From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Sun 24 Nov 2002 - 21:44:43 GMT
fighting words
Terrorism
Notes toward a definition.
By Christopher Hitchens
If any of the terms in our new lexicon has undergone a process of
diminishing returns, it is the word "terrorism." This is partly
because it is carried over from an earlier lexicon. It is also partly
because even that previous lexicon was experiencing a little
fatigue, in consequence of the word's ambiguity and hypocrisy.
The president himself, declaring us at war with this word, seemed
unconsciously to try and hurry us past it, by slurring and
condensing it into "terrism" or (it seems on some days) "tourism."
But we need a more exhaustive and exclusive and discriminating
definition of it, or recognition of it. The clue may lie in turning
the lexicographical pages even further back. In the 1970s, Claude
Chabrol produced a brilliant film called Nada. It precisely
captured both the pointless nastiness and the sinister grandiosity
of some of the movements of violence that disfigured that decade.
The Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy,
the Red Army Faction in Japan”all gave themselves permission
to kill, but without any announced goal or objective beyond more
of the same. There were other groups in the same epoch, such as
the Basque ETA or the Palestinian "Black September," which
used unscrupulous and hateful tactics but whose aims could be
understood. Chabrol's title, however, recalled an earlier usage for
promiscuous cruelty”nihilism. Terrorism, then, is the tactic of
demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.
I may as well get the obvious out of the way. In London and
Belfast during the same period, I was more than once within blast
or shot-range of the IRA and came to understand that the word
"indiscriminate" meant that I was as likely to be killed as any
other bystander. I also remember seeing a car bomb explode
outside the High Court in London, and I remember a friend of
mine being taken hostage by Provisional IRA gangsters. However,
at no point in this period did I fail to remind myself that the
British policy in Ireland was stupid and doomed and”much more
important”open to change.
The same held, in different degrees, for Zimbabwe and for the
Palestinians. It's glib and evasive to say that "one man's terrorist is
another man's freedom fighter," because the "freedom fighters"
are usually quite willing to kill their "own" civilians as well. But
then, so are states. In an excellent recent essay in Newsweek, the
conservative Fareed Zakaria points out that as between Russia and
Chechnya, there is simply no comparison in the scope and scale
and intensity of civilian-casualty infliction. Yeltsin and Putin win
the filthy prize every time. I hate and despise Hezbollah and
Palestinian suicide-murderers, as they ought to be called, but
they'd have to work day and night for years to equal the total of
civilians killed in Lebanon alone, or by Sharon alone. Lebanese
and Palestinian irregulars are, by the way, entitled by international
law to resist foreign occupation that has been internationally
condemned. Fact. So when Sharon says”as he did on his visit to
Ground Zero”that "there is no good terrorism and bad terrorism,"
he suggests a tautology that operates at his own expense. All
parties to all wars will at some time employ terrorizing methods.
But then everybody except a pacifist would be a potential
supporter of terrorism. And if everything is terror, then nothing
is”which would mean we had lost an important word of
condemnation.
This doesn't mean that we are stuck with some dismal moral
equivalence. The IRA or the Al Aqsa Brigades can be reminded,
as can states and governments, that some actions or courses of
action (bombs detonated without warning in civilian areas;
kidnapping; rape) are crimes under every known law. And the
evidence is that such awareness, along with some of its moral
implications, does become available to them. (The same thought
can also be instilled by other less pedagogic means.) Then of
course, you should try and imagine Nelson Mandela or Salvador
Allende”leaders of peoples who really did have a beef with the
"empire"”ordering their supporters to crash civilian planes into
civilian buildings. Excuse me if I say no more, though Mandela
was in fact on a Defense Department "terrorism" list as late as the
early-1980s.
Now put the case of al-Qaida. Its supporters do not live under a
foreign occupation, even if you count the apparently useless and
now embarrassing American bases in Saudi Arabia. It is partly a
corrupt multinational corporation, partly a crime family, partly a
surrogate for the Saudi oligarchy and the Pakistani secret police,
partly a sectarian religious cult, and partly a fascist organization.
Its most recent taped proclamation, whether uttered by its leader
or not, denounces Australia and celebrates the murder of
Australians”for the crime of assisting East Timorese
independence from "Muslim" Indonesia! But this doesn't begin to
make the case against Bin Ladenism. What does it demand from
non-Muslim societies? It demands that they acknowledge their
loathsome blasphemy and realize their own fitness for destruction.
What does it demand for Muslim societies? It demands that they
adopt 17th-century norms of clerical absolutism. How does it
demand this? By a program of indiscriminate attacks on the
civilian population of both. (Yes, both: The Afghan population
was reduced by as many Hazara Shiites as the Taliban could
manage to kill.) This is to demand the impossible, and to demand
it by means of the most ruthless and disgusting tactics.
Enfolded in any definition of "terrorism," it seems to me, there
should be a clear finding of fundamental irrationality. Al-Qaida
meets and exceeds all of these criteria, to a degree that leaves
previous nihilist groups way behind. Its means, its ends, and its
ideology all consist of the application of fanatical violence and
violent fanaticism, and of no other things. It's "terrorist," all right.
What this means in practice is the corollary impossibility of any
compromise with it. It's quite feasible to imagine Hezbollah or
Hamas leaders at a conference table, and one has seen many
previously "intransigent" forces of undemocratic violence,
including the Nicaraguan Contras and the Salvadoran death-
squads and the Irgun, make precisely that transition. Even Saddam
Hussein, who is certainly irrational but was not always completely
so, could perhaps, and certainly until recently, have decided to
save his life and his regime. But some definitions cannot be
stretched beyond a certain point, and the death wish of the
theocratic totalitarians, for themselves and others, is too
impressive to overlook. One has to say sternly: If you wish
martyrdom, we are here to help”within reason.
Article URL: http://www.slate.msn.com/?id=2074129
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