Terrorism
 

My question is, can terrorism ever be justified?

Personally I feel terrorism is only a brand name, as in the way one side describes another. I think most groups of people whom we describe as terrorists often have causes that determine the way they behave. Also, aren't a lot of governments behaving as terrorists also? Let me know your views

The truth is in the eye of the beholder. It entirely depends on which side of the spectrum you're situated; Either you deem someone as a hero or you deem them as a terrorist.

I would say there are times when terrorism would be justified. If I were living in Germany in 1942 and had the good sense to see things were following apart, I could hit military targets with bombs all the time. I could plant IEDs along military routes. The idea is that, when conventional warfare fails, you fall back to a more drastic and desperate form of warfare: terrorism. I think most would agree that terrorism against Nazi military targets in order to slow the holocaust would be justified. Even a peacenik like me.

I don't condone Palestinian terrorism, but it's clear that no one can or will stop Israel from breaking UN Resolution 242 and from continuously attacking and destroying what's left of Palestine. If I were a Palestinian, I might be involved in their resistance. The problem is that they hit civilian targets instead of military targets. They'd do well to read the following:

Palestine will be free when you elevate yourselves above those you face and stop killing innocent civilians. For every Israeli civilian that dies, you lose a battle. If you start to focus your attacks on military instillations at times when it's clear very few to no people will be there, and if you sabotage the bulldozers, then the message won't be covered in blood but in truth. The world will side with you when they see that you are 100% victims and the Israeli government is 100% aggressors. That cannot happen until you STOP killing civilians. You cannot have my full support and the support of the world until you STOP KILLING CIVILIANS.

I take it that by terrorism you mean, more or less, the deliberate targeting of civilians in an attempt to undermine morale and coerce a political objective when direct (military) means don't suffice.

On the one hand, no, I don't think the targeting of civilians is justified.

On the other hand, it seems kind of arbitrary to make a distinction between the targeting of civilians and the death of civilians (however 'unintentional'). When 'legitimate' military actions carry a high probability of civilian deaths, then militaries are effectively targeting civilians, more or less.

In the end, the behaviors usually referred to as 'terrorism' are of course extremely problematic. We can't sit around justifying it and must find ways to diminish it. But I think the tactic of portraying terrorism as something entirely alien - something new, different, and horrible on a scale other than that of 'normal' violence - is intellectually misguided.

hiredgun brings up a good point: what kind of terrorism are you talking about? Do you mean any military move an Arab makes? Do you mean targeting of civilians? Do you mean guerrilla tactics? Do you mean any violent act intended to gain a response of fear and intended to intimidate?

W's the biggest terrorist around. Unjustified and not exalted, he continues smirking. What's up with that? Misunderstanding? Evil?
Fighting "terrorism" with more of the same is doomed to failure.

I know we've had very similar conversations in the past, and I think that it always boils down to how we're going to define "terrorism". The word itself has been around for well over 150 years, and it's been cast upon lots of different folks.

Really, I think that at the end of the day, it's a completely subjective word. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter or patriot. You can argue that the US was founded by a bunch of terrorists just as you could argue the same about the French (WWII Resistance) or the Saudis. I think that its a very hard word to use in the present tense without taking a side in a conflict and that it's best used in looking in hindsight.

I'll disagree with OCM? about Bush, but only on a technicality since I don't think that governments can be terrorist since the word implies independent groups operating against a government. One government may sponsor and support terrorists operating in another country, but they would never sponsor terrorists operating in their own country (with only a couple of exceptions). I also think that militaries can't be terrorists because there are fundamental philosophical differences between the groups. Otherwise, I think he (OCM?) could make a pretty good arguement for the inclusion of the US as terrorists.

truth is a tangible thing. truth is written by the people in power at any givn point. history is written and re-written over and over depending on the view points of those in power.

with terrorism, its a similar thing. we've all heard the phrase 'one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter'. back in the 80's bin laden was americas freedom fighter but now is deemed a terrorist. in some islamic circles hes still seen as a freedom fighter.

in any war, the word is used loosely to accuse the other of injustices, take the last lebanon war last summer. both sides were calling each others tactics as terrorism. and yes i know its been beaten to death, but we really do need to find a solid definition for terrorism.



will id disagree with you that the most basic form of warfare is terrorism. its called guerilla warfare. it only so happens that those who perform this type of warfare are unable to meet up to the military might of superpowers and hence resort to these sorts o tactics..doesnt make it terrorism though.

as for the palestinians attacking civilians, thats a tough one since israel conscripts all males (and females into the IDF. i may be wrong), theres a belief that the entire population is armed, ready and is therefore part of an army that is an occupying force in the country. there is also a belief that all occupiers are deemed combatants, and therefore fair game.

i do however agree that their cause would be improved if military targets were intended only. but then again with the IDF doing pinpointed strikes on civilians and politicians that are part of hamas, it shoul work the otehr way round too.

are the tactics that get lumped under the category 'terrorism" justifiable? depends on the situation.
but in principle, sure.

let's allow this topic to become ugly and difficult, shall we?

if you frame the question in the direction that will and dlishguy do above and direct it at palestine, then hell yes they can be justified: they are caused by the conditions imposed via the occupation itself. you cannot pulverize a people and expect them to simply accept it forever. you do not recognize any rules at the level of occupation, you cannot expect there to be rules that shape the response. you want to "stop terrorism" then end the fucking occupation, dismantle the settlements and enable a viable palestine. you want to "stop terrorism" then grant the right of return. if you dont do it, then the problem lay with the occupation and the desperation and humiliation it generates, not with the responses to it.

but if you think about it, things are not so simple. the fact of occupation tends to simplify the politics of the responses to it, to erase them. so one's relation to such actions tends to be crunches into one's general attitude toward colonial occupation in general. which in a sense evacuates the central issue, which lay in the political motives in particular that shape a particular action, because if you say that an action that involves civilian deaths is justified, you need to be clear about why that is the case. one way of thinking about what a "terrorist" (god i hate that word) action is about is a conflict over historical narrative--over which information is included and which excluded in the construction of the history---because control over the past is control over the present in a sense, over the political logic that conditions actions in the present.

there are a host of appalling consequences of the israel/palestine conflict, and one of them is that the refusal to cover the situation in palestine in any complexity (particularly in the dominant american press) means that the positions of all palestinian political movements get collapsed into each other, made into one thing. so there is a sense in which the explanations for/narratives that enframe a given action do not ever surface. hamas is a particular organization; fatah is a particular organization--each has a particular vision of why they act, of the past they act on behalf of, of the future they aspire to. to justify such actions, you need to know the narrative. too often, we dont.

but all this is far away.
take the trade center attack.
i can imagine a narrative within which the attack made sense, but i do not KNOW what the narrative actually was (no more than anyone else does) and so find myself reluctant to enter the game of juxtaposing narratives because i have the sense that all that is really happening is a simple exercise in sign reversal. who were the people who died in the attacks? innocents or functionaries in an apparatus of oppression? both. neither. how do you decide? depends on the narrative you construct. the trade center was a self-evidently symbolic target. a symbol of what? american economic domination in the context of globalizing capitalism. what does that mean? well, one thing it means is that the entire reactionary narrative that has dominated the american mediaspace since 2001, which is now finally dissolving, is worthless. why? the premise of that narrative was that there is no economic domination, there is no oppression ongoing in the context of globalizing capitalism, that there is no association between american economic power and that oppression, so that the attacks were therefore unmotivated. and that is idiotic. on the other hand, does it follow that knowing the reactionary american internal narrative is worth nothing mean that its simple inversion must therefore be true? um...what do you think?

things of course get worse: does thinking that there are appalling conditions generated by the exportation of the worst features of capitalism mean that therefore all actions directed against these conditions--local or international--are therefore equivalent? that any such action is equally a blow against what for shorthand's sake we'll call american imperialism and is therefore justifiable? of course not. the dominant narrative attributes such actions entirely to this bizarre-o category of "islamic extremism"---what the fuck is that?---an abstraction, really: a convenient one-dimensional abstraction. does rejecting that abstraction mean that you somehow undercover the "real" motives behind the attacks in 9/2001? no. but this is obvious. ok so where does that leave you? nowhere, in a sense. you can see the effects of the notion of "terrorism" in this: it is a substitute for any account of the political motivations behind any given action. it replaces them with nothing. by replacing them with nothing, the category functions to give the impression that all political opposition that shifts into the level of direct action is equivalent to all others, and that all of them are irrational--what is more that there are and can be no rational grounds for opposing the existing order, there are and can be no rational grounds for actions directed against that order. "terrorism" evacuates the politics of opposition. "terrorism" is a category whose sole function is the legitimation of the existing order.

from this it follows that any simple statement about such actions functions to either repeat or invert the logic which follows from this category "terrorist"--and this is the point of it, i think. it puts you in an untenable position. the category is horseshit, nothing more, nothing less. considering such actions in terms shaped AT ALL by this category results in more horseshit, nothing more, nothing less.

one of the most basic aspects of revolutionary politics is that the narrative which shapes an action IS in a sense the action because in that narrative is the political and historical logic which is embodied in the action. so revolutionary politics is not about blowing shit up--it is about conflict over history and via conflict over history, it is conflict over the politics of history, and via conflict over the politics of the past, it is about conflict over the future, a future which plays out across control of the parameters that shape the present. NOT ALL NARRATIVES ARE EQUIVALENT--to make anything like a serious judgment concerning the "legitimacy" of a particular action, you need to know the narrative and on that basis take the risk--the ethical risk, the personal risk--of making an actual judgment. exercises in a simplistic sign reversal are not judgements, not really: they are reflexes. they are not even political because they do not take the requirements of political action seriously. in other words, it is not enough--not enough at all--to arrive at the general conclusion that colonialism or neo-colonialism is bad--this is not rocket science, it demands nothing of you.

these are fucked up times. it is like the late hapsburg period in austria--the illusion that things are ok is repeated endlessly through everyday routines--the politics of opposition are erased behind it, such that people imagine only this is possible--there is only one logic and we are it---this even as the space within which that logic circulates itself becomes increasingly dysfunctional, increasingly pathological. but it doesnt matter: we are asleep. we dream in patterns. in our dreams, we cling to these patterns. we think there is nothing else. and perhaps, for us, that is true for now. the elimination of the space of opposition assures one thing: that the self-blinding characteristics of the rationality within which we live become total. maybe we wont even notice that our world is crashing down around us as it crashes down around us. we are asleep and we dream in patterns. they are pretty patterns. they have a nice soundtrack. they are soft and plush and always available and imply no risk. why leave them?

this is already way too long and i have things to do.

Thank you Roachboy, that is one of the most sound discussions of terrorism that I have read in some time.
Perhaps instead of labelling these acts from whatever perspective one might choose, what we should be doing is seeing them as symptoms of a larger problem and looking at what breeds these acts (eg. oppression, poverty) and applying solutions which eliminate the breeding grounds.

A lot of governments are behaving as terrorists. Prime example, everytime the US denies habeas corpus, everytime it tortures, everytime it attack a city, town, or village, in Iraq that is no threat to the US, the US is committing terrorism.

No. It is never justified (less is more, thank you).

So you'd be against Jewish rebels carrying out acts of terrorism in late 1930s Germany against the Nazi Party? You'd be against Kurds carrying out terrorist attacks against the Baathist Party in the early 90s in Iraq? How about Cambodians using terrorism against Pol Pot?

Terrorism is a tactic. Its merits should be judged on a case-by-case basis just like any other type of combat or warfare tactic.

Truth this, truth that; blah, blah, blah. Truth isn't determined by the beholder, truth isn't written by those with power. Truth is something you discover once you look objectively though delusion and lies. It is a personal experience. It is universal. And, on terrorism, I cannot say it can ever be "justified." This last word is a loaded one, mind you. I cannot condone any action that has the distinct purpose of causing fear. You cannot fight evil with evil. You cannot stop injustice with injustice. You cannot alleviate misery by causing misery. If you want to call it a military tactic, fine, but know that there is no good in war--no matter the circumstances.

willravel

Striking military targets is more like a tactical warfare move.

Terrorism is inciting terror.

So hitting a military target when no one is there, or hitting equipment, that isn't terrorism.

The terror is when you are striking school buses, or suicide bombing in crowded areas.

Is it ever justified?

It depends; are people of a country, even if my inaction or apathy, responsible for the actions of its government? If the people control the government, then the people are the ones you need to get attention from.


I could see how if I lost everything... my kids were killed because one country dropped bombs or caused a war. You might decide, vengeance. Make them hurt like you do.

The idea of dying for your cause, being a hero to your peers. (40 virgins?) just makes it easier to kill yourself (when you already wanted to die anyway.)

To me this isn't what I would consider terrorism personally. I have to agree with Vincentt this sounds more like guerilla warfare. Terrorism for example is walking on to a bus with a bomb with tons of nails in you and go boom so you can kill as many as possible and the nails can become projectilie weapons.

All war is wrong. Sometimes it might be necessary, of course, but it's always wrong.
Terrorism is a warfare tactic.
If you were a military officer and you constantly had friends running over IEDs and had no idea when and where you would run over one, would you be scared? If you heard about military installations being bombed, wouldn't you check before entering your barracks? That's terrorism.

This includes that feeling you get when American troops enter your home.


One problem we need to work through here is a linguistic one. Some here assume that inciting terror is only something a civilian does with explosives strapped to one's chest. Please let us not forget "shock and awe," whose main ingredient was terror.

OP: Terrorism can never be justifiable. Lately we (US) have been using it as an excuse for more of the same. Wrong might be a matter of opinion, or it might just be wrong.

let me make a short version, since less is more somehow.
there is no terrorism.
there are political actions.
the question of justification lay in who is doing them and why.

& God said, "Let there be light."

Terrorists are either those attacking the describer's interest or those on the losing side being described by an historian.

Terrorism is not a military tactic used by organized governments as they are expressly illegal. As such, those acts are war crimes.

Those are my definitions.

Strangely enough, I agree with you.

& I feel good about it.

The populace thrives and grows beyond its means. The wealth of the world doesn't belong to those who are willing to steal it.

Hmm..I think we probably need to define terrorism then. The examples you give I believe to be guerilla warfare, not terrorism.


I like this answer roach. It actually looks like an essay prompt I once had. It's a great starting point for a discussion.

Is this then presupposing that all "terrorist" acts are politically based or extensions of political entities (in the same manner that militaries are considered the security apparatus of the state, or military action as an extension of economic action which is an extension of political action?).

Why no distinction in defining terrorism but instead, confining it as strictly a political act?

If we examine recent terrorist activity then yes, a good argument can be made that terrorist acts are political acts. But why the separation? I still contrue it to be an act of terror, whether political or not.

Secondly, if we are to define acts of terror as political action, then are we necessarily legitimating it?

(out of town, be back Sunday)

The terms are not mutually exclusive. Would you not agree that a small, governmentally independent organization blowing up an embassy with IEDs is both guerrilla warfare and terrorism?

Hmmm...good point will; that's tricky. But, yeah, in short, I can see that. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. This would go right in line with what roach is saying as these examples and lines of reasoning support the whole terrorism exists as political action theorem.

I do feel that is problematic as to the degree and variation.

On a conceptional, theoretical level sure. But practically speaking or on a realist level I would disagree or reposit a different variation.

Even with your great example will, I feel we can deconstruct it further: how can we separate terrorism and guerrilla warfare? I believe this distinction to be important because the implications are so drastic. When the lines become blurred, then we lose any semblance of restraint or moral imperative (I do realize how deeply subjective this becomes).

(ok, I really have to go, be back Sunday)

Maybe I should put it this way:
Guerrilla Warfare = tactic
Terrorism = intent

...just like:
Tripping pregnant women = tactic
To Be a Dick = intent

There are other reasons to use guerrilla tactics besides inciting fear in order to control or bring about change, but that is one reason.

Again, you're talking about two different concepts: tactics and intent. They are not mutually exclusive. Not all terrorism is carried out via guerrilla tactics (Shock and Awe) and not all guerrilla tactics are based in the intent of terrorizing (drug lords defending themselves from their governments). BUT, they can often go together. When you see a suicide bomber, you're seeing both guerrilla tactics and terrorism.When you see a little boat full of explosives sail into a battle cruiser, you're seeing both guerrilla tactics and terrorism. When you see a hick park a truck full of shit out in front of a government building and blow it up, you're seeing both guerrilla tactics and terrorism.

Intentionally blowing oneself up as a tactic still strikes me as absurd.

All war is absurd.

so is everything else.

Okay, war is MORE absurd. And this is coming from someone wearing a robe and a baseball cap.

nice. to my right as i sit here there is a print. it says: "the word of the day is aleatory"...once i finish this sentence, i am going to look for a bathrobe and a baseball hat. combining the 3 elements seems a lovely idea. i worry about bit about my head exploding, though.

Aleatory = unpredictable, yes? I should know that word.

You can use terror in guerrilla warfare, but not all terrorist acts are acts of war. This is because there are certain groups who cannot or choose not to actually engage a perceived enemy in a direct conflict. Instead, they use terrorism to influence political and public minds.

This could be a small group that doesn't have the resources or organization to go up against a larger, more legitimate group. It could also be a large, legitimate organization, say a government, that cannot conventionally target a perceived threat.

We shouldn't be fighting each other when people are dyimg elsewhere.

I'm probably a bit biased since I am an US Soldier serving in Iraq right now. I'd be sort of curious to see where the US is attacking a city,town, or village outright? There hasn't been an offensive like that since the war actually started when it was more of a conventional type. Having been here in both 2004 and now 2006-2007, there is a huge difference in how the US is being attacked, and how we are responding.

I'd have to agree here, since I've been on too many convoys to count throughout Iraq. I don't know anything I've experienced that is more terrifying than driving down a road and watching people pop up out of the grass and start shooting at you. Or maybe watching one of your friends get blown up randomly. Its not like IEDs are shown nice and neat on the side of the road.

Again, until you have personally had US troops enter your home, I don't think you would be in a posistion to say how it is done, unless of course you've done it. Having talked to people who have had their homes entered, the majority of them don't mind.

Only good thing about it is eventually you run out of bombers? Story in the paper here a while ago, suicide bomber in a dump truck, paid 30,000 to blow it up on a US base. Somehow he tipped it over before getting there and waited for US to pick him back up, and confess everything..

when i read this thread, i immediately thought Umkhonto We Sizwe

I agree with this sentiment and I don't give a damn about anyone's rationalizations for setting out to kill people to make a political point. IT'S THE WRONG WAY. Regardless of where you come from, what god you worship or what you had for dinner last night. It's all puffed up, egotistical bullshit when it comes down to that decision that allows for an acceptable amount of murder - because our cause is just. No. Violence is the easy way out. And mankind are perpetual cowards.

mm--you know, if the conditions that shape such actions really were adequately described this way:

maybe i'd agree with you.
i mean sitting in a chair in chicago, thinking about politics and possible courses of action, the idea of engaging in violence as a political action seems, well, remote at best.
but not all contexts are like this.
not all contexts allow for the same modes of sublimation of the sense of political impotence (posting here, for example--which requires, you know, electricity, a working phone system, regular access to food, a way of life that is degrading only at the margins or which is disempowering in particular, containable ways, say.)

sitting in my chair in chicago, i am not under direct colonial occupation, my sense of possible redress for political grievances are not wholly circumscribed by an everyday brutalization of myself, my family, those i love, those around me; i might feel as though the options for meaningful political action are limited in the states, but it nonetheless sits on me lightly, functioning as an intellectual topic that i can choose to think about or not think about--my sense of possibilities is not circumscribed by direct violence administered "legitimately" (that is via a military or police apparatus) as a functionof occupation----my life is in relative terms a bubble, as is yours.

but unilateral statements have their appeal.
so here's one:

to act as though these conditions that we live under encompass or even imply all conditions is the viewpoint of a tv viewer. to make ethical judgments on "violent political action is wrong" presupposes that conditions like the ones you live under, that i live under, are universal. that is false.

I completely understand what you mean, rb, but to me - a person who doesn't believe in any literal interpretation of evil...meaning that actions are subjective and even in the most horrific instances are perpetrated by people who have a "cause" - if you want to accept violence as an acceptable course of action to meet an anticipated end or further your "cause," then you must accept all of it as legitimate as any other. I choose not to. Not only because I am opposed to the use of violence as a social and political remedy, but because I know there are people who feel the same way as I do who live the oppressive conditions that you allude to above. It is not necessarily a luxury to feel this way.

i dont buy that either, mm.
this is why i have been posting as i have in this thread, really: my position is that there is no terrorism, only political actions and that the legitimacy of these actions is a function of who is doing them and why.
but there are problems with this, i know: for example, i might for personal or intellectual reasons focus on the political statements and modes of internal organization to evaluate a given action because i am inclined to see in the combination of the two something of what the actors are trying to bring about--so i might on that basis oppose the actions of nepalese maoists because they are maoist, or those of shining path in peru because i think they are dangerously loopy--but in other situations, i can imagine supporting the same kind of action to a point. but this is not the problem. the problem lay in assessing the contexts out of which these actions come, in working out something like a level of oppression that makes violence understandable.
sometimes i think this a dangerous place to put oneself.
mostly, though, i dont see an alternative: political judgments can be ugly messy affairs.

what is stranger still is that personally, i am not at all a violent person: i think violence stupid for the most part...but i also, for better or worse, have come to an understanding of systemic violence, banalized violence, routinized everyday violence. and frankly, i find that far more ethically repellent than i find actions against such systems. because at least with actions undertaken by small groups in opposition to colonial style violence (say) the groups HAVE TO come to terms with the fact of what they are doing--they do not and cannot blur it into a conception of "duty" or let it float away across some administrative rationality, hiding behind a notion of "doing my job"....they have to confront the violence directly--they cannot explain it away as an extension of "patriotism" or any other abstract justification to be had on such grounds.

so what i find repellent ethically and politically is organized state violence, administrative violence, administered violence.

and this predisposition itself generates certain problems--like i am well aware that the opposition i set up in the last paragraphs would unchecked tend toward a false romanticisation of small groups that would enable me to pretend to myself that they canot repeat exactly the same features that i find problematic in a state apparatus--sense of mission or higher calling or duty----so things loop back on themselves.

but all that said, i understand how it is possible that a group can be forced into the position such that this kind of action is thinkable, is possible.

but i do not accept the idea that all actions are equivalent.
so i take on the complexity of fashioning particular judgments. or try to at least.

You make your judgments and others make theirs. One must suppose a lot to deem their judgments more meritorious. Not that i don't understand that this is what people do and is a major component of why we are so screwed up as a species.

I didn't say I didn't understand it. I say I don't accept it. Little as it means.

ach.
to go any further we'd have to agree about the way in which such arguments should happen. from there, criteria about claims. it'd be easy enough were there motivation i suppose.

...all I know is that once violence is accepted then there is left very little ground left with which to condemn its use by others...

...and that once one has distanced themselves from murder with a "cause" they are living within a world of their own making where its likely that justifications for the convenience of violent action become more and more blurred...such as the street executions of Palestinians who are accused of "working with the Israelis"...it's a perfect example, and I don't point the Palestinians out as being unique...not at all, I only use them because they have been mentioned in this thread...history has proven this to us again and again from all points of the planet.

i don't understand that mixed; the bit about once violence is accepted, then you have little ground to condemn its use by others...do you extend the same philosophy to self-defense, for instance? maybe if its not necessarily "condoned" or "supported," but understood as a fairly rational response to certain social situations? what i know is that i can imagine situations in which i might take up a rifle; say if my family and loved ones were threatened by out of control governments and so forth. or psychopaths with axes and machetes.

Yes, I would make an exception for self-defense in response to certain social situations.

Not as a means to correct social systems...I suppose.

what about the apartheid bit with the umkhonto we sizwe / anc in s. africa bit? or if some international coalition actually formed and took darfur seriously? there would assuredly be violence involved in that...but i can't say that i'd really have much of an ethical qualm about it. i can't find myself able to completely renounce violence in anything other than a theoretical sense. i can see renouncing the desire to do violence, but i don't think they are the same thing.

well, a couple things.

it seems that the debate has moved away from the op onto more rational grounds--the question of whether political violence can be justified--to my mind exclusively on the part of oppositional movements--is quite different from that of any question involving "terrorism"...what is curious is that the a priori violence=>always necessarily unacceptable seems to revert back to the logic implicit in that terminology ("terrorism")--so maybe this is the differend, from a certain angle--that the discussion flits back and forth over the edge of debate structured around political violence and one structured by "terrorism" as a substitute for that.

so i take it that you are a pacifist. mm.

i'd like to be--but there are conditions that obviate it as an alternative, i think.

fanon characterized colonialism as pathological--the context is pathological and that is reflected in the modes of thinking and acting on all sides of such a situation---all sides--even calls for peace end up having their meanings shifted, fractured in such a space. and the cause is colonialism itself, occupation itself.

i can imagine myself in gaza right now, and i doubt seriously that i would be arguing that we should all try to get along. i would be arguing for an end to the occupation. i would be arguing for a change in the political context. i'd be arguing that the israeli presence is the cause of violence and that the only way out of the cycle engendered by it would be a dismantling of the occupation itself. short of that--you reap what you sow. i'd like to think that pacifist style actions would work--but if such actions are crushed violently and remain invisible, then there is no action, there are no politics, there is only suicide. pacifist-style tactics presuppose visibility. they are theater that presuppose the dignity of the participants and one effect of them is to bring down what looks on tv like exemplary acts of dehumanization in the attempts to suppress them. but without visibility, what are these actions? it is precisely this lack of visibility that lay behind most actions undertaken by palestinian groups from balck september onward. the arguments from the balck september people hinged on this fact: that the oppression being endured by the palestinians was invisible insofar as the world was concerned--they died in great number and no-one knew. the conflict with the israelis had moved through a number of phases and no-one knew who wasnt very tightly linked to the immediate situation. had this invisibility not been the case, then i doubt the action would have happened. invisibility erases the possibility of non-violent civil actions.

do i condone the tactics (the attack on the israeli olympc team in munich 1972)?
hell no.
do i understand what lay behind it? i think so.
would i have done such an action, participated in it?
i cannot imagine living under conditions such that an action like that would even occur to me. i dont think any of us do.
but i know there are such conditions.


who's to blame then?

but you cannot fuck with people forever and expect them to simply roll over. you cannot pulverize a community forever, strip them of their dignity, offer them no recourse, put them in a situation wherein the only thing they can imagine for the future is more pulverization, more humiliation and not expect fucked up consequences. the problem are the regimes that create such situations. the rationalization that is a problem is the rationalization that allows these situation to happen, to continue. that the response is generally moves to eliminate even the minimal space for manoever that enables violent actions to take place is nothing more or less than an extension of the pathology of occupation/domination to an extreme. people who are totally dominated, who are completely broken by it at best end up the object of charity shows and telethons that allow us to sit around and deplore how bad their lot boo hoo arent you glad you arent there?

oppression breeds violence: it IS violence.
in such a context, it seems that arguing from a pacifist position is, well, i dont know what it is. i expect that anyone in their right mind would prefer peace to violence. it is not always an option, however. it simply isnt.

arrggghhh....I was writing something, very fast, but I'm running out of time and I have things to do...I'll reply to this later.

I do want to. :)

It seems to me that the tragic circumstances that much of our species endures are the result of our inactions rather than our actions.

"Who has the gold makes the rules" & "Love your neighbor as yourself" are mutually exclusive.

Well, I wish I were in more of a frame of mind to write about this right now...I'm just not...perhaps later tonight.

But, I will say again that I am aware of WHY people living under oppression resort to violence. That is quite different from supporting and/or justifying it, which has been my sole point of departure on this thread.

But rb, are you suggesting that spasmodic and arbitrary expressions of violence are somehow virtuous or productive?

And arguing this from a pacifist position, even though I really don't consider myself one, is perfectly rational considering there are people currently living under oppressive circumstances who find it in themselves to indeed be pacifistic. Unlike violence, pacifism IS NOT a means to an end. It's a commitment. It just is. And in my estimation, we need more pacifists, not fewer.

Lot of fucking good all this killing has done for us, yeah.

uh....no.
the argument is basically in two parts:
first that i understand the types of political action grouped conventionally as "terrorism" to be reactive to particular contextual factors.
the justification, if any, for a particular action lay in the question of who is doing it (which organization, how it is structured) and why (its politics).

the move from 1 to 2, and the content of 2, indicates that central to any possible justification is not only planning but symbolic/political narrative.
so no: nothing about spontaneity in that. rather the inverse. i assume that an action that could possibly be justified ethically would have to be deliberate.


i used fanon to talk about the pathology of domination--you're right to take the next step within that framework----but that is also the place where i totally disagree with fanon and find his conception of revolutionary action as therapy (the "new man" emerging as a function of the violence itself, as if that violence was purgative) to be dangerous.

as for a committment to pacifism, i agree with pigglet in no. 47 on that.

no-one likes any of this.
i dont think the question of how one evaluates such actions politically and ethically is linked to whether one likes any of this or not.
like i said, i dont think anyone in their right mind would not prefer peace to its inverse.
but not all situations allow for it.
and the root cause of this sort of violence is the systematic oppression of people.
it can become so bad that folk are able to imagine that violence is a way of asserting their dignity: pacifism assumes people already have dignity---but there are forms of domination that strip that away, such that the principle "i am a human being and as a human being i have dignity" becomes a motor for violence.
it sucks that these situations exist.
thinking about them does not make me--or anyone else who looks at them--a happier person.

Ok then, do you find planned and deliberately arbitrary politically motivated violence to be virtuous and productive?

I agree with pigglet, as well. I've stated before on other threads that I'm fully behind military intervention in cases of genocide, such as Darfur and Rwanda. But those sorts of collective interventions on the behalf of defenseless people are wholly different than using violence as a political statement in and of itself. For instance, I would support a collective intervention on the behalf of the Palestinian people in order to force their rights to life and sovereignty on Israel and surrounding nations, but I will never support or justify the bombing of a bus or a restaurant as a means of asserting one's group or cause into the province of politics. And I do believe that to do so justifies any group's similar actions on the behalf of their cause of choice. To me it is insane to pick apart the carnage and proclaim that this death was justified, but this one was not. Not to mention that it justifies the resulting backlash that is certain to follow in which even more people will die for nothing. And it is for nothing. It's a cycle of revenge and retribution that will never end of its own accord.

I think it also bears mentioning that what I consider to be acts of unjustified violence are never free from the very compelling element of hatred.

i take it that you want to do this as an ethical convo. i see this as a political matter.
so you are looking for a particular type of response from me.
it ain't gonna happen.

let's step back a level:
if your take on this question is primarily ethical, it follows that you have a particular view of ethics and that view (from what i can tell anyway) seems to turn on a requirement for a priori principles. without them, presumably, you tend to see only the inverse--anything goes.

to my mind, ethics applies primarily to what i would do.
right now i am---once again---sitting in a chair in chicago.
that means, again, that i occupy a particular space that is shaped by a host of ambient factors--so the situation in which i am is particular. i might prefer to pretend that it isn't--and there is every ideological reason to do so---but once i make that move, i abstract myself from exactly the types of parameters that throughout this thread i have been arguing are fundamental, that have to be taken into account in the fashioning of judgments about the nature, meaning and justification of any given political action that unfolds in a context which differs fundamentally from my own.

so sitting in my chair, staring (AGAIN--geez, where did my life go?) at my computer monitor, can i imagine myself initiating a violent political action? no.
why?
well....my situation is such that my personal aversion to violence can remain operative.

at the same time, i do not understand my situation as self-contained--it is a function of a particular socio-economic and political system that has among its features a particular geography of oppression that functions so that the fact of it is, as they say, experience-distant.

if i think about the types of contexts that i have been referencing here, that thinking involves a degree of empathy or projection--these contexts are not mine.

if i imagine action in those contexts in a way that maps onto them the dispositions i am in a position to maintain in this one, then i am substituting the arrangement of dispositions it is my luxury to maintain in this space onto actors in that other space (x) who do not have that luxury.

the inverse does not follow (that i am therefore unable to make any judgment at all)----and while there are problems (i do not have and will not have complete information)---i nonetheless KNOW that if i approach these contexts with a priori assumptions about what i would or would not do in what i imagine that situation to be like, i am just mapping my dispositions onto those available in another context and erasing fundamental dimensions of that context in the process. i presume to know better than the people who live that context what the meanings of actions are. when i do that, i am no different from any other colonial boy.

since the parameters for thinking about this sort of situation are not in any way delimited for me by what i take to be the fundamentally bourgeois category of ethics (sorry, but sooner or later my inner residual marxist is going to surface in this kind of debate), i retain the prerogative to look at the situation to the extent that i can, decide on what kind of information is relevant and make a judgment about a given action--on political grounds.

this is not to say that there is a basic separation between politics and ethical committments--but as general ways of thinking that allow for integration of different types of information, they are separatable from each other. the converge again in the problem of fashioning judgements that speak to questions of whether i would consider action x justified and action y not justified.

there is a consideration that cuts across this: i find state violence, routinized violence administered via a bureaucratic apparatus FAR more ethically and politically problematic than i find response to that violence.

2. i agree with you (and pigglet) re. the desirability if international interventions in situations like darfur. but that is a scenario within which the people there are already pulverized--and the central cuase of that pulverization is the civil war in the sudan and the apparent collusion between the janjawid (i keep thinking ganga weed, as i suspect everyone does) milita and the sudanese government and the political situation that is being impacted upon by that collusion--which is a function of the civil war, an extension of it. were the people who have been massacred and/or herded about by this conflict in a position to react with violence to what is happening to them, i would not be inclined to see it as senseless--would you?

another problem: from what you say above, it seems that you would be inclined to blame these people were they to react with violence to what has happened to them. well, so far they really haven't--they are not in a position to---in what way is the situation improved by that exactly?

it also seems to me that to treat the cycle of violence as if it were autonomous, independent of choices made by actors on the ground, as it sounds like you do here:

is WAY too simple. so the jangawid are simply reacting to some climate problem, their actions are like the weather and so they bear no particular responsibility for anything? the primary point of an international intervention in that region would be to disable that militia, by military means if that is the only way to do it. THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VIOLENCE IN THE REGION and behind them stands the government in khartoum. PERIOD. this is not automatic, it does not follow like the wind, building on itself and leaving people no choice but to go along with it....

god this is long.
sorry about that.

If I follow you correctly, you abstain from making an ethical argument and question mine because you and I, in our state of luxury, are not able to comprehend the forces at play that compel people to political violence.

And while I don't disagree with this (as I have said numerous times that I understand why the violence is resorted to), I don't agree that one cannot, even from the luxury of Orlando, Florida, observe that said political violence is wrong. And if to conclude so is bourgeoisie, then I feel safe in saying that intellectualizing about the acceptability of the death of folks caught in the middle of someone else's war is in itself, bourgeoisie. That is quite a luxury, too, in my estimation.

As for the beleagured Sudanese people, no, I would not be against it if they took up arms to defend themselves from the janjaweed. I would not support the bombing of buses in Khartoum as a means of self-defense.

This could become quite an involved discussion as I am dredging up all kinds of related concepts (in my mind) such as hatred, exploitation, power, money, corruption...that all contribute to the many facets of BOTH SIDES of any given political struggle - compromising and delegitimizing both. Which pretty much lends perfectly to my overall perception that people just suck.

So maybe this isn't the place for this discussion. Maybe some other time and place. At any rate, it would take me time to excavate and weigh it all...the process. It's not a fully packaged concept for me, like some other issues...

it seems to me that there is some grouping of different violent acts / groups that may make the argument difficult to analyze. it would seem that lumping in 'suiciders/homicide bombers' in with all 'terrorist' actions as though it is the only type of action representative of such groups makes the positions difficult to separate. personally, i can't support or 'justify' those types of actions; i think they are 'wrong' and in fact, frequently counterproductive. but that's not to say that all violent acts committed by typically disadvantaged, militarily outclassed people can be condemned, at least to my mind. as roach stated: i think it depends who they are, why they are doing what they are doing, and how they go about it.

the particulars of the israeli / palestinian conflict get a little hairy, to mind; there is so much hatred between some portions of those populations, so much history to it, and so many different factions involved that i think its easy to simply generalize all involved as being unethical. that's a whole different can of worms - perhaps a detailed thread discussion of terrorism in that context would make more sense. taking it as a general example, however, and calling it representative of all 'terrorist' groups is dangerous. i mean, look at our own founding fathers, so to speak. not the part with the native americans; the part with the british ;)

I don't think I have generalized any one group. Nor terrorist activities as a whole. We really haven't gotten that specific.

To my mind, if you view people who haven't a direct impact on the forces that are keeping you oppressed as disposable, then I do not support your actions. Period. For example, since we seem to be focusing on the Palestinian situation, I find attacks on Israeli military outposts and checkpoints to be legitimate paramilitary maneuvers. Now, of course, I realize that these sorts of attacks are inferior as such for two reasons: 1. they are not adequately equipped to fight them and 2. attacks like this don't make a blip on the radar screen as far as demoralizing their enemy. They know what works and what works is a threat to the peaceful lives of ordinary citizens. Just as we knew when we engaged, for instance, in "shock and awe" in Iraq and the firebombing of Edo during WWII. Not to mention "the bombs." Which leads to a very key point that shapes my outlook on this subject. How much difference is there, really, between the oppressed and the oppressor? Within the ranks of the oppressed you have people in power. People who will never put themselves into the line of fire, but who will recruit the ones feeling the crunch of oppression most acutely. Both sides do this. In both sides you will find exploitation of the most disadvantaged, the struggle for power and control of resources (particularly money), corruption and greed, the abuse of authority and ever escalating levels in the acceptable use of violence as a means of obtaining and maintaining order. Just because one has the means to do so on a larger scale, doesn't necessarily make the other more virtuous and entitled. And I think this observation is exemplified in the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians in the middle east, as well as the key supporters of the respective sides, including the US.

...and I've already said far more than I intended to, so I'll stop now, abruptly yet without lament...

i got sucked into a flurry of Activity in 3-d yesterday and will be sucked into another one shortly...this has been interesting, though. a debate here that actually pushed at my thinking--it's been a while.

on my way out: what i was trying to talk about above, mm, had in the end to do with types of statements. i put ethical statements into one category and political statements into another. the difference between them came down to basically one thing: i see in ethical statements a preference for a priori logic (general principles applicable universally) and in political statements a more situationally oriented logic. from a position informed by ethics, the assumption usually is that a situational logic is arbitrary or hopelessly relativist--to counter that, from the start, i outlined specific criteria that i would use to evaluate information.

the way i set that up, it followed that the positions we are speaking from would tend to talk past each other even if in basic ways we were in agreement.

i am really quite interested in how different frames of reference work, how they kick in, how the effects play out---often this results in my taking an observer relation in debates--set up the machinery and watch it work. this one was different, however...

anyway, it is pretty clear if you look through the posts that that the points of agreement between you and pigglet and i are multiple--and that the divergences keep coming down to the same kind of problem---(a)how far do each respective place allow us to go in thinking about the particularities of situations---in this, i dont see particular disagreement, actually---(b) what happens when you move from looking at a situation to making judgements about that situation. here is the point at which the differend comes up, and the reason for the differend, in the end, is different criteria come into play--the curious thing is that both your position and the position i think pigglet and i both come from are internally consistent, and that both enable us to push quite far into problematic areas.

fact is that when not involved in a meta-conversation (judgements abut judgements) the factors that shape my positions (at any rate) are often messier than i made them appear here. but it is really interesting that (for once) a debate happened in this space that allowed for that messiness to show up, to itself be a problem, and that because it was itself part of the conversation.

ok--i need to pull myself together and go meet a new piano soon....

double

Please, please stop arguing!

Violence is a bad thing?

As if I have any, my perception tells me we shouldn't be killing ourselves to kill "others". It's just us here. (Is there an echo in here?)

"terrorism" would have less power if people were less afraid.

we're not arguing, baby :)

You mean we're in agreement? Whence the violence? The oppression? The 'power"? The "history"?

In this insulated environment (Meaning I was born and raised in the middle of NA) I guess I don't know how to talk about terrorism.

I also don't believe in its efficacy.

I and many others put our feelings on what is a "terrorist" in this thread http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=70590 a while ago. I still stand by my feelings that we have redefined the meaning of terrorism to anyone who doesn't fight by our rules (even when the rules are blatantly advantageous to us).