Terrorism is neither an ideology nor a political program or project but a tactic, observes Robert V. Keeley, former U.S. ambassador to Mauritius, Zimbabwe, and Greece, writing in Middle East Policy (Mar. 2002). “Terrorism is the indiscriminate use of violence against—generally the killing of—civilian non-combatants in pursuit of a political aim.” But by that definition, he notes, it would include, for example, the mass bombing of cities by both sides during World War II. Were the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki instances of terrorism? The question sparks heated debate.
[…]Betts himself finesses the difficulty by defining terrorism as “the illegitimate, deliberate killing of civilians for purposes of punishment or coercion,” thus leaving open the possibility that such killing may sometimes be legitimate.
Definitional problems aside, terrorism does have a history, etymological and bloody. The word was coined during France´s Reign of Terror of 1793-94. “Originally, the leaders of this systematized attempt to weed out ‘traitors’ among the revolutionary ranks praised terror as the best way to defend liberty, but as the French Revolution soured, the word soon took on grim echoes of state violence and guillotines.”
“Whenever writers on the left say that the ‘root cause’ of terror is global inequality or human poverty, the assertion is in fact a denial that religious motives really count.” Minimizing the importance of Islamic radicalism, many have simply assumed that “any group that attacks the imperial power must be a representative of the oppressed, and its agenda must be the agenda of the Left.” – Michael Walzer
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, International, Terrorism
