(this is the first of what’s likely to be many posts on my “Terrorism in the 21st Century” class, which I’m taking for three hours a day for most of the month of January.)
The quotation in the headline is:
1) A popular cliche, whose original author or speaker is hard to pin down.
2) An example, for many people, of everything that is wrong with The Left.
3) A gross oversimplification. There are many terrorists who are manifestly not freedom fighters (obvious example: Osama bin Laden). There are also many freedom fighters who are manifestly not terrorists. (obvious examples: Vaclav Havel, Martin Luther King, George Washington.) Ignoring that, and implying that it’s all relative, is a great way to make people you think terrorism is okay and obscure a worthwile point.
The point is that there are some groups that one could plausibly argue for filing under either “terrorist” or “freedom fighter”–or to be more neutral about it, which is probably a good idea, “guerilla”. Lots of groups, with many different sets of initials, have used violence in the service of a nationalist cause (e.g secession, independence, self-determination, or joining another country where they will be the majority.) Whether their cause is just or not, these groups usually operate illegally, and the government calls them “terrorists” and “traitors” while they claim to be “freedom fighters” or “liberation movements”. They tend not to organize a regular army, but to use guerilla tactics. They do not wear uniforms or try to win pitched battles; instead they ambush or blow something up and then disappear again.
So how do we figure out which of these groups are terrorists, and which are guerillas? “The ones the U.S. says are terrorists” or “the Arab/Muslim ones” are not satisfactory answers. “The ones whose cause is just” also doesn’t cut it for me. This is from a post of mine on a Tacitus thread a few months ago:
[In defining terrorism,] we have to separate the means from the ends. We want to convince people that the means are illegitimate and immoral even if you agree with the ends. The entire Muslim world believes that the PLO/PA’s ends are legitimate and we will never convince them otherwise. The hope is that people can be convinced that however much Palestinians deserve independence, it does not justify murdering Israeli teenagers in shopping malls.
This morning, one of my professors argued that you can draw a line between nationalist terrorist groups and nationalist guerillas, based on the tactics they use. I’d thought of the obvious distinctions–deliberately targetting civilians, reliance on inspiring fear–but others were new to me, and I found them pretty convincing.
I’m going to be lazy and just transcribe/translate my notes:
“It’s hard to draw the line but she maintains (and I agree) that it exists. They don’t follow the laws of war, including the laws that some guerillas do follow (they both break the law about wearing uniforms). Netanyahu: a guerilla is an irregular fighting a regular army; terrorists are irregulars fighting civilians. Terrorists will sometimes deliberately expose their own ethnic group to government retaliation. Less likely to follow the Geneva convention. By and large not interested in control over territory in the same way (guerillas often only interested in partial or temporary control, but still more interested than terrorists–who rely more on publicity & emotional effect of their actions.)”
How about: less interested in tactical success than publicity?
Note that I’m not saying that justice of the cause doesn’t matter, just that whether your ends are legitimate and whether your means are legitimate are two separate questions.
Simpler: the terrorists are the ones who lose.
Katherine,
Katherine, I’m with you. IRA under Michael Collins? Guerillas. They went after uniformed or undercover agents of the government. IRA under Martin MacGuinnes/Gerry Adams? Terrorists. They went after civilians.
The harder question is can regular armies committ acts of terrorism during wartime. Was Hiroshima terrorism, war, or somewhere in between (if that exists)?
I’ll offer a qualification of Slarti‘s good point. Guerillas/separatists/freedom fighters/whatever want to achieve certain goals – small, definable ones – outright. Terrorists are less interested in small, definable goals, and more willing to accept practical setbacks in the interest of radicalizing the population and winning adherents to the abstract purpose. Guerillas want to set the terms of the debate, and force the two sides into an agreement; terrorists have an interest in inciting emnity between two sides.
That, I think, serves an explanation of Katherine‘s note that
Terrorists will sometimes deliberately expose their own ethnic group to government retaliation.
Reprisals aren’t a side effect of terrorism, they are an implicit intention.
Terrorists will sometimes deliberately expose their own ethnic group to government retaliation.
It is important, here, to distinguish deliberate attempts by the Insurgency to provoke reprisals, and reprisals which are a matter of policy in the Power. (I’m using Insurgency and Power as relatively value-neutral terms to refer to groups as-yet undistilled into terrorist/guerilla labels)
Both occur in Israel: Palestinian groups who do not believe in an equitable solution routinely try to provoke Israeli forces into overreactions that will derail it. By the same token, the hard-liners in the Israeli government and military demonstrate a clear policy of reprisals against the families and communities of those involved in attacks, whether or not they have anything to do with them.
In Iraq, it can be argued that until this winter the majority of the problems were with American heavy-handedness. While this problem has gotten worse over time, so has the incidence of Insurgents attacking softer civilian targets: dipping into the realms of terrorism.
I believe it’s also important to recognize when a terrorist group has legitimate grievances that must be addressed /despite/ their use of illegitimate tactics. No one who approaches the subject objectively will deny that the Israel/Palestine issue must be resolved in an equitable manner which results in a safe, secure state for both peoples. But just as the excesses and war crimes committed by the Israeli military do not mean Israelis don’t have a right to their own safety, security, and defense, so too should the terrorist tactics used by many Palestinian groups not be used to deny that their /basic grievances/ are legitimate.
This is one of the nuances that is often overlooked in this kind of debate: it’s well and good to say that a particular Insurgency is a terrorist group, or that a particular Power is committing crimes in its attempts to put down an Insurgency, but the labels we attach to a group’s tactics and the legitimacy or illegitimacy thereof should not be confused with the need to address or discern the validity of the root causes of their need to use those tactics.
Reprisals aren’t a side effect of terrorism, they are an implicit intention.
Seth’s right here. There are a few academic articles looking at terror and the action-reaction cycle (oh for a JSTOR connection right now), and besides the general goal of putting fear into civilians and governments, what terrorists often want is to have their constituent groups “victimized” by the governmental response to terrorist acts so that the terrorists can recruit and mobilize additional volunteers.
Now, I can think of a few terror incidents where promoting action/reaction cycles wasn’t the case. For instance, the LTTE didn’t assassinate Rajiv Gandhi with hopes that the Indians would strike back at Tamils and help the Tigers recruit more members: they just wanted to punish what they saw as a betrayal of their interests. (Ironically, killing Gandhi cost the Tigers a lot of their support in Tamilnadu, so it might not have been worth it.)
To go to Katherine’s main point, you’ve probably run into this line of commentary already, but it’s probably more useful conceptually to think of “terrorism” less as an occupation and more as an activity. “One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter” suggests that these are occupations whose exact nature is subjective based on the viewer: this is a false dichotomy.
Consider the FARC. It’s primarily a guerilla group, and it fights regular military battles against the paramilitaries and Colombian army. But the group also commits regular acts of terror against civilians for profit and political control. So while they might generically be “freedom fighters” in some people’s typologies, FARC is nonetheless guilty of terror. The false dichotomy of “freedom fighter vs. terrorist” would seem to obscure this fact.
Freedom fighters have a broad base of support in the population they claim to be representing ( IRA, ETA, the Chechens, the Kurds in Turkey, the Tamil Tigers, the Iraqis) as opposed to terrorist which don’t have a broad base of support in the population( the Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhof gang).
Don Quijote, the prof noted exactly that distinction but noted it as a difference between different types of terrorism (nationalist terrorism v. social revolutionary terrorism. Nationalist terrorism is what it sounds like–and where it’s hardest to separate the terrorist from the guerilla. By social revolutionary terrorism she meant groups like the Red Brigades and Baader-Meinhof, and she described it in Marxist terms (but distinguished it from Maoist terrorism) but when I asked what kind of terrorist Timothy McVeigh was, she said “Sort of a lone wolf, so it’s hard to fit him on the chart, but “right wing social revolutionary” probably comes closest.)
She also went on a long digression about why the American left barely existed compared to Europe and the rest of the world, and how crazy it was for a British person to hear other Democrats attacking Howard Dean as too far left–but I couldn’t figure out how to blog about that without making it a “woe is us” sort of post.
George Washington was certainly considered both a traitor, and a terrorist, by the British, at the time. After all, they did target some Loyalists (Tories), who were most definitely civilians, and they certainly didn’t follow the European Rules Of War, as they were understood at the time.
Just saying.
Seth: good. As usual, much more thoughtful than the casual tripe I normally lay out.
Catsy: you make a distinction where none is really important. If the object of terrorist attacks has no policy of reprisal, it’d be sheer idiocy to attack in order to provoke one, don’t you think? Now, where Israel has made some enemies is in the nature of the reprisals. I’d submit that the reprisals do much to forward the ends of the Palestinians, by keeping the population in a state of outrage. I’m not sure what Israel could do to get out of this Chinese finger-trap, other than to enforce strict separation. This would spell doom for the Palestinians, though.
Just to be the irritating geek of the thread: the title cliche “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” doesn’t imply its converse, that is, that “One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.” It is properly rendered as a conditional statement, not a biconditional (“If one man believes X to be a terrorist, then another man will believe X to be a freedom fighter,” as opposed to “One man will believe X to be a terrorist if and only if X is a freedom fighter”), and thus, it is not true that the statement, if assumed true, implies that Mohandas Gandhi and George Washington are terrorists.
I did realize that, remembering dimly the contrapositive, inverse and converse in 8th grade math. But I think most people do not think it through in those terms.
2) An example, for many people, of everything that is wrong with The Left.
It’s also an astounding example of double-think: for me, it’s an example of everything that is wrong with The Right.
When Reagan funded terrorists he called them freedom-fighters – al-Qaeda and the rest of mojaheddin in Afghanistan, the contras in Nicaragua.
It’s a political tongue-twister, effectively: when the USG wants to fund terrorists, they will call them freedom fighters. (And so will any other government.) When they want to crush freedom fighters, they will call them terrorists. It is not a Right or a Left thing – it’s doublespeak, which as Orwell pointed out, is something that all people in power are guilty of.
The accusation that only the Left do it is typical of the Right in the US – they don’t like to think about the times their side has done the same thing.
Did the British consider George Washington a terrorist, or a freedom fighter?
Bin Laden and Co. are fighting for their freedom from American imperialism of THEIR lands. America started this war, NOT Bin Laden. America was starving, bombing, and killing Iraqi’s BEFORE 9/11.
Madeline Albright said the dead Iraqi children didn’t matter. 9/11 was BLOWBACK for what WE began.
Wake up Narcissistic America!
“Terrorism is the war of the poor.”
“War is the terrorism of the rich.”
Did the British consider George Washington a terrorist, or a freedom fighter?
We considered him neither. We considered him a rebel.
Furthermore the term ‘terrorist’ isn’t documented until a decade after the war of independence; and had a different usage to the modern one.
How can you make that comparison? I don’t have the words. George Washington did not murder 3,000 Londoners. He did not target civilians at all.
The word “terrorism” is sometimes misused against ordinary guerillas, whose cause might be just or unjust, but who restrict their attacks to military targets. But it applies perfectly to Bin Laden who is not, by the way, Palestinian, nor is he Iraqi. He objected to American troops in Saudi Arabia but they were there at the Saudi government’s invitation to protect them from Saddam Hussein.
He has explicitly stated that he wants to kill at least 4 million Americans and at least 1 million children. That’s genocide. He would also like to establish Islamic theocracy, where women have no rights at all, in as many countries as possible.
I can’t believe I’m even making these arguments. In some ways I don’t want to, because I cannot possibly put them in strong enough terms. I’m liberal, opposed the Iraq war, etc. etc., went to an antiwar rally, am friends with people more liberal than me–but you are the first I’ve encountered to defend Osama bin Laden.
ask Chief Cornplanter of the Senecas back in 1779 if George Washington was a terrorist or mearly fighting for his freedom, (reffering to President Washington) “When your army entered the country of the Six Nations, we called you The Town Destroyer; and to this day, when that name is heard, our women look behind them and turn pale, and our children cling close to the necks of their mothers.”
Hey, I’m just a senior highschool student who came across this site while I was doing an essay about terrorism.
I think you are taking this a bit too literally – the statement “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” does not mean that all terrorists are freedom fighters, vice versa, nor does it sanction terrorism in any way. It is rather a general statement that refelcts the truth that many terrorists arise from peoples who have genuine grievances which are either ignored or afflicted by their governments (or by other oppressing governents). The frustration of being unable to address these problems, due to a lack of any accessible political channel and the indifference of the international community, is what makes many people to turn to terrorism in the first place. In other words what I’m saying is, terrorism might seem extreme, but that is because it is often a last resort for such people. There is certainly a huge number of exceptions, particularly in the last few decades, but in many cases – and I think this is what the statement represents – terrorism occurs because there are people who are suffering, unrepresented, and because of their dire conditions desperate enough to commmit their atrocities. Just another perspective.
marguerite: He did not target civilians at all.
“In 1778, General George Washington sent the Continental Army, under the direction of General John Sullivan, to march through the area to restore peace. The company of 2,500 men marched from Easton through the Susquehanna Valley into New York State, reportedly destroying every Indian Village, sanctuary and means of livelihood they encountered.” cite
The unrelenting cruelties of the Duke of Cumberland spared neither age, sex, nor condition, and Scotland for a while realized the prophecy of Peden which foretold that the time was nigh when our people might ride fifty miles among the hills and valleys, and no’ find a reekin’ hoose nor hear a-crowing a cock. cite (or, more historically, cite)
Historically speaking, if you win, the history books will not record what you did as terrorism.
in response to ‘mithras’s post that “terrosrists are the ones who loose” … you obviously do not have a clue what you are talking about because if you did you would know that the FLN (an islamic extremist group) took over Algeria in the 60’s (france used to rule it) they were a small ‘terrorist’ group, and have been in power ever since they defeated the french authorities. so ha ha you are wrong go read up on the topic before you add mindless unjustificated posts for us clever people to waste their time reading.
listen man, terrorist is defined as ” trying to influence some ones political opinion using force”, so george bush is u sing force in iraq, afganistan, and palestine, so he is a terorrist. saddam hussien used force to change political opinions, and osama binladin also used force ….. so, they are all terrorists.
hey this iz right..i m on this.u really rock ans so does ur writing.there r some things missing which i too dont know but i think u understand it better then me.
terrorist:a person giving harms to others.. they think they are in their view but they are not in the others.. a freedom fighter too is good for its people but may not be for the others..
this is all what i know and thanks for ur writing…
actually i am a mba student,and my teacher gave me a debate topic”one man’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist”so if you can help me out with this topic.please send me the best about it if you can?i shall be very thankful to you.byeeeeeee have a nice day
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