The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
ÒTerrorismÓ is one of those words that people routinely apply to almost any behaviour they disapprove of. We had a particularly impressive spread of meanings on display recently. At one extreme, the U.S. State Department released its annual ÒCountry Reports on Terrorism,Ó a survey of all the incidents that the United States officially regards as terrorism. At the other extreme, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack ObamaÕs former pastor, when asked to justify his earlier remark that the 9/11 attacks were ÒAmericaÕs chickens coming home to roost,Ó helpfully explained that the U.S. had dropped atomic bombs on Japan and Òsupported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans,Ó so what did Americans expect? ÒYou cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you,Ó Wright elucidated. ÒThese are Biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles.Ó So it was presumably God who selected a bunch of Saudi Arabians and Egyptians to punish the U.S. for its misdeeds against Japanese, Palestinians and South Africans. But divine terrorism doesnÕt really qualify under the State DepartmentÕs definition, since God is not acting as a Òsub-national group or clandestine agent.Ó He is more of a sovereign power in his own right. This puts Him in the same category as sovereign states, whose actions, however violent and even illegal, cannot by definition be described as Òterrorism.Ó If you donÕt believe me, ask the State Department. So much for Jeremiah WrightÕs attempt to define the American use of nuclear weapons against Japan as terrorism. It was terrible and terrifying, and it was intended to terrorize the Japanese people into surrender, but it was not terrorism. Neither are Israeli actions against the Palestinians, even when 10 or 20 Palestinians are dying for every Israel victim of Palestinian terrorism, and a high proportion of the dead Palestinians are innocent civilians. Israel is a state, so by definition what it does cannot be terrorism. ÔAttacksÕ Now that thatÕs clear, letÕs move on to what the State Department does define as terrorism. The first thing that strikes you, reading the ÒCountry Reports on TerrorismÓ is that 6,212 of the Òterrorist attacksÓ Ð over two-fifths of all the 14,499 that it records for last year Ð were in Iraq. Might that be connected in some way with the fact that Iraq was invaded by the United States five years ago and for all practical purposes remains under U.S. military occupation? Algerian rebels used similar tactics against French imperial rule. So did the Mau Mau guerillas against their British colonial masters in Kenya, and the Viet Cong against the American presence in South Vietnam, and other people fighting against foreign occupation or domestic oppression in dozens of other countries. Their tactics were regularly condemned by their targets, but nobody tried to pretend that the world was facing a wave of irrational violence called Òterrorism.Ó Yet that is precisely the assumption that underlies the State DepartmentÕs annual reports on Òterrorism.Ó Or rather, it is the perspective through which the reportÕs authors want the rest of the world to see the troubles in Iraq, Afghanistan and so on, for they cannot be so naive as to believe the link between the presence of U.S. troops and a high level of terrorist attacks is purely coincidental. You can see the same perspective at work in the distinction that is made between Israeli attacks on Palestinians (the legitimate actions of a sovereign state) and Palestinian attacks on Israelis (terrorism). Thus U.S. support for Israel is also legitimate, while Iranian support for Palestinian militants makes Iran the Òmost active state sponsor of terrorism.Ó Jeremiah Wright is an embittered man who says many stupid and untrue things, but you can see why he got a little confused on the terrorism issue.
