What is terrorism?

There are many Americans today who seem to believe that the United States is surrounded by a sea of evil terrorists who are eagerly trying to destroy them. This is wrong. In fact it is reminiscent of three-year-olds who are afraid of the drain monster and the demons who live beneath the basement stairs. Even worse, it is reminiscent of the anti-Semitism that was popular in Germany and much of Europe a century ago. In those days many people really believed that the Jews were engaged in a vast conspiracy to destroy European civilization.

Paranoia is a very powerful human emotion. Anyone who has studied a lot of history has come across this emotion on numerous occasions. “Beware, they are out to get us” is a common theme in history. The “they” are usually foreigners but have also included minority groups and social classes.

The only remedy for paranoia is knowledge and understanding. That is why this emotion is so common among the very young who, quite naturally, are lacking in knowledge and understanding. One of the most important jobs that parents have is to reassure their children that there is no drain monster and there are no demons living below the stairs. Likewise national leaders and historians should be educating their people to understand that foreigners are not intrinsically evil. Unfortunately, many politicians and historians do the opposite. They use the natural emotion of paranoia to win votes and sell books. This is a great human tragedy and one of the most serious problems of democracy.

Most terrorists are not intrinsically evil people who revel in death and destruction. They are revolutionaries. In some cases they are individuals seeking revenge. In a very few cases, they are evil.

One of the most important aspects of modern society is that individuals are not allowed to use violence against each other. Violence becomes a prerogative of the state. It is reserved to specially recruited and trained police officers and soldiers who wear distinctive uniforms and are given the job of keeping the peace and defending the state. Ordinary citizens are allowed to use violence only under the most dire circumstances when their lives are in danger and they must act immediately to defend themselves or their loved ones.

The concept of reserving violence to the authorized agents of the state is a very good idea, but what happens in a society that requires revolution? For over 400 years the entire world has been engaged in a massive revolution from traditional society to modern, democratic market society. If the state is the only entity that is allowed to use violence, how can this revolution proceed? About three-quarters of the world is still engaged in this revolutionary process, which typically lasts for one or two centuries. In a revolutionary situation, self appointed people sometimes use violence. This does not necessarily mean that they are evil terrorists.

The imperative of the modern revolution is by far the most powerful political force on this planet. The much-vaunted power of the United States is miniscule in comparison. America wants peace and stability throughout the world and has developed a policy that is against most revolutionary activity. Since the end of World War II, the United States has been energetically interfering with the natural course of revolution throughout the world.

For over a decade Arab leaders have been warning that American policies in the Middle East would lead to trouble. Hundreds of times this country was warned, and every single time those warnings were ignored. The Arab leaders knew what they were talking about. It happened. Roughly 3000 Americans were killed by Arab revolutionaries. Because the perpetrators of this act did not wear uniforms and were not the agents of any state the Americans call them terrorists.

I am not going to quibble with this definition. They were revolutionaries, and they were terrorists. What is important is why this happened. American leaders claim that the only reason was a desire to do evil. They say that America was attacked by evil terrorists, period. That is wrong. This kind of revolutionary terrorism happens for a reason. The following is a brief tour of trouble spots where the United States has created enemies for itself.

The Arab Countries

Much of the Arab world is still involved in the most violent part of the modern revolution and will be for decades to come. They are a long way from the final outcome, which is democratic market nation-states. The Palestinians do not yet have a nation-state of any kind. Their land was taken from them by the Israelis. Hamas, Hisbulah, and Islamic Jihad are Arabic revolutionary organizations that have become involved in the fight for a Palestinian homeland.

The Arab states must have revolution, and the Palestinians must have a national homeland. That is why these organizations exist. They are not simply evil terrorists trying to cause death and destruction. So far Hamas, Hisbulah, and Islamic Jihad have mostly tried to avoid targeting Americans. But the United States gives full support to Israel to target them. If this policy continues, it is likely that they will eventually retaliate. The Americans will have no one to blame but themselves.

Al Qaeda is an umbrella group that grew out of Saudi, Egyptian, and other Islamic revolutionary organizations. The United States has deliberately chosen to support oligarchic, Arab governments that use violence to maintain their power against the legitimate revolutionary aspirations of their people. It is this American policy that has turned the wrath of Al Qaeda against the U.S. This did not have to happen. All that is needed for the United States to remove itself from the target list is to change its policy and stop trying to prevent revolution in the Arab world.

Most everyone is in agreement that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein, but there must have been a better way to eliminate him than starting a major war in Iraq. He has now been out of power for a year and a half, but the war continues. The Americans insist on fighting to gain control of Iraq and impose their version of democracy. This is not going to happen.

The Americans are killing Iraqis on a daily basis. This policy is provoking more resistance, which leads to more killing in a vicious cycle. It is clear to any objective observer that American policy is not working. It is only causing death and destruction. This kind of arrogant behavior could easily lead to more attacks on the United States in the future, possibly for decades to come. If those attacks materialize, American leaders will blame evil terrorists, but it is their own policy that will be the real cause.

Iran

From 1948 to 1979 the United States supported the Shah of Iran because he allowed free reign to the CIA to use his country as a base for spying on the Soviet Union. The Shah needed this support because his own people were turning against him. The modern revolution had arrived in Iran, and the time for absolute monarchs was over. The United States deliberately chose a policy of opposing the revolution and maintaining the Shah in power against the wishes of the Iranian people.

This policy was doomed to failure. The revolution happened. The Shah went into exile, and the new revolutionary government was an enemy of the United States. Saddam Hussein, who ruled next door in Iraq, saw his chance to win glory, annex an Arabic-speaking province, and seize a large part of Iran’s oil. He quickly launched his army to seize the opportunity.

Iran was much larger than Iraq, and its population was filled with revolutionary fervor. Saddam was soon in big trouble. He was on the verge of a massive defeat, which probably would have caused him to lose his job as dictator of Iraq. Then, Ronald Reagan rode to the rescue. American policy tilted toward Iraq. Saddam was given access to satellite photos of the battlefield, but that was not enough. So the United States provided Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons technology and the ingredients he needed to produce poison gas. Saddam was able to stabilize the front lines, achieve a draw in the war, and stay in power.

Iran suffered a million casualties in the war, and its revolutionary government became even more anti-American. George Bush knows every part of this story, and it was fully reported in the American media. But the reason that he came up with to explain anti-Americanism in Iran is that they are evil terrorists. “The Axis of evil,” Bush calls them. “They hate us because we are free,” he says. Say what! He has GOT to be kidding.

Axis of evil? They hate us because we are free? I don’t think so. Iran is anti-America because American policy was anti-Iran. It is an open and shut case of cause and effect. The U.S. supported their unwanted Shah, tried to stamp out their revolution, and helped Saddam Hussein wage war against them with weapons of mass destruction. Now the Americans say that Iran is to blame for the problems between us. Give me a break. The American media is fully aware of all of this, and has done nothing to put the record straight. What is going on here?

North Korea

In 1944 the United States desperately wanted the Soviet Union to attack Japan. If they would do this, America offered to let them occupy Manchuria and northern Korea after the war. That is what happened. The Russians attacked Japanese controlled Manchuria and Korea, which became an artificially divided country.

Kim Il-sung, the leader of North Korea, desperately wanted to reunite his homeland, and negotiations were going nowhere. After many requests, he prevailed on the Russians to provide enough of their war-surplus weapons to seize the South, and he launched an attack. This is exactly the same thing that Abraham Lincoln did when the United States was a divided country. The Americans went ballistic. The evil communists are trying to conquer the world, they shouted.

The American military was quickly rushed in to defend South Korea and attack the North. As part of the war B29 bombers, commanded by Gen. Curtis LeMay head of the Strategic Air Command, destroyed every city and town in the North and then started wiping out the larger villages. The civilian death toll is estimated at about two million. At the beginning of World War II, bombing civilians was called terror bombing. Then Britain and the United States started using this strategy in a major way and it became known as strategic bombing.

Curtis LeMay was the foremost practitioner of this kind of terror, whoops, I mean strategic bombing. He was told many times that North Korea’s weapons mostly came from the Soviet Union and bombing their cities would have little effect on the war effort. To hell with that, he said, the only good commie is a dead commie. He worked as hard as he could to kill as many North Koreans as possible, military and civilian.

Fifty years later the North Koreans still do not like us. Well surprise, surprise. George Bush thinks he knows why. They are evil supporters of terrorism, he says, they are part of the axis of evil. They hate us because we are free. No, George, that is not the cause of the problem.

Considering American government policies, over the last fifty some years, toward communists, Arabs, and revolutionaries in general, it is amazing that the United States has not been attacked much more often. What goes around, comes around is the old saying. The communists mostly licked their wounds quietly. The Arabs are different. They have practiced a cult of revenge for many thousands of years, an eye for an eye and all that. It should not be a big surprise that they found a way to retaliate. I think that the United States and Israel should stop killing Arabs as soon as possible.

It is long past time for the United States to stop creating enemies. Half the world is still in the grip of the modern revolution. A large amount of political violence is going to continue for the next generation or two. It is counter-productive to define all of this violence as evil terrorism. The United States has done a lot of good work to help solve some of the world’s revolutionary problems, but it has also made mistakes. America could learn from those mistakes and do a better job in the future. Paranoia is not the solution to anything. With knowledge and understanding, we could do much better.