not that force can be rationalized as lawful or legitimate. If it's seen as legitimate, then violence is not terroristic, no matter how unjust, excessive or random. The question here then is: what makes something "unlawful?" The rules of engagement for soldiers in war and the procedures promulgated by law enforcement (police, FBI, ATF and so on) are essential to legitimizing state use of force -- otherwise, the public could see the actions of soldiers and law enforcement as arbitrary and capricious. The intentional irony here is that in the fog of chaos the very existence of these rules legitimates their violation in the breach.
Police use of force can be rationalized as being in the public interest since it's carried out under the color of law. Likewise, when military forces bomb and kill civilians in times of war we are told that war is a messy business and "mistakes" are inevitable. In the huge gray areas of real conflicts, the existence of tidy procedures provides a convenient fiction that justifies varying degrees of random savagery. Legitimacy or illegitimacy is not an inherent property of the act or acts; legitimacy or illegitimacy are subject to interpretation.
The U.S. State Department defines terrorism as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience" (Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f(d)).
The State Department's definition is better than the FBI's, but it implicitly excludes state-sponsored terror since the agents of such terror are state actors.
Britannica Dictionary defines terrorism this way:
"Terrorism, n. the systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective. Terrorism has been practiced by political organizations with both rightist and leftist objectives, by nationalistic and religious groups, by revolutionaries, and even by state institutions such as armies, intelligence""
This is better still, but neither it nor the State Department's definition specifies that a key characteristic of terrorism is its indifference to the injury or death of innocent victims or even terrorism's deliberate targeting of innocents.
Finally, here is the USA PATRIOT Act's definition for a new crime dubbed "domestic terrorism:" "acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws " [if such acts] " appear to be intended "to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion."
Obviously, by this definition, any act of civil disobedience and any political protest could be readily categorized as "domestic terrorism" since they are all designed to influence the government's policy. Someone, after all, can always trip and get hurt. Lobbyists, obviously, intend to influence government policy. The PATRIOT Act's definition for "domestic terrorism" is so broad that it robs the term terrorism of all real meaning and makes it instead a catch-all label that can be used against almost any dissenters or advocates of policy that those in power do not appreciate. Environmental or animal rights activists, for example, do not target people. What they engage in might more properly be described as sabotage. Yet because a spray can might blow up while a saboteur is using it to deface a Humvee, for example, they could be (and have been) classified as "ecoterrorists" or "domestic terrorists." If truckers, to use a different example, were to engage in a strike action or demonstration in which they used their trucks to block traffic in D.C. for an hour or more, this could arguably be seen as dangerous to human life and be treated as terrorism. Indeed, a group of demonstrators in Salt Lake City a few years ago were prosecuted as "domestic terrorists" for interfering with commercial businesses retail sales on the street where they were demonstrating. Simply put, the PATRIOT Act's definition of terrorism renders the term meaningless except as an amorphous bogeyman.
At the 2008 Republican National Convention held in St. Paul, Minnesota, local, state and federal police -- including a complement of police from a number of other cities throughout the country - carried out pre-emptive raids and used unprecedented covert and overt force against protestors. One observer described it as "Abu Ghraib brought home." I wrote an essay at the time entitled: "Shock and Awe Comes Home to Roost:"
"Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America and he's worried that someone won't read them their rights." -- Sarah Palin at the RNC
"[T]he
looser "preemptive strike' rationale being applied to situations abroad
could migrate back home, fostering a more permissive attitude on the
part of law enforcement officers in this country." -- FBI Special Agent Colleen Rowley
"We
followed our [RNC] Welcoming Committee members to many cities around
the country. We consulted with the terrorism task force in those cities.
We received information, etc. [Did you have infiltrators?] Yes, we did. [Were they paid?] Yes." - Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher
"[S]ix or seven officers came into my cell" one officer punched me in the face"And then they slammed--and I fell to the ground, unconscious. And the officer grabbed me by the head, slammed my head on the ground and re-awoke me "to consciousness. I was bleeding everywhere. " They put a bag over my head that had a gag on it. And they used pain compliance tactics on me for about an hour and a half. They pressed--they separated my jaw as hard as they could with their fingers". They "bent my foot backwards. I was screaming for God and like screaming for mercy, crying, asking them why they were doing this." - Elliot Hughes, member of the RNC Welcoming Committee, arrested at gunpoint days before the RNC, charged along with the other RNC8 Defendants with "conspiring to riot in furtherance of terrorism."
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