Imad and Me
Jacob Sullum | February 15, 2008, 1:29pm
A couple of things struck me about the New York Times coverage of Hezbollah leader Imad Mugniyah's assassination. First of all, in this publicity shot from the Hezbollah Media Office, Mugniyah looks like a an older, pudgier, camouflage-wearing version of me:
I gather this picture was taken before the plastic surgery he supposedly had. Despite his Semitic looks (I know, I know: Arabs are Semites too!), this was a guy who considered blowing up a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires a legitimate tactic in a war with Israel. In his view, killing any random Jew, anywhere in the world, was just retaliation for wrongs committed by the Israeli government. Yet I was still surprised to see the Times unambiguously call Mugniyah, who headed Hezbollah's Islamic Jihad Organization, a terrorist.
The headline over the main story about Mugniyah's death, "Bomb in Syria Kills Militant Sought as Terrorist," equivocates a bit, but the text calls him "one of the most wanted and elusive terrorists in the world." A sidebar summarizing his murderous career calls him "perhaps the world's most feared terrorist" before 9/11 and notes that "the list of those who might seek justice or revenge against him was a lengthy one." By contrast, the Times usually calls Arab terrorists who target Israelis "militants." The Times story about last week's suicide bombing at a shopping center in Dimona, for instance, called the Fatah-affiliated Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which initially claimed responsibility for killing an Israeli woman at the shopping center, "militant groups." (It also called the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades a "militia.") Later, when the Qassam Brigades took credit for the murder, the Times described that organization as "the military wing of Hamas," which it called a "militant Islamic group."
So what exactly does it take for a "militant" to be recognized as a "terrorist" in The New York Times? Evidently he needs to target Jewish civilians not only outside Gaza and the West Bank but outside of Israel, preferably on a different continent. I think it also helps if he attacks Americans, as Mugniyah repeatedly did. The Times does not seem to be squeamish about calling Al Qaeda "a terrorist group." If Osama bin Laden had crashed a plane into a building in Tel Aviv instead of New York City, would he be merely a militant?
reasonabledowt | February 15, 2008, 5:00pm | #
Unofficial "Clarification of Definition" Posting:
A word ending in "ist" describes a person who uses, practices, believes in, or operates within the boundaries commonly accepted as the meaning of the noun pre-ceeding "ist".
Examples:
Capitalist - one who uses capital
Constitutionalist - in the US, one who believes in the Constitution
Communist - one who believes in a socioeconomic structure that promotes the establishment of a classless, stateless society based on
common ownership of the means of production
Violinist - one who acts upon a musical instrument called a violin causing (hopefully) music to result.
Racist one who antagonizes and/or oppresses people of other (than his/her own) races due to the believe that
Terrorist - one who acts in such a way as to cause people to be terrified. (Therefore spiders, snakes, cockroaches, and cops can be considered terrorists.)
Motorist - one who motors
Shootist - one who shoots
Sexist - one who sexes? (Chicken sex-ist, or chicken sex -er? People are actually paid to determine the sex of chicks in eggs.)
(*note: suffix "er" in some words produces the same effect as the suffix "ist" - i.e. "shooter" rather than "shootist" - but not in the example "racer" for "racist".)
Paul | February 15, 2008, 8:04pm | #
If terrorism is a word that merely describes a tactic and we should apply it even to those whose causes we believe in, why are her panties in a bunch about admitting that WWII strategic bombing was terroristic?
I take exception to this. Some WWII strategic bombing was terroristic, much was not. And I don't personally have any issue with what Shannon reports on WWII strategic bombing. I happen to know a little something about strategic bombing. My father was a member of the infamousely "marked" Bloody 100th, was shot down on his fourth mission over Munster and spent two years in German prison camp until the war's end. His mission: Bombing ball bearing factories.
Most of the U.S. strategic bombing was carried out against just such targets. Its effectiveness has been argued, but to call that "terroristic" is bogus. The British did believe that saturation bombing of German cities was the most effective solution- especially considering the beating they were taking by the Luftwaffe doing same.
Britain's Bomber Command, headed by Arthur "Bomber" Harris, believed a saturation bombing of major German cities was the best way to cripple the Reich. American planners, including Generals Ira Eaker and Carl "Tooey" Spaatz, countered that precision attacks against selected industrial targets like oil production facilities, aircraft and ball bearing plants were the best use of bomber strength. "It is better to cause a high degree of destruction in a few essential industries ... than to cause a small degree in many," the USAAF Committee of Operations Analysts agreed in March 1943. Harris, however, expressed contempt for this concentration on a limited number of targets, calling them "panacea targets."
One might view certain tactics as terroristic in the sense that the targets (as proposed by the British, not as proposed by the U.S.) were indiscriminate. But again, these were regular uniformed armies with central command structures. Countering them, and targeting them for retaliation was logistically straightforward: Shoot back at the guys with this insignia on their planes.
What Shannon attempted to define (and did an exemplary job of it) was attempt to codify the situation when the people shooting at you indiscriminately cannot be distinguished from the civilian population from whence they came.
I don't necessarily think it's necessarily wise to exempt states from the label, by the way. Doing so is potentially moral statism of the worst sort.
I never have once exempted the U.S. from any possible lable of acting in a "terroristic" way, and I don't read anything in Shannon's posts which suggest same. In fact, by my interpretation, Shannon was doing the exact opposite. She was warning that one should be careful how you label someone or something based upon your affinity with their cause.
Shannon's observation (and one I lean towards agreeing with) is that it seems that this happens often, where if your tactics are abhorrent, but your cause just, you're a "militant" or "freedom fighter".
I don't excuse the actions of the U.S. merely because our cause is just. Ask me how I feel about our actions when our cause isn't just?
Les | February 16, 2008, 3:09am | #
Val, I don't understand how stating that the life of a child in another country is equal to the life of a child in this country is "rhetoric." Nor do I understand how stating my opinion that such a belief is repugnant to me qualifies as "rhetoric." I suppose it depends on the definition you're thinking of.
So do you feel that the US government should value your son's life more than, lets say a Japanese factory worker (see they dont have to be mothers or children)?
Well, you didn't specify in your original question, now, did you? (And YES, if you're going to honestly philosophize about civilian casualties, they DO have to be mothers and children.) You asked,
"Do you not feel that because the governemnt derives its power, legitimacy and finances directly from you that they would treat your life as infinetely more valuable then the life of a citizen of another government."
The answer is still, "Absolutely not." You imply that paying taxes makes a life more valuable, "infinitely" more valuable, even. This is, I think, morally untenable and, again, a philosophy that's been used time and again to defend needless violence against innocent parties.
Should they risk your son's life (lets he was a GI in the Pacific around 1945) and be sure to save that factory worker's life? Or should they assume that in all likelyhoold that Japanese worker will die, but more than likely risking your son's life will not be necessary? What if 100 factory workers have to die to not have to risk your son's life? 1000?
This is a clumsy and unrealistic hypothetical. If my son was ever conscripted (and I would encourage him to resist that conscription as I believe involuntary servitude is slavery), I wouldn't give a good goddamn who the government thought needed killing. Your scenario requires that I trust the wisdom of the government (and what objective reason is there ever to do that?) to know who needs to die and who doesn't and, strangely, it requires that we imagine ourselves in the last justifiable war the U.S. was involved in, over 60 years ago.
The bottom line is, you asserted that since I pay taxes, my life should be worth more to my government than the life of some civilian in another country. While I sadly agree that this is the accepted philosophy of the government (and perhaps most people around the world), I also think it's destructive nonsense that's only fueled the ease with which Americans embrace war as a means to an end.
I don't know if all that's "rhetoric," but it's what I sincerely feel. I'm stepping off the soapbox, now.
val | February 18, 2008, 10:49am | #
Your scenario requires that I trust the wisdom of the government (and what objective reason is there ever to do that?) to know who needs to die and who doesn't and, strangely, it requires that we imagine ourselves in the last justifiable war the U.S. was involved in, over 60 years ago.
Les, I was responding specificaly to your statement about that last justifiable war.
Remeber what you said about WWII?
Whether or not demoralization was the intention of the U.S. forces, the fact remains that the civilian populations of Dresden and Tokyo (especially in March of '45) were devastated beyond any military purpose. Even if mass murder wasn't the goal, the civilians were treated as if the value of their lives was negligible.
And that exactly what I was getting at, the civilian's lives were treated as negligible compared to the GI (American citizens/allies) it saved, as they well damn should have been. I repeat the government derives its legitimacy and power, not just finances, from its citizens, and in my opinion, is unequivocaly required to judge its citizens' lives as more valuable then the the lives of citizens of another country (especialy an enemy country).
The government (in this case army), ideally, acts as extension of you, as your agent. Now I know thats and ideal situation, and that almost never happens as can be seen from the amount of posts on this site. But in case of a war, justified or not, where the government has put 'your' son or 'my son' in harms way, I expect them to do everything necessary to make sure he comes back.
You are trying to muddy the point by talking about the unjustified Iraq war (atleast that what Im assuming you are getting at). First, I wasnt talking about the reasons of why a war is started, nor wether one should be involved in a war or not. I was talking about specific tactical decissions, like Hiroshima/Nagasaki or Dresden or whatever... If army command feels that by nuking/bombing an area and saving a number of soldiers' lives be it their own or allied, but wiping out a score of 'innocent' civilians, then I feel they are morraly and fully justifed to do so. And the ratio of saved to killed does not have to be 1:1...
Anyway back to the definiton of terrorism.
