Stop Crying 'Terrorism' Every Time We're Attacked

[Richard]

Interesting read - terrorism vs war.

Richard

Stop Crying 'Terrorism' Every Time We're Attacked

Three weeks ago, a Jordanian suicide bomber blew up seven CIA employees at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan. The CIA called it a "terrorist attack." So did The Associated Press in a report published in dozens of news outlets. Other journalists, analysts, commentators and TV news anchors followed suit. In a Washington Post op-ed published last week, CIA director Leon Panetta said of the fallen officers, "When you are fighting terrorists, there will be risks."

Terrorists? No, sir. The bombing of the CIA base, like the November massacre at Fort Hood, was an act of war. It was also espionage. But it wasn't terrorism. Terrorism targets civilians. The CIA officers killed at the Afghan base, like the soldiers shot down at Fort Hood, were not civilians. They were running a war.

According to the U.S. Code (Title 22, Chapter 38, Section 2656f), "the term 'terrorism' means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents." That's the definition we apply to other countries when we designate them as state sponsors of terrorism.

The Sept. 11 attacks, which used planes full of civilians to hit the World Trade Center, fit this definition. So did the attempt to blow up Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day. So did the Taliban's 2008 bombing of a hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan.

The Afghan base bombing doesn't fit the pattern. The CIA personnel who died in the attack were combatants. In interviews with multiple newspapers and wire services, U.S. intelligence officials have confirmed that the personnel at the Afghan base were closely engaged in selecting drone targets in Pakistan and orchestrating Special Operations attacks on the Taliban-allied Haqqani network. In the Afghan theater, the CIA is becoming a paramilitary agency. It runs our drone war in Pakistan, and the Afghan base struck on Dec. 30 is "a targeting center for Predator strikes and other operations inside Pakistan."

That's why the bomber, Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, targeted the base. Read the accounts of his will and his farewell video. "This is a message to the enemies of the [Islamic nation], to the Jordanian intelligence and the CIA," he says in the video. "We will never forget the blood of our Emir Baitullah Mehsud." He vows to "retaliate" for the death of Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban boss who was killed in August by a CIA drone strike.

And because the officers at the Afghan base were drone masters, they let him in. He was offering them hot intelligence on Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's deputy leader. They hoped his information would lead them to al-Zawahiri. They were going to do to al-Zawahiri what they'd done to other al-Qaeda commanders: wipe him from the face of the earth. If they'd been ordinary intelligence analysts, they never would have whisked al-Balawi into their base for an urgent meeting. They did it, and they died, because they were fighting a war.

Al-Balawi was a jihadist. He wrote nasty, crazy stuff about martyrdom and killing Americans. But those were just words. He was, as one terrorism expert put it, a "cyber-activist." Presumably, that's one reason the CIA took a chance on him: He had never actually tried to kill anybody.

Well, now he has. But his victims weren't civilians. Neither were the victims of Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter. Read the job titles of the Fort Hood casualties: major, sergeant, captain, specialist, specialist, sergeant, private, private, captain, private, lieutenant, private.

Within days of the Fort Hood massacre, everybody and his brother was calling Hasan a terrorist. Even Sen. Joe Lieberman and former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who should know better, said it was terrorism. Lieberman cited evidence "that Dr. Hasan had become an Islamist extremist and, therefore, that this was a terrorist act."

Therefore? You mean, anybody who kills anybody in the name of Islamic extremism is a terrorist? If that's all we mean by terrorism, then our enemies are right: It's just a code word for people whose religion we don't like.

This isn't what we meant by terrorism when we went to war against it. But one of war's perils is forgetting your principles. You torture, you lie, you change the meaning of your commitments. You win the war by losing your bearings.

Al-Balawi's father understands what terrorism means. Last week, he said of his dead son, "Had he killed innocent civilians I would have denounced him." But his son hadn't done that. He had killed intelligence agents. And the fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the father argued, was "a war of intelligence agencies."

He's right about that. In the skies over Pakistan, our agents have the means to incinerate al-Balawi's masters. And I hope they succeed.

But imagine the reverse scenario: an armada of Afghan drones hunting American militia leaders in the United States. Would you retaliate by slaughtering Afghan civilians? Or would you identify the drone masters, infiltrate their intelligence network and kill them? Does it matter which path you choose?

It certainly does. And if we can't tell the difference anymore – if we need lessons in the meaning of terrorism from the father of a suicide bomber – then it's time to remind ourselves what we're fighting for.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...1.270fb4d.html

This essay is way above my modest intellectual gifts. He seems to base his entire argument around a definition that makes no sense to me. "Terrorism targets civilians." So non-civilians are not terrified? Sounds like we need a new word.

[JJ_BPK]

I think he is making an argument for the justification of the acts,, as acts of war
by brave combatants. He also doesn't denounce terrorism or terrorist attacks.


An Act of WAR, to him, it's OK..


An academic justification via word associations.

[Richard]

Actually - I read it as more a statement to the effect that we (as a nation, our NCA, reporting MSM and blogospheric pundits) seem pretty confused by the whole GWOT while our enemies appear to have a pretty distinctive and more cohesive point-of-view about it - terrorism vs terroristic acts.

Richard's $.02

[head]

The writer is saying the CIA attack and the Fort Hood shooting are simply quid pro quo in a time of war and he makes it seem as if we are not justified to be outraged or even upset since "the victims weren't civilians" - as if they deserved it.

I could understand if the writer was coming from the viewpoint that referring to these attacks as separate "terrorist attacks" leads the public to believe that the islamic extremist are lone wolves and not just small parts of a large scale "war" effort.

He can call it whatever he wants, whatever lets him sleep well at night.

[Sigaba]

IMO, the crux of Mr. Saletan's commentary is that he wants the United States to center its efforts on terrorist groups and their leaders rather than individuals.

By my reading, Saletan thinks that striking the wolves in their lairs is a more efficacious approach than attacking their shadows and their followers.

In some respects, Mr. Saletan's approach to GWOT is similar to the view Bush the Younger articulated in his 2006 speech to the general assembly of the United Nations. A transcript of that speech is available here. (Among the key differences would be Mr. Saletan's views on detaining and interrogating terrorists and suspected terrorists.)

FWIW, Mr. Saletan is a professional journalist, not an academician.

Any essay that evokes this many different views on what it's point was seems to lack much utility.

[Marina]

I think the guy is making a case for just asymmetric warfare. Like we have rules such as the Geneva convention and theory on just war.

The terrorists are at war. Is it a just war?

The US and allies are at war with a non-state. That has never happened before - on a worldwide scale. So how do we have a just asymmetric war with terrorists, that is civilians who are at war with us.

The questions in the article cannot be answered because there are no rules for a war with civilians.

So is this a clash of civilizations? The west again the ummah? What is the ummah? Who represents it? Who represents the west?

Without answers to moral questions, we have an ethical dilemma. The real question is: do terrorists have ethics?

That would be the subject of another thread but I don't really want to debate terrorists' ethics.

Originally Posted by Marina

terrorists' ethics.

An oxymoron if I ever saw one.

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by Marina

I think the guy is making a case for just asymmetric warfare. Like we have rules such as the Geneva convention and theory on just war.

The terrorists are at war. Is it a just war?

The US and allies are at war with a non-state. That has never happened before - on a worldwide scale. So how do we have a just asymmetric war with terrorists, that is civilians who are at war with us.

The questions in the article cannot be answered because there are no rules for a war with civilians.

So is this a clash of civilizations? The west again the ummah? What is the ummah? Who represents it? Who represents the west?

Without answers to moral questions, we have an ethical dilemma. The real question is: do terrorists have ethics?

That would be the subject of another thread but I don't really want to debate terrorists' ethics.

Marina--

Your post is thought provoking.

To throw a few more questions into the mix.

• Does a clash of civilizations need to be just?
• Might the U.S. and its allies be better served making geostrategic arguments for GWOT that are amoral but establish parameters for ethical conduct?
• Do efforts to establish a moral framework for GWOT set the conditions needed to wage successfully coalition warfare today?

[craigepo]

I too find this thread to be quite thought-provoking. For my linear, simplistic mind, I read the original article to, basically, make a distinction between terrorists and enemy soldiers based on what group they belong to and what/who they attack. I understand his train of thought, but think that his definition is overly simplistic. Would the US code definition of terrorism find that the perpetrators of the Boston Tea Party were terrorists? A quick read would say yes, even though history tells us(Americans at least) that this group of Freemasons were actually picking a fight for freedom.

As for Marina's interesting writing, I think our questioning of whether terrorists have ethics is only partially relevant. Initially, I would answer that, yes, they have some sort of ethical code, as they outwardly state that their actions are mandated by their religion.

Clearly, we do not share their ethical code. However, the reason why the question of whether they have ethics need be answered is solely to know what "makes them tick", and to determine the most efficacious way to destroy either their will or ability to conduct terrorist activities. Beyond that, the issue becomes quite academic.

Another question presented is how to have a "just war" with terrorists. Indeed, the Geneva convention and other more-modern rules of war mandate and imply that wars would be fought between two or more well-defined uniformed military forces. This is clearly not the case in the GWOT as we know it today.

IMHO, the rules of war must be amended in this situation. The Geneva Convention rules were simply not designed with the GWOT situation in mind. While the U.S. was a signatory to the Convention, our leaders must ensure that our adherence to these rules is tempered by the necessity of winning the present, extremely unconventional war against an unconventional enemy.

Sigaba presents some interesting questions regarding whether our morality is getting in the way of fighting efficiently in the GWOT. My short answer would be "yes". My answer would be historically based.

When Sherman marched through the South, he did more than just find, fix, and neutralize Confederate troops. He burned military stores, destroyed rail lines, and just about anything else that could be used by the South. Likewise, during WWII, the Allies often flew B-17s wingtip to wingtip, bombing entire cities to take out a bearing factory within a city.

The result of this type of warfare was to destroy both the enemy's will, as well as ability, to make war. The morality underlying these actions was that to win quickly and decisively was the most humane way to bring the war to a fast, PROPER conclusion. These actions were undertaken with this motivation in mind.

Obviously, we don't need to "burn down" the entire country of Iraq, and we don't need to level Afghanistan with wingtip-to-wingtip B-17 missions. However, I would argue that we will not have "won" the GWOT until we have destroyed the Muslim extremists' will and ability to make war/conduct terrorist acts. While many situations are presently winnable by winning hearts and minds, our country must also adopt the mindset of "a little more Sherman, a little less Schwarzkopf" in order to be ultimately successful. At least for the present jihad-believing Muslim generations.

See generally the various results of the various Crusades.

[Warrior-Mentor]

Seems as if he's trying to legitimize the attacks on the CIA Base and Fort Hood because of the targets - to paint the jihadis as nobel warriors because those killed were Soldiers (or intel professionals prosecuting acts of war).

Political correctness already prevents many from calling them jihadis. Now he's trying to expand political correctness to prevent calling them terrorists.

Perhaps he'd prefer if we called them "the most nobel Soldiers of Allah."

[dr. mabuse]

*

[PRB]

No comment on the article or the authors intent.

I've always drawn a distinction between military targets and civilian targets.
CIA is a legitimate target for the enemy.
The Ft. Hood deal is simply a traitor motivated by Islam. Terrorism fits this scenario in some aspects.

My problem with terms is that we often use them as more than descriptive in nature but as an end unto themselves....to define our present and future actions.

Our primary problem is we still have not defined the 'enemy'...non nation state organizations and "individuals" that are making war on our Nation.

We need to declare war. Period.
Declare war on non Nation state org, name them, declare our intent to destroy them unconditionally and thru any/all means.

If you harbor, coexist you do so at your own peril.

This criminal/ vs terr vs...whatever is the issue or we wouldn't be having this conversation.

We've complicated the situation and can actually simplify it.

For those who are indifferent to the choice of words and their definitions, this report may enlighten you. Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims by Department of Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties - January 2008