Week 12 A war on terror?

Week 12 Today: the war on terrorismWhat is terrorism?Who are the terrorists?

Why talk of a war on terrorism in a course on old wars and new ones?Terrorism is notoriously difficult to define, e.g.,the difference between fighting for freedom and being oppressive; yet both can be examples of terrorism; indeed, there are 100 different definitions of terrorism; this said, all involve . the deliberate use of fear as a tactic (e.g. by crippling or killing innocent people) . to a political purpose, i.e., .. to frighten people for a specific politico- strategic, politico-economic, politico-civic, politico-cultural or politico-spiritual end Defined in this way, terrorism is a deliberate tactic of 1.terrorists who wage war using terror (this is the stereotypic image) 2. state leaders who wage war on terror[ists] (n.b. the difference between this and a war on terror) 3. pacifists who oppose war and terrorism (by equating the two) 4terrorists who wage war using terror

state leaders who wage war on terror[ists]

pacifists who oppose war and terrorism

Robert Goodin (in Whats Wrong with Terrorism [2006]) highlights how terrorism can be both . deflationary - not as bad as analysts believe, and . expansionary - there are more terrorists than is generally thought (n.b. Western political leaders mounting wars against terrorism being potentially among them)He does not include pacifists but they are moremetaphorical as terrorists than the other 2 groups [terrorism is] not as bad as analysts believe

[however] there are more terrorists than is generally thought

Goodin looks at terrorism in terms of the killingof innocent civilians; he quotes Michael WalzersJust and Unjust Wars in this regard . Walzer says that: Terrorism is the deliberate killing of innocent people, at random, in order to spread fear through a whole population and force the hand of its leaders (my emphasis) . also: The victims are third parties there is no special reason for attacking them (end?) The attack is directed indiscriminately (?)So: the deliberate use of fear as a tactic, i.e., trying to intimidate people (for a political purpose), is the distinctive wrong that terrorists commit (c.f. Mafia who use fear as a tactic to a commercial end) . the problem is not only the crippling or killing of innocents, however; it is (quoting Walzer again) .. the intrusion of fear into everyday life .. the violation of private purposes .. the insecurity of public spaces, and .. the endless coerciveness of precaution

the endless coerciveness of precaution

The definition in the US Code is similar, i.e., pre-meditated politically motivated violence [fear asa tactic to a political end] perpetrated against non-combatants [innocents] targeted by sub-national groups or clandestine agents [non-state entities, i.e. terrorists], usually intended to influence an audience [to a political end again] . the US State Department and the CIA both use this definition in their official statements and their activities

The US Armys Field Manual has the same: . In contrast [to terrorism], war is subject to international law. Terrorists[, however,] recognize no [such] rules. No person, place or object of value is immune from terrorist attack. There are no innocents (my emphasis) . c.f. George W. Bush after 9/11: terrorists [seek to] kill all Americans [making] no distinction among military and civilians

[And Bush himself?]

Even the famous U.S. radical, Noam Chomsky, sees terrorism like this: [t]here is no doubt, he says,that the 9-11 atrocities were an event of historic importance, not - regrettably - because of their scale, but because of the choice of innocent victims [n.b. my emphasis] . all these writings agree that the 9/11 attackers were fighting dirty .. by killing civilians [innocents], and .. by ignoring the norms of civilized conduct written down in the laws of war

fighting dirty

N.b. the dirtiest fighting would be the use of nuclear weapons or radioactive material . with the end of the Cold War, control over the Soviet Unions nuclear stockpiles was lost . getting nuclear weapons/material became easier . nuclear weapons are still the least likely way a terrorist group could threaten people, though the danger is greater than it used to be (c.f. states) . nuclear radiation poisoning is more likely today, though this is not a high risk to all of humankind

getting nuclear weapons became easier

Even the UN highlights innocents, e.g., in the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (1999) terrorism is . Any act intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a civilian, or to any other person not taking an active part (my emphasis) in [an] armed conflict, when the purpose of such an act is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act (my emphasis; n.b. state and non-state actors) The definition by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime puts it most concisely highlighting war crimes, e.g. the use of prisoners as weapons, as well as crimes against humanity, torture and genocide all of which involve innocents:

Act of Terrorism = Peacetime Equivalent of War Crime

Despite the popularity of highlighting those not involved, there are three problems with doing so: 1. how is killing innocents different from murder, since murder victims are innocent too? . Gooding says terrorists do commit murder, but doing so for terrorist ends is morally worse . do you agree?

2. there are also different kinds of innocence, that is, not all civilians are completely so, e.g., workers in a weapons factory, although civilians, are not innocent; they are likely to become targets as a consequence, n.b., the 9/11 attacks were on command centers of the US military-industrial complex (the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre) and justifiably so in the view of the attackers

3. the killing innocent civilians approach is essentially a framework for controlling state- on-state violence. In trying to [fit] terrorism into that framework, we treat terrorist groups as if they were states and as if they were waging war [Now: when] terrorism is part of a guerrilla war or a struggle for national liberation [this works T]he terrorist group [is] a government in waiting In other cases the terrorist group is not a quasi-state [one]. Also: innocent civilians suggests there are non-innocent non-civilians . indeed, in every society there are non- civilians, e.g., soldiers and police, who are innocent in terms of terrorists complaints; i.e. they may be powerless to do anything to effect the change terrorists want . to see them as non-innocent, however, and legitimate targets for attack, e.g. random cop- killing, becomes problematic

innocent civilians [r]andom cop-killing

As to defining it: what sort of ism is terrorism? Is it an ideology (like communism) or is it apsycho-pathology (like sadism) . as a psychopathology it is usually seen as mind-work that is perverted, distorted, irrational, shameless, remorseless or callous . as an ideology, it is usually seen as .. pragmatic in its use of violence, and .. philosophic (political) in terms of what those using the deliberate fear tactics want

psychopathology ideologyRe the latter, i.e., what terrorists want, Goodin says: different things in different cases . some are nationalists - they want self- determination (e.g., the Basques of Spain, the Palestinians, the Northern Irish, the Islamist separatists of northern Nigeria) . some are marxists - they want the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism (e.g., the German Red Army) . some are anarchists - they want radical nihilism instead of government

These are non-state groups who all deliberately use fear tactics to try to make state leaders accept their specific demands; they intimidate and coerce andthey do so as the means to particular politico-strategic - even politico-spiritual - ends . this said, they often fail, e.g., the terrorist attacks by the Irish Republican Army (the IRA); these had no success at all in cowing the British public43 (the IRA) completely failed to intimidate the British public

Terrorists do always have a political purpose

however, i.e., they are not street gangs or criminals,who often use terror (stand-over tactics) but are not terrorists . this purpose may be vague and imprecise .. e.g. smash the system . though it is usually more specific .. e.g. Brits out; force the oppressors to show their true face . even nihilist terrorists do not want nothing .. e.g. they may want a more free community

smash the system [London riots 2011]

smash the system

smash the system

... even nihilists

even nihilists

even nihilists

Goodin notes that today there is a new kind of terrorism which is about identity . he also notes a relationship between terrorist violence and alienation induced rage .. in both Rwanda and Somalia crises occurred because of such rage; the result was terrorist violence, i.e., ethnicide .. in both cases, the deliberate use of fear tactics to a political purpose was intense Rwanda and Somalia

Goodin also cites Habermas, who says that the global terror that culminated in the September 11 attack bears the anarchistic traits of an impotent revolt directed against an enemy that cannot be defeated in any pragmatic sense Global terrorism is extreme in its lack of realistic goals (my emphasis) . do you agree?Osama bin Ladens purpose was politico-strategic, i.e., to get the U.S. out of Saudi Arabia; hence hisDeclaration of War (1996) and its account of . U.S. policy since the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and . the corruption and un-Islamic practices of the Saudi state Bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in Pakistan in 1988/9during the war with the Soviets in Afghanistan;when the Soviets left he returned to Saudi ArabiaIraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 which put Saudi Arabia at risk; Bin Laden offered to help but KingFahd accepted that of the U.S. instead; this meant U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia which Bin Laden saw assacrilege; the Saudis eventually banished him and he moved to the Sudan; an attempt to assassinate thepresident of Egypt led Sudan in turn to expel him;he then went to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan where he trained an elite part of the army and calledfor global jihad despite having no authority to do so

... global jihad

Al-Qaeda has a number of aims; they include . provoking the U.S. in particular, and the West in general, into invading a Muslim country, by attacking the U.S. and causing large numbers of civilian deaths and injuries . encouraging local resistance to occupying forces . waging a war of attrition on the U.S. and its allies . creating an ideology it can spread world-wide . causing the U.S. and global economies to collapse

a number of aims [e.g.] creating an ideology [Anwar al-Awlaki]

In December 1998 the Director of the CIAsCounterterrorist Center told the President that al-Qaeda was planning to attack the U.S. andtraining aircraft high-jackers to do so; in Sept. 2001,four planes were hijacked and crashed into sites of symbolic U.S. significance - 2,977 people died . on May 2, 2011, bin Laden himself was killed by U.S. Navy Seals in Abbottabad, Pakistan . on Sept. 30, 2011, Anwar al-Awlaki, the bin Laden of the Internet, was also killed in a CIA drone strike in Yemen Sept. 2001

on May 2, 2011, bin Laden was killed

on Sept. 30, 2011, al-Awlaki was killed

Is terrorism by spiritual extremists different from the secular kind because of the radical difference in the political purpose they promote? . Analysts see the rise in the number of radical religious movements as representing a move towards transcendental ends and away from secular ones - like national freedom, e.g., .. Aum Shinrikyo is a millenarian group that used deliberate fear tactics to show that the end of the world was near Aum Shinrikyo [Shoko Asahara]

This said, even Aum was organized like a state; e.g., . it had a bureaucratic structure (a Minister of Education and a Minister of Health and Human Services), and . its idea of the end of the world had a politico- strategic dimension; e.g., .. Aum taught that we live in a time when the forces of evil will destroy themselves in a war and only the faithful will survive; this sent a clear realpolitik message, albeit one couched in spiritual terms

Now: it was noted at the start that state leaders can be terrorists too; leaders say terrorists are thosewho wage war on the civilized world without anylegitimate reason for doing so, but their logic is circular since it says .. only states are legitimate, therefore .. only state leaders have the authority to wage war, therefore .. non-state groups do not, which means .. violent acts by state leaders cannot - by definition - be terrorist ones the logic is circular

C.f. the Dictionnaire of the Academie Francaise (1796) where terrorism was first defined; this says:[t]errorism has been used by political organizations with both rightist and leftist objectives, by nationalistic and ethnic groups, by revolutionaries and by the armies and secret police of governments themselves (my italics) . as Goodin says: Of course the state can engage in terrorism both against its own people and against other states ; indeed, it has done so with depressing frequency for years

To make his case Goodin argues that weak states, or warlords in failed states [who want to be]

quasi-states, often attempt to achieve by terror whatthey cannot [achieve] otherwise . he adds: the stronger the state the stronger the temptation to rule using terrorist means; this was the case with the tyrants of antiquity; it was so in the 20th c. as well, e.g., with the bombings of London, Tokyo and Dresden in WWII and the generalized terror this involved warlords in failed states [in this case Afghanistan]

the bombings, in WW2, of London, Tokyo, Dresden

These bombings, as Goodin says, were of no military value. The aim was to demoralize enemy non-combatants, that is, to kill civilians in suchlarge numbers that their government[s] [would be] forced to surrender (they were terrorist tactics) . the same applied to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; both cities were of no material assistance in [the] war against Japan, i.e., there was nothing the people in them could have done to meet the demands of the Americans and the British (terrorism again)Perhaps all war is terrorism, therefore, since all war deliberately creates fear for political purposes . pacifists say yes; though they also say some wars are worse than others (a war that kills millions is worse, they would say, than one that kills hundreds - though both are morally wrong) . non-pacifists say no; they see a difference between military and political ends (e.g. the deliberate use of fear or terror to win battles as opposed to to its use to erode the will of the people)State leaders have the ability to terrorize people in other states with just the threat of war . the most famous example of this is the balance- of-terror as represented by the MAD doctrine . the aim of this doctrine is to have a stock of nuclear weapons big enough and secure enough to .. survive if the enemy hits first, and .. hit back hard enough to completely destroy the enemy with what one has leftHere each state concerned terrorizes the other the balance-of- terror [versus a first-strike policy]

The US Code, for example, wants us to think that while state representatives can do many wrongs that may look like terrorism they cannot be terrorism since (as with pirates) officials are not private individuals, i.e., they act with state authority, however . just because politicians have a mutual-protection pact not to treat each other as terrorists, does not (Goodin says) change the fact that: If what they do is done by non-state actors [then [what politicians do like this is] equally wrong (my emphasis)

N.b. how, unlike the CIA, for example, the FBI does not use a definition of terrorism that explicitlyexempts state leaders and officials . it does do so implicitly, though, e.g., it highlights how the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombing says what states (and state leaders) might do is not covered by the ConventionInternational Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombing [ratified 24 Sept., 2003]

State representatives, in other words, can and do carry out terrorist acts against other states, e.g., . hijacking airplanes .. in 1973 Israeli jets forced an aircraft to land they believed had members of the PLO in it . kidnapping .. in 1973 Sth Korean secret agents kidnapped the head of the Korean opposition in Tokyo . politically motivated murder .. in 1985 there was the Rainbow Warrior affair . even war the Rainbow Warrior affair

even war

States terrorize their own people too; the termterror has its origins in the Reign of Terroragainst the French people by the Jacobins who tookover after the French Revolution (1789) . the revolutions Convention passed a Law of Suspects (1793) that allowed it to arrest those seen as partisans of tyranny and enemies of liberty . over 2 years, 200,000 citizens were detained; 10,000 died without trial; 17,000 were killed the Reign of Terror

Contemporary regimes of terror - Stalins Russia, Pol Pots Cambodia, Maos China - have all been examples of authoritarian and totalitarian governments deliberately using fear to intimidate citizens to stop the spread of political opposition . in the Soviet Union, 7 to 15 million people were sent to forced-labor campus . 20 million died in these camps plus the results of forced collectivization and famines . 20 million more were imprisoned or exiled - domestically or overseas forced-labor camps [the gulags]

. in Cambodia, from 1975 to 1979, Pol Pots Khmer Rouge killed - using forced labor, starvation, disease, torture and execution - between 1 to 3 million Cambodians (out of 8 million, i.e., 25%); this campaign was directed against the professional and technical elites, e.g. .. city dwellers were forced to relocate to the countryside to work on collective farms and other projects 90 Pol Pots Khmer Rouge

. in the Peoples Republic of China, from 1958 to 1961, Mao Zedong tried to change the country from a pre-communist to an advanced communist one using rapid industrialization and rural collectivization .. the plan was for a Great Leap Forward .. the result was widespread famine, however .. this was followed by the Cultural Revolution .. coercion, violence and terror led to one of the most deadly mass killings in human history (estimates vary from 18 to 45 million) a Great Leap Forward

So: why talk about terrorism in a course on old wars and new wars? Though terror as a tacticis as old as organized government, the creation of the contemporary state system changed why it isused and by whom . on the one hand it is used now by groups within or across states that want sovereign autonomy .. as such it is a form of asymmetric warfare .. it occurs when conventional war does not work because of the difference in power

groups that want sovereign autonomy [n.b. 7000 ethnies/200 states]

This is a new kind of war that does not rely on battles and armies; it may also involve non-secularambitions, e.g., the creation of a Muslim ummah . its funding may be unconventional too, e.g., it may involve a mix of .. state sponsors .. private individuals .. criminal activities (like opium or cocaine production and trafficking) .. kidnapping for ransom (Abe and IS), and/or .. smuggling On the other hand, by declaring a war on terror,states like the U.S. say they will use old war tacticsto keep themselves as safe as they can from attacks by terrorists (while creating fear that justifies force) . n.b., it may be impossible to counter all risk in this regard and creating fear can backfire; this does not stop governments trying to do so though . hence they hunt the leaders of groups that have said they are opposed to them, or committed acts of aggression against them, and . they tap the phones of the world for intelligence

and I hope to see you next week