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thinking over my first cigarette of the day.....delayed is partially right---there is no obvious definition of terrorism: it floats around, its use is a matter of convenience for the state.
once the label is applied, there are effects: --that there can be no political dimension to an action, for example--this in turn has effects--the idiotic notion that 911 was only about killing as many people as possible when it is obvious---obvious--that the targets were symbolic--the trade centre of american economic hegemony; the pentagon as american military hegemony---the field in pa, well....----the discourse of terrorism in bushworld has been very much about trying to erase any symbolic dimension to the actions in order to make it all the easier to slide straight into the world-as-western-film mode that it has exploited without hesitation since. much of the reaction to this thread that is hostile to questions about the notion of terrorism seem to me to bump into the limits of the discourse of bushworld and turn in the small circles that it makes available for thinking.
1. pursuing the element raised above about civlian targets: if you have a problem with civilian casualties, then why has the doctrine of total war been ok for states in this century? why would you not imagine that "terrorism" is the same doctrine turned back on itself?
in a war, for the americans, why is it even imaginable to refer to civilian casualities as "collateral damage", to talk them away? beccause "we didnt mean to kill civilians"? but the doctrine of total war erases the distinction combatant/civilian, and shifts the goal of war to a "breaking of the will"....
what is the difference between civilian targets and collateral damage? a legal declaration by a state? which means what? seriously....you would argue maybe that the ability to declare war is an extension of the states monopoly on legitimate violence...but that position presupposes that the state is necessarily seen as legitimate itself? which relies on consent, yes? and what of groups that do not consent? same doctrine---coming out of clausewitz--is being applied by different entities--one is terror, one is war--huh?
2. i find it fascinating that the right cannot deal with the idea that people who find themselves without legal recourse, in materially degrading situations, might construct for themselves a radical **political** opposition to the existing order and would choose to act outside the limits of that order.
maybe it follows from the inability of the right to imagine that there are systematic problems with the economic system they for which they unthinkingly cheerlead--for the americans, things appear easy because some of the worst consequences of that order have been shipped far away, and so it is easier to pretend that all is well in general. [[this is not to speak of the consequences of american foreign policy as a separate entity over the past 60 years]]
or maybe it follows from the right's own view of the state, which is about reducing its purview, andm thereby about reducing the possibilities of mediation in conflict situations by law as medium for negociation rather than as simple instrument of repression. this view presupposes a wholesale misunderstanding of the role of the state in navigating structural conflicts generated by capitalism over the past 150 years. the rights own view of the state will increase the likelihood of more such actions because it rests on an reduction of the possibility for dissident groups to act upon the state--it reduces the ability of the state to maintain its legitimacy by integrating elements of conflict into the status quo--and thereby increases the likelihood of conflict....add to this the paranoid suspicion of international law, and you have a poilitics that generates the conditions of radical opposition and works to shut down the ability of the dominant order to react, and then responds to this by trying to frame any such dissent as "terrorism"--it is incoherent, it is dangerous, it is self-defeating.
the right's view of the situation simply echoes the problems with the notion of terrorism--they hide from thinking about the system they work in by shifting to the language of will, or morality, and try to pretend that the conditions that create the possibility of radical political opposition can be dismissed by sneering reference to "poor victims"--which simply shows that they will not engage in thinking seriously.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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