For the last five years, I've been listening to this crap about the 'War on Terror'. I am absolutely sick of hearing about it.
Yes, there are terrorists, and yes, many of them have ideologies completely counter to American values. But the very idea of defeating terrorism seems foolish to me, a largely self-educated American who has never traveled outside the Empire (I don't think a weekend in Vancouver counts).
It is becoming increasingly clear to me that this so-called strategy upon which Bush and Co. have based their power-grab, is a stage play, something to fill up the TV screens while deeper, more mundane evils are committed.
For one, I have yet to hear of any administration official give a comprehensive definition of terrorism. There are several definitions on the books, of course, but little agreement between them. Check
http://en.wikipedia.org/... for a nice survey of the different definitions. But most of these are fairly broad.
Just once, I'd like to hear Gonzalez or Bush say they are at war with either of these definitions:
"n. the unlawful use or threat of violence esp. against the state or the public as a politically motivated means of attack or coercion."
(Webster's dictionary of law)
Still, that leaves open the question of who determines what is "unlawful". Under this definition, the invasion of Iraq could be interpreted as an act of terrorism.
The Jewish Agency for Israel's Department for Zionist Education lists in its glossary this deinition (I figured they would know, right?):
http://www.jafi.org.il/...
"Acts of murder and destruction deliberately directed against civilians or military in non-military situations."
But doesn't an act of violence directed against the military make it, by definition, a military situation? In any case, a comprehensive definition of terrorism is kept deliberately loose. It is generally agreed upon, in conversation at least, that when a nation commits to military action, that is war. Whan a non-state entity does it, it is terrorism. But to use "non-state" as part of the definition would preclude the U.S. (or any state) attacking other sovereign nations under the pretense of fighting terrorism. Nations have long funded non-state entities to fight for them. Sir Francis Drake is a fine example of a state-funded terrorist.
So if the Taliban's symbiotic relationship with Al Qaeda represents a terrorist state, a question arises, what do you call it when a corporation (or network of corporations)influences a government to commit economically-motivated violence against a state or population "as a means of attack or coercion"?
Since a corporation is a non-state entity, motivated by a single purpose (profit), and is not limited by national boundaries, is it possible to have a terrorist corporation? I think so. The Federal Criminal Code defines a person as (the U.S. Federal code lists the definition of "person" as "any individual or entity capable of holding a legal or beneficial interest in property" (Title 18, Section 2331.C). So if a corporation contributes to acts of violence deemed illegal, could they not also be prosecuted as terrorists. Again, the question remains who determines legality.
To speak of defeating terrorism is a fallacy to begin with. Terrorism is not an army, or even an ideology; it's a tactic. That's roughly on the order of the U.S. saying during the cold war, 'we are at war with ICBMs', or the British trying to defeat passive resistance in India. Recall that during the American Revolution, British generals often complained about the barbaric tactics of the American insurgency, with groups like the Sons of Liberty and Francis Marion's guerilla tactics. Today those tactics are the norm, and terrorism is now the assymetrical warfare.
Terrorism is simply the next step in the evolution of warfare, and the obvious reaction to entrenched nuclear super-states, and to instant global communication that has melted national borders. It is a potent combination of non-geographical identity-branding (as opposed to nationalism) and nuclear-age desperation.
Tanks are for people who have land to defend, for groups that still think in terms of geography. IEDs are the miltary equivalent of the drive-through hamburger, warfare for today's on-the-go global citizen who doesn't have time to sit still for a carpet bombing.
The new organizational strategies are multinational corporate entities and multinational ideology networks, both of which are destabilizing forces on the old national model.
Terrorism is an urban tactic that requires civilian populations, whether or not the cause in question has widespread support. Terrorist tactics depend on the nation-state's hesitancy to utterly destroy a population, e.g. with nuclear weapons. And the nation-state's heavy handed approach will always kill innocents. In a world where information has become both the battleground and the ammunition, every air strike is another PR victory for the ideology network. The actual lives lost are secondary to the fact that they are seen via mass media, and this fact is not lost by either side. One beheading or dead child becomes an abstract atrocity before millions of La-Z-Boys.
In short, unless the nation-state deals with the root causes that fuel the ideology, nothing short of utter genocide will defeat a terrorist network, and even that is not a sure thing. Unfortunately, the root causes are not about religion, culture, or who gets to live in Israel.
It is technology that has sparked modern terrorism, as part of a vast wave of change that the tightening spiral of communication has brought. If there were no nuclear weapons or cell phones, Al Qaeda never would have been. You want to destroy terrorist networks? Destroy every cellphone tower and shut down the Internet. Terrorist groups are the symptom of much greater changes going on, changes that will reshape society to something very different than the world we have become accustomed to.