Just what IS terrorism?

{11/14/04 - Note from Adminnemooseus - This topic takes over the theme of the (IMO) excellent Terrorism - Criminal Act or Act of War?. If you are interested in this topic, you should read and consider the above cited also.}We have another thread running about news reports characterizing rebel activity in Iraq as terrorism. The timing is interesting because I've been hearing many different opinions of just what constitutes terrorism from other quarters in the wake of Arafat's death.To my mind, a terrorist act would be an act or the threat of an act of political protest intended to kill or harm civilians, or would at least show criminal disregard for the safety of civilians.I've heard it said that the first act of modern terrorism was the Gunpowder Plot against Britian's Parliament and King James I in 1605. The 1881 assassination of Russia's Alexander II has also been cited as the first, as has the King David Hotel bombing in Jarusalem in 1946. Each of these acts was of course political, but the King David Hotel bombing seems to me to be unique in its disregard for the lives of civilians (including a large number of medics and nurses).In your opinion, what distinguishes an act of terrorism from other acts of war or violent protest?This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 11-14-2004 12:22 PM

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Dog is my copilot.

Yes, it's always the victors who write the history books, but there ought to be some objective measure by which we judge whether an act of war or violent protest should be considered terrorism. My proposition is that terrorism involves intent of harm to civilains, or at the very least a criminal disregard for the safety of civilians. At least in more recent history, that measure should not be so difficult to make.By extension, we have to deal with who is and who is not a terrorist. It is a common conception that Arafat was a terrorist, and what gave me the idea for this thread was the fact that I keep hearing him referred to as the "father of modern terrorism". I dispute that because the King David Hotel bombing pre-dates any terrorist activity which Arafat may or may not have been involved in and may in fact have given the Palestinians the idea of targeting civilians.As we were saying, history is written by the victors, and it's very difficult to find an objective assessment of any acts of war or terrorism which have taken place in the Middle East since the time of the British Mandate in Palestine. But it's not so difficult to find subjective assessments from a variety of sources, and I suppose all we can do is consult all available sources before we decide that we have all the facts and can make a sound judgement.But what I'm really after is an objective definition of terrorism that is specific enough that we can judge any act, no matter who committed it or in what cause it was committed, as being or not being terrorism.BTW, I'm sorry I didn't notice that a similar thread is running before I proposed this one.

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Dog is my copilot.

Jar asks:

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Would you say that all actions, regardless of who commits them or who is targeted during a period when there is a declared state of war between recognized nation states would be excluded from terrorism?

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No. As far as I'm concerned, if it's civilians and not military units that are targeted, then it's terrorism.You may be able to come up with an example that is too difficult to clearly define, but that's why I brought this up. I'm trying to find a better definition than the one I use now.

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Dog is my copilot.

pink sasquatch writes:

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Seems pretty straightforward; though when I responded by saying that the US military definition would qualify the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as one of the worst acts of terrorism in world history, he got pretty pissed off.

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Good point. I suppose I'd have to agree that those bombings could be viewed as terrorism.For purposes of comparison, let's go back to the King David Hotel bombing. Responsibility for that act, which killed nearly 100 mostly civilian people, rests with Manachem Begin, who decided to go ahead with the bombing when his superior (the name escapes me) tried to call it off at the last moment out of apparent concern for civilian casualties. The fact that Begin made the decision to go ahead with the bombing makes him technically a terrorist. In his case, though, I think we have to take into consideration the fact that he did work toward peace in the Middle East later in his life.In the case of the Americans dropping the a-bombs on Japan, clearly the targets were civilians. It was terrorism, but again it wouldn't be fair to judge the act as though it were isolated.It's a complicated question, for sure. I don't suppose there is an easy answer.

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Dog is my copilot.

jar asks:

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Was the carpet bombing by the British initially of German cities an act of terrorism or of war?

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That's an even better question. I suppose it would depend on the motive. Was the primary motive to kill civilians?How would you label this one?

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Dog is my copilot.

jar asks:

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If you were a senior decision maker, say, Churchill, would you consider the infrastructure of the enemy as a legitimate target?

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Yes, and that gets to my point of motive. Was the motive to kill civilians or to destroy infrastructure? I'd say the carpet-bombing was intended to destroy infrastructure, in which case it was not terrorism (at least not using my definition).But in the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (sp?) we're still left with what looks an awful lot like terrorism. The primary motive was to kill civilians in such huge numbers that the enemy would be forced to surrender, was it not?

jar asks:

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Is the civilian population that supports the war through manufacturing, agriculture, finance, communications, logistics or intellegence part of the infrastructure?

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Yes, but that doesn't answer the question of motive. In the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki I'm not so sure our motive was to destroy infrastructure. That could have been done with other weaponry.And so now we're right back to the question I asked before: was the primary motive to destroy infrastructure or to kill civilians? I think it was the latter and thus I think these were acts of terror, though as I said before they must be considered in the context of the war.This is why I think we need a better definition of terrorism, but I'm not sure that one is possible.

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Dog is my copilot.

jar asks:

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What about the aerial bombing of Britain by Germany during WWII?

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I see, it could be a question of deeper motive (although I suspect you're trying to get a subjective answer from me). In this case, I think we have a combination of motives and thus we've hit on a gray area.Earlier, you asked about the people who work in the factories that make up the infrastructure. I suppose it's possible to look upon such people as legitimate targets and not civilians, so we might draw the distinction there. If the primary motive was to destroy infrastructure and inhibit the enemy's capacity to make war by destroying factories and killing factory workers, then it could be argued that the act was not one of terrorism but simply of war.Then again, in the case of Germany's air raids on Britain, weren't some of the targets purely civilian and/or cultural? Those cases would be regarded as terrorism, imo.Did Britain's raids on Germany ever target purely civilian / cultural sites? I can't remember for certain but somehow I feel that you probably do.

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holmes writes:

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So the fact that he was a blatant terrorist should be forgiven because after he got his concessions by being a terrorist... and was then set into a position of legal power... he then demanded everyone else play fair and worked for peace, so that he could enjoy the position he was in and the concessions he got through terrorism?

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No, I'm simply saying we should take into account what happened later when assessing the man's life (or anyone's life, for that matter). I didn't say that the assessment should lead us to the conclusion that Begin was a saint. I'm trying to keep a narrow focus and I didn't want to get into precisely what that assessment would be. Some of the things I've said in this thread could be used to paint Truman as a terrorist, but I don't think it would be fair to assess Truman's life based solely on what he did with a-bombs.This is precisely why I'm trying to come up with an objective definition of terrorism. There are plenty of subjective assessments around and they all depend on someone's point of view. I'm trying to get beyond point of view, but as I said earlier it might not be possible.

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Dog is my copilot.

jar asks:

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During a declared state of war between Nation States, would you say that it is a legitimate tactic to try to diminish the other sides moral and commitment?

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In principle, yes. If it involves killing or harming civilians for the sake of killing or harming civilians then, even in wartime, no.In the earlier thread that was recently closed but linked from this thread (in two places) the following definition for terrorism was offered: That seems more specific than my definition and may work better, but even here we're stuck with situations, like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that we'd like to logically separate from acts like 9/11, but I'm not sure we can separate them.

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Dog is my copilot.

I do see your point and I agree with it, holmes. However, I further see that it was a mistake to confuse the issue by getting into the question of who is and who is not a terrorist. I'd rather stick to the question of what is and what is not terrorism. I should think that would be easier to assess objectively, though I'm still wondering whether even that is possible. The question seems murkier than ever now that I've gone through the earlier thread linked by Quetzal and Moose.

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Dog is my copilot.

I think I said before, jar, that if the intent was simply to destroy infrastructure conventional weapons could have been used. They weren't. Therefore it seems to me that the intent was to kill civilians for the sake of killing civilians, ergo it was terrorism.I don't see that the number of civilians killed has as much to do with it as the motive behind the attack that killed them. Am I wrong to try to consider the problem this way?

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Dog is my copilot.

I'm going to have to give this more thought and get back to you later, jar. If nothing else, I think you've established that this question is an exceedingly complicated one.

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Dog is my copilot.

After reading back through all of this - and the topic linked upthread - I'm more convinced than ever that if an objective definition is possible (and I'm leaning toward saying that it isn't) it will have to take motive into account. I see your point about differences in exposure in different methods of attacking Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but do you think those attacks could still be called terrorism? After all, might we not say that placing the lives of a relatively small number of Americans at greater risk in order to spare the lives of a relatively huge number of Japanese civilians would have been the right thing to do? Do you think you might feel differently if you were Japanese?And what about the interesting case of the King David Hotel bombing I mentioned earlier? Was that really terrorism in your opinion? We don't know for certain that civilians were specifically targeted since the British military maintained offices in the building. We DO know that the attack was carried out with virtually no regard for the lives of those civilians, but that much can be said of our own attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And we shouldn't forget that the radical zionist political movement responsible for the bombing wanted as much as anything to destroy records that British investigators planned to use against its members and other Jews. Those records were stored at the King David Hotel.Holmes observed that the only reason Begin was able to earn a reputation as a man of peace was precisely because he had begun his successful political career by using terrorism as a tactic. One wants to say something like "once a terrorist, always a terrorist" but at the same time one feels compelled to recognize that same terrorist as a man who earnestly worked to make peace between Israel and Egypt.Do we credit Begin with helping to make peace and thus sparing the lives of countless people, or do we insist on remembering only the terrorism he was responsible for? I've heard it said that the hotel bombing is what gave the Palestinians the idea of targeting civilians. If that's true, it might be more reason for remembering Begin as a terrorist.

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Dog is my copilot.

jar asks:

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Can you explain that? I really don't understand what you're trying to say there.

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To be bluntly honest, I'm not certain what I was saying. I had a bit to drink last night and I can't quite remember what my thinking was. Wish I'd waited.But I think I must have meant that using conventional weapons to destroy the infrastructure of the cities would, as you said earlier, have increased American exposure and likely have driven up American deaths and casualties. Some people feel, though, that more civilian lives might have been spared. I think that's what I was getting at.

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First, which organization carried out the attack at the King David Hotel?

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A radical zionist organization called Irgun, but it was ultimately Manachem Begin who made the decision to carry out the bombing after his superior, exiled in either Europe or the US (David Ben Gurion was the man's name; I've heard various accounts of where he was at the time) had tried to call it off for fear of civilian casualties. Begin tried to deflect criticism of his actions by pointing out that he (or someone in his command) had issued telephone warnings of the bombing beforehand in order to allow time to evacuate. That defense seemed rather hollow when you consider the precise timing of the blast (the bomb was detonated at midday, when the hotel and its restaurant would have been most crowded).As to which nation-state, you must mean Israel since this and other zionist groups evolved into the Israeli government. I don't remember all of the facts about these organizations and the article at wikipedia doesn't go into much detail. At the time of the bombing, the area was still ruled by Britian under the mandate. I think the bombing helped to hasten the end of the mandate, which of course would show that this particular terrorist bombing was successful in its aims.The declared state of war you mention has me confused (and it may be due to my spotty memory). It would seem you mean the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, but that came after the hotel bombing and indeed after the establishment of the state of Israel. It did involve other acts of terror, though, including a brutal massacre of civilians in a town whose name escapes me and a reference to which I can't seem to find at the moment.EDITED the second sentence of the last paragraph; it was slightly misleading as originally worded.This message has been edited by berberry, 11-16-2004 12:29 PM

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Dog is my copilot.