President Bush has declared a “war on terrorism”. Indeed?
Osama bin Laden is undoubtedly a terrorist. Killing 4800 civilians at the World Trade Centerwas a terrorist outrage. But the United States would have declared war on bin Laden even if hehad been satisfied with killing American soldiers in Saudi Arabia or blowing up oilinstallations across the Middle East. It is not the methods of bin Laden that have caused thiswar, but his aim: to get rid of the United States and its satellites, the Arab kings andpresidents, throughout the Middle East.
In order to pursue its war, the United States has set up a world-wide coalition. Everyonejoining it has been issued an American permit to call his enemies “terrorists”: Putin inChechnya, China in its Muslim regions, India in Kashmir, Sharon in the occupied territories -all are now fighting against “terrorists”. Everyone and his bin Laden.
Many years ago I coined a definition I am quite proud of: “The difference betweenfreedom-fighters and terrorists is that the freedom-fighters are on my side and theterrorists are on the other side.” I am glad that this definition has been adopted by my biggersand betters.
Since the New York atrocity, it has become fashionable to talk about “terrorism”. As a result,it has lost all precise meaning.
“Terror” means extreme fear. The root of the word is the Latin “terrere” – to frighten or befrightened. The modern term was first used to describe the regime of terror instituted by theJacobins, one of the factions of the French Revolution, to destroy their opponents bybeheading them with the guillotine during the years 1793-4. In the end, their leader,Robespierre, suffered the same fate.
Since then, the term has acquired a more general use. Terrorism is a method of attainingpolitical goals by frightening the civilian population. It does not apply to the frighteningof soldiers. The Japanese who attacked the American fleet in Pearl Harbor were notterrorists. Neither were the Jews who attacked the soldiers of the British occupation regimein Palestine.
Clausewitz said that war is the continuation of politics by other means. That is true forterrorism, too. Terrorism is always an instrument for the attainment of political aims.Since these may be rightist or leftist, revolutionary or reactionary, religious orsecularist, the term “international terrorism” is nonsense. Each terrorist body has its ownspecific agenda.
There is hardly a liberation movement that has not used terrorism. Algerian woman put bombs inthe cafes of the French settlers (some of them were caught and horribly tortured by Frenchparachutists). Nelson Mandela spent 28 years in prison because he refused to order hisfollowers to abstain from terrorism. The Maccabees were terrorists who went around killingHellenized Jews. So were the Irgun fighters who in 1938 put bombs in the Arab markets of Jaffaand Haifa in retaliation for Arab attacks. Shlomo Ben-Josef committed a terrorist act when heshot at an Arab bus (and I joined the Irgun when he was hanged by the British).
Generally, terrorism is the weapon of the weak. A Palestinian “terrorist” recently said:”Give me tanks and airplanes, and I shall stop sending suicide-bombers into Israel.” But bigpowers, too, can use terror. Dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima was a terrorist act, designedto frighten the Japanese population into demanding that their government surrender. So wasthe Nazi blitz on London and the British bombing of Dresden. Churchill and Hitler were asdifferent as day and night, but they used the same method.
Israel has used this method from the day of its inception. In the early 50s the IDF committed”retaliation raids” designed to frighten the villagers beyond the border in order to inducethem to put pressure on the Jordanian and Egyptian governments to prevent the infiltration ofPalestinians into Israel. During the War of Attrition in the late 60s, Moshe Dayan terrorizedhalf a million inhabitants of the Egyptian towns along the Suez Canal into fleeing, so as to putpressure on the Egyptian president to stop attacking Israeli strongholds along the Canal. Inthe 1996 “grapes of wrath” operation, Prime Minister Shimon Peres terrorized half a millioninhabitants of South Lebanon by aerial bombardment into fleeing north, in order topressurize the Beirut government into stopping the Shi’ite guerrillas from attacking theIsraeli occupation force and its mercenaries. It is the same method that is used in the armywhen a commander punishes all the soldiers in a company, so that they will turn against the onewho made him angry.
The trouble is, it does not work in conflicts between nations. Generally, it iscounter-productive. The Taliban have not turned bin Laden over but have become more extremein their opposition to America. The IDF blockade against Palestinian villages, which thisweek denied them water and food, does not isolate the ‘terrorists”, but on the contrary, turnsthem into national heroes. The devastation caused by the Russians in Chechnya did not break -indeed, it strengthened – the opposing guerilla forces.
Since terrorism is always a political instrument, the right way to combat it is alwayspolitical. Solve the problem that breeds terrorism and you get rid of the terrorism. Solve theIsraeli-Palestinian problem and the other flash-points in the Middle East, and you get rid ofal-Qaida. It will wilt like a flower deprived of water.
No one has yet devised another method.