(updated below)
A gunman yesterday attacked two military sites in Chattanooga, Tennessee, killing four U.S Marines. Before anything was known about the suspect other than his name — Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez — it was instantly and widely declared by the U.S. media to be “terrorism.” An FBI official announced at a press briefing: “We will treat this as a terrorism investigation until it can be determined it was not.”
That “terrorism” in U.S. political and media discourse means little beyond “violence by Muslims against the West” is now too self-evident to debate (in this case, just the name of the suspect seemed to suffice to trigger application of the label). I’ve documented that point at length many times — most recently, a couple of weeks ago when the term was steadfastly not applied to the white shooter who attacked a black church in Charleston despite his clear political and ideological motives — and I don’t want to rehash those points here. Instead, I want to focus on a narrow question about this term: Can it apply to violent attacks that target military sites and soldiers of a nation at war, rather than civilians?
In common usage (as opposed to legal definitions), “terrorism” typically connotes, if not denotes, “violence against civilians.” If you ask most people why they regard the 9/11 attack as so singularly atrocious, you will likely hear that it was because the violence was aimed indiscriminately at civilians and at civilian targets. If you ask them to distinguish why they regard civilian-killing U.S. violence as legitimate and justified but regard the violence aimed at the U.S. as the opposite (“terrorism”), they’ll likely claim that the U.S. only kills civilians by accident, not on purpose. Whether one is targeting civilian versus military sites is a central aspect to how we talk about the justifiability of violence and what is and is not “terrorism.”
But increasingly in the West, violent attacks are aimed at purely military targets, yet are still being called “terrorism.” To this day, many people are indignant that Nidal Hasan was not formally charged with “terrorism” for his attack on the U.S. military base in Fort Hood, Texas (though he was widely called a “terrorist” by U.S. media reports). Last October in Canada — weeks after the government announced it would bomb Iraq against ISIS — a Muslim man waited for hours in his car in a parking lot until he saw two Canadian soldiers in uniform, and then ran them over, killing one; that was universally denounced as “terrorism” despite his obvious targeting of soldiers. Omar Khadr was sent to Guantanamo as a teenager and branded a “terrorist” for killing a U.S. soldier fighting the war in Afghanistan, during a firefight. One of the most notorious “terrorism” prosecutions in the U.S. — just brilliantly dissected by my colleague Murtaza Hussain — involved an alleged plot to attack the military base at Fort Dix. Trumpeted terror arrests in the U.S. now often involve plots against military rather than civilian targets. The 9/11 attack itself targeted the Pentagon in addition to the World Trade Center.
The argument that even attacks on military bases should be regarded as “terrorism” rests on the proposition that soldiers who are not actively engaged in combat when attacked are not legitimate targets. Instead, it is legitimate only to target them when engaging them on a battlefield. Under the law of war, one cannot, for instance, legally hunt down soldiers while they’re sleeping in their homes, or playing with their children, or buying groceries at a supermarket. Their mere status as “soldiers” does not mean it is legally permissible to target and kill them wherever they are found. It is only permissible to do so on the battlefield, when they are engaged in combat.
That argument has a solid footing in both law and morality. But it is extremely difficult to understand how anyone who supports the military actions of the U.S. and their allies under the “War on Terror” rubric can possibly advance that view with a straight face. The official framework that drives the West’s military behavior is the exact antithesis of that legal and moral standard. When it comes to justifying their own violence, the U.S. and their closest allies have spent the last 15 years, at least, insisting on precisely the opposite view.
The U.S. drone program constantly targets individuals regarded as “illegal combatants” and kills them without the slightest regard for where they are or what they are doing at that moment: at their homes, in their sleep, driving in a car with family members, etc. The U.S. often targets people without even knowing their names or identities, based on their behavioral “patterns”; the Obama administration literally re-defined “combatant” to mean “all military-age males in a strike zone.” The “justification” for all this is that these are enemy combatants and they therefore can be legitimately targeted and killed no matter where they are found or what they are doing at the time; one need not wait until they are engaged in combat or on a battlefield. The U.S. government has officially embraced that view.
Indeed, the central premise of the War on Terror always has been, and still is, that there is no such thing as a physically limited space called “the battlefield.” Instead, the whole world is one big, limitless “battlefield”: the “battlefield” is wherever enemy combatants are found. That means that the U.S. has codified the notion that one does not have to wait for a “combatant” to enter a designated battlefield and engage in combat; instead, he is a fair target for killing anywhere he is found.
The U.S.’s closest allies have long embraced the same mindset. The Israelis have used targeted assassination of the country’s enemies — killing them wherever they are found — for decades. They’ve murdered multiple Iranian scientists at their homes. They deliberately bombed the home of a Gazan police chief and killed 15 people inside. They previously killed 40 police trainees when bombing a police station. Just this week, my colleague Matthew Cole used NSA documents to prove that Israeli commandos in 2008 shot and killed a Syrian general while he hosted a dinner party at his seaside vacation home. This all is grounded in the view that one need not wait until one’s enemies enter a “battlefield” and engage in combat in order to kill them.
The question here about the Chattanooga shootings and similar attacks is not whether any or all of this is justified. The question is whether the term “terrorism” applies to such acts, and whether the term has any consistent meaning. To question whether something qualifies as “terrorism” quite obviously is not to say it is justifiable: All sorts of violence is wrong without being “terrorism.”
One could argue that attacks such as last night’s in Chattanooga count as “terrorism” despite targeting military sites because they are not carried out by states but rather by individuals or non-state actors. But that’s just another way of saying that the violence the U.S. engages in as part of the War on Terror is inherently justified and legitimate, while the violence engaged in by its declared enemies — non-state actors — never is. This is all about creating self-justifying double standards: Just imagine the outrage that would pour forth if Syria had sent a commando force to kill an American or Israeli general in his home.
And ultimately, that’s the real point here: The U.S. Government, its allies and their apologists constantly propagate standards that have no purpose other than to legitimize all of their violence while de-legitimizing all violence by their enemies in the “war” they have declared. Nothing is more central to that effort than the propagandistic invocation of the term “terrorism.” We’re now at the point where it is “terrorism” when enemies of the U.S. target American military bases and soldiers, but not “terrorism” when the U.S. recklessly engages in violence it knows will kill large numbers of civilians.
UPDATE: A tweet from CNN today:
If any enemy of the West ever made a similar claim, it would be denounced as an oxymoron.
Wouldn’t it just be helpful to remove the word “Terrorism” as it really has no basis in this discussion? The US declared “War” on a set of “people”. Whether or not these “people” form a “nation” or not no longer matters. The US declared war. The US is at war. Since when has war become something that no one fears anymore? Oh yeah when any acts of violence perpetrated on domestic soil are seen as acts of “Terrorism” and not acts of “War”. The US is at war and should thus be afraid of the consequences of that war. If the British had labelled all of the WWII bombings of London, etc. as acts of “Terrorism” then WWII would have never ended. The people would have been scared of nothing but a word and so confused that they didn’t know who or what they were fighting. War is what you should be afraid of. So stop being consumerist robots and wake up to what is happening. You are at WAR. It would be appropriate to ACT like it.
If you’re saying to the American citizenry that they should act like they are at war. You’re right. Unfortunately, I think George Bush said to go shopping and tie yellow ribbons or something. It’s much easier to be an armchair patriot and citizen – and let Big Bro take care of ‘terrorist’ whilst surrendering Constitutional rights. The citizenry have been compulsory drafted into a war whether they like it or not, though. And that thought is scary. Especially when the last 10 yrs + have shown that asymetric warfare and national surveillance simply does not work (chattanooga case in point).
There’s an irony in the way the war on terror has been waged: the US Armed Forces (DOD, NSA, etc) agree or pledge to uphold and defend the Constitution not to defend Joe Blow-american. Joe Blow is supposed to take care of that himself – protected by another right to self defense.
I’ll just add this from The Conquest of Haiti by Herbert J. Seligman, July 10, 1920: “Americans have conceived the application of the Monroe Doctrine to be protection extended by the United States to weaker States in the western hemisphere, against foreign aggression. Under cover of that doctrine the United States has practiced the very aggressions and tyrannies it was pretending to fight to safeguard weaker states against.”
History repeats.
The abridged definition of terrorism by U.S. military recruit brainwashers (based on DOD definitions) in 1996 was: [keyword RIP] “The unlawful use or threat of force or violence to achieve religious, ideological, or political goals.” The target was always changing, so really of no importance. At one time I think it was persons or individuals; later I believe it included property, etc.. ad nauseum legal changes in the definition.
The next question is “unlawful” according to what law? Followed by doesn’t that mean the U.S. acts as terrorists at times?
I believe Glenn was on Bill Maher’s show when he called an Iraq war vet (another guest on the show) a terrorist (if my recollection serves right); applying the above definition, I believe Glenn is right on.
Fighting fire with fire means you become the very thing you are fighting against.
We need to look at USMC Gen. Smedley Butler what he did and said or wrote. His words and advice are applicable to today’s ‘terrorism’ situation.
Fact are again stubbornly making it impossible for jihadi apologists and appeasers to deny that this was a Muslim-perpetrated Islam-based Quran-mandated act of war against American people.
“Chattanooga Shooter Mohammod Abdulazeez Followed Al Qaeda Cleric Online in 2013
Jul 21, 2015, 7:25 AM ET
“FBI agents have found evidence that Chattanooga shooter Mohammod Abdulazeez was following a radical American member of al Qaeda online in 2013″
http://t.co/f5U7KzvH8H
No.
What about the the U.S. Government standard that prevented these Marines from carrying arms (i.e. protecting themselves)? Are you really attacking a “military site” if those on that site are barred from defending themselves? How is that any different from attacking civilians? I can only imagine the GG piece had the shooter been taken out by a rightly armed member of our military before he achieved his “martyrdom”. That would have been racist. All of you conspiracy theorists would claim he was killed because he was muslim and our security services actively kill muslims for no reason, or something….(See *facts* on last muslim terrorist rightly killed while “associating” with the FBI). Furthermore, if you think SSRIs are to blame in this situation, you have lost the plot. Statistically speaking, those suffering from depression and treated with SSRIs are LESS likely to commit a crime than those not afflicted with the illness. What other mental organizational principle could have caused this horror? Perhaps a belief in chemtrails? Area 51 and Aliens? Help Me!!!!
Here’s a better question for you: how is it that we call at5tacking our soldiers on base ‘terrorism,’ when our government routinely uses drone strikes on weddings, funerals and other family gatherings in the Middle East when we suspect a ‘terrorist’ in attendance? How is that not also ‘terrorism?’
Of course, it is not the same thing. How could anyone think that way?
What our morally superior, freedom-loving soldiers do is called “defending freedom in the Universe” as God has asked us to do.
What they do is -terrorism- … well, … it depends, what China and Russia do is “being irresponsible” and “freedom-hating”. Unfortunately, our drones, guided missiles, nukes, … , lies, bravery, … doesn’t seem to work when it comes to people who can defend themselves on an equal basis. Besides God doesn’t tell us to attack China and Russia. You see God is “responsible”, too.
USG
Director Comey? If so, go reproduce with yourself.
Always dissecting the double standards which most in the West seem to be immune to…keep up the good work!
Thank you for that piece of clear thinking. Israel should simply be referred to as a “terrorocrcracy.” It has dominated the Middle East through state terrorism for nigh on 70 years.
The Chattanooga Shootings: Could Selective Serotonin Uptake Inhibitors (SSRI’s) have played a part?
“The Chattanooga Shootings: Could Selective Serotonin Uptake Inhibitors (SSRI’s) have played a part?”
Played apart in what?
I took SSRI’s for two decades. I never became a racist, or a terrorist.
Why find a false reason to excuse a racist terrorist from his actions, when lack of character and morals are the obvious choice?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evil_That_Men_Do
“”The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.”
SSRIs plainly provide no cure for black-and-white thinking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlYC-3gPSeM
I was looking at the black and white world
It seemed so exciting
If you’d only put me back to back with that girl
When the night’s inviting
With just a little lighting
There’ll never be days like that again
When I was just a boy and men were men
You never go from moment to moment
You’re the living double of a single fiction
You’re very colourful with your compliments
As you feel the finger’s friction
It’s a freeze-frame
Still it’s real life
You don’t want to look
Cause you’ve seen the film and you’ve read the book
I was looking at the black and white world
Trying to name some pin-up
Those days she was just a beautiful girl
Now she’s framed and hung up
I thought she was young
Up until I saw her last night in close detail
Though they all fade away when you’re so pale
It’s more than just a physical attraction
It starts with a face and ends up a fixation
But you’re never gonna feel a fraction
Of the way it used to work on your imagination
When you were looking at the black and white world…
SSRI stands for Selective Serotonin REUPTAKE Inhibitors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_serotonin_reuptake_inhibitor
Strangely enough “SSRIs are effective for the treatment of premature ejaculation.”
In your case if you took them Rumpole might not accuse you of Premature Adjudication.
In some users SSRIs can cause suicidal or even homicidal ideations. Additionally, a great amount of scientific research exists showing that a lot of cases of depression have almost nothing to do with serotonin (depletion or adhesion). Sometimes instead of making ‘depression’ worse (and there are also cases of psychotic depression and people who are bipolar swinging between extremes due to being prescribed SSRIs and the like, in which the meds have made things worse.)
Regardless there have been enough instances of people newly placed on antidepressants who kill themselves and/or others (though the latter is less rare) or done quite out-of-character things for there to be black boxes on meds stating that antidepressants can in some individuals lead to an *increased* risk of suicide. And one could argue going and shooting something up might just be a case of wanting to die, just not by one’s own hand.
Botched that first paragraph: Sometimes instead of making depression symptoms better, they can make them worse, or change the ‘structure’ or type of depression.
Yes, as with all psychotropic drugs care is needed with administration.
I suffer from PTSD and CHRONIC depression and anxiety. SSRI’s have a good effect on MOST people suffering from same.
The effect of the treatment needs to be observered and if suicidal thoughts are increased the treatment should be reviewed.
I do not advocate the use of SSRI’s for all types of depression , nor is that the way they are used.
Antidepression drugs are not a universial solution to depression.
I am unaware the alleged shooter was on SSRI’s but I have known many people who have benifited from SSRI’s, myself included.
Charleston – “terrorism” was the least. Burn confederate flags in an offering to the PC god. The gunman was white. Both were “gun free” zones (do cops have to check their weapons?).
Mr. Greenwald
There is no doubt that when the US bombs ISIS in Syria and Iraq that we are at war (unofficially) with the Islamic terrorist organization. We should expect violence in return. Simple. The attack at the military recruiting center is the expected response. Americans should prefer this over attacking a mall, or a Synagogue (a high value target for Islamists).
However, to suggest that the word “terrorism” is meaningless is wrong. The Intercept uses every attack by Islamists against the west to justify the violence because of our “racist war” against Muslims. Even after the Boston Marathon Bombing, you accused Americans of racism even for suspecting an Islamic terrorist for the attack even though Sunni Muslims commit more acts of terrorism than anyone else in the world. In an amazing display of what-aboutery (and denial), when Charlie Hebdo was attacked, you ran a series of cartoons depicting Jewish power. The Intercept has become one of the foremost apologists for Islamic terrorism in the world.
“….The 9/11 attack itself targeted the Pentagon in addition to the World Trade Center….”
That is completely ridiculous. Are you arguing that the attack of the World Trade Center is collateral damage from the attack of the Pentagon? You owe your readers an apology for this statement which is completely absurd. Civilians were targeted at the World Trade Center. There is no disputing that. There is no justification for that attack.
Scahill ran an article in which Awlaki justified violence against Americans because of our support for Israel. This is exactly how the Intercept justifies Islamic terrorism. So it is no wonder you want to remove the term “terrorism”. A day or two after the Paris attacks when civilian Jews were targeted and murdered in Paris, the Intercept callously ran an article, in effect, justifying that attack by quoting an al-Qaeda operative.
Terrorism defined:
“……A deadly explosion ripped through a Shiite mosque in a busy neighborhood of Kuwait’s capital after Friday prayers, witnesses said…..The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for the attack, which Kuwait’s Interior Ministry said killed at least 27 people and wounded 227…..”
“…….Taliban militants stormed a Shiite Muslim mosque in northwestern Pakistan on Friday, killing 20 people in a wave of gunfire and explosions before the siege ended, officials said……”
“……The Itamar ……..massacre…….took place on 11 March 2011, in which five members of the same family were murdered in their beds. The victims were the father Ehud (Udi) Fogel, the mother Ruth Fogel, and three of their six children—Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and Hadas, the youngest, a three-month-old infant. According to David Ha’ivri,[4] and as reported by multiple sources[5] the infant was decapitated.[6]…..”
Those are fucking examples of terrorism. Do you understand the difference Mr. Greenwald – and why that is terrorism? Is there any reason for justifying these attacks against innocent Muslims or Jews?
That was not “whataboutery,” aka, the fallacy of relative privation. Glenn’s piece was deeply flawed — including a surprisingly ignorant (for him) misapprehension of the messages actually communicated by several Charlie Hebdo cartoons, which were actually PRO-Muslim. But whataboutery had nothing to do with it.
No, he was saying that if the calls to publish purportedly offensive Charlie Hebdo cartoons to show solidarity were legitimate, then he was showing dedication to free speech by publishing a slew of cartoons that were antisemitic, (and others that were not but which some would say were). It was poor reasoning, but he felt he was pointing out the failure in the logic of those calling for publication of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.
I’m going to ignore the rest of you very silly rant, except to note that this is peak Craig:
“…….That was not “whataboutery,” aka, the fallacy of relative privation. Glenn’s piece was deeply flawed — including a surprisingly ignorant (for him) misapprehension of the messages actually communicated by several Charlie Hebdo cartoons, which were actually PRO-Muslim. But whataboutery had nothing to do with it……”
Bullshit, Mona. It was what-aboutery at its worst. Whether, it was the Boston Bombing, the burning of the Jordanian pilot (another classic what-aboutery apologists article), Charlie Hebdo or playing games with the definition of terrorism, Greenwald finds it difficult to condemn Islamic violence even as prevalent as it is world-wide. His article on the statistics of Islamic terrorist attacks in the US was a classic example of abusing statistics and excusing Islamic terrorism while Islamists murder (mostly Muslims).
“…….I’m going to ignore the rest of you very silly rant, except to note that this is peak Craig….”
Of course you are Mona. When you have no answer (and that is the way I take your typical response of late), then your replies are always the same. You are not one to ignore a response because you consider yourself an expert on everything so at least you should admit your deficiencies, OK?
No, Craig, and reasserting it doesn’t make it so. A statement is fallacious — or not — depending on the purpose for which it is made. Glenn did not publish the other cartoons for the PURPOSE of saying those should be of concern rather than the Charlie Hebdo ones. He did it for the reason I already explained.
Sure thing. I admit to having a deficiency in knowing what to say to this hysterical outburst:
But Mona, you are the deeply flawed one for thinking Charlie Hebdo cartoons equate to bravery. Glenn is ‘ignorant’ of the actual message in the actual cartoons? Yeah, plenty of things do manage to elude Glenn …
“Some would say”?
You and Craig should get a room for your straw men.
But that, of course, isn’t what I think. Standing on their own those cartoons suggest no particular character traits.
But publishing then after many serious threats was indeed very brave.
Glenn doesn’t read French, and knows very little about contemporary French political culture. Both of those things — but especially the latter — are necessary to understanding the messages of many of Charlie Hebdo cartoons. As the controversy wore on, and he’d been presented with evidence of the cartoons’ meaning to the French who received them, Glenn began caveating his statements in a way that takes this into account.
Hi Mona, I am French, I have stopped French magazine like Charlie Hebdo and Lemonde a longue time ago, because I find them onesided, alienating and pro-isrealian (for I don’t know what benefit we might have with Isreal… a theocracy) and extremely anti-muslim and particularly anti-northafrican!
Charlie Hebdo is nothing but a propaganda magazine!! they would never publish any cartoon about what the IDF is doing on daily basis (IDF=Isreali defense forces, or the US forces )… remember if you hit a person long enough!!! he/she will hit you back nomatter how lovely he/she is!
you should read about the history of the middle east and see how the US has treated them!
I am not justifying the violence, I am just saying that Violence generates Violence…. think about how an Iraqi might feel when he looses everything just because the Bush administration wanted to make some money for their friends! and how just is the world we are living in…. when an unjust war was declared and the perpetrators of these crimes and lies are still above the law!!!
think also, about what would happen if the US stops interfering with the middle east!! (the US never tired that!! let’s try it and see what happens)
“they would never publish any cartoon about what the IDF is doing on daily basis”
You despicable liar. You should be ashamed of yourself for spreading untruths about the victims, insulting the memory of the dead, and slandering the survivors.
Here are just some of the cartoons where CH did indeed attack Israeli policies:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AODOnj8RqvA/VK7gr1qtWpI/AAAAAAAAmhs/0OIa_jrhSvY/s1600/hebdo%2Bjew.png
“think about how an Iraqi might feel when he looses everything just because the Bush administration wanted to make some money for their friends!”
Um, dummy, Charlie Hebdo people were murdered because the murderous Muslim thugs who attacked them wanted to *avenge their so-called prophet* – trying to impose the internal Muslim blasphemy codes on the entire non-Muslim world, not because of Bush, or French colonial history, or any other excuse idiots like you are making.
You are either a moron or a very inept jihadi propagandist. The only thing certain here is that you are “French” only in the most superficial, administrative sense.
Markus writes:
Charlie Hebdo is a satirical magazine rooted in 60s leftist mockery of religion — all religions. As well as rightwing politicians and racist thugs.The cretin “Louise Cypher” does for once serve a purpose by linking to a few of the anti-Israel cartoons CH published. There are more.
But in any event, Blumenthal’s film is not much about CH — it is about the meaning of “Je suis Charlie” as a socio-political movement, and that movement is fascist.
Do watch it.
I think it’s perfectly valid to question the propagandistic use of the word “terrorism” at every opportunity. If you feel that “justifies” terrorism, that’s really a problem that exists only in your imagination, and therefore irrelevant.
Interestingly, you cite 2 instances of politically-motivated attacks on Mosques — by Muslims — as “fucking” clear instances of terrorism. Yet, whether the Charleston shooting was terrorism was a hotly debated topic for weeks in the US, and the FBI director didn’t think it was.
Jose
Personally, I believe the murders of the nine black people was terrorism i.e., had a political motivation. No one can argue that the KKK was not a terrorist organization in addition to being a racist organization. However, there are gray areas in the definition of terrorism (like a lot of things). Furthermore, western governments are propagandists. No one can deny that either. The Tennessee target was a military target. But the Intercept is also a propaganda publication. As I mentioned above, Scahill published an article within a couple of days of the Charlie Hebdo murders in which Jews were specifically targeted in a separate (but connected) incident. Scahill published a quote of Awlaki when asked about a civilian target:
“…..“The American people live [in] a democratic system and that is why they are held responsible for their policies. The American people are the ones who have voted twice for Bush the criminal and elected Obama, who is not different from Bush as his first remarks stated that he would not abandon Israel, despite the fact that there were other antiwar candidates in the U.S. elections, but they won very few votes. The American people take part in all its government’s crimes. If they oppose that, let them change their government. They pay the taxes which are spent on the army and they send their sons to the military, and that is why they bear responsibility.”……”
Does the Intercept even oppose civilian “western” targets at all? That is classic extreme propaganda by the Intercept (let alone insensitive to innocent Jews targeted in Paris).
And implying that the attack of the World Trade Center Towers was collateral damage because the 911 attacks also targeted the Pentagon is completely absurd (but consistent with the implications of the Scahill article).
“……The 9/11 attack itself targeted the Pentagon in addition to the World Trade Center…….”
That is indefensible, but not that unusual for this far left publication.
Thanks Jose.
“……The 9/11 attack itself targeted the Pentagon in addition to the World Trade Center…….”
Still no explanation of why this is “indefensible” in your alternative-history universe.
I think it’s amazing that this even has to be explained. Let’s say that I read Anders Breivik’s manifesto in order to try to understand his motivations and ideology. And let’s say that I can see where he’s coming from, even though I disagree with his reasoning on logical grounds, and his methods on moral grounds. Would you still say that I’m “justifying” what he did, and that I’m not “opposed” to what he did?
“Those are fucking examples of terrorism” – CraigSummers
CraigSummers,
For fuck-sake, we’ve talked about this repeatedly: People killing other people is wrong.
Do you not understand that ‘complexity’? It’s not a ‘left’ or ‘right’ issue. It’s a human issue.
Honestly – is there any reason other than self-hate for justifying these attacks against writers here that can help others to make any sense of your ongoing, fallacious, pseudo-arguments?
“Why does shame and self-loathing become cruelty to the innocent ?” – Anne Rice, Merrick
.
My favorite part: :”“….The 9/11 attack itself targeted the Pentagon in addition to the World Trade Center….”
That is completely ridiculous. ”
I’m glad to hear your project of rewriting all of history is still ongoing.
Oh Craig, I will add this. You don’t even know what a “definition” is. You said this:
And no definition followed.
targeting of civilians for political gain. I’ve said it dozens of times – and you know it. Just look at each of the incidents I mentioned. They all have one thing in common……Jesus, what could that be?
Oh, so the United States and Israel are terrorists. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and this:
And you still cannot accept that it is Jews doing the slaughtering in Palestine, despite quoting the horrific statistics.
But the casualties cannot speak over the volume of Mona who cries antisemitism as if the phrase is meaningful.
Mona sreams chrages of mental illness at her detractors
That was odd. It just self posted before my phat fingers could recover.
Mona first lays charges of mental illness on her detractors followed by claims the detractors are unsympathetic to the mentally ill.
So the mentally ill are unsympathetic to themselves, eh Mona?
You used the term ‘ignorant misapprehension’ earlier; just sayin’.
Yes, you remind my of a psychotic individual of of his meds because of your bizarre claims. But I have never — and never would — claimed someone’s opinion is invalid because they or family members are mentally ill. YOU implied that.
Yeah, me and Glenn Greenwald:
And you, nuf, are one of those people who are hostile toward Israel in part based on actual antisemtitism. A term that does, in fact, have meaning — as Glenn insists.
No justification for the 911 attack? Are you kidding? Do you know what evils the people in that building did?
This is not to say that I support attacking unarmed civilians. But to say that the people who worked at the WTC were innocent is rubbish. Read Ward Churchill’s essay on the matter for more details of the harms they were doing.
Actually, I wonder if people notice the very important point you have made right there.
Those so-called signature strikes based on “patterns” and high tech drones
// __ Obama Drone Strikes Are ‘Mass Murder’ – Jeremy Scahill
~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9Trh8iwNt8
~
especially those double tappings by the U.S. military are very obviously directed at family members and people acting impulsively on their sense of humanity
We are told that they are morally inferior savages who can’t even understand the meaning of freedom and who are now telling us “we are worse than Saddam Hussein” …
However, when they attack the West they don’t attack Harlem, Hialeah or kindergarten as the IDF proudly does (one of the many acts of terrorism you selectively omit), but the Pentagon and U.S. military basis.
They don’t seem to be that deprived of morality after all.
I wonder what USG will do when those “morally inferior savages” get smart about things and down the satellites USG is using to guide the drones killing them. That isn’t so technically difficult
Satyagraha,
RCL
This latest article is a textbook example of obfuscation. Will Saletan of Slate produced a similar piece and his argument is no less asinine. In the duplicitous moral analysis of Saletan and Greenwald, the USA’s campaign of drone warfare has rendered the entire world a battlefield, thereby legitimizing strikes against unarmed marines on domestic soil. What is so ironic about these two unoriginal polemicists is how they rely on same lack of nuance they malign so many others for. In effect, they are guilty of lumping all Muslims together. The Chattanooga shooter was a naturalized American citizen of Jordanian and Kuwaiti ancestry. The only thing the shooter had in common with America’s declared enemies overseas was a shared religious belief. The USA liberated Kuwait from Sadaam Hussain and Jordan has also waged war on ISIS. So why are Greenwald and Saleton referencing American drone attacks against ISIS? How is that in any way relevant? Any ‘geopolitical’ grievance the shooter had was clearly filtered through the lens of theology. That’s it. The Chattanooga shooter killed those 5 innocent marines because he wanted to get to paradise. Greenwald and Saleton have slyly grouped the shooter with enemy combatants found in Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East as a red herring to distract use from the unique menace that is radical Islam.
The only way I could lend any credence to Greenwald and Saleton’s argument would be if a foreign ISIS fighter entered America for the sole purpose of attacking Marines. Of course, that is not what happened. Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez was educated at an American University and briefly enjoyed employment with the State of Tennessee. He was not one of “them”; he was one of “us”. That’s precisely what makes ISIS-inspired terrorism such a unique threat. Greenwald and Saleton are attempting to downplay Islamic violence on domestic soil by disingenuously framing it as a continuing conflict between two mutually culpable sides. But Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez was supposed to be on our side. Mohammod Yousuff Abdulazeez had absolutely no affiliation with the other side. Greenwald and Saleton are muddying the waters with the word ‘terrorism’ because the term, for them, connotes a discomforting dose of moral clarity. It highlights how insane the practice of Islam can still be in the year 2015. America’s misadventures overseas do not in any way make the actions of Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez any more ambiguous. If Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez didn’t have an imaginary friend, those five marines would be at home with their families right now. End of moral analysis.
No hyperbole — you literally don’t know what you are talking about. Tarek Mehanna, an American Muslim, was convicted of providing “material support” for terrorism (including conspiring to “murder” U.S. soldiers in Iraq) in 2012 and is currently serving a 17-year sentence. This is most of his sentencing statement:
Please note all of Mehenna’s reasons — they have nothing to do with trying to get to heaven, fer chrissakes.
Lovely speech. Was his plan to wage war against the soldiers responsible for that reprehensible gang rape? I do not think so. Our entanglements in the Middle East are complex and, admittedly, morally ambiguous. Some Jihadi in a court room is ,by no means, the arbiter of what is right and what is wrong. You have proved my point. The only reason he has any solidarity with these “oppressed” people is because they share the same delusion. That doesn’t give him the right to kill anyone and it doesn’t preclude me from condemning his behavior and beliefs. I hope the judge threw the book at him
Well, yes, I proved your point if your point was that it’s fuckwitted to claim that Muslims who take up arms against U.S. soldiers do so because said Muslims want “to get to paradise.”
Whether the reasons these Muslims actually state are compelling — whether they are “right or wrong” — is not the issue here. The issue is that they have many entirely secular reasons for taking up arms against the United States.
You now get that your initial claim — “they do it to get to paradise” — was bullshit, right?
I never said or implied he didn’t have any secular reasons for taking up arms against unarmed soldiers. You’re just assigning to much weight to the wrong factors. Religion is the X-factor, If he didn’t believe in the doctrines of Islam, he would have have opened fire
Correction: he would not have opened fire. Mohammod wanted to be a martyr. Martyrs end up in Paradise. His martyrdom would be the reward for “avenging” the harm done to Muslims around the world. In other words, he was a religious maniac.
So was Chris Kyle. Nationalism frequently is accompanied by civil religion, and Kyle drank deeply of that.
Well yeah, and if millions of American soldiers and sailors didn’t believe in the doctrine of American exceptionalism/nationalism there wouldn’t be any committing atrocities and war crimes. Eg. My Lai, Abu Ghraib.
Religion — including nationalism — can be the prism through which individuals reflect on secular wrongs. This is not exclusive to Muslims.
That’s a false equivalence. Many Soliders who fought in Vietnam were drafted into the army. They had no choice. While Chris Kyle may have used his religion to soothe his conscience, the doctrines of Christianity did not compel him to snipe militants or perceived militants in Afghanistan. He could have just as easily been a Jew, an atheist or even a Muslim. Nationalism is not a form of religion. Atrocities are committed for a wide variety of reasons in combat zones, most of which have nothing to do with the “doctrines of American exceptionalism”. The Soldiers are just there to do a job and sometimes they end up committing terrible acts. However, in the 21st century, over 99% of religiously-motivated crimes is done by Muslim. I can provide you with the stats if you’d like. Furthermore, Muslim-majority nations also commit atrocities in the name of nationalism. While Saudi Arabia’s assault on Yemen has a religious component, it is primarily motivated by national security threats posed by the Shite Houthis. I
Oh, and Jonah? I had meant to also bold this bit from Mr. Mehenna’s speech:
“The Chattanooga shooter killed those 5 innocent marines because he wanted to get to paradise. ”
Sorry, you’re only allowed one ridiculous assumption per sentence.
Perhaps, I’m making an mistaken assumption but this is what I’m inferring from your snarky response: 1) Marines at a recruiting station aren’t innocent and 2) the killer didn’t have the afterlife on his mind. Whatever his terrestrial grievances may be, I can assure you he wouldn’t have gone forward with his plan if he didn’t think something was waiting for him on the other side. When a Jihadi says, “Allahu Akbar”, take him at face value. They really believe this shit
That term just means “God is Great” and is commonly used by everyone. In this particular case there is no indication that the shooter even uttered those words. But, is that the criteria now for defining who is a terrorist? Anyone who utters those words while shooting is a terrorists while all other murderers are just plain old criminals or mentally ill.
It’s worse than that. Anyone who says anything other than “I didn’t get that pony I wanted for my 12th birthday” while committing mass murder is a terrorist.
#1 and #2 are correct, although you are expressing them positively when my point was merely to question YOUR positive assumptions. Don’t just reverse them to project new assumptions on me.
The rest you are continuing to make up.
Gen. Dwight Eisenhower:
Murderous sniper, Chris Kyle:
The bottom line here is this. Language and semantics are now framed by those who call the shots, redefining terms and words, and entire phrases to fit the mold. Torture is not torture but enhanced interrogation. Terrorism is not terrorism until they say it is. Or a Muslim commits a crime. And if there are inconsistencies, well, those are deemed to be as a direct product of one engaging in critical thinking, where a deeper analysis of things and events is made. A territory that is not preferred. And THAT alone may make you a terrorist.
Even by your analysis Glenn, If Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez was not part of a designated terrorist organization (which seems to be the case at this point) then we would in fact not be at war with a lone individual meaning it’s by every definition a terrorist attack.
What? You wanna try that again so it makes sense?
Malphius means that an attack can only be considered an act of war against US combatants if the person is at war with the US. Given that no one has officially declared war on anyone else, and to the extent that the US targets unknown militant-looking people all the time, Malphius is not making much sense.
see this excerpt from David Swanson (from his excellent book, “War is a Lie”):
Wars Are Not Fought on Battlefields
http://truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/93978:david-swanson–wars-are-not-fought-on-battlefields
@nuf said
Kiss my secular anti-Zionist Jew ass.
Not even if you shave it.
Tribal toad.
Great article! TheIntercept is definitely my go to news source. Can anybody suggest other like-minded news sources? Cnn, HuffPost, FOX, MSNBC, ABC…I can’t take any more of that fluff propaganda. Peace to Glenn Greenwald and the staff!
I would like to point out the gunman’s background. According to WIKIPEDIA’s article on the 2015 Chatanooga Shootings:
He was reportedly a Jordanian citizen born in Kuwait, although Jordanian sources claimed that he was a PALESTINIAN with a Jordanian travel document. According to The Washington Post, both of Abdulazeez’s parents were self-described in their divorce proceedings “as natives of ‘the State of PALESTINE'”
@CRAIG SUMMERS
Can you spot the difference between Mona and nuf said?
If it’s any comfort Gator, nuf does go on at some length about why he’d nevertheless oppose the Holocaust.
If it’s any comfort Gator, nuf does go on at some length as to why he’d nevertheless oppose the Holocaust. Great guy, that nuf.
Back at you, Mona :)
I spoke of millennia of mistreatment and ya’ll jumped straight to the Holocaust; right out of the Hasbara playbook. I do not consider the term ‘ill-treatment’ to include the Holocaust; the holocaust is an abomination.
Do we (the world) have trouble with Rwandans, Armenians, or any other group claiming special rights because of their Holocaust®? No. But Israel costs us more than any other nation.
Anyone asserting their religion gives them certain rights over others is not a friend.
Hasbara is a form of discrimination, little different from Xtians who refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple because a religion forbids it.
Imagine Scientologists getting special treatment for their Super Adventure Club activities.
Well, they do get tax breaks, perhaps because Scientology is no less believable than any other religion, including Judaism.
I posit that Hasbara has been in practice since well before the Holocaust. The world is responding in an overwhelmingly positive way to BDS; why is it so extreme for me to suggest Jews may have been behaving exceptionally since before the Holocaust?
I am being a bit of an asshole but my behavior is nothing when stacked up against the destruction and horror wrought on the planet today by Israel.
So yes, I have supreme disdain for all religion but especially for the Abrahamic versions.
Actually, I didn’t, but so what if I had? You are grossly blinded by Jew hate, but even so, it couldn’t have come as a surprise to you that your claiming Jews brought on themselves millennia of persecution was going to eventually lead to discussion of the Holocaust.
No, it’s not. Once again, you are a moron, just as with your misuse of the word “innate.”
I don’t know what that means, and likely do not care to.
I see. You are endorsing pogroms, slaughters, forced conversions and various blood libels against Jews because you object to a nation-state’s obscene policies.
Real genius and humanitarian you are.
Says the person with a family history of schizophrenia.
Gator claims he is unable to shake the pride he has in his fellow Jew. He favors himself for being a Jew like Glenn.
That is tribal bullshit.
I do not hate Jews as you, the Habarist, would believe. I hate the behavior that is exhibited by the Jewish state of Israel.
I am well aware you do not understand my point but then you think Charlie was all about bravery.
Consider my opinion of you as low as that held by an orthodox Jew; I wouldn’t offer you my hand if you were drowning.
I “believe” it based on the evidence, to wit, you have three times written this (the prior two were essentially the same):
That’s all any reasonable person needs to know to label you an antisemite.
By the way, in addition to being an antisemite, you are offensively bigoted against relatives of the mentally ill:
A number of wicked smart and reasonable people commenting here have had known the burden of family members suffering from mental illness. Indeed, some commenters themselves suffer from clinical conditions.
And my schizophrenic brother? He was logical when on his meds. It’s just then when off of them he was even less coherent than you are.
It’s important to realize there are two ‘war fronts’ in any conflict: the actual conflict of what really happens, and how it is then reported in the media. Information war is just as important as the actual war, and that is why ‘terrorist’ is such a useful term for the government, media, pentagon, etc to smear their enemies–and just as important get the public to believe in and back their ‘narrative’ of world events. So, residents of Falluja who are defending their city from US military attack are ‘terrorists’–and not residents in their own country justifiably trying to protect their homes and property from an invading, occupying force. But when the US government bombs Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII, two cities with with little or no military significance and full of civilians, the narrative is “we did it to save American lives” or “end the war” instead of what it rightly is, a state sponsored terrorist act of collective punishment against civilian targets resulting in 200,000 dead civilians and thousands more living the rest of their lives permanently disfigured with horrific burns. Of course the US military confiscated all videos showing the immediate aftermath and victims in both cities and censored everything. Dresden is another example of state sponsored terrorism against civilians in WWII. The US military drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan are state sponsored terrorism, often killing civilians and bystanders who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but when reported in the media “drone strike in Pakistan kills terrorist and his followers”. The amount of lying done by the US government and its shills in the media is inveterate, shameless and knows no limits.
So, this commenter, nuf said, “clarifies” and objects to being deemed antisemitic by stating:
Clarified, indeed.
I’m tired of hearing the word anti-Semite. Most Israelis aren’t even semites, they’re just jewish Europeans. Being jewish does not make you a Semite.
So, then, one is a fool for claiming that Hitler and his National Socialist pals were antisemites who killed millions of European Jews? Huh.
You can be a fool whether you claim Hitler was an antisemite or not; your choice.
Try meds, again. From what I’ve read they take time to work … and new ones are in the pipeline. Keep in touch.
“Being jewish does not make you a Semite.”
Indeed.
Shorter Mona; criticizing Jews? Antisemitism!!!
Mona is using tactics of the Hasbarist yet she gets her panties in a bunch when this fact is asserted. She then doubles-down with flame and invective because people are too stupid to see her pointy headed view.
Probably there’s a check in the mail from Bibi …
And Ayn Rand was a member of the Communist Party USA.
You and your pal Nadia need to remonstrate with that ignoramus Norman Finkelstein who writes sentences like these:
The crazy fool seems to think there was such a thing as antisemitism in Germany!
Terrorism means something very precise but rather than elaborate, let me offer eecummings paean to its opposite..
People cannot love America and not hate terrorism.
Upon what else might we spend 6 to 7 hundred billion dollars per year if not to show our love of everything holy?
Pretty deep, and true argument.
Hitler killed millions, Stalin, our buddy at the time killed many more; Mao killed the most and Nixon who also killed millions opened a business relationship with him. The Brits invented the concentration camp in S Africa and Canadians renamed Berlin after him..General Kitchener. The Americans were the second concentration campers in the Phillipeans but for sheer terrorist killing by a small number of people you have to give it to Tibbets and his crew of the Enola Gay bombing the defenseless civilians of Hiroshima and the Airplane still fly’s proudly at the Smithsonian. Humans are a nasty lot and none more nasty than the USA. Wanna see a potential terrorist; look in the mirror; if you are human, you are lookin at one. Wanna see a hypocrite, look in the same mirror.
“Can it (terrorism) apply to violent attacks that target military sites and soldiers of a nation at war, rather than civilians?”
“Ultimately … the U.S. Government, its allies and their apologists constantly propagate standards that have no purpose other than to legitimize all of their violence while de-legitimizing all violence by their enemies in the ‘war’ they have declared.”
Beyond his misplaced and pathetically naïve focus on words, Glenn lays bare here his defining flaw: Deep-seated guilt for being a Westerner – too cowardly to take up arms for the opposition. Believing because he must – safe in his sanctuary from the real enemy’s ideology and guns – that the power of his own words somehow matter.
Just another chicken-shit hiding behind a keyboard.
Well, that was quite the litany of ad hominem non sequiturs!
And yeah, guys who fly to Hong Kong to receive and publish top secret documents from the sole superpower in the world, oh absolutely, what a coward.
You fucking moron.
Hey texas,
I saw where Obama is getting ready to invade Texas. Hope you and GlenD got lots of ammo.
‘…his misplaced and pathetically naïve focus on words…”
The Intercept is a website publishing journalism. Maybe you’re in the wrong place? If you have a problem with words, and prefer to sit blinking at images instead, then perhaps you’d prefer Youtube.
As for the rest of your gibberish – about Western guilt, and being too cowardly to kill people – it isn’t worthy of a response.
That was brilliant. Very funny, made my Sunday morning. “Prefer to sit, blinking at images…” Perfect.
You are an idiot, sir. Born and bred.
Indeed, the real shame is our feckless leaders talk out of both sides of their mouths. If we are at war with these animals and the battlespace is global, why do we have “gun free zones” at military facilities?
What you miss due to your vicious biases is that this was an attack on unarmed people, which makes it an act of cowardice. As well, your smallminded hatefulness makes you miss that every war in history has civilian casualties. So the only way you can utter this banal tripe is if you are opposed to every war in history.
What’s saddest about our current world is how many talking heads and pols who are of substandared intelligence get a platform to spout nonsense. I spit at you for writing this while those Marines families are still grieving.
Bravo! What a great performance of inanity, up to and including the gratuitous reference to the Marines’ families. It’s hard to chose, but this is my favorite leap (into orbit around Pluto) of logic:
Cool beans!
Mona – Have any family members in the military? Ever served yourself? I’m pretty sure not. Wait till the blood has dried in the streets before you go on like this. But hey, what do you care, right?
Glenn D — Ever had your family blown up at a wedding party? Ever seen your own kid have her legs blown off? Cuz our CIA and military does those things to brown and Muslim people. But hey, what do you care, right?
Have you? I’m well aware of how Obama relentlessly slaughters people but never talks about it publicly.
Tell me, are you aware that as you spew your inanity that there is a Navy sailor fighting for her life after spending all night in surgery last night? Seems to me you think she deserved it. One can only hope you are next.
And oh yeah, Glenn G had his facts wrong. Terrorism is an attack that is designed to strike terror into a population, it doesn’t have to be against civilians, As well, under all standards of war, soldiers who are off the battlefield and unarmed are not considered to be legitimate targets.
But hey, keep lecturing me. I know this is how you “make a difference”, lol. Armchair, web activists, what a joke this site. I come in from time to time to see what Glenn is doing with the gift of fame Edward Snowden gave him and it’s pretty sad to see him waste it mostly on preening.
Says who? And why do you opt for that definition in particular?
Yeah, and her whole family is in the hospital lounge reading The Intercept.
You moron.
There is no “off the battlefield” in a global war. And, it is a global war that we are waging. More to the point, If we can designate entire countries as “battlefields,” why should the territory of the United States be carved out as a hostilities-free zone for our adversaries?
One more point. What you miss about your own POV is that your argument is nonsensical. My reasoning isn’t flawed, you just don’t like it. There is a big difference. I get you care nothing for those families or the Marines or the brothers in arms of of those who died. I get that you can’t imagine mentally masturbating about semantic nonsense is insulting in the wave of such savagery.
You are welcome to that. But you are not welcome to claim there is no reason to what I say. It’s a perfectly reasonable comment – but I also understand the military, up close and personal.
Shorter Glenn D: “I know lots about the U.S. military so I know all about why that Chattanooga shooter is a terrorist by gum and military families in Chattanooga read Glenn Greenwald daily. So there!”
Jesus.
You are so intent on scoring points that you miss the message, Mona.
Can you imagine, Glenn D — how effective Mona and Glenn would be in the real world?
For different reasons, the barbarians would silence them both — as they went kicking and screaming: “BUT I HAD A POINT TO MAKE HERE!!!”
Fools.
Translation: “Mona argues well with a command of facts and logic and I hate that!”
Says the guy who announced it was a certainty that I never disagreed with Glenn Greenwald. How’d that work out?
Because we cannot trust our ‘allies’ with loaded guns?
And they’re not animals per se, they are people.
So now we’re at war with cowardice?
On the subject of ‘acts of cowardice’, there have been countless, well-documented incidents in which U.S marines deliberately shot and killed unarmed civilians in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And as for the U.S’s favourite ally in the region, they’ve been deliberately murdering unarmed civilians for decades – shooting unarmed women and children waving white flags, murdering 13 year old schoolgirls walking home from school, bombing U.N safe houses, schools, hospitals, children’s playgrounds, and children playing football on a beach, shooting 12 year old’s in the head and point blank range, and demolishing the homes of Palestinians whilst the occupants are still inside, e.t.c. How’s that for cowardice?
Are the people that carried out these crimes also ‘animals’ in your self-serving scheme of things? Of course not. You probably regard them as heroes.
And as for your contention that somebody being ‘opposed to every war in history is necessarily a bad thing’, I take it you were one of those late developers who still played with his action man toys at the age of 16?
Hmm… I wonder about this. SInce we are engaged in a “global war” (I have two “war on terror” medals from my military time), the theater of war clearly includes the United States. (And, was this not part of the justification for putting a U.S. civilian in a Navy brig in the United States several years ago?)
If we are indeed engaged in global war, as the U.S. government appears to claim in rhetoric and in the naming of its medals and campaigns, the territory of the United States should be considered, at the very bare minimum, part of the rear area of combat operations. What are the Geneva/ICRC rules for attacking uniformed military personnel who are on duty in the rear?
By the way, while on military duty, I always considered that I was a legitimate target in wartime whether overseas or in the United States. Just like cops when facing criminals or insurgents, military personnel should be the initial targets of any armed responses by a wartime adversary. We want them to attack the military, not civilians. Yes, political and military leadership of the country are in denial. But, so is the public. Americans have sanctioned running wars with a volunteer military and without a war tax so that they personally don’t have to suffer any pain or awareness of the nasty business of war. Too bad our enemies do not agree with the idea of a global war being conducted totally external to the territory of the United States.
Absolutely heartbreaking. What kind of sectarian differences could justify such horrific violence and bloodshed? So sad for the people of Iraq. ISIS must be stopped somehow.
http://www.theworldbeast.com/isis-displays-of-us-stuff-grasped-from-iraqis-adjacent-fallujah.html
I was at a state sponsored meeting where terrorism was discussed,
most of the participants were prison guards in the high security prison where the german RAF (short for red army faction) murderers were held
we all agreed that the RAF mudrers were acts of terrorism
the failed attempt of Stauffenberg tto blow up Hitler was not
but in between in the free world there is no question , because there are many alternatives to violence
Absolutely terrible, poor innocent people. When is this ever going to stop? My heart goes out to all their families and friends. Why is there so much evil in this world?
http://www.theworldbeast.com/isis-displays-of-us-stuff-grasped-from-iraqis-adjacent-fallujah.html
Good
FWIW: Glenn, you and Froomkin are by far the only ones worth reading on this site. You two make most of the other contributors look like amateurs, especially Juan Thompson and Lillian Segura, whose journalistic incompetence, skewed positions and looney-leftist subject matter really drag down the quality.
You, you racist pig — who thinks African-Americans don’t merit police protection — are wrong, again. Dan Froomkin is good, but Lillian Segura is outstanding in her long-form investigative journalism. Juan Thompson is also very good on the beat of criminal justice and race issues.
Almost nobody can match Glenn Greenwald, so it’s no insult to find that any given writer doesn’t manage it.
,,,and Mona the Junkyard Dog is simply an angry bitch. You can do much better than her Glenn if you think you need someone to patrol the comments section.
Yes, an angry bitch who knows you are a racist pig who claims blacks don’t merit police protection from murderers.
It is terrorism on both counts usa foreign policy and military manoeuvres, as well as Maj Nidal Hassan in Fort Hood, and SSgt Robert Bales …
one side is not innocent of conducting terrorist acts. But anti-usa forces are morally justified in history.
Of course it’s not terrorism. Because if it were terrorism, America’s superduperdomesticglobal dragnet would have caught that terrorist before he got the chance to put his dastardly plot in motion. Wouldn’t it?
This guy was an American citizen, which makes his case one of treason. I don’t agree with the enemy combatant status that Mr Greenwald wants to bestow him with.
The term “terrorism” is not technically wrong in this case. Those soldiers were off-duty and not prepared for war. It would have been the same case had someone walked into a mosque and opened fire to kill people, although technically many of them would have been off-duty jihadists and other terrorists.
Too much ignorence in one comment kind sir. Not all practising Muslims want to blow up the Yanks. Only those who have probably had a family member blown up by the Terrorist masquerading as Democracy Bringers.
” although technically many of them would have been off-duty jihadists”
chuckle!
POTUS says we are not at war with Islam, so…terrorism.
Yep. It is in many ways unfortunate that governments were allowed to define terrorism in the first place. It was perhaps natural that journalism and the public would trust government to do this. The state does, after all, hold the monopoly on use of force, and is tasked with creating and employing the laws that define how terrorism (whatever that now means) is dealt with.
But is it enough to simply point out the hypocrisy and double standard used by governments? Is it enough to delegitimize governmental models (there are many, and they are not consistent) without offering the public anything better in their place?
I’m struck by the differences in how terrorism is discussed in public fora when compared with other issues of public concern–as an example, Global Warming/Climate Change. There is a fairly robust public debate on GW issues, and while government(s) are involved in the conversation, they do not *drive* the discussion, or define it–as they have in the case of the “T-word”. Instead, we have lively and very influential input from academics, private citizens, NGOs, etc.
Why is that not the case with “Terrorism”? Why no journalistic standard? Why no concerted attempt by academia to provide a less-biased alternative to government treatments?
I have no idea why this young man would kill 4 Marines and 1 Sailor in Chattanooga or what he was thinking when he tragically took the lives of these young men. The night of the shooting, when the shooter’s motive was unknown and there was wild speculation about the cause for the shooting, there was much mention that the shooter, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, was born in Kuwait. Steve Kornacki was filling in for Chris Matthews on MSNBC that night. On the show, as guests, there were the usual former FBI agents dubbed “terrorism experts.” These experts surmised that the shooter had been radicalized by ISIS web sites and suggested that Americans needed to be more vigilant in observing their neighbors and reporting to the police any suspicious behavior they observe. Just like in the former East Germany. However, there was not one word said that would suggest that the shooter’s motivation might have been U.S. policy in the Middle East. It is apparently beyond the pale to even suggest that we might have brought this on ourselves.
You don’t need to read ISIS web sites to become radicalized. All you need is to read and listen to America’s corporate media to become really upset at how we approach the rest of the world and project Amercian power across the globe. That said, it was indeed tragic that these young men in our uniform lost their lives. And even more tragic to know that more lives are going to be lost if we don’t fundamentally change our role as the World’s Super Power.
Excellent article.
Our shameless cowardly leaders think they are still bulletproof but they should recognize that the explosions are getting closer and they and those they love will come apart as easily as the people of Yemen or Afghanistan. They care nothing about innocents slaughtered by our military in some distant country. It’s a shame that they will probably have to hear the explosions or machine gun fire from their DC offices before they learn what it really means to have the world as your battlefield. Hint: your own house is part of that world.
My message to these DC nincompoops is “End your endless war. Now! Violence just brings more violence.”
The U.S. Definition of terrorism, international or domestic, requires that the act “appears to be intended” to intimidate, change policy etc… So how it appears is the required element of the crime not the intention of the actor. Dylan Roof’s crime, it is said, did not, in Charleston, SC., appear to be intended to intimidate etc….In NYC it may have appeared that way. A Muslim perpetrator automatically appears to be intending to intimidate us here in the U.S. and elsewhere. I don’t know whether the U.S. Courts have weighed in on the subjectivity of this element as unconstitutionally vague.
You’re white, aren’t you?
Thanks Glenn for a superb analysis!
Excellent article, thanks for solidifying ideas and thoughts that had yet to coalesce in my poor intellect.
This may just be reiterating the obvious, but dubbing violent acts, plans of actions or just free speech by certain people or groups as terrorism (a term not only failing to follow the actual definition as Glenn points out, but also, often redefined any which way depending on the agenda and who the enemy is), seems a very conscious decision by governments, corporations and their medias in order to breed hate, fear and mistrust. It makes for better ratings, more docile, ignorant and subserviant populations; and by demonizing and denying the humanity of those it brands terrorists, makes them much easier to kill, torture, or imprison with or without trial, with impunity and with even popular support. It makes little difference if they’re whistleblowers, environmentalists, or Muslims.
Nailed it. Thanks for directly calling out the blatant Intentional Cognitive Dissonance so prevalent in our society and government!
Great article Glen.
It is this level of analysis that erodes the narrative. The governments are playing a blame game, a game of aspersion casting. Terrorism has to be defined by the people and Glenn Greenwald, because the government’s definition is elastic and duplicitous. They claim they are “at war”, yet when that “war” comes to their shores, they exploit that fact further to their advantage and misname it “terrorism”. The governments own acts of terror, are quickly labelled as something else, like er War, or “collateral damage”. They are reprehensible and shameless liars.
Thus it is in a number of areas.
“Religion”: What I practice.
“Superstition”: What “they” practice.
“War”: When I attack you.
“Terrorism”: When you attack me.
Etc.
The other side of this coin: So many Americans are employed at Army and other military installations—and for contracting corporations—that it’s easy now to view these sites as workplaces. When people stalk their corridors shooting at anyone in their way, we identify with the victims as employees.
Our first response is not a military one—who did this, who ordered it, and where is their headquarters?—but (after the shooter is stopped) to ask, How did an armed unauthorized person enter this secure workplace?
If our military (installations) had a clearer, better defined purpose and mission beyond self-justification, we might look at these events differently.
It s all humman greed and selfishness .
We all know how this silent religious war started between Us and middle east …
so back to the point , who is terrorist ? …My opinion —==
Both ISIS & US .(Both kill , torture and then justify it in the name of religion).except obama now …
So It dosnt matter what they call each other …..we humans are the only animals in this world who enjoys name calling (to fit our agenda)…..
I think it will be stupid forbus to be expect from Us or any other country to respect the defination of terrorism ….
Dont stress ….
Nailed it, names do not matter. The extreme terrorists, thugs, idiots or SOBs call them what you will on both sides have set the world on fire. As the fire becomes more engaged more people on both sides will be forced into the fray and have to grab a bucket to save their own asses. This may if fully engaged be a big one.
Both ISIS and the US are terrorists? While I agree that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”, to imply moral equivalence is ludicrous. “This silent religious war….?” What color is the sky on your planet? There is nothing silent about it and it has little to do with religion, perhaps with exception to the allahu Akbar yelling enemy – who is killing far more Muslims than US servicemen. This is about freedom! We are fighting for liberty, they are fighting for submission. Make sure you pick the right side – else your blogging days will be limited to quoting the Sura while living in Dhimmitude and wondering what happened to the freedom you once enjoyed in the ‘terrorist’ US. ISIS, AQAP, Hamas, Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Shabab, Boko Haram (literally, books are forbidden) are but the tip of the burgeoning global jihad which seeks to remove your freedom! Only Iran has ever experienced any level of democracy, and only briefly in the Islamic world. They are all dictatorships, theocracies, monarchies or military rule – remnant of coup d’etat. Perhaps 2% of the citizens of Islamic Republics participate in society. The rest are slaves, near slaves or indentured servants. PS – Sunni and Shia, along with their various offshoots and allies have been killing each other for a millennia. Differing interpretations of the Quran are responsible for more deaths than malaria and this did not begin with our ill-advised offensive toward Sadaam Hussein. But you’re right, were both terrorists and we should just make friends with those who seek our demise.
For whatever it’s worth: the Federal criminal definition of terrorism, 18 U.S.C. § 2331.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2331
Chapter 113B (see hyperlink above § 2331) covers the relevant sections on terrorism generally. So, if they’re going to investigate it as “terrorism” or charge it, it needs to fit.
Only if that’s a special requirement for investigations. For a trial, they can charge something completely different and then after the jury is finished the judge can garnish the sentence on grounds of terrorism. I’m assuming the media and the “creators” of history can do the same.
It’s not just the rhetoric, the loose hyperbole, about the word “terrorism”. The Global War on Terror, by name and by talking points going back to 2001, made the entire world the battlefield. So, here we are.
http://jurist.org/forum/2010/12/where-is-the-battlefield-in-the-war-on-terror-the-need-for-a-workable-framework.php
It’s a case of rhetoric causing damage, not just blowback, and it’s not just a matter of legal phrasing, but a principle of war. It’s hard to plan for something that is sloppy in the concept, but that was the starting point for all the GWOT hyperbole, wasn’t it?
Obviously, the ‘Global War on Terror’ is more euphemism than reality wrt nation-state actors. The geographical limits of the global war clearly exclude for example … most of the western world, Russia, China and the remaining 7 permanent members to the UN Security Council. For obvious reasons, it’s not a ‘global war’ … yet.
.
To be sure, these state actors are subject “to” loosely defined acts of ‘terrorism’ in the form of non-state actors but I have yet to see any of the above state actors accused of sponsoring terrorism (in the GWOT) … no matter how egregious their conduct in world affairs.
http://www.i-p-o.org/koechler-terrorism-collective-security.htm
In my view coram, the rise of ‘terrorism’ in the 21st century is directly related to the breakdown in the principles of collective security enshrined in the United Nations charter. That is: rogue nation-states acting unilaterally … often in contradiction to their own ‘national interests’.
see also; THE UNITED NATIONS, THE INTERNATIONAL
RULE OF LAW AND TERRORISM http://i-p-o.org/koechler-un-law-terrorism.pdf
The Charleston shooter IS a terrorist. The reason he is not called a “terrorist” is because most editors have an even more vile description to use called “racist”.
When these “terrorists” start wearing uniforms and positively identify themselves as combatants, then we won’t call them terrorists, saboteurs, and spies. All of which have no standing under the Geneva convention and in fact are barred as legal combatants; something you apparently need to brush up on, Glenn.
Consider when German intelligence agents entered the U.S. in 1942 to conduct sabotage but were captured. “POW” you say? No. They were saboteurs and had no protections because they were not legal combatants. Six of them were executed by electric chair on August 8th, 1942.
Um, you do realize the shooter is a U.S. citizen, right?
And I’m fixing something for you:
Right,… and the other “terrorists” in 45 you gave a job/money (like you did to AlKaida when the russians try to take Afghanistan) to build even bigger bombs… like Werner von Braun and other german scientists ;-)
But you really overdid it when you were really using it on civillians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki… So actually your mindset hasn’t changed from Korea, Vietnam and all other wars on people who’s only “problem” was/is that they don’t want to be like you ! Think about it ;-)
The american race is a violent and terroristic people that has been in war for more than 200 years since its declaration, and just had mere 17 years of peace. If a people has been constantly involved in wars, they have been subject to all kind of propaganda for generations and dont know how information difers from propaganda. They have lost perspective and regard the whole world as enemy. Even germany was counted to the axis of evil when we did not join in quickly enough into the “war on terrorism”. I only wonder how confused the general american must be, looking at all these facts and still thinking of themself as “world police”, bringing “peace and democracy” to countries far far away…
But how can we object this? Americans have spent more on military than the rest of the world combined, so we better shut up or we might end up on a terrorist list…
The defendants in 1942 — the case was ex parte Quirn, 317 U.S. 1, by the way — weren’t accused of terrorism. They were found guilty of breaches of the law of war, spying, espionage, and such; forum, verdict and sentence upheld by the Supreme Court, so it’s valid case law.
Anyway, someone posing as a civilian or something other than a legal combatant is liable for trial and execution. It’s still a war, but the looseness of the word “terrorist” is the problem here. That was the whole point of the article.
Dylann Roof left a manifesto and had a goal: to start a race war. It was hyperbolic and insane, but he had what he saw as a political purpose. That would make it a reasonable example of domestic terrorism. There is not enough proof of a motive in this latest instance.
He may have been influenced by a radical religious belief, he have have had a larger goal than simply lashing out. But until we know he is a “mass murderer” not a “terrorist.”
Nonsense. Roof’s purpose was very clear: to start a race war. That’s classic nonstate terror.
Next you’ll be telling us he was a love vigilante. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlHQSIMHqjA)
Or were you referring to Abdulazeez in your second paragraph?
Or were you referring to Abdulazeez in your second paragraph?
That’s how I read it Baldie.
Ever actually read the Geneva Conventions, DW? Spy shows up there, and saboteur. They may be deprived of the right to communicate for a limited time after their detention, and that’s about it. There isn’t really a concept of “standing”under the conventions at all.
Since your distinction is one of wearing a uniform (I assume by “positively identifying themselves” you mean a fixed sign?), are the CIA operatives who fly the drones “legal combatants”?
Good luck finding the word “terrorist” in the Geneva Conventions at all.
Oh the quagmire. The eternal can of worms opened by the Bush and neo-con gang. and continued by the new world order American dictatorship whether Republicrat or Demolican. Never ending in analysis, talking points, criticisms, brain wash, Orwellian twisting, on both sides. The bee hive has been messed with, and it will never end. Just what they wanted, a country of massive violence, moralized by it’s supposed Christian values, executed by its brutality, and corporate fascism. They will use “terrorist” until it wears out like “communist”, and then no matter what “ist” they will turn the violence and control on their citizens, a full blown totalitarian police corporate militarized state, with the media as God, enslaved through debt, crippled by addiction, and hope will only come when the weight of it all finally brings it all down. Until then the violence will escalate and the poor and the rich will live besides each other, in a denial stage, buffered only by the “ism’s” and the fear used to enforce this fascism with commercials.
LOL
There actually is one distinction, which is that in attacks like these the terrorists camouflage themselves among the domestic civilian population. By contrast, a U.S. bomber displays its flag and enters as a hostile. Though in the age of drones such points of honor seem rather pointless, the notion of the spy or saboteur hidden among the population being distinct from the soldier in uniform is pretty longstanding. But … that doesn’t disprove your broader moral point.
Wnt, keep in mind that US personnel in special operations forces and paramilitary units of the CIA often dress in civilian attire while on missions. When they kill people on those missions, is that terrorism by the US? It is if what this Chattanooga shooter did was terrorism.
It’s also worth noting that the US government has a sordid history of training, funding, and otherwise assisting people and operations that are blatantly terroristic (e.g., the School of the Americas).
Basically, the word “terrorism” has been twisted by the US government and its puppets into meaning “violence that we oppose.”
American military and intelligence personnel and their fusion-center-fed state and local law enforcement compatriots are Responsible for Creating and Maintaining a State of Terror for
each and every American Citizen…
The guy was a naturalized American citizen. He was an American. He was not the “other”. He was as American as Hulk Hogan. He killed military personnel on domestic soil in the name of his sky god. He is a terrorist, plain and simple. Stop making excuses. Stop muddying the waters. Stop minimizing this horrific act of terror by drawing irrelevant comparisons to America’s drone campaign overseas. Also, enough with the lame straw man arguments. I watched CNN all day yesterday and I do not recall them immediately labeling this as an act of terror. They actually demonstrated remarkable journalistic responsibility. Once his name was released, it’s completely acceptable for the media to start making some assumptions. The killer was not a foreigner. He was an American.That’s the only identifier that matters
So am I correct to presume that you would like to amend the definition of “terrorism” to include: “Any act of a citizen against the military of his/her country”?
You’re not confusing the word with “treason” are you?
So he’s a terrorist simply because he’s an American citizen? If he were a resident alien or some dude visiting on a visa, the terrorist designation could be dropped?
Last I checked, there were no religious slogans shouted as he gunned these people down, nor has there yet to be shown any other religious motivations in his dystopic view of the world. There may yet be such motivations discovered, but they have yet to be as of now.
Can you actually precisely define terrorism and what qualifiers make a particular act an act of terrorism? I bet you cannot give such a definition that consistently applies to attacks against the west but does not apply to attacks by the west against foreign targets.
1. How do you know this; and
2. Is that the only reason?
You see, there is a long record of Muslims committing violent acts against the West and giving some very specific, secular reason. Are you familiar with this?
Mona, are you saying the shooting might have a cause?
Wow. Mona has outed herself as an “actual” anti-semi … wait, that’s not it.
No, unlike you, I don’t run around declaring that Jews might deserve several millennia of persecution culminating in the Holocaust because of how Jews behave. THAT is — YOU are — antisemitic.
I’ve been waiting for you to toss out that I think the Jews deserved the Holocaust. I figured that was were you were coming from but I really felt I should let you say the actual phrase.
No one deserved the Holocaust. The camps were an abomination. Yet more non-Jews died in the camps than Jews. The Russians lost 20 million people but the Russians do not use that fact to justify anything.
I consider BDS to be valid persecution of a people who conduct the unacceptable policy of apartheid.
The world’s current reaction to BDS is labelled antisemitic, designed to destroy Israel. Yet you support the concept of BDS, do you not? I am saying that the country and people of Israel are forever playing the victim, always lashing out first in defense of some existential threat. They then go to great lengths to explain Hamas rockets are the reason they kill some 250-300 civilians for every Israeli civilian killed.
Hasbara is justified exceptionalism. I’m saying it has been in practice for a very long time, well before the Holocaust, and the world may be justified in persecuting those that would support the practice.
Yes I imagine you did know that’s what any reason able person would know you meant when you twice wrote: “If the dominate [sic] behavior of Israeli Jews today were in practice for millennia then it is entirely possible any ill-treatment of the Jews may be justified.”
That you now back-pedal at least shows you are capable of some shame.
“Back pedal”? How about clarify? It honestly never occurred to me “any reason [sic] able person …” would miss the historical context of my remark. I’m speaking of the persecution for millennia which the Jews claim, and you’ve asserted as much hence my Hasbara charge. Israel is to receive no quarter until it stops occupying Palestinian territory.
‘
Let me issue a correction for the record:
If the dominant behavior of Israeli Jews today were in practice for millennia then it is entirely possible any historically claimed ill-treatment of the Jews may have been justified.
The FBI decided to to investigate this as an act of domestic terrorism until “proven otherwise”. This on the basis of a name (as Greenwald indicated in the article).
I suspect they mean to imply that it will be called “domestic terrorism” unless it was determined that Abdulazeez isn’t a US citizen. Either way, they’re determined to file it under “T”.
We don’t even have a motive. For all we know, this is the (young) adult version of a school shooting, that typically sad American story: chronically bullied person gets access to guns, and it’s the end of many lives.
I suspect it is…
Jonah is the only voice of reason here.
Glenn used the strawman. NPR, CNN, our president, and many other news outlets have shied away from using the T word. FOX did it because that is what FOX does. The F_B_1 is investigating it as T because that is what they do. But even the sheriff and FBI spokesman were hedging their bets and not using T-word in full force.
Glenn was great with the Snowden story, but one just has to research how he treated Sam Harris to see how Glenn is a bleeding heart liberal who apologies and “explains” the actions of non-white murderers.
PROVE the MSM “story” TRUE……..before labeling what it isn’t!!!!
“Terrorism” is a western phrase to put a stamp on whoever is an actual enemy of their politics or goals they want to archieve.
Like the US labeled Che Guevara a terrorist, or china labels the Dalai Lama a terrorist. Or the Nazis labeled the underground resistance terrorists.
I would call them Freedom-Fighters, because all this people stand up to resist these plans of the faschists countries, who lie to them and to their own people, to find any excuse to target them. Some people in europe would even call the leading greek party syriza a terrorist group, because they stood up against the pressure and blackmailing of their government to end the suffering of their people under the fist of financial terrorists in the ECB, IWF and so on.
And yes, I applause every freedom-fighter who fights for this. Because it seems there is no political way to stop the iron fist of capitalism and the suffering of the poor mayority of the worl in another, more intelligent or suitable way. And if some americans die in their homeland, so what ? If you declare war on people, then this also is legitimate for the other side to do. If you want a “clean” war, then you should do so too. What goes around, comes around. And blowing up birthdayparties or weddings with hellfire missiles is as cruel as shooting americans on their home-lawn. And I believe this will go on as long as the US will change their prospective on the rest of the world. But with the given learn-resistance we know you have since the birth of your country, this xould take a while… you are just stupid, stubborn idiots, and sometimes, you have to pay for that, until you learn that every action has their consequences, even for you !
A fairly well reasoned argument, but Americans long ago stopped listening to reason.
I’d like to know how many American have officially been killed due to Terrorism this year, however you define it.
Undoubtedly the number is lower than the number of Americans killed by falling furniture.
Ron Paul said it perfectly when he referred to the “terror threat” as a “manufactured crisis.”
The danger posed by something is independent of the frequency in which it occurs. There’s a reason many people hire professional movers when changing residences. Moving furniture can be really dangerous. Planes rarely get hijacked anymore. According to your logic, I guess that means we should greatly reduce security at airports
This is nothing new. A few enlightened individuals have been saying this for years.
I have been saying this for years and getting ridiculed by my friends and by my coffee group, all of whom consider me to be a bit loopy if not legitimately ready to be incarcerated in some mental institution, a la Soviets.
You’re right that a military target is the difference between war and terrorism. Though we should then be calling out (and trying, and punishing) police officers for terrorism when they beat up or kill people for “contempt of cop.”
But give Obama credit for a little progress, at least. He still has yet to admit that Fort Hood was anything but “workplace violence.”
Hmmm, not sure Mr. Glenn…
The psychopath “I’d be okay wiping out Islam” Moronalphius suggested anyone of a different mind is somehow seeking to “support/join ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra, etc…”
I’d better watch my step.
Calling them by their correct name,ISUS,AlCIAda and AlnUSrA would make that argument moot.
Spelling is sort of moot too when Malphius is “okay wiping out” close to 2 billion people.
That is the purpose of the state. It legitimizes its own violence and delegitimizes all others.
—
The use of violence is a natural monopoly. People pledge allegiance to the strongest, most violent faction in exchange for protection. This faction grows in strength, eliminates rival factions, gains supremacy over a defined geographic area and becomes the state.
—
The state then gets to define who are the terrorists – it’s one of the prerogatives of being a state. In the past, the state may have labeled their enemies as anarchists, subversives or insurgents. Terrorist is simply the mot du jour.
—
Google Ngram Viewer
Thanks. I’ve never seen that before. Pretty amazing. I see the last time the word “terrorism” spiked like that was in 1517 :)
Have any of you commenters even read the article? Because most of you seem to have missed the point -HINT: read the final paragraph.
If we are going to use the word “terrorism” it is extremely important that the definition be applied CONSISTANTLY to every person, group, and government.
Countries are not above the rule of law even though no enforcement of that is taking place at this time.
War crimes committed in the WW2 have been punished to a much greater degree than more heinous acts the US commits every day.
The irony that the “Accountant of Auschwitz” (who never killed any person) recently sentenced to 4 YEARS for his role in the murder of 300,000 people is palatable, when the US kills innocent people with its killer flying robots every day in violation of the Geneva convention.
Actually, what i read and heard most was “it is being prosecuted as an act of terrorism”, but then, i do live in SF and listen to democracyNow. A small improvement?
What should be said however is “it may have been executed with the help of known terrorists”, which by the way, should also be said about everything the USA does.
So if you article is suggesting that this is “not” terrrorism (a perspective I don’t agree with) because it is a “militant” attacking a military objective in a country they are at “war” with I have a couple of questions:
1. Does that mean they are an enemy combatant engaging in combat operations while not wearing insignia or uniform? If the answer to this in your mind is yes, look at the penalties someone faces for this under the Geneva Convention.
I’m all for handling these folks in that way; it would expedite the process with the same result.
2. “The U.S. Government, its allies and their apologists constantly propagate standards that have no purpose other than to legitimize all of their violence while de-legitimizing all violence by their enemies in the “war” they have declared.”
Are you really going to compare these people to the men and women of the actual armed services of this country? Can you not see the moral difference and motive?
What are these people trying to accomplish politically?
What nation are they aligned to?
I’m trying to get to the real point of my comment:
Your article is both factually inept and offensive to me. You have not thought through the logical conclusions you are drawing here, you are legitimizing the political stakes of ISIS and other radicals by comparing them to those who serve honorably, and you are actually enabling people to morally justify getting behind the cause of radical groups.
This is a sorry excuse for journalism.
Then how odd you offer no facts of your own or cite factual errors Greenwald supposedly made. But I do understand you find the piece offensive — the truth can have that effect.
See Mona’s comment just below.
The members of IsUS,Al CIAda and AlnUSra believe they are more right politically than we could ever be,as strangers in strange lands,and in that we have not been invited to any of these nations,but hey the failure to walk that mile in another’s shoes always leads to stupidity.
Could you, please, elaborate on that “moral difference” you seem to “see”?
Why is it exactly that the USG and their allies have greatly exceeded the genocidal ratio of Nazis during WWII (and the Math you can find here, could we at least agree on 2 + 2 being 4?):
~
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/17/ramstein/
~
but you, like many other people are so “Good-Christian morally blinded” that you can’t see that? Let’s not even mention that those wars were started based on well-known lies
About the “motives” … Don’t even start making fun of yourself!
Thank you again Glenn for calling things by their name and meaning
Satyagraha,
RCL
Any reaction to a war is justified. The usa declared war on terrorism, which actually should be the main reason to now not call them terrorists anymore: as they have been declared war, actions of the so called terrorists have a legal ground, just as any army has a legal ground to fight when in war.
In fact, the usa has declared war to any muslim in the world. While this alone is as insane as it sounds, how can we then regard bombings and killings of usa soldiers as terrorist act? What did they expect? That nobody would fight back? Or that they would wear uniform, and form a country (i suggest “Terrorland”) so they can rightfully fight back those attacks that we would describe as terroristic acts if they would not have been planned and put to action by our christian peace forces?
And it all was triggered by an event that could have only happen by the help of usa intelligence. I mean, who financed, trained and armed the terrorists, that then finally flew into the towers? And why was building 7 brought down, resulting in the largest fileshredding in mankinds history (learning who was resident in that building might enlighten you… It was the main target, i’d say…). God have mercy on us when people find out the truth…
Oxford Engish Dictionary:
Terrorism: The use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.
You sure wrote a lot in your attempt to further divide a nation and distract it from issues that actually matter. The young man was Muslim and he attacked and killed people in a non-combat zone.
Let’s be honest, while most Muslims are nice and peaceful people, we aren’t fighting skirmishes in Pensylvania with the Amish nor are we hearing reports that Buddhist extremists are using children to execute enemy officers.
Radical MUSLIM groups and individuals are using acts of violence to further their agenda and to force people to either live in fear or acquiesce to their religious and social views. Any attacks made by these groups (outside of active combat zones) are acts of terrorism.
Ok, that makes the United States and Israel premier terorrists.
It always seems to come down to Israel, forget about the Kurds, the Tibetans, slave laborers in Qatar, the Coptic Christians of Eqypt, etc, etc. The focus is always on Israel, but of course we must not be accused of antisemitism.
As an American I am complicit in the crimes committed, from before its foundation, of the State of Israel.
Mona, I see your point, I guess that means we’re morally complicit by virtue of the US support of Iraq, and Turkey for their refusal to allow self determination for the Kurds, US support of Egypt and their treatment of Coptic Christians, US alliance with Qatar and their enslavement of foreign workers. Or maybe your post is just antisemitic hypocrisy.
Oh, you’re one of those Zionists who still thinks that works? It doesn’t, not on anyone reading or writing here.
The U.S. gives Israel $3.1 Billion annually in military aid — more than all other nations. Those F-16s Israel uses to commit atrocities on Gaza? We pay for those. We give zero military aid to Palestinians.
We also give Israel diplomatic cover in the UN and other international institutions so that it may continue to kill, steal land from and oppress Gazans and Arabs on the WB.
Mona, you’ve nailed it, I am a Zionist, have been all my life, and I stand by my earlier comments.
Mona, I do get it, you’ve been reading stuff written by other self-hating Jews. I’ll bet you could have included Noah Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein. If you would like to add some balance to your reading list, may I suggest Carolyn Glick and Alan Dershowitz. They too are Zionists, but well qualified to give you the other side of the debate, but then perhaps you already know it all, and have your mind made up.
Um, sure. Alan “torture warrants” Dershowitz. He’s an prime example of Zionism destroying the Jewish soul.
As with the antisemitism thing, that doesn’t work here. And dude, if you really think anyone is going to accept that John Judis is a self-hating Jew, I mean, well, I guess that’s a brain on Zionism.
To be fair, I don’t know if John Judis is Jewish or not; I do know that he is not a friend of Zionism, and his writings have been far less than objective. Antisemitic probably.
John Judis is Jewish and is a well-respected journalist. His book “Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict” is packed with well-researched facts.
No one here — and people all over increasingly — pays attention to Zionist smears of antisemitism or so-called self-hating Jews.
Greenwald addressed this nonsense well some 3-4 years ago: http://www.salon.com/2012/01/19/the_smear_campaign_against_cap_and_media_matters_rolls_on/
“No one here — and people all over increasingly — pays attention to Zionist smears of antisemitism ”
Some here do sling that term and occasionally put the word “actual” in front.
When it comes from a non-Zionist, it really hits home …
Well, I was an ardent Zionist until about ten years ago — totally hoodwinked by the “Exodus” narrative. Then I began reading knowledgeable people online, as well as books by men like John Judis, and my views changed more radically than on any other political issue in my life.
As for the antisemtism thing, you really should be careful with that. Zionist promiscuity with that term is diluting it of all potency. Some of us almost feel we are doing something wrong if a Zionist isn’t calling us antisemitic. I submit to you that this is a bad thing.
Larry,you are not a neutral observer of the Israeli govt,are you?In a court of law,the victims and perps family members don’t sit on the jury.
I don’t claim to be neutral, nor do I claim that Arabs don’t have legitimate issues and concerns. I once lived in Israel, and admit to an Israeli perspective, and I wouldn’t deny an Arab to his perspective his/her right to dignity and respect. That said, to characterize Israel’s policies to apartheid is unfair and not consistent with facts. Israel accepted the UN partition plan of 1947, it was the Arabs who rejected it, it was the Arabs the committed armed aggression in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and the more recent events in Lebanon, and Gaza, this isn’t opinion it’s fact. When you lose wars of your own making there are bound to be consequences, deal with it.
The African National Congress has declared Israel to be an apartheid state, as has Desmond Tutu. They are experts.
Zionists accepted that plan grudgingly because, altho it stole less land for them than they wanted (and which they would in short order take anyway), it gave UN sanction to the idea of an ethno-religious Jewish supremacist state. This would explain why Arabs rejected it.
Zionist terrorists had been killing Arabs and British for decades, as well as UN officials before 1948. So the West was increasingly caving to this terror to let Zionists have land that was not theirs. Arab nations saw this happening and sought to intervene militarily. Israel has continued to the present to steal more land and maintain the evictees as refugees in an apartheid state.
Zionist terrorists had been killing Arabs and British for decades, as well as UN officials before 1948.
I suppose you condemn the Jews right to self defense in pre Israel statehood. You may be unaware of the Arab massacres of Jews in Safed, and Hebron and other Jewish communities. Jews represented 25% of Hebron’s population prior to the massacre of 1929, every single Jew that didn’t escape was murdered for no other reason than that they were Jews. Please don’t prove your ignorance by trying to make Jews responsible for all the violence, yes they fought back, but context is important. For 2,000 years Jews were, as a group, probably the most passive ethnic group on earth; but the holocaust changed everything. No, I’m not saying the Arabs are responsible for the holocaust, but the Jewish character awoke from 2,000 years of passivity, they were no longer willing to be the worlds doormat. If Arabs want to murder innocent Jews, they needed to do it at their peril.
Self-defense? They were taking over land, refusing to hire non-Jews, massacring Arabs, and importing thousands more Zionist Jews to take over yet more. They did not seek to live in peace among the native Arabs — they sought to take over. Judah Magnes, the founder of Hebrew University, saw it happening and was horrified.
The Zionists were evil and took over inhabited land with terror:
Shamir, by the way, innovated the letter bomb.
They are not. The West appallingly assisted Zionists in stealing Arab land that was not the West’s to give in order to expiate it’s guilt. This is why Westerners, especially Americans, owe a huge debt of concern and care for the oppressed Palestinians.
Sanctions are an act of war.
Funny,the guy was from Kuwait,our bestest friends.
Never ever stick sticks in hornets nests,the repercussions are disasterous.(look at our whacked out post 9-11 nest )
Dylann Roof is a radical MUSLIM?
Perhaps defining terrorism is like defining obscenity, “I know it when I see it”. For a citizen, in a non-combat zone, to surreptitiously stalk and attempt to commit bodily harm to an unsuspecting person, whether in uniform or not, is terrorism in my mind. To make my own position clear, I’m not a fan of our drone program either, but that’s another issue, and doesn’t excuse this man’s terrorist act.
How is a drone “another issue?” Is that not someone “surreptitiously stalking and attemptng to commit bodily harm to an unsuspecting person?”
I know a definition when I see it, and this isn’t it.
What Benito said.
Yes and yes.
“I suppose you condemn the Jews right to self defense in pre Israel statehood. ”
My uncle served in the RAF in Palestine during 1946. He witnessed two RAF sergeants hanged from lampposts by Jews. I call that murder. You say that Jews were the most passive people ever until the Holocaust. Israel is always justified because they were attacked; straight from the Hasbara manual.
Quite true. If indeed we are a “nation at war” — as we have been for the last 20 years or so — then we were attacked by a warrior. If, on the other hand, we are just a peace-loving nation harming no one…. Sorry, what was I thinking?
Put a zero on that, it has been 200 years at war.
What this story got me thinking about is the Palestinian claims at the ICC. The Israelis have repeatedly claimed that Hamas is guiltly of war crimes for firing rockets at civilian areas. But Israel has a near universal draft. So if it is legitimate to kill soliders at home then Hamas would be off the hook. If on the other hand it is not allowed under the rules of war then Israel has definitely committed war crimes. This is the beauty of the ICC bid. For once hypocrisy is the enemy of both Israel and the west.
Israel was abiding by the cease fire arranged by the UN when those Hamas rockets were fired, by what theory should Israel be denied the right to defend itself? In addition, Hamas is a terrorist organization, their actions should be recognized as criminal activity.
@ Larry
That may or may not be the case. That is always disputed “who fired first” or “who provoked who first and how”? Of course you can always buy the Israel propaganda that they’ve never provoked and are always the victim but that’s demonstrably not been the case at times in the history of their subjugation of the Palestinian people.
The question is “defend itself” in what manner i.e. directed at whom and with what proportionality or means? Collective punishment is a war crime. So is demolishing an entire city if it isn’t proportional or directed toward known combatants with significant strategic or tactical military “value”. Neither is using “human shields” which Israel has done, notwithstanding the accusation that all Palestinian combatants do. But that also elides the reality that Palestinians are herded into an open air prison and don’t really have the geographic luxury of standing out in open spaces and challenging the IDF sans “human shields” in their neighborhoods, buildings, cities and towns.
They are a “terrorist organization” to people that benefit from labeling them as such–specifically the Israeli and Western governments. To Palestinians and many others they aren’t, they are the legitimately elected representatives of the Palestinian people (political wing) and the defenders of the Palestinian people (the “military” wing). One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter–that’s part of the problem with assigning definitions of “terrorist” to one group or not another if you don’t do it consistently based on the nature of the conduct engaged in while exempting yourself from the definition because you are a “state” and you deny that right of “statehood” to others and their people, representatives and military forces.
Well said, RR. Succinct.
Regardless of which side of the debate you come down on, any objective person would conclude that Israel has no incentive to fire the first shot in Gaza. It is obviously in Israel’s interest to promote a quiet environment on their frontiers. Hamas has every incentive to promote hostility toward Israel to maintain their public relevance. To expect otherwise would make ones own bias transparent.
This is not so.
Israel is an occupying state and aggressor, one that ethnically cleansed native Palestinians — Muslim and Christian — from their land, often killed them, and have walled many of the refugees up in an open air prison on the Gaza Strip. Israel’s obligation is to end the occupation and oppression — the Palestinians have a right to resist their oppressor.
Moreover, the “war” last summer began when a rogue Hamas cell kidnapped two Israeli yeshiva students and killed them. Netanyahu almost immediately knew the young men were dead, but pretended not to for two weeks as he sent soldiers into Gaza to ransack and violently harass Gazans. The anti-Arab frenzy he worked up in the media under false pretenses caused a Jerusalem teen Arab to be kidnapped and burned alive by Zionist settlers.
Hamas then sent out a few of its ridiculous, impotent rockets. Whereupon, Netanyhu committed the atrocity we all saw in pictures coming from medical staff and others on the ground during the obscene carnage Israel inflicted on Gaza last summer. Dead babies, maimed kids.
All so that Netanyahu could destroy the unity government that Hamas and the PA were evolving toward; the annihilation and destruction drove Gazans back into the arms of Hamas.
Israel is practicing genocide.
Mona, yes Israel reacted to Hamas’ “ridiculous, impotent rockets”, about 10,000 of them many stored in Mosques and schools. How dare Israel fight back. The reality is that Israel is not an occupying power, the area of Judea and Samaria, what you might refer to as the West Bank, was lost to Jordan after their armed aggression, but I’m sure you know that. When a state commits an act of war and loses, there are usually consequences. Personally, it is my hope Israel adopt a one state “solution”, bringing Israeli law to both Judea and Samaria, and providing resident permits to all Arabs residing there. I would also support an offer of Israeli citizenship to all those that apply.
The only schools Hamas used last summer were vacant ones, unused for some time.
Israel is founded on terrorism and ethnic cleansing of native Palestinians that a war with Jordan cannot impact. Native Arabs have the right to their homes, villages and cities. Settler-colonialists cannot morally take this land in a war of aggression.
Israel’s most immediate moral obligation to Gaza is to permit:
1. Freedom of movement of Palestinians in and out of the Gaza Strip.
2. Unlimited import and export of supplies and goods, including by land, sea and air.
3. Unrestricted use of the Gaza seaport.
4.Monitoring and enforcement of these agreements by a body appointed by the United Nations, with appropriate security measures.
Until Israel has ended the immiseration it has imposed on the refugees of Gaza, starting with the above, Israel has no moral claim to self-defense, at all. It is an occupying power and oppressor.
Hey, I’m sorry if my view rattles your cage, you know the one that longs for the nostalgia of the 7th century Caliphate. You might want to bear personal witness to the treatment of women in that society, just to test the moral foundation of your sympathies.
Non sequitur.
Another non sequitur.
Its interesting. Mona is criticizing Israel for its indiscriminate killing of women and children. Larry’s counterargument is that if Israel hadn’t, the population would have spontaneously started re-enacting the 7th century Islamic Caliphate which probably granted few rights to women and legitimized abuse. Israel’s actions can only be preventing this from occurring in one way. The plan must be to eliminate all the women from the population, so that there none left to abuse. Further, in a few decades there would be few people left to do the abusing in the first place. But I don’t think that seems to be their aim, since the deaths are in thousands and there are millions of Palestinians still left, who might still start having potentially dangerous, spontaneous 7th century history re-enactment desires.
Do you think blowing they,their children and their husbands up will liberate women in these nations?The opposite is what happens.The only thing we liberate is them from their lives.
The caliphate will rise or fall on its own,this American says whatever.
Mona, you do an excellent job of refuting the lies of these hasbara propagandists.
@ Larry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli-occupied_territories
So basically everybody in the world considers it to be “occupied” territory except Israel and they call it “disputed.”
I think basically the only people buying your BS about “Israel not being an occupying power” is you, your fellow hasbarists and the government of Israel. Which basically makes you wrong, factually and legally.
To raise a UN determination on any subject related to Israel cannot be seriously considered in view of their record of obvious anti Israel bias. To debate the legal claims to these territories requires more complexity than simple and biased UN resolutions. It requires understanding the conditions for the 400 years that preceded WWI, the Balfour Declaration, the 1920 League of Nations resolution mandating the governing of the region of Palestine to the Brits, and the 1922 resolution dividing Palestine at the Jordan River, the East Bank to the Arabs, the West Bank to the Mediterranean to a Jewish Homeland. I can go on, but it’s obviously a little complicated for this kind of forum.
Now that is truly special, from the guy who has cited the UN plan to establish the State of Israel as something the Arabs so awfully would not accept in the 1940s and beyond.
I have a reasonably good understanding of all that you enumerate. So does John Judis whose excellent book I have recommended.
Shorter Larry
“Israelis are the victims. Israelis are always right. You people are stupid or anti-semites. The UN is a bunch of anti-semites. And I Larry Goldfield will never accept as “factual” or “legal” the understanding of the situation well researched by the many lawyers and scholars that follow Glenn Greenwald’s work and comment here–because, well, you’re all misinformed anti-semites or self-hating Jews.”
Hey Larry, how much are you getting paid (is it by the word or paragraph) to be purposefully obtuse regarding factual and legal reality and catapulting your hasbara? Do they give you a free laptop and some gummy bears in addition to your salary?
You know Larry it is precisely people like you who want to deny the reality of the Israel-Palestine situation, and condone the highly immoral and illegal actions of the State of Israel that is turning much of the world’s population against the cause of Zionism. And I’ll tell you frankly that can’t end well for the State of Israel to become and international pariah state subject to a global Boycott, Divestiture and Sanction Movement. And it’s coming. And exactly like Apartheid South Africa, the State of Israel will ultimately have to change. Sorry but that’s the arc of history that we are traveling.
You need to get your facts straight. Hamas did not start firing rockets first. It was Islamic Jihad. Hamas was doing every thing it could to stop the attacks. Israel made that impossible with their murderous rampage through the west bank.
For the record the war before this one was started when Israel sent a cease fire offer to the Hamas leader who enforces the ceasefires and then droned him when he received it.
Don’t take my word for it. Go search it in any Israeli paper. Israeli papers may be censored by the military and ordered to print false information from time to time. But they are still more honest about what is going on over there than any “free press” news source in the west other than The Intercept.
OMG. Here it comes agin! Shooter supposedly travels to Jordan for a month. Not on the Enforcement “radar”. Major “news” orgs with no apparent verified or confirmed info. Delighted squeals of “Lone Wolf, Lone Wolf, Lone Wolf!!!” Waiting for Comey “Your Watchful Intel Homey, yo!” to start the We Must Break Encryption Parade Phase II. Meanwhile, back on Earth, James Holmes is convicted through due process and a Court with a Jury rather nicely, thank you very much. Double Plus Ungood…Is there an Informant in the House? Of course there is…
I believe the Police Officer murdered was considered a CIVILIAN. All moot, since press judges as a NeoCon influence.
The distinction between military and police personnel in the US is primarily one of semantics. Both groups are paid to carry arms in service to the government. Whether justified or not, an attack on armed police hardly equates to an attack on random, unarmed civilians. Attacks in the latter category, when carried out for political purposes, are the essence of terrorism.
A matter of perspective, I suppose, depending on whose propaganda it is. Terrorism or similar crimes — “i delitti” in the Italian in this example.
http://www.pritzkermilitary.org/explore/museum/digital-collection/view/oclc/846628091
“This all is grounded in the view that one need not wait until one’s enemies enter a “battlefield” and engage in combat in order to kill them.”
That’s because most of the time there is no “battlefield”. A busy marketplace or a mosque is most often the closest thing to a “battlefield”. Terrorists don’t where uniforms, or have divisions, or recognize any sort of legal code of conduct. Until recently groups like AQ and ISIS didn’t hold land either
“The U.S. often targets people without even knowing their names or identities, based on their behavioral “patterns”; the Obama administration literally re-defined “combatant” to mean “all military-age males in a strike zone.””
So what? In what war has anyone ever bothered to learn the names of individual opponents?The cry at Bunker Hill was”Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes” not “Don’t fire until you learn their fucking surnames”
The kind of highly legalistic combat engagement that Glenn demands is an unrealistic fantasy
I believe Glenn was objecting to the hyperbole. And the hypocrisy of it being one thing on the street in Chattanooga and something else on the street in Fallujah or Sanaa.
You might want to think this through again. As I see it, if you are not fighting uniformed soldiers on a battlefield, but rather attacking those in houses, at funerals, in SUVs, or wherever they happen to be, even the most basic morality would require that you know enough about the people you are targeting to be able to identify them before carrying out the assassinations. Otherwise it is just mostly random killing, essentially the same as what the terrorists do.
Yes, because both sides were constituted of *soldiers and recognized that they were on a battlefield.
What you purport to defend is sending flying-robot bombs half way around the globe to kill people we don’t know in their home or at weddings. If you accept that then you are a monster.
“Yes, because both sides were constituted of *soldiers and recognized that they were on a battlefield.”
And THAT is where much of the moral superiority of soldiers to terrorists comes from. In the fact that you identify yourself rather than blending in civilians. One of the express goals of terrorism, or “asymmetrical warfare” if you like is in fact to engineer such accidents. Do you think anyone in the Taliban was the least bit sorry when that wedding party got attacked? No its a propaganda coup.
Do you have any evidence that the Taliban engineered the US attack on the wedding party? Even if they did, how does that make them terrorists? Is, perhaps, a terrorist anyone with an inclination to violence that you do not like?
By “engineer” I mean they create the conditions where its difficult to distinguish between civilians and combatants. The hope is that civilians will be caught in the crossfire and therefor alienating the populace. It’s a classic strategy elucidated originally by Brazilian Marxist terrorist Carlos Marighella.
Non sequitur.
Again: What you purport to defend is sending flying-robot bombs half way around the globe to kill people we don’t know in their home or at weddings. If you accept that then you are a monster.
I don’t see any difference between drones or manned flights, mistakes can happen either way. Obviously not retaliating against terrorism because civilians may get caught in the crossfire validates their tactics and ultimately just leads to more terrorism which leads to more causalities in the long run. Far more people have died at the hands of the Taliban than from drones.
Ah, yes, the moral yardstick for killing people ought to be: “Are we still behind the Taliban’s body count?”
You remain a fuckwit.
Uh,we have tanks,planes ,missiles etc to hind behind,so we don’t have to hide like they do,as they don’t?sheesh,the hypocrisy.
Curious,what torture technique do you use to make the doves cry?
I largely agree, Glenn, and I almost never agree with you. This could be described as an act of war, but acts of war can only be committed by legitimate state actors. It is more accurately an insurgent act, and under international law, insurgents may still be considered criminals and prosecuted by the state in which they operate.
I agree that this shooting is more properly defined as an act of war. But who’s to say it wasn’t a “legitimate” act of war? It was probably conceived as a small retaliatory strike against the military of a government that has been bombing, invading, and occupying Muslim countries for many years to appease the Zionists and the military-industrial complex.
As for international law, the US, Israel, and their puppets have been flouting it for so long that it has been reduced to little more than the law of the jungle.
…continued crazy idea…I guess it’s whether the concept of terrorism is there to be used by the strong, to rule the weak,…”I have F16s you have only IEDs ergo, you are the terrorist. Because I, the lone strongman, say so”
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…or is the concept of terrorism going to be a product of the weak against the strong, …”yes, we only have improvised weapons and you have the drones but the burden is on you, to at a minimum, not use your powerful weapons against civilians. If you do, then you are the terrorist. We the weak, (but numerous), say so.”
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I kind of am partial to the second way of looking at things, and not only within countries but internationally. I don’t see how the rule of the many is sustainable within a nation, when that nation is operating globally under anti-democratic principles.
Since 9-11 some people, myself included, have been asserting that it is wrong to refer to various perpetrators as terrorists, suggesting that it would be more logical to consider them as criminals, and to consider their organizations, if applicable, as criminal organizations. This would have put the focus where it belongs, on capturing and prosecuting the criminals, shutting down the criminal organizations, and instituting preventive measures. Sadly, it was – and remains – in the interest of those who seek power through instilling fear to raise the spectre of something that is extra-criminal. Thus have they justified wars, acts of war in countries that we are not at war with, and the steady erosion of our rights. The only things that should be of concern in the present case are the care of the victims and their families, determination of whether the perpetrator received aid and encouragement from any other individuals or organizations in planning and executing the crime, and determination of why the perpetrator committed the murders. But that is not what is going to happen. Suddenly the murder of four Marines in Tennessee is worse than the murder of four blacks in South Carolina, because in the mind of America, terrorism is worse than hate, which is in turn worse than a simple axe murder.
great article . . I always enjoy reading your analysis pieces. You might add that when a prisoner kills himself in his Guantanamo chicken cage it’s also considered an act of terror. Of course, once you are a terrorist, what other acts can you perform?
“Can it apply to violent attacks that target military sites and soldiers of a nation at war, rather than civilians?” I’d guess the answer is yes, if the state is militarized. A couple weeks ago I was watching a very funny clip of Tonight Show’s Jimmy Fallon and, iirc, Will Smith. In the middle of it, the camera panned the audience. It was all servicemen. I nearly fell out of my chair.
Really tragic that it’s about killing others or getting killed oneself. It’s absolutely clear that anyone under assault by those trying to kill them will be terrified, no matter where they are. It’s definitely not ratcheting down the violence when people can be killed with impunity while unarmed and not engaged in active violence. It’s not even efficient for any side, as it cycles even more violence which leads to more iniquity and loss of life and liberty. It all makes me ill with discouragement. How about the way of Jesus, Martin Luther King, Ghandi and the Dalai Lama? Even the new Pope’s onboard. Is it too much to ask that we ourselves stop contributing to this horrible problem?
Obama called him a lone wolf, not a terrorist.
This is an interesting piece, a prowess in rhetorics – I mean this as a compliment – to induce reflexion. It nails perfectly our misuse of the word terrorism and the reasonning flaws that come with it. Eventually though, I think it falls a bit short because it does not offer an alternative.
If you allow, I wil come back to the basic, original, pre-2001 definition: “Terrorism is any action made to reach political or ideological goals through the use of terror.”
Terrorism has never been « senseless targeting of civilians ». Just like the US Government, ISIS has its own political agenda, albeit a fairly crazy one.
You will not that this definition does not hinges on targets or perpetrators, but intent and action. Cutting, with the help of a bit of intellectual honesty, through all matters of prejudice and unequal treatment.
In that case, Charleston and – probably – Chattanooga become acts of terrorism, while Aurora – which did not hold a political sway – doesn’t.
This brings us to the drone campaign, and this is where it gets interesting. The fact that the US is killing civilians is weel-established, so I won’t come back on it.
The problem becomes: Is the US intentionnaly trying to use fear and terror as political tools? This would mean the targeting of civilians is entirely deliberate, by definition.
And, if they are not trying to use fear, why do civilians keep dying in drone strikes?
I have my own opinion – it is irrelevant here – , but this approach yields an alternative option to the intentionnal and self-justificating misuse of the word « terrorism ».
…one more crazy idea occurred to me. What if trying to make sense of a definition of terrorism, in a world dominated by a super-power, is like trying to get democracy to work, in an electoral system dominated by the Koch brothers?
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Perhaps any way you structure the voting in the US, change voting boundaries, voting ages, whatever, if the Koch brothers can buy their way into power, all those discussions about who to vote for and how to change government structures is irrelevant.
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..so maybe, in a world where it is easier for Bush/Obama to use military force unilaterally, than to submit to any type of legitimate representation of world law, democracy…as long as that is the case, terrorism is going to be whatever the biggest bully says it is.
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Mind you the Koch brothers have a proven track record of getting legislation passed, just as the US military has a proven track record of destroying enemies. It is just that the things they get done, aren’t necessarily good for the vast majority of people, in America, or on planet earth.
As we saw with the Patriot Act, the interpretation of any law can end up meaning something quite different than what the authors of the law intended.
It would seem that the laws of war need to be updated and clarified to reflect and constrain the abuses of current interpretations, but since those who would be involved in such a process are the ones engaging in abusive interpretations, it would be a futile endeavor.
So, since we know there will be no accountability for the opportunistic double standards our governments use in justifications and propaganda, we can debate, criticize and try to reform them from within, or we can…
Beyond the latitude of interpretation, we have a secret court, FISA.
The authors of the Patriot Act obviously meant to curb our freedom.And their use of an Orwellian term for it is further proof.
Terrific article. Thank you, Glenn.
I hope the delusion that has encased the minds of so many Americans about what their country does to other people and the reasons for it will soon fade away. Too many people in this country are so unaware of the devastation the U.S. and its little poodles (well, Rottweilers) like Britian and Israel have brought to so many for no reason other than profit and hegemonic power. We are not hated because we are a peace-loving, anti-war entity that loves diplomacy and values human life. We are hated because we have brought mass death and destruction to countless countries and people. We are hated because we illegally invade other sovereign nations and bomb and obliterate them to take control of their people and resources. We have now turned countless once-secular, economically independent/thriving Muslim countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria -all secular before we turned them to rubble) into hell-on-earth for the people in those countries (and mark my words we are trying to do the same to Iran). We have killed millions of Muslims since 1990 because of our war-mongering, murderous policies. Not to mention the full support and aid we give to murdeous, rogue regimes like Israel.
And then like idiots we feign surprise when the blowback finds its way to our doorstep. People need to wake. The. F**k. Up and change the status quo – the system – because your bought-and-paid-for politicians sure as hell aren’t going to.
Are you really this thick Glenn? Abdulazeez is not a “solider of Islam” or a solider at all. He is in no way authorized by any responsible sanctioning body to use violence, that’s why he’s a terrorist and a criminal. He is no more justified in taking vengeance on behalf of his ummah than Dylan Roof is on behalf of White rape victims.
Why won’t you call Dylan Roof a terrorist? He killed more than twice as many people.
How do you know this? What constitutes a by “responsible sanctioning body?”
So you’re saying someone has to be a soldier to be a terrorist, then?
My head hurts. Let’s leave the term “terrorist” out and address the more fundamental question… Is the shooter in the Chatanooga incident a criminal or a soldier in a war? If he had lived should he have been tried for a criminal offence or held as a prisoner of war? Really. I’m not trolling. I’d love to hear Greenwald’s and other opinions.
Glenn is focusing on the racism behind the word of “terrorism” to avoid the bigger issue of Jihadists.
A true Jihadi is someone who understands the spiritual significance of Jihad (literal meaning of which is ‘striving’) and is striving to develop his or her inner self so that it reflects the higher qualities, such as love, peace, forgiveness, humility, selflessness, not doing unto others what one doesn’t want done unto oneself, generosity, justice, etc.
See also, “The Spiritual Significance of Jihad”, by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, which is accepted by both the Sunni and the Shia Muslims, at http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/vol-9-no-1/spiritual-significance-jihad-seyyed-hossein-nasr/spiritual-significance-jihad
One of the ways to distort Islam is by hijacking its sacred terms, giving them negative meanings, often by creating new English terms out of them, and then using them so frequently that they become the popular meanings. This is done both by many non-Muslims and Muslims.
P.S. This text box renders so small on my iPad that I can only see two lines at a time. The iPad does not allow expanding it as a laptop or a desktop does.
OF COURSE it’s terrorism…as defined by Western nations as any attack on a Western nation by a non-Christian.
No, play fair. This has nothing to do with being ‘Christian’ (indeed the US is great at stirring up hornets’ nests inside of almost totally Christian countries as well). This isn’t about religion at all — it’s about the American/Western agenda.
(If Christianity had any part in this then one might have to stop being so mean to non-whites on American soil, too, btw.)
Which Christian countries are you talking about?
Most of Central and South America. Most of ‘Eastern’ and ‘Central Europe’ (eg, ex-Yugoslavia, Ukraine). A lot of Africa (though that stuff’s gotten less press).
Point taken. Notice something about all those places? The abject fear of Godless communism. Of course, born-againers don’t consider them REAL Christian countries, do they?
Yes,American Christians are definitely hard to come by lately(or at least heard,that could be media intentional),they’ve all gone apocalyptic OT nutty.
And yes,its about Arab nationalism,and Western imperialism.
Everything the Intercept is doing is great and I support all of it.
My concern is simply this, for the last over 50 years sense I first worked in the civil rights movement (obviously a failure) and the anti war movement (also a failure as it didn’t shorten the Vietnam war by even a day).
These reports must continue but until the problem so eloquently described by Howard Zinn long ago is addressed just convincing a few more people will continue to have very little effect.
These discussions and disclosures are important but do almost nothing about the core problem which must be confronted and solved if there is a better world to be achieved. Here’s the Zinn quote:
“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.”
Glenn, thanks for everything you write, but are you going to burn out like Jon Stewart? I don’t know how you do it. I can feel a headache coming on thinking about these things.
“Glenn, thanks for everything you write, but are you going to burn out like Jon Stewart?”
I suspect if you don’t sell out, you don’t burn out. Stewart made various concessions and, what’s worse, seemed to internalize them. For instance, his softball approach to pharma merely resembled the NY Times’ game of grubbing creds as a “liberal” bastion while still serving as a cog in the institutional and industrial PR machine. As a commercial lib paragon, one is allowed to give little slaps to various industries and institutions as long as this comes with the big slobbering kiss of faithful defense of the real sacred cows and linchpin policies that hand control to corporations. The loud but inadequate protest of broader bad policy just acts as a little pressure release valve for the flabby mainstream left while effectively doing nothing about any of it.
The cancer of apathy starts with those piecemeal deals with the devil. By the end, Stewart was sold and it was painful to watch.
By the way, over at Amazon there is a sale on AR15 tactical rifle scopes, camouflage kits and speed loaders, because you know, those are things you need for a well regulated Militia, or to hunt ducks, or to do other stuff apparently.
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I know I make fun of Americans a lot, but a day doesn’t go by…I mean whether I’m coming home from school, alive, or from a movie theatre, alive, or from anywhere I come home from, alive…a day doesn’t go by that I don’t lament the fact that I can’t form my own well regulated militia.
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– “Suffer, cry, repeat: Terror from mass shootings has become predictable and routine
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We are the capital of shootings like this now, certainly among what the President calls “advanced” nations. It really doesn’t matter in the end whether they’re officially classified as acts of domestic terrorism or not. In a country where no one feels safe or can be protected from the latest madman with a gun, terror has become predictable and routine. We just don’t know the next stop on the tour.”
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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/mass-shootings-predictable-routine-article-1.2295137
I’m guessing the reason the FBI didn’t push for this to be quoted more was because of how outright horrible it is:
https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-comey-regarding-dylann-roof-gun-purchase
Here we go again. This time we even have a supposed invocation of the “law of war”.
Terrorism, under the laws of war, applies to military actions the primary purpose of which is to cause terror among the civilian population (AP1, Article 51(2)).
Directly contrary to what is written in this article, the following statement is not true:
It might be a good idea, given that attacks on military bases and against military personnel repeatedly happen these days, to actually find out what is and is not the “law of war”.
One actually can legally hunt down soldiers while they’re sleeping in their homes, or playing with their children, or buying groceries at the supermarket. One can hunt them down anywhere they are. What isn’t legal is to then apply military violence that contradicts the principle of distinction (targeting the civilians) or contradicts the principle of proportionality (killing them together with the surrounding civilians when the number of civilians who are predicted to be killed is out of proportion from the military advantage gained), or that contradicts the principle of military necessity (that the action will further the goal of bringing the conflict to the swiftest conclusion by winning).
It is only permissible to target civilians when they are directly participating in hostilities, and that is one place the “far from battlefield” arguments you hear come from. And it is permissible to extend warfare across borders when the enemy is using the border for protection, and that’s the other case of “far from the battlefield.”
Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. By definition, they make no distinction between civilians and fighters, or they use a weapon which obliterates such distinctions.
Attacks the primary purpose of which is to cause terror in the civilian population are prohibited.
Sources for your edification, Glenn: 1977 Protocol I additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, especially Part IV – Civilian Populations. This provides the working definitions of the things you are pretending to know. Geneva Convention III relative to Prisoners of War, Articles 4 and 5. This provides one of the working definitions of a combatant. Geneva Conventions of 1949, common Article 3. This provides all of the statutary law of war applicable during non-international armed conflict unless the parties are signatory to 1977 Protocol II, which in any case is an explication of the former, and contains a widely used definition for what a non-international armed conflict is (Article I). The 2009 Interpretive Guidance on the Notion of Direct Participation in Hostilities under International Humanitarian Law (known as the Guidance on civilian DPH, typically). This will provide you with a working knowledge of who is and is not considered to be a lawful target during non-international armed conflict.
And finally, there is the Customary IHL Database, maintained by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on their website. Just go to http://www.icrc.org and learn about the laws of war that you have refused steadfastly to admit the existence of, even though even al Qaeda and the Taliban do so, since you started blogging.
This attack is not an act of terrorism until the motive is ascertained. But if the motive is consistent with Article 51(2) then it is, under the laws of war, regardless of who the targets were. As for domestic law, terrorism includes conducting MCI attacks with affiliation to a designated terrorist group, so all bets are off.
Why you persist in inventing your own laws of war year after year is quite beyond me.
Under these rules, do you accept that nearly all drone strikes are war crimes, if not terrorism?
I would need to see your proof that they are war crimes before I would accept your “nearly all”. The armed groups targeted by the attacks never make this claim, rather they make the claim that the attacks are unfair because they don’t get to face their attackers. Keep in mind that they are far less disproportionate and indiscriminate than bombs used for the same purpose.
And I do accept that if they are used to terrify the civilian population, and that is their purpose (it does seem to have been that in some cases in Pakistan) then yes, that would be terrorism.
Signature strikes are no doubt war crimes — and I don’t believe that’s even a controversial statement. But even in cases where the targets are known, it’s been documented that they get targeted when they are at home with their families, and so on. What about al-Awlaki and Samir Khan getting killed while travelling by car in Yemen?
Most strikes during an international armed conflict would fit the definition of a “signature strike”. Basing something on intelligence and probability and not on knowing the names of all the people in the opposing military before killing them is the rule, not the exception.
What’s wrong with the signature strikes is that the level of purported assurance that the target is what they think it is doesn’t comport with reality. That’s actually a moral and technological argument — and a good one — but probably not a matter of laws of war.
The debate over al-Awlaki and Samir Khan in IHL/LOAC circles comes from whether or not they are actually civilians directly participating in hostilities, and what laws of war should apply. And here’s what it is mostly:
Some groups, including the ICRC, assert that Yemen is far enough from the battlefield (this is how it’s actually used) that it does not qualify as an application of the cross-border principles in customary law of war. Therefore, according to them, unless and until there is some kind of well acknowledged allegiance between the U.S. and a participant in the armed conflicts in Yemen, it is an international armed conflict if the U.S. attacks there, and the entire Geneva Conventions and most of Protocol I all apply. The U.S. asserts that it is a case of attacking a combatant wherever and whenever they can, and it asserts that only common Article 3 applies.
Either way, the question eventually revolves around whether the two were civilians DPH. The U.S. asserts that they had “continuous combat function” — a term from the Guidance referring to when a civilian becomes targetable at any time and not just when they are either immediately participating in hostilities or are on route or on the way home from it.
Continuous combat function means that they have a function in a warring party (an armed group) which would (in essence) be targetable if they were performing it for a military of a nation-state.
So the argument of the U.S. is that they had this status, the argument of those who call it a targeted killing is either that the U.S. wasn’t party to a war there, or that they were civilians with no continuous combat function.
There is nothing inherently illegal (w/respect to the laws of war) in attacking a combatant (or the equivalent in non-international conflicts) at home. It becomes illegal if it violates something else. And as several people in the U.S. and other militaries have also asserted, it may become strategically stupid, or morally repugnant without being illegal.
And Hiroshima? ?
With all due respect, Ondellette, you haven’t really said much with your comment here. Nothing you said justifies what the American military does.
With all due respect, Chris, I didn’t say a word about justifying what the American military does.
On the question of intent, you’re just guessing, right? For all we know, the attacker’s intent might be anger and retaliation, not to “cause terror” in the population. For that matter, we don’t really know what the unstated intent of the US government is with its drone campaign, and your preferred definition does not exclude state actors. Tom Friedman once said the real purpose of the Iraq war was to send a message to the Muslim world (“suck on this”). Terrorism if true?
Absolutely agree with this portion of what you wrote. However, one probably needs to prove the “unstated intent” before it becomes fact. Usually, that ends up being done by finding out that it was actually stated somewhere.
Then what is your point in your original comment? This was a recruitment center meant to hire people to kill overseas — a definition used to justify military strikes BY the West, so why not AGAINST the west?
I think you fell in love with your own rhetoric. You missed the forest for the trees.
The point of my original comment was to point out that once again, someone has used their own seat of the pants version of the “law of war” without actually knowing what the laws of war say.
You may not approve of that point when the person being criticized and you agree on some act and some war. But it is no different than the countless times on various comment sections that I’ve done the same thing when some armchair soldier of fortune asserts that if someone is a spy they can be shot on sight. Or when some other person asserts that acknowledged civilians being held at Guantanamo may be held for the “duration of conflict”. Neither of those are true, either.
“What isn’t legal is to then apply military violence that contradicts the principle of distinction (targeting the civilians) or contradicts the principle of proportionality (killing them together with the surrounding civilians when the number of civilians who are predicted to be killed is out of proportion from the military advantage gained), or that contradicts the principle of military necessity (that the action will further the goal of bringing the conflict to the swiftest conclusion by winning).”
By your own words, regarding the last two items, drone strikes and many bombing campaigns are illegal.
Are they? Are the targets of the attack civilians directly or deliberately not bothering to find out? If not, they don’t violate distinction. What is the perceived military advantage? Proportionality requires judging that. Are they perpetrated with the goal of winning the war as quickly as possible? If so, they don’t violate military necessity.
There’s a reason that you need to actually have trials for war crimes.
Interesting legal crap ondellete.
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It brings to mind, who decides what is indiscriminate? What does the “directly” in “directly participating” mean? What is “proportionate”? How do you judge what is the primary purpose of something? The primary purpose of the Chattanooga shooting, for the shooter, might be, to kill people in the US army. The primary purpose of the incident, for Obama, might be justify another Middle Eastern adventure, or to justify new NSA powers.
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– “This attack is not an act of terrorism until the motive is ascertained”
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People around the world are wondering, I know I am: Why should we give a flying f**k about all that legal crap? Even if America’s legal definitions on terrorism weren’t coming from the same class of great minds as torture fetishist John Yoo, why should America decide what is terrorism and what isn’t terrorism, inside, and outside America?
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If America wants to enforce laws on its territory, fight crime in a principled way, I can see the point of having a legal discussion, All Americans, and all visitors to America consent, actively, tacitly, to that.
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But having a discussion based on US law, or on International law, as interpreted by Americans, on the laws of war? That’s what has been happening up till now, and surprisingly, the verdict is in…Everything the US government does is legal, everything its adversaries do is illegal, what are the chances???
The chances that there is an armed conflict anywhere, whatsoever, and that one side, any side, has perpetrated zero war crimes is about zero. Always has been.
You don’t have to give a flying fuck about all this legal crap. Just don’t assert that your beliefs are more than just your beliefs because they are grounded in all this legal crap if you don’t.
@ Ondelette
Well hell must have frozen over and pigs must be flying. I agree with Ondelette on his narrow critique re: laws of war and Glenn’s premise.
I’ve said it many times, when you aren’t starting petty shitflinging fights with folks I actually find many of your comments well reasoned, informative and valuable.
Here’s the more interesting question(s) regarding Laws of War (at least to me):
1) Are those laws meaningful tools to promote more civilized or humane armed conflict? In other words, which groups of civilians and “legitimate” armed combatants benefit? It appears to me to be rules designed for equally matched state uniformed combatants and civilians of nations that are very similarly situated economically and militarily. Those laws didn’t help the people of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Afghanistan or Iraq (at least not except possibly on the margins) because clearly America and its allies committed what could be considered “war crimes” against those peoples. It didn’t help German civilians in WWII. Seems to me Americans and their allies will never be meaningfully held accountable for any “war crimes” they commit unless they are ultimately defeated as a military and/or nation forced to sue for peace.
2) If some or all of 1) is true then what is the value of Laws of War when an economically and technologically superior nation decides to invade and destroy another nation with/without international consent? I mean is it a “propaganda” tool or value to be utilized by the superior invading nation to trot out a few “war crimes scapegoats” and then sacrifice them on the altar of “legalism” to demonstrate that the superior invading nation acted “legally” or held its own “accountable”? If so, they do nothing to fundamentally address larger atrocities, illegalities, war crimes or hold those who ordered them accountable? I mean it seems like the “rules” or “laws of war” are “victor’s rules” in that they are generally only employed against defeated peoples and their proxies.
3) If the “biggie” Law of War (i.e. war of aggression) can be violated with impunity and without accountability by America, Israel and their various Western allies, and if it is necessarily true that in any armed conflict there will be war crimes and various atrocities, what good are the Laws of War if they don’t meaningfully address the lack of justification and/or immorality of most armed conflicts or acts of aggression by such states as America, Israel and/or their various Western allies?
4) If there is no consistent coherent international enforcement mechanism that treats all combatants and the nature of their acts equally before international law, without deference to “intentions” or relative economic/military/political power in the international community, why should any nation in a position of relative inferiority agree that they are meaningful or should be adhered to? In other words, if you are truly “defending” your land and peoples from invasion by another group, why should you fight by someone else’s rules? What is the moral argument against not fighting via the means, tactics and with the tools available to you against an invader with superior manpower, technology and weaponry even if such means, tactics and tools are somehow contravene the Laws of War? At a practical level I wouldn’t. Laws of War don’t seem to have much moral coherence or effectiveness if they can’t stop an illegal or immoral invasion of another’s land in the first instance. In my opinion, and if it can’t, you are morally justified in repelling invading troops in any manner you see fit and have the stomach for. And the only argument I can see for not doing so is practical more than moral–it is one of reciprocity of treatment between legitimate combatants of two warring forces.
5) As far as civilians go, if civilians or their families have no meaningful individual right of redress via an effective international enforcement body against combatants or the politicians who order particular actions that end up harming civilians, then what is the meaningful value of the so called Laws of War to civilians? I mean are they simply aspirational?
Look I’m all for building the international institutions that could meaningful hold together such an idea as the “Laws of War”, but all I’ve seen or read in my lifetime is that the “Laws of War” are a form of “victor’s laws” imposed on lesser or defeated combatants. They are never meaningfully employed, nor could they be absent a functioning global institution capable of enforcing penalties or sanctions, against nations such as America, Israel or their Western Allies (of course that includes the other non-Western big boys like China, Russia, India, Pakistan etc. and in particular anyone with nuclear weapons).
I find the entire idea an exercise in trying to convince people that wars can be moral or morally fought when they can’t except in self defense. And if that’s true then the only value is to legitimize armed conflict waged by the relatively superior forces and function as a propaganda tool for their benefit.
The laws of war are intended to protect those who are taking no active part in hostilities, and to limit the methods and means of warfare. The entire region of conflict and its inhabitants benefits from some applications, others are directed specifically at certain populations. The laws certainly did help prisoners in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, some such laws grew out of those conflicts. You know as well as I do that law is often reactive not proactive. What do you define as “on the margins”? Are you suggesting that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were anywhere near as lawless as those in Rwanda, Congo or South Sudan? As for World War II, the entire 4th Geneva Convention was written as a response to World War II. Protection for civilians didn’t exist in statutory IHL during World War II. We no longer have carpet bombing. Is that an accident or because it’s now illegal? All those complaints about Agent Orange, all those complaints about cluster bombs? Would those all have happened if the world hadn’t agreed to protect the civilian population?
Attempts are being made to use the laws of war against Omar Hassan al Bashir of Sudan — to wit, he’s been charged with genocide by the ICC along with several of his ministers and generals. I don’t see anybody applying the laws in his favor, but the parties he is fighting can hardly be called the victors in either the Darfur or the Two Areas conflicts, can they?
The “biggie” as you call it is UN Charter law, currently. It is jus ad bellum law not jus in bello law which was what was being discussed up to this point in your part of the discussion. Dismissing all of the (mostly jus in bello) application of the laws of war because of the failure of a law that prohibits war doesn’t seem very meaningful, and in worst case leads to atrocity in and of itself.
Absolutely not. Not only don’t the laws degenerate to “whatever means necessary”, a form of no holds barred warfare just because one party sees itself as militarily inferior. The only people who could possibly believe this are those who have no idea just how bad it gets in war in a black hole of the law. Reciprocity is one reason for not doing so, mental stability is another, and wanting the war to end someday is a third. Many insurgent groups have trouble with this or that provision of IHL, but I would challenge you to actually find a real, non-keyboard-warrior, armed group anywhere that believes that there shouldn’t be any limits to armed conflict. Here is a flick about al Qaeda (essentially) contacting the ICRC about the ICRC visiting their war prisoners.
But civilians do seek redress and some do see it. What you are asking for is quite different than whether the laws of war are meaningful to civilians. They are. They prevent atrocities — not all the time and not in every conflict, but in many conflicts. They enable a return to peace in some places, which since the civilian population represent the majority of the casualties nowadays, does benefit the civilian population. What you are asking for is for people who in your perception are guilty of the crime of aggression, or some other crime, that you haven’t seen prosecuted, see accountability before you’ll give your approval to the laws of war. There are many I’d like to see held accountable too, and many that others would like to see held accountable that haven’t. There are many in domestic law that have never been held to account, either and yet you are not so willing to dismiss all of domestic law.
Institutions for mandatory prosecution of anything whatsoever in the strictly international arena are far behind what they should be. In quite a few countries in the world, so are domestic institutions. Nobody advocates doing away with the rule of law and civil rights because it doesn’t protect people in dirt poor countries with dysfunctional social and legal institutions. But when it comes to international law, especially international humanitarian law or refugee law, all of a sudden people who (and I’m really not trying to make this personal so don’t take offense) have no real contact with the human race’s most horrendous activity argue that because the institutions and laws which attempt to ameliorate suffering and protect those not participating are not perfect, they are useless.
Why is that? Why the double standard amongst people who’ve never fled war? Most asylees I’ve ever talked to argue for stronger application of the laws of war, not doing away with them. More than half the countries in the world are younger than the statutory laws of war, and accept signing on to them as a fact of life, not a choice like some people here in the “big countries”. Are they just too 3rd world to understand what they’ve seen with their own eyes? Take Africa. The only people there calling the ICC unfair are the strongmen and dictators worried about ending up in its dock. People from Katanga who were ethnically cleansed by means of rape as a weapon of war from their villages, they keep filing in any court that will hear them, the same way clients of CCR do here.
Consider the tone of the following statements you make in your comment here:
Here we go again. This time we even have a supposed invocation of the “law of war”. […]
Just go to http://www.icrc.org and learn about the laws of war that you have refused steadfastly to admit the existence of, even though even al Qaeda and the Taliban do so, since you started blogging. […]
Why you persist in inventing your own laws of war year after year is quite beyond me.
And further down in the comment chain,
The point of my original comment was to point out that once again, someone has used their own seat of the pants version of the “law of war” without actually knowing what the laws of war say.
I admit that tone can be difficult to perceive accurately, at times, from individual comments, but this sort of ‘tone’ has been persistent in much of your commentary directed at Greenwald for a long time now. And using our ownseat of the pants version wrt the topic du jour is what every one of us does most of the time since we can’t all be experts at everything!
I acknowledge that it can be frustrating to interact with people who are ignorant about issues one is more informed about – I have the same frustration when conversing with folks who still insist that merely breathing the same air as someone with HIV puts one at risk – but if I do nothing but excoriate, am I likely to change their attitude? Probably not. Nor am I likely to educate them to a higher level. Insisting that everyone on the planet be an expert on every topic before they comment on it won’t get us anywhere in terms of convincing people regarding right/wrong, moral/immoral, etc. either.
It is in particular this sort of exactitude – insisted upon in your critiques of Greenwald – that I suggested in my last comment to you (and now perceive that I did so accurately) would cause similar jeremiads against his lack of expertise should he actually write about the Sudan crisis.
I don’t have a problem with your requests for attention to matters that concern you for reasons I truly believe you hold dear because I agree that these tragedies need exposure, but I do have a problem with the manner in which you provide your critique when Greenwald finally does essay into territory where you hold expertise. If I were him, I wouldn’t go there either because it looks like your most overriding interest is in finding fault – the more granular the better – no matter what sort of sympathetic attention to the underlying issue he is trying to generate. Requests, like your previous one on Sudan, start to resemble a set up, as opposed to honest pleas for recognition of the crises, and no sane person will attempt to satisfy that when they suspect – and there is considerable evidence for the rationality of those suspicions – they will be torn to pieces on the details the minute they commit to posting, their overriding concerns for justice notwithstanding and given no consideration by the critic whatsoever.
I appreciate your contributions here. I learned a lot from your exchange with RR below, and will continue to read your comments with attention. But I will have to ignore the back and forths between yourself and others over the righteousness of anybodies claims on propriety because I see both sides engaging in “jiggery pokery” (h/t Scalia) and that’s just sad because I really DO believe that most of us are on the side of trying to make these atrocities stop. Really. And accusations elsewise are, imho, disingenuous in the extreme.
Thank you for your efforts to keep us awake and aware.
1) Glenn’s tone in articles like this is similarly strident, Pedinska.
2) All the rest of your highlights have to do with my other criticism of him, that he has literally, in the ten year history of his blogging/reporting/journalism, refused to reference the Geneva Conventions even once that I can see. Instead, he pretends that some other “law of war” exists that he can reference on the same topics to which those conventions apply, in sharp contrast to the 195 signatory nations which believe them to be universally in effect.
Yes, I am going to criticize that, and it should be criticized, in the strongest possible terms. And yes, it does amount to his making up his own laws of war as a substitute. To wit, in this article, he claims, as I quoted, that combatants in a war cannot be legally hunted down in their homes with their families. That is just plain not true at all. The laws of war do not prohibit that except to the degree that doing so would disproportionately harm civilians.
So I stand by the language that I used. I devote a fair amount of my time to this subject, and Glenn, by using his considerable authority to completely mischaracterize the “law of war” is undoing the work of everyone who tries to inform the public about the laws of war.
I don’t care why he dislikes the Geneva Conventions so much (although I’m pretty sure it’s because they stipulate universal jurisdiction and make claims binding nations, including the U.S. to laws superceding their own laws), the least he can do is not butcher the “law of war” with his own opinions in defiance of what is actually in the laws of war. It’s hard enough to try to get parties to conflicts to obey the law without prominent journalists writing up their own conflicting version of what those laws say. Especially prominent former lawyer journalists.
One other thing, Pedinska. I do read what you write, and I do understand it. I did take your advice and write to Betsy Reed about increasing the coverage on Africa. I did that on the 11th, it is now the 20th, and I don’t have a reply yet. I’ll let you know if I get one.
Being informed on Africa, like the South Sudan or Sahel crises, is quite arguably a choice. I would love to change that choice for people, but it is a choice. Being informed on the basic principles of the Geneva Conventions is not, as the High Contracting Parties, which include every single country in the world, agreed in those conventions that they would inform the public of those principles. It’s written into the Conventions, and the Protocols. And arguably the only measure of whether or not that’s been complied with is that members of the public show in their public discourse that they are actually informed. Glenn has shown in this article that he is not.
Consider the tone of the following statements you make in your comment here:
Here we go again. This time we even have a supposed invocation of the “law of war”. […]
Just go to http://www.icrc.org and learn about the laws of war that you have refused steadfastly to admit the existence of, even though even al Qaeda and the Taliban do so, since you started blogging. […]
Why you persist in inventing your own laws of war year after year is quite beyond me.
And further down in the comment chain,
The point of my original comment was to point out that once again, someone has used their own seat of the pants version of the “law of war” without actually knowing what the laws of war say.
I admit that tone can be difficult to perceive accurately, at times, from individual comments, but this sort of ‘tone’ has been persistent in much of your commentary directed at Greenwald for a long time now. And using our ownseat of the pants version wrt the topic du jour is what every one of us does most of the time since we can’t all be experts at everything!
I acknowledge that it can be frustrating to interact with people who are ignorant about issues one is more informed about – I have the same frustration when conversing with folks who still insist that merely breathing the same air as someone with HIV puts one at risk – but if I do nothing but excoriate, am I likely to change their attitude? Probably not. Nor am I likely to educate them to a higher level. Insisting that everyone on the planet be an expert on every topic before they comment on it won’t get us anywhere in terms of convincing people regarding right/wrong, moral/immoral, etc. either.
It is in particular this sort of exactitude – insisted upon in your critiques of Greenwald – that I suggested in my last comment to you (and now perceive that I did so accurately) would cause similar jeremiads against his lack of expertise should he actually write about the Sudan crisis.
I don’t have a problem with your requests for attention to matters that concern you for reasons I truly believe you hold dear because I agree that these tragedies need exposure, but I do have a problem with the manner in which you provide your critique when Greenwald finally does essay into territory where you hold expertise. If I were him, I wouldn’t go there either because it looks like your most overriding interest is in finding fault – the more granular the better – no matter what sort of sympathetic attention to the underlying issue he is trying to generate. Requests, like your previous one on Sudan, start to resemble a set up, as opposed to honest pleas for recognition of the crises, and no sane person will attempt to satisfy that when they suspect – and there is considerable evidence for the rationality of those suspicions – they will be torn to pieces on the details the minute they commit to posting, their overriding concerns for justice notwithstanding and given no consideration by the critic whatsoever.
I appreciate your contributions here. I learned a lot from your exchange with RR below, and will continue to read your comments with attention. But I will have to ignore the back and forths between yourself and others over the righteousness of anybodies claims on propriety because I see both sides engaging in “jiggery pokery” (h/t Scalia) and that’s just sad because I really DO believe that most of the folks commenting here are on the side of trying to make these atrocities stop. Really. And broad accusations elsewise are, imho, disingenuous in the extreme.
Thank you for your efforts to keep us awake and aware.
Why do you bother trying to even reason with these adult-children? They aren’t fit for discussion with someone as sentient and thoughtful as you.
Indicating quite clearly that you didn’t read my comment in the first place. The only comments not fit for discussion are the one and two line ad hominems attached everywhere throughout the comment column.
This article reminds me of the argument I had with another commenter a month or two back about what constituted a ‘terrorist attack’ on ‘American soil’. I wonder if he’ll show up here and try to make the same specious claims again. I’d find the link but I can’t find anything on this site. I’d feel almost prophetic (if it weren’t so obvious that this was how things went).
Nice article, Glen. As always, you made a compelling case. I wish more Americans would just stop to think… even for a minute.
It can be instructive to mentally substitute Terrorist with Barbarian. The subtext that comes with Terrorist now means they are virtually synonyms.
Canada is no longer safe from these types of attacks, Stephen Harper has put a target on our backs. I miss the days when Canadians were made fun of for being to nice.
Yes, and both times Canada has been “targeted” had almost no connection to Islamic militants. Glen listed one above, and the other trial in progress (BC), an drug addicted couple had their entire “plan” spelled out to them by undercover RCMP-CSIS agents. Canada couldn’t wait around for attacks coordinated out of ME. Harper was desperate to play with big boys.
Harper has been nothing but a shameful blight on Canada.
The state of Canada,
like the USA and every other state,
has been reduced to a facade which is maintained to
camouflage the religion of global “free market” capital’s
most aggressive and arrogantly perverse acolytes.
Laws and constitutions are only words – of which the most
perverse/powerful devotees will determine the meaning.
The “elections” and “parties” are now hollow fronts.
devotees
I thought I had erased the last word “devotees” when I
altered a previous sentence.
The WTC itself could be seen as a legitimate military target as it was filled with offices for the CIA, the FBI, the near global NYPD “counter-terror” officers, all of whom are lead agencies in attacks on Muslims from a mideastern point of view. Furthermore, the American “way of war” is to attack economic targets as al here know. Hypothetically, if the U.S. military was to plan an attack against the U.S., the WTC would have been near the top of its target list judging by our numerous attacks on other countries.
It was? That’s news to me.
No, the WTC was a civilian building.
So are we really pretending that 9/11 was not an insidejob?
Good grief.
Please Sean, not here. The only “inside” factor in 911 was incompetence.
Yes, that is the pretense, here.
Most lawyers here can’t even grasp high-school level math. Well, a couple three, anyway. (You know who you are)
Yes, but let’s keep in mind that the US and Israel do intentionally destroy civilian infrastructure when then engage in war — notably, power plants.
from CBS/AP 11/05/2001
It’s odd that the tower that held CIA fronts was not hit by a plane but collapsed anyway. whatever
LOL Great to see the old faces again, good on ya, Nuf.
Terry, no hyperbole. Nuf has outed himself as an actual antisemite. He feels that throughout history Jews may have behaved in ways that brought their persecution down on them. He says this and stands by it:
Mona the Habarat.
Tell me it isn’t true
Mona the Hasbarat was a joke Mona.
hasbarat
English
Etymology
Blend of hasbara and rat
Noun
hasbarat (plural hasbarats)
(slang, pejorative) hasbarist
2009 Don Bailey, re: zionist trolls who infect the internet Group: talk.politics.mideast
If you’ve come across a hasbarat, on-line or otherwise, you have learned that no amount of reasoned argument or intellectual maturity has any effect. That’s because hasbarats don’t care if they come across as ignorant, obnoxious, nasty or inane. All that matters for them is sabotaging criticism of Israel and support for Muslims
2012 Bill, Re: Last charge of the Churchill brigade Group: sci.military.naval
and anti-Jewish-Israels are always painted as anti-Semites…how convenient. Lie. Bernie Schwarz, still being a hasbarat disseminator for Shitrael?
2011, eunometic, Re: Some idiot faking Eunometic please read below on “false flag racism” Group: alt.politics
In Israel groups called ‘hasbarat’ are even organised to manipulate Wikipedia, bulletin boards and create false flag racism.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hasbarat
Just 2 recent events: Operation Cast Lead and Operation Protective Edge
If ‘historical’ Israel behaved as it has behaved since the state was formed, that would justifiably put them into another’s cross-hairs. Israel is in conflict with many nations; I’m saying they may well be reaping what they sow. The UK Foreign Minister said recently that Israel desires a permanent standoff with Iran. That is not peaceful behavior; it’s aggression.
An “actual” antisemite? At least you’ve dispensed with the mental illness schtick, that was well beneath your station.
Your indignation at my cogent statement is rather histrionic and not too dissimilar from the Hebdo scene you made months back.
Yes, that would be you.
And I’ve said several times now, to claim as you insist that I, of all people, am a hasbara-ist means it is as reasonable to attempt reason with you as it would be to try it with a schizophrenic who is off his meds. A frustration I have a number of times experienced in my family. #futile
The idea that only non-combatant deaths matter is a narrative that not even those who say it believe. They obviously do mourn the death of combatants, so long as they belong to their own tribe.
If you’re engaging in massive violence against others, and you worry about bad PR, you obviously have an interest in propagating the narrative that you only try to kill non-persons.
Since 1864, there has been a set of conventions in place that protect people not in the fight and limit the methods and means of war. Longer, if you count traditions. The point isn’t that only non-combatant deaths matter, the point is that non-combatants are supposed to be protected.
The Geneva Conventions of 1949 are the only statutory international law that every single nation has signed or acceded to. Of course it’s bad PR to be seen to be violating them. That’s kind of the point.
The Geneva Conventions also protect combatants, mind you, against things like indefinite detention and torture. But I wasn’t talking about legal issues. In media narratives, it is always assumed that if only militants or combatants (of the other side) get killed in an attack, that’s basically the same as if no lives were lost. Even progressives go along with such narratives.
I can imagine that to someone in Yemen, people getting killed by bombs raining down on their country, does matter, even if only militants get killed. Sure, it’s more upsetting if a wedding party gets bombed, but it must still be upsetting to them regardless.
The belief in “American exceptionalism”
like the exceptionalism of the Germans, the French, the British, the Israelis, the Christians, the Jews, the Muslims,………..
on and on,
is the most common method of encouraging human disdain for humanity.
It is also the single most profitable message
promoted by the political class,
democrats, republicans, and libertarians alike.
At this pace, all of us will be using Tor and writing from Brazil within a decade or two.
I believe that killing is ‘not terrorism’ if done by those who work for a government, preferably wearing some uniform so that, if they kill ‘our guys’ we can immediately invade the country but if they don’t take direct orders from some state agency, it’s very frustrating and we call them terrorists.
Of course, the standards are flexible when ‘we’ are involved. I am thinking of the bombing of Serbia (not terrorism). Clinton ordered at the time a couple of cruise missiles into Belgrade’s TV studio. Many people were killed but that was Okay because the TV studio was, we were told, a legitimate target. On another occasion, the private residence of Mr. Milosevic, Serbia’s president was bombed, another legitimate target. Now, let’s imagine if, somehow, Serbia managed to blow up the Fox building on Madison Ave., NYC, NY. That would have been terrorism, of course. Or, God forbid, they managed to lobe a few mortar shells into the White House. It’s likely that our response would have been the carpet bombing or possibly the use of a couple of tactical nukes because that would have been terrorism.
By the way, please fix the ‘comments’ box. It’s way too small and I would really like to be able to come back and edit my comment after I submit it or at least preview it prior to submission.
Congratulations. You basically got what the operational definition is. Terrorism is something that threatens governments, not something that governments do. That is, unless it’s a rival government that does it.
In the War on Terror, the enemy’s name essentially translates to “enemy” and their tactic is “enemy stuff.”
No wonder the word Terrorism cannot be applied to the US. It’s not a descriptor. It’s a branded, trademarked, all rights reserved incantation to ward off journalism.
How does one cut through the fog of propaganda to communicate the insidious double standard described here? There seems to be an almost total lack of empathy on the part of the people in the US and its allies. How can that be countered?
You ask great questions. There does seem to be a lack of empathy on the part of the U. S. and its allies as well as folks like Dylan Roof and the Chattanooga shooter. We humans are way too quick to use violence to push an agenda, settle problems, etc.. We have somehow GOT to start seeing each other as fellow humans. We have GOT to stop using violence and war; the stakes are just getting too high.
I think the least we can do is continue to point out US hypocrisy, double-standards, and inconsistency wherever we see them, both in real life and on the Web.
I’m grateful to Glenn for this site (not to mention his heroic aid to Edward Snowden), but one thing I’d suggest is that we avoid staying in our “comfort zones” when spreading the truth. I.e., we shouldn’t merely vent about US lies and bullshit propaganda on “friendly” sites such as this, but also plant seeds of truth on neutral and even “hostile” sites. Not everyone can be reached, but the facts and logical consistency are on the side of those who oppose all this “War on Terror” horseshit. I know from experience that even the hardest hearts can sometimes be converted.
Robespierre – “If the spring of popular government in time of peace is virtue, the springs of popular government in revolution are at once virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country’s most urgent needs.
It has been said that terror is the principle of despotic government. Does your government therefore resemble despotism? Yes, as the sword that gleams in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles that with which the henchmen of tyranny are armed. Let the despot govern by terror his brutalized subjects; he is right, as a despot. Subdue by terror the enemies of liberty, and you will be right, as founders of the Republic. The government of the revolution is liberty’s despotism against tyranny. Is force made only to protect crime? And is the thunderbolt not destined to strike the heads of the proud?
”
https://www.marxists.org/history/france/revolution/robespierre/1794/terror.htm
Our inability to define terror combined by it being embraced by the world’s most powerful military gives carte blanche to those that support the “might is right” view of the world. If terrorism had any limiting effect on US policy, America would simply choose another less limiting word.
In the name of democracy, in a time of urgent needs, terror emanates from virtue. The US is democratic, democracy is virtuous. The US has urgent needs. From that, emanates prompt severe and inflexible justice.
Compared to the virtue of the great US, What are mere innocent civilians? Individual Muslims?, other countries? When those people are as just as America, then they can decide who can be legitimately killed.
(alternative definition of terror) Terror is a policy guided by the principle of terror. Terror is justified by one’s own self estimation as morally superior. Terror is put into action by any means required. Terror is incomplete without the condemnation of one’s opponents’ actions, whatever they may be, as “terrorism”.
Now, if after reading all this, the actions of the US still resemble despotism to you, clearly you are on the side of the despots. Don’t be surprised if the gleaming swords of the heroes of liberty strike you like a thunderbolt.
That was an excellent and fascinating post. But, gosh n golly, doesn’t Robespierre sound just like a sophist par excellence?
Here’s why this was An Act of Terror.
We’re fighting a global War on Terror. Therefore, our enemies are Terrorists. And what do Terrorists do? They commit acts of Terror, of course.
The best part is watching which editors are allowing the T word. It might be a Freudian slip, it might be overt propaganda. But one this has finally been proved: Terrorism’s actual working definition is unprintable.
You can consider this a quibble if you want, but the second sentence doesn’t follow from the first. What does follow is that the US is exempt from the charge of “terrorism”, but that doesn’t imply that US violence (in the WOT) is “inherently justified”. As you already noted, “all sorts of violence is wrong without being ‘terrorism.'” And, if the violence of our “declared enemies” is eligible for the charge of terrorism, that doesn’t imply that their violence in never justified.
Yes, it does.
Of course it is. That’s 90% of your output — “quibbles,” real and manufactured.
“Yes, it does.”
Why do you bother? Because you’re a demented troll.
Greenwald: “all sorts of violence is wrong without being ‘terrorism’”.
When Glenn tells me I behave like a demented troll, then I’ll worry. In the meantime, you behave exactly as I said: your shtick since you arrive at TI is to pick at nits, real and manufactured.
So, you’ve abandoned your argument that started and ended with “Yes, it does”? You’re a fucking joke.
@gg
I was hoping / expecting you would write something like this. Thanks. My first thought was that it was essentially a low-tech drone strike by the other side.
P.S. I do wish you and the Intercept would entirely stop using “terrorist” / “terrorism” in your own writing in general. It only help perpetuate what you oppose. Why not walk the walk as well as talk the talk? “Militant” / “militant action” or somesuch seems true and rather neutral.
Agree with part, but ‘militant’ doesn’t seem at all neutral to me.
When it is perpetrated by false-flag operations conducted by Israeli Mossad terrorist squads – Yes.
@Sufi Muslim True but completely irrelevant to the point he is making.
I know.
Thanks,
There is a corollary point to naming people “terrorists”. In reading the articles about the Chattanooga shooting last night, the lead investigator (for the FBI, I presume) said “hundreds” of investigators will be assigned to the case. It may be day-of-the-crime bluster, but if what he said is true, do we need to assign so many people to what will probably turn out to be an American, run-of-the-mill mass shooting? (I can’t believe I’ve come to be so inured to American violence that I can honestly describe the Chattanooga shooting as “run-of-the-mill”.) Adjusted for inflation, I doubt if the government spent as much money, or used as much manpower, to get John Dillinger.
“Terrorism” justifies militarizing what once was routine police investigation.
They’re starting to call routine typical hacking crimes ‘terrorism’ now. The language has been building up more and more this past year. It’s happening more with drug crimes too.
According to my understanding of the classical Islamic law, targetting the non-combatants, including off-duty soldiers, is un-Islamic.