The OP asks a good, but flawed, question. He seems to be somehow equating the US with the UIJS, suggesting that this is what the muslims in these countries think is happening. Pjen is suggesting that muslims think that the US is trying to take over the world.
Now, they do in fact think this but not quite in the way outlined in the OP. For example, in Afghanistan, the US removed the Taliban but it is not trying to stop Afghanistan from having an Islamic government. The US isn’t trying to stop any country from having an Islamic government if they want one. But a government can be democratic and Islamic. All the US was doing in Afghanistan was removing a bunch of lunatics from power, this is a fact that nearly all muslims recognise and support.
The proposed UIJS sounds to me like a large scale Taliban and if they really did start to destroy:
then I would say we would be obliged to fight them by whatever means necessary.
I am not sure what flaw you imply, but the question was not meant to ‘equate’ the USA with the UIJS, but to equate the views of the western world about a potentially threatening and financially dominant organization that is totally contrary to the west’s interests with a potentially threatening and financially dominant organization that is totally contrary to the third world’s interests.
The rhetorical question is:
If we were in the same position then as third world terrorist organizations are now, would we then justify acts we now call terrorist as a reasoned response to a threat to our core interests?
Using the term Jihad (which only means religious struggle) and identifying the dominant opposition as Islamic is only a device to make it clear that the dominant power was philosophically different to western liberal democracy and clearly opposed to it in the way that western liberal democracy is seen as inimical to Islamic fundamentalist regimes.
I believe that were we to do this thought experiment honestly, most of us would end up justifying ‘terrorism’ in the same way that people we label terrorist now do so.
And finally, it’s not just muslims who think that the US is ‘trying to take over the world’, look at the anti-globalization protests, talk to today’s students in Europe, listen to European socialist parties, read the internationalist journals, listen to critical professors of economics and history- there is a wide and active group of people who have a reasoned argument the Western Hegemony is indeed the result of the major world economy, unrestricted, ensuring that the world as a whole works only for the West’s benefit.
I believe this is the answer Pjen was expecting. If the situation were reversed and you felt another culture was oppressing you, even invalidating your existence (as those in this thread who discount the potential for a theocratic culture to coexist with “modernity” have) you would do whatever possible to save yourself, your way of life. It happened in Viet Nam, Chechnya, Soviet era Afghanistan, and all over Africa, South America and the rest of the third world. The only difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist is the means of confronting the oppressor.
That said, America isn’t the Taliban. Our failures as a culture are more sophisticated and less overt. IMHO, what we are is a hulking, nescient, swaggering intimidator, whose foreign policies have lost any semblance of the moral authority gained in the years of and prior to wwii. Our domestic picture looks pretty shitty to me also. A nation founded among other things on the ideal of equality (one as false then as it is now but there none the less) has been regressing in a key indicator of quality of life in a society, the middle and lower classes. Reagaonomics and Son of Bush have pushed social inequality in this country to its greatest width since the 1920s; to a social playing field of robber barons cum philanthropizing global plutocrats, specially interested multinational corporations, and as always the unsuspecting masses getting the shaft, but I digress.
In our domestic and external hegemonic agendas alike we are failing. Like most great societies, wealth and power have gotten to us. Macedonians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Turks, Mongols, Spaniards, Portuguese, French, British, Germans, Russians, everyone else who had dreams of acculturating the world to their own self-serving, and presumed universally applicable standards has failed to avoid the inevitable snafus; corruption, greed, excess, over expansion, irreverence for founding values, war mongering, moral decline or any combination of the above. God Bless America is all well and good, until it starts drowning out the warning signs.
Things will never be right until the US, China, Japan, the EU, Russia and the rest of the first world decide to put their own interests behind the interests of the world. An idealist fantasy where right makes might. But like I said earlier try convincing that to them.
You are equating the US with the UIJS. But you can’t equate them because they are completely different. The US may have economic hegemony but it isn’t (generally speaking) an expansionist country. The UIJS, on the other hand, seems to be expansionist - you said they would destroy one democratic country after another.
If we were in the same position as al qaida, then yes, obviously we would see terrorism as justifiable. Presumably OBL thinks terrorism is justified and if I was OBL then I would think terrorism is justified. It’s a meaningless question.
The point is, OBL is wrong because:
Western liberal democracy isn’t inimical to Islamic fundamentalist regimes. ok maybe the liberal part is, but there’s no reason why a fundamentalist Islamic regime can’t also be democratic. Even hardline religious nutjobs disagree with each other as to the best way to implement the koran, so they could form political parties to represent the different branches of thought.
The election might consist of a choice between an al qaida party and a taliban party but it would still be an election, and there’s no reason why it can’t be a free election.
Also, I don’t think capitalism is contrary to Islam, even hardline Islam. If you ever visit a muslim country, you will see such in-your-face capitalism it will blow your socks off. I once went to Kashmir and the tenacity with which people try to sell you things is nothing short of amazing, they almost start to cry if you decide not to buy it.
So the US isn’t actually inimical to third world interests, but the UIJS would be inimical to western democratic interests because they would try to destroy democracy. So it’s not comparable.
I would say that use of terrorism would be justified in the case of someone trying to destroy democracy. But it is not justified in the case of al qaida because nobody is trying to destroy Islam or Islamic governments or Islamic countries. This is just their perception but their perception is wrong.
This is where your reasoning is flawed. You are right that there are situations in which most of us may end up justifying terrorism, but it would not be in the same way that people we label terrorist now do so, at least not the al qaida brand of terrorism.
It would be in different circumstances. In any case, I’m not sure what your overall point is. Are you saying that al qaida are justified in their use of terrorism and that we should therefore leave them alone?
You are correct but the UIJS concerned a muslim entity and so I was restricting my answer to the muslim world.
The definition of a rhetorical question is a question which does not require an answer - it’s a question, which by the very nature of itself being asked, provides the answer within itself.
Your question above is actually a hyperthetical question - a question based on what if? scenarios - and quite frankly, it’s a bit of silly question - and here’s why - it requires us to suspend belief and to imagine an alternate universe where the Western World is no longer the place it currently is - and well, that’s just bollocks.
For all the assertions regarding “hegemony this” and “hegemony that”, ultimately, what sets the Western World apart from the rest of the Thrid World is the commitment to, and the quality therein, of our education systems.
Time after time, history has shown that an “educated society” inherently tends to reject “religious fanatacism” as an acceptable way to go. More importantly, an educated society implements social structures which reflect what the Western World is all about - quality health care and social welfare etc etc.
It seems to me that the entire premise to this thread is flawed - and to demonstrate my case - just consider one country which is arguably the first and most famous experiment in pure Islamic fundamentalism - namely, Iran.
Apparently, in the last decade, Iran has produced an astonishingly high percentage of university graduates in comparison to it’s population base - and why not? It’s oil rich after all. Well, now we’re seeing an entire generation of highly intelligent free thinking young people who are openly rejecting the chokes attached to the Islamic Mullahs. The general consensus is that open democracy is on the verge of breaking out in Iran any day now.
Accordingly, the Western World doesn’t need to fight military campaigns to combat Islamic Jihad states - nope, not at all. The Western World merely has to fight ignorance.
Quality Education equals better society. Simple as that. There will never be a world covered by half the world’s countries which are some sort of universal Taliban - as much as some of those Islamic Fanatics might like it - and the reason is simply because there’s too much education already out there. You only have to let just one generation of students get on the internet and your Taliban powerbase gets undermined in no time.
This is true, however the progressive Iranian youth isn’t calling for the reformation of asecular society. They want an end to fundamentalism, repression, and an overly aggressive implementation of sharia. The point you are missing is that a state that is democratic AND Islamic can exist, and as you mention likely will. Iran is an unusual model, but an important one regardless; an infant nation reknown for tossing out the puppet dictator that was oppressing and Westernizing their homeland, struggling with a new identity. They didn’t get it right on the first try and Bush is all but ready to drop the 101st airborne. Ironic given that, America was a failed confederacy for its own formative years.
Pjen, I hope I’m not stepping on your toes here. Tell me to stop at any time.
Not expansionist in the traditional sense. Western states don’t plant their flag and claim someone else’s land in the name of Jesus and the Empire like they used to. Now we have to play by the rules of a postcolonial world. The third world is a war-torn, impoverished, uneducated place for many reasons, not the least of which is the self-interested intervention of developed nations pursuing resources both natural and political.
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Jeez! And all this time I thought it was so much more complex than that. You’d better get over there quick and clear this whole mess up. :rolleyes:
The Quote function seems not to be working properly so:
(b)Reply to Jojo: (/b)
I was not equating the USA with the UIJS, I was trying to get people to compare the (i)views(/i) of the Liberal Democratic West of the current Islamic world and the (i)view(/i) of the current Islamic world of the Liberal Democratic West WITH a potentially marginalized Liberal Democratic West and a Hegemonic Islamist order and (U)their(/U) (i)views(/i) of each other.
My comments about fundamentalist Islam having a difficulty with democracy and capitalism are still valid. If the whole polity of a state is based on revealed truth (religious fundamentalism) then democratic processes are not able to become the dominant means of decision making. Islam at its very core denies the validity of loans with interest- the very basis of modern capitalism. Although a type of social share ownership may be compatible with Islam, it is unlikely to be acceptable to a fundamentalist state. However, my argument does not depend on this being the inevitable case, just that the UIJS follow these policies.
I am not arguing the Al Qaeda are (i)right(/i), but that they are right in their terms and that the Liberal Democratic West is right in their terms. The thought experiment was intended to demonstrate that if the tables were turned, we might have some uncomfortable admissions to make about our possible actions.
(b)To Boo Boo Foo: (/b)
A rhetorical question has come to mean a question without an answer in some circles- those of common dioscourse. Its exact being is a question designed to examine the rhetoric of a series of statements- how they are argued out. So my thought experiment is essentially a Rhetorical Question- 'Would we act otherwise if the situation were different?"- essentially a rhetorical question.
And yes, it is hypothetical (not hyperthetical) as all thought experiments and rhetorical questions have a certain hypotheticallity about them.
Finally, it is only a “silly question” if you persist in trying to defend current actions and beliefs, rather than try to look at the situation from outside your current view of the situation and consider hypotheticals- “What ifs”.
(b)To Cainxinth: (/b)
Do feel free to continue, you’re certainly not treading on my toes.
Given that you’ve now framed your question in clearer terms, then I’m afraid the answer would, in all honesty, be “yes”: many of us Westerners would become terrorists against the UJIS, in the same way that the French Resistance are hailed as heroes now, yet they participated in actions that could be described as terrorism. I sincerely hope that the tactics would be considerably less brutal than 9/11, but who can tell?
The lengthy analogy (or parable or whatever) aside, the question you are asking is: how do you distinguish a “terrorist” from a “freedom fighter.”
When George Washington’s men hid behind bushes and shot at the British soldiers, were they terrorists or freedom fighters? when the French resistance fought the Nazis in WWII, were they terrorists or freedom fighters? And you, and most posters, are suggesting that there is no difference (except “as determined by the winner.”)
I offer a definition that can be used to distinguish an act from being terrorism or being “justifiable freedom fighting.” It has to do with how closely the act is connected to the political goal.
First, it depends on the ultimate political goal. An ultimate goal of “freeing my country from oppressive tyranny” is one thing. An ultimate goal of “killing all the Americans/Jews/blacks/Kurds…” is something quite different – you’d keep on killing, long after your country was liberated. If your goal is revenge (rather than liberation), then you’re into terrorism rather than freedom fighting. Or if you decide that liberating “your country” of Germany means invading Poland, France, Austria, the Netherlands, etc. then you’ve got an unacceptable goal. So, sometimes you can distinguish freedom fighting from terrorism by looking at the ultimate goal.
However, when we have an ultimate goal that is not ipso facto terrorism, then I contend that the question of definition relates to how closely are your activities tied to that goal. Thus, when the goal is driving the enemy army out of your home territory, shooting at enemy soldiers (guerilla warfare) is closely connected to the political goal, and I would call that freedom fighting.
However, if the goal is driving out the enemy army, and you crash a civilian airplane into a civilian building, then you’re no longer connected to the political goal. If your goal is to free Palestine from the occupation by the Israeli army, and you blow up vacationers at a resort hotel in Kenya, there’s no direct link between your goal and your action. Or you blow up a shopping mall in undisputed Israeli territory. Then you’re just out to kill Jews, not to push the Israeli army off your land.
This is not to say that this definition will solve every case – there are clearly areas that are shades of grey. But I think it is a useful definition.
The objective of terrorism is to terrify a civilian population, so that it will compel its government to withdraw from a policy. And, of course, you don’t care who else (from which other countries) get killed in the meanwhile. You don’t need to link your target directly to your goals.
The objective of freedom fighting is to fight against the oppressive government itself, not against all the people who live under that government. You need to target the government (army, etc) rather than just random people, so that your target is linked to your goals. Thus, by my definition, French Resistance and U.S. Revolutionary Army come down on one side; the IRA and al-Quada and Hamas come down on another.
In their time. GW and co. were undoubtedly seen as traitors and terrorists. Democracy was seen as rule by the mob and to be avoided (even the US constitution was designed to avoid rule by the mob a little over a decade later.) So, values are time dependent- we are currently in Democracy’s time!
I like the idea of closeness to achieving a political goal, but this depends what the political goal is. I am sure that Hamas believes that its planned atrocities in Israel and the occupied territories are close to one of their goals- making it difficult for Israel to feel that it is controlling the Palestinian problem. Although their long term goal may be to set up a Palestinian state, their short term goals involve causing Israel psychic pain and avoiding ‘conservative’ Palestinians such as Arafat from concluding a settlement with the occupiers that lets the case for full Islamic statehood be begged. I am certain that Hamas would say that they pass your closeness test as it is the only action open to them to achieve their short-term goals.
I like your idea of connection between the act and the result, but I am afraid that this would place the Hiroshima/Nagasaki incident in 45 clearly in the terrorist camp. Effective, certainly; legal, probably; but no true connection between act and goal- so immoral and a terrorist act by your definition.
I do agree that the object of terrorism is to terrify the civilian population, but this is in fact a legitimate goal as part of warfare. It has been used as a tactic by nations and alliances since at least the Spanish Civil War. So although terrorism necessarily involves terrifying a population with and end in mind, terrifying a population with an end in mind is not necessarily defined as terrorism within out Western Liberal Democratic Polity- we have accepted Dresden, Guernica, Hiroshima/Nagasaki, the Blitz, Viet-Nam 64-72 etc. etc. as normal warfare. Arguably our recent threats against Iraq were at one time intended to cause popular alarm in Iraq leading to Saddam’s overthrow- the use of terror to achieve and end.
I repeat that I do like your comments, but there is still a long way for me to go before I can accept that the freedom fighter/terrorist dichotomy seems more to me than a difference in moral frames of reference.
One argument that I would add to yours is the question ‘Could we achieve our ‘justified’ aims within a reasonable length of time using less violent methods?’
I often used this argument in the seventies and eighties against IRA/Sinn Fein protagonists, pointing out that by 2030 the North of Ireland would have a Catholic majority, and that the decennial plebiscite regularly held to decide the future of the colony would win the struggle for them. However, that struggle was less to do with reason and more to do with history! As the man said, anyone who says they understand Irish Politics most certainly does not.
This argument would give a great deal of strength to ANC policies- nothing else was likely to work given the the hegemonic West broadly supported South Africa and the white minority possessed an excess of real and perceived power, so terrorism was the only way to proceed.
However, it also justifies 9/11 (in their world view) because (in their world view) the USA is inimical to the survival of fundamentalist Islam, and it cannot be persuaded to back-off save by terrorist acts, therefore the occurence of random and aggressive attacks at the American Heartland is the most effective way of proceeding toward their goal. Of course, if the USA was more respectful of non-Western opinion through the UN and elsewhere, and showed that it was willing to let other methods of government other than Western Liberal Democracy thrive, then their argument would be taken from them because argument in the UN would be just as effective. (Reality Filter)This is not lokely to happen(/Reality Filter) and consequently, in their own terms they are justified.
<< In their time. GW and co. were undoubtedly seen as traitors and terrorists. >>
There is a difference between political rantings and propaganda and the cold analysis of history. I assume that we are talking about trying to find an historic perspective that allows us to differentiate terrorism from freedom-fighting. Obviously, in any given war, each side calls the other side evil, traitors, monsters, rapists, etc. My father-in-law tells of being in the U.S. army that invaded Germany in 1944; his unit took over a small farmhouse, and the Germans (Nazi supporters, mind you) were terrified that the American soldier would rape their women and eat their babies – that’s what they had been told by the Nazi government.
OK, a long aside, but that just said that each side tries to demonize the other side.
Your question is whether an dispassionate onlooker could say that there was a difference (morally, one supposes) between the 9/11 terrorists and the French Resistance. And it is not very encouraging to say that the only distinction is based on “who won” and “who wrote the history books.”
Hence, my attempt at a reasonably objective standard.
First, however, I define that certain objectives are, per se, not legitimate. The only legitimate goal of freedom fighters is the liberation of their country from an outside invader. Period. If the goal is simply to kill all the British, to drive the Jews into the sea, to enslave the blacks, then we’re not talking freedom-fighting at all, we’re talking racist genocide.
Well, perhaps, but if the goal is trying to destroy the U.S., then that’s an act or warfare or genocide – there’s no argument that trying to destroy the U.S. is “freedom fighting.”
If the goal (instead) is to get the U.S. military out of Saudi Arabia, then that’s a potentially acceptable goal, it seems to me. Attacks against the U.S. military, to make it expensive (in money and lives) to stay in Saudi Arabia, such attacks could be defended as “freedom fighting.” But attacks against civilians (non-US citizens died on Sept 11, too) in New York cannot be considered as a direct target towards the goal of pushing the U.S. out of Saudi Arabia.
I reject the notion that all morals are equally valid – a morality that says that Kurds are inferior and sacriligious and it is our moral duty to massacre them, is a “morality” that I reject out of hand. If you’re talking about the actions of an established government, then one can classify their actions on moral grounds, but you’re not usually trying to classify them as “freedom fighters” or “terrorists.”
But if the goal is “liberation of the homeland,” then Al-Quada and Hamas state that as their goal, too. Hence, my idea (not mine, actually, I forgot where I read it, some years ago) is the question of how directly the activities impact the goal. I like your addition of whether violence is necessary or whether there are other avenues that can be attempted.
Agreed, my definition is not always clear. You can certainly argue that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were “terrorist” activity. However, I don’t think that the actions of a legitimate governmetn can be considered “terrorist” or “freedom-fighters” – those are terms applied to non-government agencies.
BTW, another touchy spot with my definition is that the Sept 11 attack against the Pentagon is not cleanly classified. The use of a civilian plane is (by my definition) terrorism; but the Pentagon is a legitimate target (IMHO) of a freedom-fighter trying to get the U.S. out of his country. I similarly would not regard the attacks against U.S. military personnel as “terrorist.”
Perhaps we need a larger vocabulary. The attacks against U.S. military personnel (the bomb on that boat) are “terrorism” in the sense that the perpetrators were trying to terrorize the U.S. government and military presence. But any act of war is similarly trying to “terrify” the enemy.
So, we seem to have evolved:
To be a freedom fighter rather than a terrorist:
(1) the goal must be the liberation of a homeland, and not revenge or genocide or conquest or…
(2) the activities must be directly tied to the goal; and
(3) peaceful efforts must have been exhausted without success before violence was begun.
A freedom fighter: Blows up an occupation convoy in his own country in an attempt to remove the occupation.
A terrorist: Goes to another country and steers jetliners into its buildings in an attempt to murder as many civilians as possible.
Thus, the IRA is a terrorist organization.
The Chechens probably aren’t.
But the Chechens lose the “freedom fighter” name when they cross the line and hi-jack a theatre with 800 people in Moscow. When they take those sort of steps, they’ve transgressed the grey line from “freedom fighter” to out and out blatant “terrorist” scumbags.
Equally true, when the IRA were targeting British Soldiers and British Soldiers alone - then yes, they’re entitled to the claim of “freedom fighters”.
My personal rule of thumb is this - all of the above is true, and in the case of murkiness, if and when innocent civilians are targeted, then it trangresses “freedom fighting” and goes into “terrorism” - with one major exception - when armed forces of one country are being asked to do such things because those countries have officially declared war.
Which is not to say that Dresden in particular was so incalculably sad. Historians seem to all agree that the Dresden bombings were far MORE about Churchill trying to scare off Stalin than anything else. Hiroshima, conversely, especially when taken in the context of the incredible fighting on Okinawa which preceded it, whilst also just as dreadfully sad, was a situation where the Japanese Military had no respect whatsoever for the sanctity of their own peoples - and it ultimately took the Japanese Emporer to overrule the Japanese Military cabinet after the Nagasaki bombing. There is still incredible debate as to how many American (and Allied) lives would have been lost in a Japanese mainland invasion - and yet, the Japanese Military showed no signs whatsoever of giving up. A dreadful position for President Truman to be in I dare say.
The US might not be a fascist theocracy, but what difference does it make to the rest of the world, when in the last forty years the exact same foreign policy has been in effect?
No, the west does it by producing more. Everything else is just icing. What proof is there that impoverishing countries is profitable (besides maybe countries that have oil)?