The Goose and The Gander : Ethical Implications of the War on
Terrorism
by Scott Chastain
George W. Bush must bomb the United States immediately!
I know that sounds rather odd and in fact the circumstances which have
brought about this necessity are bizarre to say the least.
The president, you see, has ordered a war against terrorism and has
promised us to ferret out and bring to rout any terrorist or terrorist
organization, those that harbor, protect or fund terrorists, and those that
train terrorists and run terrorists camps (Bush Address Sept 20, 2001).
The United States does all of these things.
Therefore, the United States must bomb itself immediately!
Of course this won’t occur because our government has blended the lines
between war and justice, between soldier and criminal (Fletcher 635-637), and
has redefined the word terrorism to make it technically impossible for the
United States to conduct terrorism because terrorism by this new definition is
something which happens to us! (647-648). Thus, the War on Terrorism
cannot be fought ethically as the United States has redefined terrorist
activities to only apply to attacks against the United States while conducting
the same sort of clandestine attacks on smaller countries against an enemy which
has no sovereign state and thus making this a “new kind of war” which mixes
the rules of war and the rules of justice at its own convenience, and brings
about its own failure.
At this juncture in our discussion I would like to talk briefly about
patriotism. I am concerned that you
may think that I am not a patriot or that these words are unpatriotic. Indeed the opposite is true.
It is because I love this country that I do not wish to see further acts
of terror committed by or against her. It
is out of devotion to my land that I am cautioning against hypocrisy.
All of these problems began back in the year 1979.
The world was in turmoil. Iranians
had taken Americans hostage from our embassy.
The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
The United States got its chin into deep water in dirty dealings with
terrorists and soon-to-be terrorists as a result of all of this. The United
States diverted money and weapons through the Pakistani Interservices
Intelligence which dispersed the funds to various newly formed Islamic
Fundamentalist terrorist organizations (Fischel 199).
The purpose of this transaction was to aid the Afghanis in their
resistance against the U.S.S.R. invasion, and help weaken our cold war foe.
While this was happening, ex-CIA director George Bush, on the ticket as
Ronald Reagan’s running mate, secretly arranged a deal with the Iranians to
hold the American Hostages until Reagan’s inauguration in exchange for
weapons. Monies raised during these
illegal arms deals were diverted to supporting guerrillas and their terrorist
activities in Nicaragua. This is
the infamous Iran-Contra scandal (“History and the World Today” 1486-1487).
The support sent to the terrorists in Afghanistan, under the leadership
of the Saudi Arabian Osama bin Laden paid off.
After nine years the campaign ousted the Soviets and aided in the fall of
the communist regime in mother Russia. Within
a few short years following the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan the U.S.S.R. would
collapse and democracy would win the day. But
at what cost?
A disenfranchised terrorist and his troops were cut off from aid from the
United States, which no longer needed the support of the Muslim radicals.
Left to their own devices and a sweltering pot of growing Islamic
fanaticism which fanned the flames of the deep and lingering hatred they had
towards our society, which they perceived as decadent and immoral, Osama bin
Laden bided his time.
The United States eventually committed a grave atrocity to the Muslim
Fundamentalist mind. We put our
troops, a mixture of Christian and Jewish soldiers, in Saudi Arabia; their most
sacred ground. We based our troops
there to fight the war against Iraq and to oust Iraqi presence from Kuwait.
After the war ended, the United States kept troops on the ground far too
close to Mecca for Laden and others of like mind.
The time for the reach of the terrorist bomb to strike America was at
hand. Strike, they did!
Within the years following the Gulf war, Laden and company managed to
bomb our military barracks, our embassies in Africa, and even an aircraft
carrier, the U.S.S. Cole. They
planted a bomb in the World Trade Center in 1993 (Fischel 201-203). Clearly we
had a witches’ brew of hatred bubbling up in the Middle East, and we seemed
powerless to counteract it all. The
culmination of these terrorist activities ended in what has been called
(debatably) the worst terrorist attack in the history of the world.
On September 11th, 2001, terrorists from Laden’s
organization known as the al Qaeda, hijacked four American jetliners. They flew two of these jets into the twin towers of the World
Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and one crash landed in Pennsylvania, no
doubt on its way to a more dire target than the Amish countryside.
The world was outraged. Americans,
British, Russians, Pakistanis,
Chinese, Japanese, Canadians and virtually every country with the sole exception
of Iraq expressed their sympathy. Riding
on the surf of this disaster, President Bush secured virtually unimpeded powers
from Congress and the U.N. to act against this atrocity. The War on Terrorism was born.
To quote the “rules” for this “new kind of war”, I will let the
president speak for himself. The
following is a quotation from the presidents address to a Joint Session of
Congress and the American People which occurred at 9:00 P.M. EDT on September 20th,
2001:
Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that
supports them. … It will not end
until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and
defeated. … We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against
another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest.
And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism.
Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.
From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support
terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.
This statement leads us into our next quandary.
What exactly is terrorism? The
Webster’s new Encyclopedic Dictionary defines terrorism as a “systematic use
of terror especially as a means of gaining some political end.”
This definition is obviously not what the president was referring to.
Have we not employed these tactics everywhere from our military
engagements to our police actions? The
bombing of the Federal Building by
Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City didn’t really fit into this definition
either. Clearly what McVeigh did
was terrorism, wasn’t it? Yet it
was not systematic, but rather a one time deal.
In order to carry out the War on Terrorism we needed a more workable
definition. The USA Patriot Act was
designed to do just that. It
defined terrorism as follows:
The
term “domestic terrorism” means activities that - (A) involve acts dangerous
to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or
of any State; (B)
appear to be intended - (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian
population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or
coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction,
assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily within the territorial
jurisdiction of the United States” (Fletcher 647-648).
This definition not only operationally defines terrorism for the sake of
international policy but it also absolves the United States from any accusations
of terrorism! How conveniently
ethnocentric. I don’t really want
to cite the old cliché, but isn’t what is good for the goose also good for
the gander? Can we really and
honestly only call a vicious terrifying act “terrorism” when it happens to
us? I mean, for example, if we
dropped a couple of atomic weapons on some Japanese cities in order to terrify
their government into an immediate and unconditional surrender, wouldn’t that
be terrorism? If we launched
“smart bombs” at cities in Afghanistan and set out land mines in civilian
districts in order to scare them into turning over members of the al Qaeda to
us, wouldn’t that be terrorism? (Leaning
355).
Let us examine this a bit more closely.
If A does C which results in D, and B does C which results in D, then A
and B have not done the same thing C. This
seems to be quite illogical reasoning and an invalid argument.
If Joe steals a cookie for the purpose of eating it, and Sam also steals
a cookie for the purpose of eating it, then to say that Joe’s act was wrong
and Sam’s act was right is counter-intuitive.
Obviously they both stole cookies for the same purpose, and have both
committed the same crime. That makes a lot more sense.
It could be argued that the difference between the attack on the WTC and
the Pentagon were terrorist, while the attacks on Kabul, Afghanistan and other
civilian targets were part of a war. This
seems reasonable but if this is the case then we must consider the attacks on
Sept. 11th to be a formal declaration of war from the al Qaeda
against the United States. Under
the rules of war this act would not be criminal nor subject to any punitive
action. If this was a criminal
action, then the case becomes a matter of justice and any act of war in response
would be unjustifiable. Either this
is a matter to be tried in a court of law under normal trial by jury, or this is
an act of war. It cannot be both at
once! (Fletcher 635-637).
Getting back to the definition of terrorism, if we exclude the
ethnocentric components we can define terrorism as any act which is designed to
threaten or coerce a civilian population or a government for political reasons.
If we use this definition, we can clearly see that the United States has
committed many acts of terrorism in the past, including in the failed war on
terrorism in Afghanistan. We can
see how many of our Allies have used these terrorist methods, and yet we still
call them our friends. Of course in
being guilty we are all in the same boat so we might as well row together.
Turkey, for example, has
committed atrocities against its Kurdish population, including the rape and
sexual torture of Kurdish women in their custody (“Update on Afghanistan” 8).
I could cite atrocities committed by U.N. members for pages, suffice to
say, they exist and they are numerable.
Even now the United States may be training as many as 10,000 Iraqi
Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni rebels to assist in a possible war with Iraq, should
one occur. While it is unsure
exactly where these rebels are being trained, and what they are being trained to
do exactly, is unknown to the general public, it can be assumed that they are
not being taught how to shoot an M-16 assault rifle, as they are quite familiar
with war having lived with it all their lives.
While the White House insists they will not be used in any sort of ground
war against Iraq, we can only speculate at whether or not our government is
training up an Iraqi Taliban like the one that was so effective against the
Soviets in Afghanistan. An
anonymous source told Agence France Presse that if we simply wanted a military
force against Saddam Hussein there are already 100,000 armed Kurds in Northern
Iraq ready to move (Lee). These
10,000 are receiving some sort of special training, either innocuous as the CIA
contends, or guerrilla as is more customary.
If the latter, it seems we may be doomed to watch history repeat itself
after the war in Iraq is concluded.
When all is said and done, the War on Terrorism cannot be conducted
ethically unless all countries which support, finance, train, or harbor
terrorists are dealt with equally. When
Timothy McVeigh left his fertilizer bomb in front of the Federal Building we
didn’t start bombing American towns we thought he might be hiding in. We didn’t leave land mines in the Oklahoma wheat fields for
the farmers’ children to stumble upon. In
addition to this hypocrisy, we must remember that the KKK can be considered a
terrorist group and we harbor them and give them protection under our
constitution. We cannot fight this
alleged war ethically.
Perhaps it cannot be fought at all.
Despite our success at destroying the same Taliban we helped establish in
the first place in Afghanistan, the al Qaeda terrorist organization is alive and
well. It also appears that the
corpse of Osama bin Laden promised us by our president (isn’t it a crime to
put a bounty on another person’s head?) is still warm and animated.
Since April of 2002 the al Qaeda have run amok over the globe launching
no less than 11 terrorist attacks from Tunisia to the Philippines.
These attacks have killed as many as 266 people (Elliot 28-29).
The United State braces as we are promised a more serious blow to come.
It is clear we cannot conduct the War on Terrorism ethically, as we
ourselves are committing terrorist crimes and we protect our allies who are
committing terrorist crimes. With
the al Qaeda terrorist organization still going strong despite the number of
innocent people we killed to stop them, it is evident that the War on Terrorism
is unsound as well as unethical. We
should learn from the events of the past year about the dangers of acting rashly
out of vengeance and overstepping the bounds of reason as we wage war against
ghosts.
I must pause here to concede that something must be done about
terrorism. I do not wish to give
any impressions that I admire terrorists or support any terrorist agenda.
It would seem intuitive to call any act of terrorism a crime, and if we
are speaking of international terrorism let us call it an international crime!
With this definition, we can be empowered to seek the aid of many states
to bring these criminals to justice without ourselves becoming criminals.
I think this solution clears all blurred lines and will offer the most
aid to avoiding international accidents and misadventures which could cause an
escalation in both terrorism and international unrest.
A judicial process would serve us better than any half-witted War on
Terrorism ever could.
Gerry Spence cautioned us that we could become “the most proficient,
the most hideous, the most gargantuan terrorist in the history of humanity and
thereby plant a crop that bears an eternal fruit of hatred.” (40). Indeed if
we are committing these acts of terror and are too blind from our own point of
view to see that we have been terrifying the Middle East as official policy for
over 20 years, then we must acknowledge this and act.
The way I see it we can either alter our own practices concerning
terrorists activities we commit and bring these other radical terrorists to
criminal trial for their horrendous deeds, or we must begin bombing ourselves!
Work’s Cited
Bush, George W.
Address. Joint Session of Congress and the American People.
United States
Capitol, Washington D.C.
20 Sept. 2001.
Elliot, Michael.
“How Al-Qaeda Got Back on the Attack.”
Time 28 Oct. 2002 :
28-29.
Fischel, Jack.
“The Road to September 11.” The
Virginia Quarterly Review :
199-206.
Fletcher, George P.
“On Justice and War : Contradictions in the Proposed Military
Tribunals.”
Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 25 : 635-648.
“History and the World Today.” Webster’s
New Encyclopedic Dictionary. 1993
ed.
Leaning, Jennifer.
“Was the Afghan Conflict a Just War?”
British Medical Journal 324.7333 :
355.
Lee, Matthew.
“US Planning Military Training for Iraqi Opposition.”
Agence Free Presse 25
Sept. 2002.
Spence, Gerry.
“Have We Already Been Defeated?”
Humanist 62 (2002) : 40.
“Terrorism.”
Webster’s New Encyclopedic Dictionary.
1993 ed.
“Update on Afghanistan.” Off Our Backs Aug-Sept 2002 : 8.
