NYC Letter: What Is Terrorism?

Terrorism is much discussed. But there seems little agreement on exactly what it is. At least one wire service, as a matter of policy, pointedly uses meiotic ruses to not report terrorism.

Title 22 of the US Code, Section 2656f(d) defines terrorism thus:

The term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

Well, that’s pretty straightforward, but it appears to give Saddam a pass, since his terror was a national enterprise. This may have been the thinking behind M. de Villepin’s recent fatuous claim:

"Terrorism didn’t exist in Iraq before,” de Villepin said. “Today, it is one of the world’s principal sources of world terrorism.”

It is a mystery how M. de Villepin explains all Saddam’s torture chambers, rape rooms, and mass graves without recourse to the word “terrorism”.

Of course, coming from the French, who openly campaigned to keep Hamas off the terrorist rolls last year, this is rich.

Diplomatic advisor to French President Jacques Chirac, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, told the Israeli ambassador in France, Nissim Zvilli, during a weekend meeting, that there is no evidence that these two organizations are "terror groups."

"If we find that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are indeed terror groups opposed to peace, we may have to change the EU's stand," Gordo [sic] conveyed. "However, we mustn't limit ourselves to one, clear cut, position."

This is standard European cerebral mud. It is exactly the absence of “one, clear cut, position” that gives terrorism sufficient leash to operate. Career terrorists such as Messrs. Arafat and Yassin fake their legitimacy on European vagueness.

The opening question needs to be comprehensively answered before terrorism can be comprehensively quashed. So let’s give the American definition a haircut:

Terrorism is organized violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets to achieve extralegal political objectives.

That should now cover the abuses of Mr. Mugabe’s racism and the Sudanese slave trade as well as Mr. Yassin’s anti-Semiticism and the paramilitaries severally of Northern Ireland, Colombia, the Philippines, et al.

Ironically, in France’s first crop of Republicans terrorism as a legitimate tool of state found its most eloquent apologist and most enthusiastic exercitant:

“It has been said that terror is the principle of despotic government. Does your government therefore resemble despotism? Yes, as the sword that gleams in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles that with which the henchmen of tyranny are armed. Let the despot govern by terror his brutalized subjects; he is right, as a despot. Subdue by terror the enemies of liberty, and you will be right, as founders of the Republic. The government of the revolution is liberty's despotism against tyranny. Is force made only to protect crime? And is the thunderbolt not destined to strike the heads of the proud?”

Maximillien Marie Isidore de Robespierre
Address, National Convention, 1794