And it was I who copied the text book definition of "terrorism" in a post last week, a definition that many people thought was nuts...and yet i haven't seen a better one.
From: Robert Munn
To: CF-Community
Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2004 3:03 PM
Subject: Re: They're Terrorists - Not Activists
How is it not a case of good v. evil? People who take hundreds of children hostage and proceed to blow them to bits with high explosives are evil. Same goes for people who detonate a bomb on a bus full of children (Israel), or detonate a bomb on a Metro train full of commuters(Madrid), or ram a plane into a skyscraper (NYC), or blow up an embassy full of hundreds of people (Africa), or bomb a temple full of tourists (Algeria), or kidnap and murder a bunch of tourists and resort workers (Phillipines), or bomb a disco full of tourists (Bali), or blow up a bank building (Turkey), or murder a bunch of people trying to register to vote (Afghanistan), or bomb a housing compound full of foreign families (Saudi Arabia).
Do you actually see any grey area in there, a possibility that any of these acts could somehow be justified, or that the perpetrators could somehow be called well-meaning but misguided? In my world, all of these people would be captured or killed and stuck in very hot uncomfortable cages in Guantanamo for the next 50 years. I wouldn't even bother moving them inside for hurricane season. Whatever punishment they get can't compare to the horrors they have inflicted on others.
At the end of the day, though, the perpetrators of the acts I listed above are terrorists because of intent, not because of the evil nature of their acts. The intent to instill fear in a populace through violence or the threat of violence (I believe someone supplied that definition on the list last week) is what separates terrorism from other acts of violence. For instance, the genocide in Rwanda wasn't terrorism. It was genocide. It was still evil and horrific, but by definition it was genocide and not terrorism.
Michael is right, news organizations, especially in the West, have contracted the disease of moral equivalence. These organizations have become Tools and Dupes of the enemy in the war on terrorism, and the enemy has become very skilled at using them to further their agenda. It isn't an overuse of the word terrorism to describe a series of acts that meet the definition of terrorism. By avoiding the word we avoid the issue that we are in fact engaged in a world-wide struggle against an enemy that uses terrorism as their primary method of attacks against us. We should not avoid the reality of the stuggle we face. Places like Iraq and Israel are the front lines of the battle, but this is a global struggle and there can be only one victor.
> Caveat: in quite a few of these cases...the people probably are
> terrorrists, and probably are evil.
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