The classic definition of terrorism as violence against civilians to make a political point may make sense but the term’s elastic use — even applied to attacks on U.S. soldiers operating in foreign lands — has transformed the word into an epithet that depends on one’s preferred bias, writes John V. Whitbeck.
By John V. Whitbeck
The Western world has reacted to the “terrorist” shooting spree in Paris with near-hysteria, immediately intensifying its own lethal violence in the Middle East. Israel is branding as a wave of “terrorism” the continuing suicidal attacks by hope-deprived Palestinian children armed only with knives and scissors.
In the new “peace process” for Syria, Jordan has accepted the thankless task of deciding which of the many armed groups in Syria are “terrorists” and, as such, are to be excluded from the process and bombed.
At the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to conduct a devastating aerial assault on Baghdad, known as “shock and awe.”
And Americans have been fiercely debating whether the latest in a long line of domestic gun rampages, carried out by a Muslim married couple in San Bernardino, California, deserves to be deemed an act of “terrorism,” as President Barack Obama termed it during his nationally televised speech on Sunday night.
In this context, it may be enlightening to recall the last international effort to define this indefinable word. At the UN’s 60th anniversary summit in September 2005, the 191 member states tried but failed to agree on a convention defining the word “terrorism.” Some commentators actually sounded surprised, even saying that there had been a failure “even” to agree on a definition. No one should have been surprised.
The definition being proposed by then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan would have defined “terrorism” as “any action intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants, when the purpose of such an act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population or to compel a government or an international organization to carry out or to abstain from any act.”
A fair…