What good is terrorism?
What good is terrorism? What is its purpose?
Terrorism is defined by the US Department of Defense as “the unlawful use of — or threatened use of — force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives.”
This brings two questions to my mind: What makes some violence lawful and some unlawful? and when has terrorism been successfully used to achieve political, religious or ideological goals?
Were the Jewish attacks on the British in Palestine unlawful? Are the attacks on US troops in Iraq unlawful? Are Palestinian attacks on their Israeli conquerors unlawful? Who says? Who makes these “laws”? For Bush and the Israelis anyone who fights them back is considered to be engaging in unlawful violence. It’s not lawful to fight your masters or your country’s invaders. Or so they claim.
What are some examples any group achieving their goals through terrorism?
I can only think of a few. Maybe I just don’t know enough history, especially the history of terrorism. If we consider the actions of the colonists in the Revolutionary War as terrorism then those attacks accomplished something. Certainly the British considered our resistance to our legitimate king as unlawful. It was only our winning that kept them from treating us as Bush or Israel treats those who resist them.
Some definitions of terrorism include assassinations, even assassinations targeted at tyrants and torturers. The anarchists of a hundred years ago engaged in a program of tyrannicide. They targeted the bad guys all across Europe. They seemed to have been less interested in intimidating governments, achieving some political goal or even rallying the people than just taking vengeance on powerful murderers. The anarchist assassins are one reason there are no absolute monarchs in Europe today. They made that role so unhealthy that now Europe’s Kings and Queens are constitutional symbols who rule nothing and spend their lives pretending to be sweetie pies. That is progress. And for that we can thank the anarchists.
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=03/12/03/6357622&query=Mike%2BDavis
I wouldn’t call the anarchist assassins terrorists. They went straight for the powerful. They tried to avoid collateral damage. Because we, we the people, we are always the collateral damage. The upper classes don’t count us but the anarchists did. They understood that the people were their constituency, not their enemy.
Even in the US the anarchists did some good. When McKinley was taken out we got Theodore Roosevelt, a progressive who made America a better place. The plutocracy would never have allowed Teddy Roosevelt to be president. He was only appointed the vice-presidential nominee to get him out of New York politics and into a powerless position. I’m not aware of any evidence that when the anarchist Czolgoscz killed McKinley that he was seeking anything more than revenge for the massacre of nineteen Slavic miners, no evidence he meant to put a better man in office. But the outcome was good for the nation or at least for most people in it.
At what point did the attacks on power become attacks on the innocent and powerless. That makes no sense. Such attacks could never rally the innocent to any cause. In fact it tends to make them support their oppressors..which may be the point. If those that claimed to be fighting for the people attacked those in power, perhaps those in power responded by blind attacks on the people, attacks that served the additional function of turning the people against those who fought for them. Perhaps those in power used fake terrorist attacks to wage secret war on their own people.
I believe terrorism became widespread in World War II when civilian populations were bombed in an attempt to break their will and turn them against the war or their leaders. The purpose of civilian bombings was to “coerce or intimidate governments or societies.” Their goal was primarily psychological. Surely such bombing is both terrorism and a war crime. And it didn’t work. Bombing a civilian population only convinces them that the enemy they are fighting is even worse than the tyrant at home.
Now terrorists bomb civilians. Or so we are told. But who are these bombers? They usually seem to end up dead so can never be questioned about their purposes. They lack any obvious political goal which makes it possible for someone like Bush to claim “They hate our freedom.”
The Palestinians bombers seem to be after vengeance for Israel’s tyranny. At least there is a de facto state of war between Israel and the Palestinians. That gives those bombings some rationale, at least as much as the civilian bombings of WWII. In Iraq invasion by a foreign power justifies resistance to the invaders and their collaborators.
But why did Timothy McVeigh bomb the Murrah Building? What was the purpose of the hijackers on 911 (If you believe the government account of that day)? How did killing innocents accomplish anything but stirring up the US to attack the hijacker’s putative supporters? Could that have been their real purpose of the attacks?
Let’s examine an two sides of the same coin.
Agent provocateur: An agent provocateur is an agent whose duty is to make sure suspected individual(s) carry out a crime to guarantee their punishment; or who suggests the commission of a crime to another, in hopes they will go along with the suggestion, so they may be convicted of the crime the provocateur suggested.
The Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group, (P2OG), brings together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception. Among other things, this body launches secret operations aimed at “stimulating reactions” among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction — that is, for instance, prodding terrorist cells into action and exposing themselves to “quick-response” attacks by U.S. forces.
This was from a Los Angeles Times articles reprinted at http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1028-11.htm
So the US government has a “group” whose main purpose is to get terrorists and states to attack innocents, so they can be attacked by US forces. That makes me wonder if any “terrorist attack” is legitimate.
I am reminded of the leftist bombings of the 1960s. There weren’t very many of them and the bombers tried to avoid any casualties but they did happen. Those bombings, according to their perpetrators, had two purposes: 1) To pressure weapons manufacturers and researchers to get out of the business and 2) To stimulate the government to institute police state measures that would turn the populace against them and cause the people to, eventually, rise in revolution.
Hmmm.
Well, the attacks of 911 have been used to justify turning the US into a police state. The only group they benefited is the Bush administration. The attacks allowed the Bush Junta to justify the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the theft of their resources, which, according to the Project for a New American Century, is exactly what the Neo-Cons wanted, a new Pearl Harbor to rally the people behind wars of conquest.
I don’t define terrorism as broadly as does Mike Davis. I would exclude the anarchist assassins and define terrorism as “the use of force or violence against innocent individuals or their property to coerce or intimidate them in order to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives though these objectives my be hidden and the attacks falsely attributed.” I think terrorism only has two purposes. Vengeance/Justice (in the case of real terrorism) and to rally support for those who “appear” to fight against it (in the case of false flag terrorism).
Vengeance is not to be sniffed at. When the Allied Powers bombed civilians in WWII they were taking vengeance for their own casualties. When the anarchists went after tyrants vengeance was sometimes their only goal. When the anarchists took out the czar nothing changed because the whole system was so corrupt that eliminating one man, or a thousand, could not change it. Only revolution could reform it. So the assassins aimed at vengeance, that being all they could accomplish. Vengeance. Vendetta. Vigilante. They were seeking justice in a system that was unjust to the core. Since they could not bring the tyrants before a court of law, try them for their crimes before a judge and jury, they sentenced and executed them ex judicia just as Bush often sentences to death those who oppose him. However, when the innocent are targeted, that is either mindless, counterproductive vengeance, something provoked by those in power or done by them under a false flag.
I don’t think any progressive movement can realize its goals through terrorism. Just the opposite. Terrorism strengthens the hands of those in power. Terrorism, real or feigned, allows tyrants like Hitler and George W. Bush to justify greater repression in the name of security. That’s not to say that when progressives, those struggling for positive change, are met with violence by those in power, that they have no right to fight back. They do. But never to kill innocents in that struggle. Leave the killing of innocents to tyrants and the mad.
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© Alllie 2006
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