A perspective from the London Times ~
thetimes.co.uk
He is a terrorist, we just frighten people
MATTHEW PARRIS
Terror is a handy word. It really only means fear but because it has bought a hat and may parade as terror-ism and terror-ist, the media have acquired a term which subliminally directs the reader towards only that fear which is fomented by those we do not like. Rather than explain how the withering fire of the American AC130 gunship dispenses good fear, while Osama bin Laden dispenses bad fear, it is easier just to change the word. I frighten. You terrorise.
“Terrorist” might be thought a recent expression but goes back at least as far as 1795 when it was used in England to describe the Government of France unleashing “the Terror” on its citizens. So a word we now associate with defiance of the State was first coined to describe the means by which a neighbouring state was enforcing her law. Curious the way we forget how history changes its terms to suit the victors.
Which brings me to Michael Gove. My fellow-columnist on The Times has started a debate about the status of terrorism and the approach which civilised people should take to it. On Tuesday this week he wrote thoughtfully on this page about the difference between those, like him, who support this war, and those, like Simon Jenkins, Libby Purves and me, who are sceptical.
Michael Gove thinks that “those who prosecute their goals with violence” must, for that reason alone, be crushed. Not only because we happen to reject the creed which al-Qaeda is fostering, and not only because we need to protect ourselves from their particular attacks, but for a deeper reason too, we must block our ears to what they say, and simply fight them. We must fight them because they are trying to achieve their aims by violence. “This must be a war on terror as an abstract noun and as a universal policy because our efforts will be unavailing if the lesson is not learnt that to use terror is to see the frustration of all one’s goals.” Smashing terror thus becomes no more than self-defence and a philosophy for all seasons. He suggests that we should not even begin work on a new Middle East peace agreement until terrorism there has been defeated.
This is as mistaken a view of history as it is of human nature. Violent protest and the threat of violence to blackmail authority does not stand outside but within our cultural tradition, though right at its margins. Illegal violence is a last resort, always has been and always will be. It is important that the resort be viewed with repugnance, and that our presumption against it remain very strong.
Terrorism should be regarded with horror: Michael Gove is right about that; but for a reason different from the one he offers. It is because we must separate the terrorist from his habitat. We must drive a wedge between the terrorists — who will be very few in number — and those many whose tolerance they need in order to hide. We must ask why that tolerance is being extended. Then we must try to end the tolerance. This will sometimes — just sometimes — be done by conceding some of what the terrorist demands.
For, strange as it may seem, violent protest is the most delicate of organisms. Michael, like many naturally conservative pessimists about human nature, seems to regard terrorism rather as a gardener regards nettles and a certain type of churchman regards homosexuality: something to be stamped on hard — or before we know where we are it will spread and the whole country will be at it.
I have no such fears. From the earliest age, from the moment the toddler begins to talk, human beings exhibit a deep, strong, remorseless craving for rules, for fairness, for order, and for the subjection of others to the same order. Getting your way by violence is cheating, and everybody — yes, everybody — knows that. Nobody — no, nobody — likes to see it happen. Very few of us could ever, in any circumstances, be terrorists.
But in very limited circumstances most of us can imagine suffering terrorists in our midst, and turning a blind eye. Many Zionists must surely feel, if not approval, at least ambivalence about the terrorism which led to the founding of the state of Israel. I raised an eyebrow at Binyamin Netanyahu’s remark this week that “terrorism is always wrong. Those who fight terrorism are always right.” In the 1970s Margaret Thatcher alarmed her advisers by remarking privately that if she became Prime Minister she would never shake hands with Menachim Begin, because he had been a terrorist. Her position had a Govean logic. Fortunately she was talked out of it.
I hope that Michael might feel, if not approval, at least ambivalence towards the activities of the French Resistance. I hope I would have approved of the suffragettes when they smashed windows until somebody noticed. I did not quite approve of the British Government’s turning a blind eye towards the South African ANC’s presence here, but I understood it. I would not have turned in a terrorist to the South African police. In none of these cases did the use or threat of violence, having achieved its purpose, spread like the cancer Michael Gove fears. It met the forbearance it needed to survive only because, hating violence though we did, we understood the anger. When the cause for the anger was removed, society closed ranks again against the violence.
“Terror” as a political movement is not a rampantly infectious disease galloping towards epidemic unless “stamped on” fast; it is more like the HIV virus: desperately fragile, tender, able to survive and spread in only the most specialised environment, and very containable indeed once we understand how and where and why it spreads. This is because no terrorist moves in a vacuum. He lives in our world with us and cannot operate without many quite uninvolved citizens seeing or getting hint of his presence.
And in this respect we start with an advantage in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are not really native to that place. Terrorism and the Taleban are not the same thing and we should be working to sharpen, not blur, the distinction. There is a difference between a terrorist and those who “harbour” him. Tony Blair was wrong to say there is none: the difference is crucial. Hundreds of people now in Afghanistan must know where bin Laden is hiding. Tens of thousands must know people who know.
Between you and me and the ringleaders of the Real IRA there are probably only about three degrees of separation. If the terrorist and his aims and methods are genuinely abhorrent to almost everybody, then sooner or later he will be caught and stopped. Every enduringly viable terrorist-driven cause lives and moves in a culture which is at least ambivalent, or contains a substantial sub-culture which is ambivalent, about its presence. Ambivalence is the oxygen of terrorism.
The terrorist himself is intractable — the Israelis are right about that. You cannot compromise with him. Bin Laden cares little about Palestine; he has bigger, madder, impossible concerns. So forget him and refocus on those whose ambivalence his movement needs, outside as well as within Afghanistan. These run to millions, and they do care what happens in the Middle East. They do find the presence of the US military in Saudi Arabia offensive. They do feel bewildered by the bombing of Iraq, and resentful about sanctions against Iran. If we can drive a wedge between him and them then we do not need to “find” him: they will.
That is why the Govean rage lest “concessions” might seem to be made to the terrorist is counter-productive. Ask yourself what bin Laden wants. Of course, sooner or later this war will kill him and he cannot welcome that; but he will die certain of Paradise, and rejoicing that by the manner in which the United States has speeded his journey there they have widened the circle of darkness in which his many successors will operate.
I am not a pacifist, only someone who believes that the consequences of war are desperately hard to predict or contain. I do not expect this war will end in humiliation for Mr Bush, Mr Blair or their allies. As in the Balkans, I expect them finally to smash their way to something they will be able to call victory. But on their journey there they will have overturned more, and antagonised more, and stored up more sorrow for the future, than will at first be realised. |
