Terrorism has a simple, comprehensive definition: It is illegal political violence. But no practical or ethical purpose is served by characterizing all of its practitioners as terrorists. Each case is unique. Each terrorist action occupies only one point on the spectrum of political violence. History teaches us that violence is the ultimate determinant; society depends on the law, and law depends on the apparatus to enforce it. Thus, government necessarily exercises violencecontrolled, legal violence.
The fundamental strategy for reducing the global level of violence must be a reduction of the sense of grievance that fuels it.
It is no coincidence that most costly incidents of anti-American terrorism in recent years took place in the Middle East. Perhaps the most extreme example of post-World War II American paternalism is U.S. determination to deny hegemony over that oil-rich area to any rival power. This commitment to a precarious status quo puts the United States in opposition to the perceived interests of the regimes in Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and to the currents of Islamism and Arab nationalism throughout the region. While professing to act as the impartial protagonist of peace and justice in the Middle East, Washington has aligned itself with only two of the several competitors in a chaotic regional power struggle.
A number of Third World countries continue their long and convulsive passage from colonialism to full independence. Part of the cost in making this change evidently must be paid in blood, mainly by the people of the Third World nations directly concerned, but also as an adjunct to the process by the nationals of any country that seeks to intervene. Here the United States’s actions in the Middle East illustrate the point. And this being the case, the question arises as to what policy options are best calculated, above all, to reduce the toll in human lives.
Under isolated circumstances, reprisal can be morally justifiable and tactically effective.
But today in the Third World, violence is most often the inevitable expression of legitimate grievances against local oppression or foreign interference. The violence can be attenuated only by political and economic reform, not by counter-violence. Taking whatever action is feasible, the United States has an obligation to lead the campaign to reduce international violence. That effort will succeed only insofar as it meets the tests of morality and consensus. No nation, however powerful, is qualified or entitled to be the policeman of the world.
Fortunately, if U.S. policy is not always democratic, the American political system is and it enjoys the system’s capacity to learn from experience.
A part of the terrorist motivation comes from domestic oppression and lack of good economic options for terrorists. If you have a bad boss you can’t get mad at him so you go home and get mad at your wife and kids, it happens all the time. Arguably the same holds true internationally, if the people in Saudi Arabia or Palestine are pissed about their 50% unemployment rates, governmental oppression & corruption and cannot get mad at their leaders w/o risking death they can take it out on the US the same way someone who is mad at their boss cannot take it out on him so he finds someone else to yell at. Democracy would help redirect some of that anger back at their own domestic government. Religious fundamentalism and personal strife seem to be linked from what I have seen in my life, the people who turn to fundamentalism are more often than not desperate in some way.
None of this would cure terrorism, but it would help cut it down.
From Confidence
“An eye for an eye” is not an excuse to violate the commandment that says “Thou shalt not kill.” The Bible was written over many hundreds of years by many different people, and there are many contradictions in it. I tend to rely on the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount for guidance in these matters.
My personal feelings about the death of Bin Laden are that he should have been arrested and brought to trial and gone through due process. In reading various accounts of his death it seems to me that this could have been possible. But I understand that those who killed him were under intense pressure, possibly confused and possibly not aware of all aspects of the situation.
I do not believe in capital punishment for any reason. I do not believe in punishment at all. “Vengeance in mine, saith the Lord,” to quote the Bible one more time. That means vengeance is not ours. But I do believe in restraint. We have to make sure the person who commits a crime doesn’t do it again. So life imprisonment without possibility of parole, I think, would have been appropriate for Bin Laden. However, that would not have been for me to determine.
From Rev George Honn III
I just finished your column on the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. Thank you for being honest and setting a high standard for us to look at. Being a minister I have done the same thing you did. Others have done the same. I have not commented on this issue publicly. The killing of a leader geopolitical or ideological is still a killing. It may have been necessary and we did it as humanely as possible, I for one cannot celebrate it. It is a sad moment in our history when the only way to solve a problem is to kill someone, anyone.
