Defining Terrorism

Philosofialogos over at Ponderings & Prose recently sent me a link to an article where Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez accused the US of harboring terrorists against the Venezuelan state, inciting that the Bush administration is being hypocritical in its stance on terrorism. There is evidence that the White House met with and supported Venezuelans who attempted to the failed coup to throw Chavez out of office, a coup which the Bush administration publicly said that they were in favor of, even though Chavez was democratically elected by free Venezuelans who have a right to choose their own government and who they want to lead it. Chavez also claims to have evidence that the CIA would have tried to assassinate him if he took a plane to the US to speak at the United Nations a couple of weeks back.

Chavez's comments bring a few interesting thoughts to my mind: How can terrorism be defined? Is the Bush administrations stance against terrorism be better defined as an extension of protecting goverment interests? Just how much terrorism has the US supported? Against whom? And for how long has terrorism and the support of it been a part of US policy?

The answer to the first question is subjective, and since all the other questions depend upon the answer to the first question, it might be better to answer all these questions with more questions, pointing out examples of US foreign policy. Since I take great, sometimes sadistic, joy in making things confusing, this is what I will do. Besides, if it's confusing, you have to think about it. While I usually do a lot of preaching, ranting, and raving on the blog, I think a subjective topic such as defining terrorism deserves more thought and less mouth.

Can an attempted coup be considered terrorism? Or, better yet, can a revolution be considered terrorism? What happened in Venezuela cannot be consider a revolution, but it comes close. The coup had a decent amount of support, but it wasn't enough to fully counter the majority of popular support that President Chavez receives. There was a general strike and massive marches in the streets surrounding the presidential palace, but no military actions, so it wasn't a revolution. But, as a general question to an objective, third party, non-biased spectator, should a revolution in any country be considered terrorism?

Is terrorism just limited to making innocent civilians fear for their lives because of a terrorists actions? Or should we consider the overthrow of a government to be terrorism, too, especially if that overthrow is violent and lacks popular support?

Whether or not the attempted coup in Venezuela is terrorism is very subjective. On one hand, people should have a right to revolt against their government if they feel it is necessary. On the other hand, Chavez is the democraqtically elected President of Venezuela, and citizens can just do what any other normal republic does: Wait until the next election and put somebody new in office. ("Attention shoppers, this offer is not valid in California.") Of course, since Chavez is a relatively popular leader who obtained his office by winning a popular election, Chavez's opponents probably fear that he would be reelected in a second popular election, so they searched for other ways to remove him from office. Can a coup under these circumstances, when a minority of the people wish to usurp a democratically elected popular government by placing their own leader in power, is Chavez correct in defining this as terrorism?

Could the American Revolution be defined as terrorism? Obviously not to our founding fathers, but certainly Great Britain looked upon actions like the Boston Tea Party as terrorist in nature. Can we define the Boston Massacre as a terrorist act?

Is it terrorism to wage war to take another countries land, like the US did when it fought against Mexico in 1846, acquiring Utah, New Mexico, California, Nevada, Arizona, and pars of Colorado that were previously under a Mexican flag.

What if war for conquest is done for religious purposes? Surely terrorist organizations like al-Qa'ida would love to get rid of the US government and enforce Islamic law across this country if they got the chance, and they are widely recognized as one of the largest terrorist organizations in the world. Did President McKinley not have the same religious righteousness when waging war against the Philippines at the turn of the last century? McKinley commented on why he thought the US needed to fight this war: "...There was nothing left for us to do but to take them all and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them [emphasis mine], and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ also died." [Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, pg. 305-6; Zinn commented, "The Filipinos did not get the same message from God."]

Bombing and murder of innocent civilians who are not able to defend themselves is probably most well known act of terrorism, but it is only defined as terrorism in certain cases. Those cases depends upon ones opinion, and there are many. Is there a clear defintion of terrorism that makes a Palestinian suicide bombing stand apart from the Israeli soldier who murders a Palestinian child? Can the 12 years of UN sanctions on Iraq, stretching throughout the Clinton administration, be considered terrorism for the childrens lives it terminated? Can the fact that US didn't support a Shiite rebellion against Saddam Hussein in 1991 leaving thousands of Shittes to be slaughtered, be considered support for terrorism? On the same side of that coin, can the US be guilty of supporting terrorism when we gave Hussein the chemical weapons which he used to gas thousands of Kurds and the Iranian army?

When President Clinton bombed a Sudanese medicine factory, robbing many people of medicine that they needed, was it terrorism? Bad intelligence reports? Or, what still lingers in the back of my mind, a reaction to Monicagate story and keep it off the front pages? And what about support from Carter, Reagan, and Bush Sr. administrations to Latin American military juntas, like Grenada, Chile, and El Salvador? Or Reagan's bombing of Tripoli, Libya, which could have killed hundreds of innocent Libyans all because their president, Khadafi, may have been involved in a bombing in West Berlin which killed an American serviceman?

Are we to assume that actions committed by the official military forces of a nation-state are exclude from any definition of terrorism and should be defined as something else? And what do we call the actions committed by intelligence agencies from one country that unfavorably effect and/or replace the democratically elected government of another country? Case in point, how would define a joint action from US and British intelligence agencies in the early 50's to overthrow Iran's new democratically elected government and place the Shah back in power?

So, what's terrorism? And if a simple layman with only a public education, like myself, can ask the questions I have just posed, can we really believe anything that any US Presidential administration tells us about terrorism and how they are fighting it?