That's what I'd like to ask George W. Bush, his Defense Secretary, or any of the generals running the war in Iraq. It seems their definition of terrorist is anyone opposing American military force.
The insurgents in Falujah have been so labeled, in addition to being called "Saddam loyalists" and "Baathist remnants". On the other hand, they're never called Iraqi nationalists, which just may be a more accurate description, even acknowledging the fact that Iraq only became a "nation" after the British decreed it one following World War I. Nationhood, a thoroughly Western notion, is an awkward fit for the polyglot ethnic, tribal, and religious reality of Iraq.
So who are the terrorists?
Of course, I believe that the use of overwhelming military force to bludgeon an opponent into submission is an act of terrorism. Remember "shock and awe"? That was clearly, and admittedly, a strategy to terrify the Iraqi people and to shorten the war. Over a year later, we still have a war on our hands, so maybe it wasn't such a good strategy.
A better way to define terrorism is to view it as a tactic by the weak to resist, or, in this case, to fight, the powerful, sort of like the geurrilla warfare used by the Americans against the British in the War of Independence, of by the Viet Cong against the Americans, both of which worked.
I don't condone killing of any sort, but to put the issue in perspective, far more Iraqis, terrorists or not, have been killed and maimed by American military might than the other way around.
So who are the terrorists?
George W. Bush believes terrorists are the evildoers arrayed against the forces of good.
Pat Robertson (or maybe it was Jerry Falwell) said that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was a terrorist.
Rod Paige, the Secretary of Education, says that teachers, at least those affiliated with the National Education Association, are terrorists.
Anti-abortion fanatics claim that the women marching for choice in Washington are terrorists.
And environmentalists who destroy property (but haven't as yet killed anyone) are terrorists, as in eco-terrorists.
Whatever the definition, the term is widely overused. The so-called "war on terrorism" needs to be re-thought and re-phrased. As I said in my March 15 post in Joe's School:
"Despite the mounting casualties (that includes the 200 dead in Spain), U.S. strategy remains stubbornly the same: hunt down and kill all the terrorists in the world. That approach is about as likely to succeed, it seems to me, as the war on drugs."
In short, there is no military solution to the problem of terrorism, no matter how one defines it.
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Posted by: Juno Mindoes | December 21, 2010 at 11:39 PM