Re:"terrorism" - If there are dead civilians laying around, you've got "terrorism" or "counter-terrorism". What if a base of soldiers is blown up at night? More terrorism. These are all military attacks in any event.
Some comments from the US military on the definition
"Terrorism is common practice in insurgencies, but insurgents are not necessarily terrorists if they comply with the rules of war and do not engage in those forms of violence identified as terrorist acts"
terrorism.com
Some critical thoughts on that definition from my favorite liberal linguist re: "terrorism"
"...The Culture of Terrorism"
"Take, say, a word like `terrorism,' for example. Like most
terms of political discourse it has two meanings: there's a
literal meaning ... "the calculated use of violence
against civilians to intimidate, induce fear, often to kill, for some
political, religious, or other end."
That's terrorism, according to its official definition.
But that definition can't be used. Because if that
definition is used, you get all the wrong consequences. For
one thing, that definition turns out to be almost the same
as the definition of official U.S. policy. Except, when it's
U.S. policy, it's called `counter-insurgency' or
`low-intensity conflict' or some other name. But, in fact,
if you look at the definition, it's essentially terrorism.
In fact, almost a paraphrase. Furthermore, if you apply the
literal definition, you conclude that the U.S. is a leading
terrorist state because it engages in these practices all
the time.... which has been
condemned by the World Court and the Security Council for
terrorism, in this sense. And the same is true of its
allies. So, right now, they're putting together what they
call a `coalition against terror', for the `war on terror',
and if you run down the list, every one of them is a leading
terrorist state.
So obviously you can't use that definition.
So therefore, there's a propagandistic definition which is
the one actually used and in that definition terrorism is
"terrorism which is directed against the United States or
its allies and carried out by enemies." Well, that's the
propagandistic use and, if you read the newspapers and the
scholarly literature, they're always using that use. And
that's not just the U.S. Every country does that, even the
worst killers, the worst mass murderers do it. Take the
Nazis, they were combating an occupied Europe. They combated
what they called terrorism, namely partisan resistance,
which often was, in fact, terrorism in the technical sense Resistance usually is.
The American Revolution is a good example -- plenty of
terrorism. So, the Nazis were combating terrorism and they
called what they were doing, which was extraordinarily
brutal, `counter-terrorism'. And the U.S. basically agreed
with them. The U.S. Army, after the war, made extensive use
of Nazi training manuals... did studies which did careful
analysis of them, thinking what was right, what was wrong --
meaning did it work or didn't it work -- essentially
accepting the same framework, and, furthermore, immediately
started carrying out the same actions against, pretty much,
the same enemies.
The U.S. Army manuals, on what is called
`counter-terrorism', drew from German manuals and even
involved the high German officers -- Wehrmacht officers --
who were used as consultants. And, in every other state,
it's the same. The terrorism they don't like is called
`terrorism' and the terrorism they do like, because they
carry it out or their allies carry it out, is called
`counter-terrorism'.
Well, this all has to do with the use of language. But you
certainly don't have to be a professional linguist to see
this. This just requires having ordinary intelligence and
looking at the facts. And the same is true throughout, I
mean the terms that are used are twisted in ways to satisfy
the needs of whoever's using them, which turns out mostly to
be concentrated power centers, state or private, and that's
true wherever you look. |
