Mark23

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

Infinite_Loser

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.

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Willravel

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.

hiredgun

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.

Willravel

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?

Ourcrazymodern?

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.

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The_Jazz

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.

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dlish

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.

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roachboy

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.

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cyklone

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.

samcol

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.

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jorgelito

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

Willravel

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.

Baraka_Guru

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.

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Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
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Vincentt

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.)

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Xazy

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.

Willravel

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.

Baraka_Guru

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.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Ourcrazymodern?

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.

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roachboy

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.

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it make you sick.

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Ourcrazymodern?

& God said, "Let there be light."

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The_Jazz

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.

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"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

Ourcrazymodern?

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.

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jorgelito

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)

Willravel

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?

jorgelito

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)

Willravel

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.

Ourcrazymodern?

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

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Willravel

All war is absurd.

roachboy

so is everything else.

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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Willravel

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

roachboy

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.

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Willravel

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

Baraka_Guru

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.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Ourcrazymodern?

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

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itlain

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..

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pig

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

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mixedmedia

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.

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roachboy

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.

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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mixedmedia

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.

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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce