What's your deffinition of terrorism? Leave your comments!

You read about it every day, "Baghdad bombings continue despite arrest of key terrorist!", "Terrorist blows self up in Israeli settlement!" or "suicide bomber this! Suicide bomber that!" but when you really think about it, what defines terrorism as opposed to say, a desperate attack or another type of crime? And do our legal definitions currently work? Do we even know what our legal definitions of terrorism are? To start with, I will give my definition of terrorism.

Unjustified, non-state, premeditated, militant action that uses scare tactics indirectly or directly targeting the establishment (meaning "The Man"), sometimes with an intended audience.

I think its pretty good, as it excludes stupid things like "eco-terrorism" to leave them in the realm of vandalism. Blowing up parked trucks at a dealer for example is not militant. Serious vandalism? yes. Terrorism? no.

I took a long time to come to this conclusion, and did so with the help of Kalliscrow. You can view it all here.

From this definition, we can see that terrorism is a slippery thing. With state sanction, a terrorist ceases to be a terrorist and becomes a private military unit. Look at piracy. If you had a "Letter of Marc" from the king, you were a privateer and had all the rights of a navy ship. Without one, you were a pirate and could be executed by any country. Or what is justified? Blowing up the Gestapo HQ wouldn't be terrorism, would it? Actually, that's looking at it from an Allied standpoint, in which case it is not terrorism, but to the NAZIS, this would be terrorism. (Issues of ultimate good or evil are irrelevant to this argument.) And its gotta be premeditated, because something like a protest stampede is definitely not terrorism. So we can see that terrorism is a pretty subjective term, and when given a good definition, can be applied to many different acts from different points of view.

However, I am just a mere citizen with no power to sway the public opinion, and what really matters is our legal definition of it. So what is our legal standpoint? The CIA website says (http://www.cia.gov/terrorism/faqs.html):

The Intelligence Community is guided by the definition of terrorism contained in (USC:Title 22 Section 2656f(d)):


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

—The term “international terrorism” means terrorism involving the territory or the citizens of more than one country.

—The term “terrorist group” means any group that practices, or has significant subgroups that practice, international terrorism.

If you actually check the code, the section is a mandate for an official report to the speaker of the house on terrorism (which Bush recently canceled). The convenient thing about the USC is that definitions are only valid in one section, and can be redefined in another.

Title 18, Sec. 2331 defines "international terrorism" as

(A) Involve[ing] violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States ..., or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States...;

(B) APEAR to be intended—

(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;


(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or


(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and


(C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum

Not only is this completely different, it covers just about any crime possible (with the condition of life endangerment) because you only have to have "appear[ed] to have intended" which is so vague it makes me want to barf. Lets go over that again. If you do something that endangers someone’s life, and is technically a crime (such as protesting without a permit), which only gives the appearance of coercion, even if there was no intention, then you can have all kinds of little things thrown at you. (Deportation without trial, indefinite imprisonment etc.) A protest stampede could very easily fall into this category. It even can cover something that isn't a crime if you do it in a country where it isn't a crime. So there are two in the US code, but there have been others in executive orders and reports, all of which are the same but different, ("but only if I want them to be" says George). You can get a list here: http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/terrorism/101/definitions.html.

So I come to the conclusion: We have loose legal definitions for a term
(terrorism) that implies the innocence of the victim. Why are we using it as a legal term at all? I say down with War on Terror up with War on Bad Standards of Living and Untrue Ideas About the West and Women that Permeate Islamic Culture. But..OH NO! ITS TOO LONG FOR A SOUND BITE! GEORGE CANT USE THAT! Man, this world is so hard for a Texan to exist peacefully in. And don't forget to tell me what you think, I can learn from you.