Terror And Just Response

September 11 will surely go down in the annals of terrorism as a defining moment. Throughout the world, theatrocities were condemned as grave crimes against humanity, with near-universal agreement that all states mustact to "rid the world of evildoers," that "the evil scourge of terrorism" -- particularlystate-backed international terrorism -- is a plague spread by "depraved opponents of civilizationitself" in a "return to barbarism" that cannot be tolerated. But beyond the strong support forthe words of the US political leadership -- respectively, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and his Secretary ofState George Shultz [1] -- interpretations varied: on the narrow question of the proper response to terroristcrimes, and on the broader problem of determining their nature.

On the latter, an official US definition takes "terrorism" to be "the calculated use ofviolence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological innature...through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear."[2] That formulation leaves many questionopen, among them, the legitimacy of actions to realize "the right to self-determination, freedom, andindependence, as derived from the Charter of the United Nations, of people forcibly deprived of that right...,particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes and foreign occupation..." In its most forcefuldenunciation of the crime of terrorism, the UN General Assembly endorsed such actions, 153-2.[3]

Explaining their negative votes, the US and Israel referred to the wording just cited. It was understood tojustify resistance against the South African regime, a US ally that was responsible for over 1.5 million deadand $60 billion in damage in neighboring countries in 1980-88 alone, putting aside its practices within. Andthe resistance was led by Nelson Mandela's African National Congress, one of the "more notoriousterrorist groups" according to a 1988 Pentagon report, in contrast to pro-South African RENAMO, which thesame report describes as merely an "indigenous insurgent group" while observing that it might havekilled 100,000 civilians in Mozambique in the preceding two years.[4] The same wording was taken to justifyresistance to Israel's military occupation, then in its 20th year, continuing its integration of the occupiedterritories and harsh practices with decisive US aid and diplomatic support, the latter to block thelongstanding international consensus on a peaceful settlement.[5]

Despite such fundamental disagreements, the official US definition seems to me adequate for the purposes athand,[6] though the disagreements shed some light on the nature of terrorism, as perceived from variousperspectives.

Let us turn to the question of proper response. Some argue that the evil of terrorism is"absolute" and merits a "reciprocally absolute doctrine" in response.[7] That would appearto mean ferocious military assault in accord with the Bush doctrine, cited with apparent approval in the sameacademic collection on the "age of terror": "If you harbor terrorists, you're a terrorist;if you aid and abet terrorists, you're a terrorist -- and you will be treated like one" The volumereflects articulate opinion in the West in taking the US-UK response to be appropriate and properly"calibrated," but the scope of that consensus appears to be limited, judging by the evidenceavailable, to which we return.

More generally, it would be hard to find anyone who accepts the doctrine that massive bombing is theappropriate response to terrorist crimes -- whether those of Sept. 11, or even worse ones, which are,unfortunately, not hard to find. That follows if we adopt the principle of universality: if an action is right(or wrong) for others, it is right (or wrong) for us. Those who do not rise to the minimal moral level ofapplying to themselves the standards they apply to others -- more stringent ones, in fact -- plainly cannot betaken seriously when they speak of appropriateness of response; or of right and wrong, good and evil.

To illustrate what is at stake, consider a case that is far from the most extreme but is uncontroversial;at least, among those with some respect for international law and treaty obligations. No one would havesupported Nicaraguan bombings in Washington when the US rejected the order of the World Court to terminate its"unlawful use of force" and pay substantial reparations, choosing instead to escalate theinternational terrorist crimes and to extend them, officially, to attacks on undefended civilian targets, alsovetoing a Security Council resolution calling on all states to observe international law and voting alone atthe General Assembly (with one or two client states) against similar resolutions. The US dismissed the ICJ onthe grounds that other nations do not agree with us, so we must "reserve to ourselves the power todetermine whether the Court has jurisdiction over us in a particular case" and what lies"essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the United States" -- in this case, terroristattacks against Nicaragua.[8]

Meanwhile Washington continued to undermine regional efforts to reach a political settlement, following thedoctrine formulated by the Administration moderate, George Shultz: the US must "cut [the Nicaraguancancer] out," by force. Shultz dismissed with contempt those who advocate "utopian, legalistic meanslike outside mediation, the United Nations, and the World Court, while ignoring the power element of theequation";"Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast acrossthe bargaining table," he declared. Washington continued to adhere to the Shultz doctrine when theCentral American Presidents agreed on a peace plan in 1987 over strong US objections: the Esquipulas Accords,which required that all countries of the region move towards democracy and human rights under internationalsupervision, stressing that the "indispensable element" was the termination of the US attack againstNicaragua. Washington responded by sharply expanding the attack, tripling CIA supply flights for the terroristforces. Having exempted itself from the Accords, thus effectively undermining them, Washington proceeded to dothe same for its client regimes, using the substance -- not the shadow -- of power to dismantle theInternational Verification Commission (CIVS) because its conclusions were unacceptable, and demanding,successfully, that the Accords be revised to free US client states to continue their terrorist atrocities.These far surpassed even the devastating US war against Nicaragua that left tens of thousands dead and thecountry ruined perhaps beyond recovery. Still upholding the Shultz doctrine, the US compelled the governmentof Nicaragua, under severe threat, to drop the claim for reparations established by the ICJ.[9]

There could hardly be a clearer example of international terrorism as defined officially, or inscholarship: operations aimed at "demonstrating through apparently indiscriminate violence that theexisting regime cannot protect the people nominally under its authority," thus causing not only"anxiety, but withdrawal from the relationships making up the established order of society."[10]State terror elsewhere in Central America in those years also counts as international terrorism, in the lightof the decisive US role, and the goals, sometimes frankly articulated; for example, by the Army's School ofthe Americas, which trains Latin American military officers and takes pride in the fact that "LiberationTheology...was defeated with the assistance of the U.S. Army."[11]

It would seem to follow, clearly enough, that only those who support bombing of Washington in response tothese international terrorist crimes -- that is, no one -- can accept the "reciprocally absolutedoctrine" on response to terrorist atrocities or consider massive bombardment to be an appropriate andproperly "calibrated" response to them.

Consider some of the legal arguments that have been presented to justify the US-UK bombing of Afghanistan;I am not concerned here with their soundness, but their implications, if the principle of uniform standards ismaintained. Christopher Greenwood argues that the US has the right of "self-defense" against"those who caused or threatened...death and destruction," appealing to the ICJ ruling in theNicaragua case. The paragraph he cites applies far more clearly to the US war against Nicaragua than to theTaliban or al-Qaeda, so if it is taken to justify intensive US bombardment and ground attack in Afghanistan,then Nicaragua should have been entitled to carry out much more severe attacks against the US. Anotherdistinguished professor of international law, Thomas Franck, supports the US-UK war on grounds that "astate is responsible for the consequences of permitting its territory to be used to injure anotherstate"; fair enough, and surely applicable to the US in the case of Nicaragua, Cuba, and many otherexamples, including some of extreme severity.[12]

Needless to say, in none of these cases would violence in "self-defense" against continuing actsof "death and destruction" be considered remotely tolerable; acts, not merely "threats."

The same holds of more nuanced proposals about an appropriate response to terrorist atrocities. Militaryhistorian Michael Howard proposes "a police operation conducted under the auspices of the UnitedNations...against a criminal conspiracy whose members should be hunted down and brought before aninternational court, where they would receive a fair trial and, if found guilty, be awarded an appropriatesentence." Reasonable enough, though the idea that the proposal should be applied universally isunthinkable. The director of the Center for the Politics of Human Rights at Harvard argues that "The onlyresponsible response to acts of terror is honest police work and judicial prosecution in courts of law, linkedto determinate, focused and unrelenting use of military power against those who cannot or will not be broughtto justice."[13] That too seems sensible, if we add Howard's qualification about internationalsupervision, and if the resort to force is undertaken after legal means have been exhausted. Therecommendation therefore does not apply to 9-11 (the US refused to provide evidence and rebuffed tentativeproposals about transfer of the suspects), but it does apply very clearly to Nicaragua.

It applies to other cases as well. Take Haiti, which has provided ample evidence in its repeated calls forextradition of Emmanuel Constant, who directed the forces responsible for thousands of deaths under themilitary junta that the US was tacitly supporting (not to speak of earlier history); these requests the USignores, presumably because of concerns about what Constant would reveal if tried. The most recent request wason 30 September 2001, while the US was demanding that the Taliban hand over Bin Laden.[14] The coincidence wasalso ignored, in accord with the convention that minimal moral standards must be vigorously rejected.

Turning to the "responsible response," a call for implementation of it where it is clearlyapplicable would elicit only fury and contempt.

Some have formulated more general principles to justify the US war in Afghanistan. Two Oxford scholarspropose a principle of "proportionality": "The magnitude of response will be determined by themagnitude with which the aggression interfered with key values in the society attacked"; in the US case,"freedom to pursue self-betterment in a plural society through market economics," viciously attackedon 9-11 by "aggressors...with a moral orthodoxy divergent from the West." Since "Afghanistanconstitutes a state that sided with the aggressor," and refused US demands to turn over suspects,"the United States and its allies, according to the principle of magnitude of interference, couldjustifiably and morally resort to force against the Taliban government."[15]

On the assumption of universality, it follows that Haiti and Nicaragua can "justifiably and morallyresort to" far greater force against the US government. The conclusion extends far beyond these twocases, including much more serious ones and even such minor escapades of Western state terror as Clinton'sbombing of the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan in 1998, leading to "several tens ofthousands" of deaths according to the German Ambassador and other reputable sources, whose conclusionsare consistent with the immediate assessments of knowledgeable observers.[16] The principle of proportionalitytherefore entails that Sudan had every right to carry out massive terror in retaliation, a conclusion that isstrengthened if we go on to adopt the view that this act of "the empire" had "appallingconsequences for the economy and society" of Sudan so that the atrocity was much worse than the crimes of9-11, which were appalling enough, but did not have such consequences.[17]

Most commentary on the Sudan bombing keeps to the question of whether the plant was believed to producechemical weapons; true or false, that has no bearing on "the magnitude with which the aggressioninterfered with key values in the society attacked," such as survival. Others point out that the killingswere unintended, as are many of the atrocities we rightly denounce. In this case, we can hardly doubt that thelikely human consequences were understood by US planners. The acts can be excused, then, only on the Hegelianassumption that Africans are "mere things," whose lives have "no value," an attitude thataccords with practice in ways that are not overlooked among the victims, who may draw their own conclusionsabout the "moral orthodoxy of the West."

One participant in the Yale volume (Charles Hill) recognized that 11 September opened the second"war on terror." The first was declared by the Reagan administration as it came to office 20 yearsearlier, with the rhetorical accompaniment already illustrated; and "we won," Hill reportstriumphantly, though the terrorist monster was only wounded, not slain.[18] The first "age ofterror" proved to be a major issue in international affairs through the decade, particularly in CentralAmerica, but also in the Middle East, where terrorism was selected by editors as the lead story of the year in1985 and ranked high in other years.

We can learn a good deal about the current war on terror by inquiring into the first phase, and how it isnow portrayed. One leading academic specialist describes the 1980s as the decade of "stateterrorism," of "persistent state involvement, or `sponsorship,' of terrorism, especially by Libyaand Iran." The US merely responded, by adopting "a `proactive' stance toward terrorism." Othersrecommend the methods by which "we won": the operations for which the US was condemned by the WorldCourt and Security Council (absent the veto) are a model for "Nicaragua-like support for the Taliban'sadversaries (especially the Northern Alliance)." A prominent historian of the subject finds deep rootsfor the terrorism of Osama Bin Laden: in South Vietnam, where "the effectiveness of Vietcong terroragainst the American Goliath armed with modern technology kindled hopes that the Western heartland wasvulnerable too."[19]

Keeping to convention, these analyses portray the US as a benign victim, defending itself from the terrorof others: the Vietnamese (in South Vietnam), the Nicaraguans (in Nicaragua), Libyans and Iranians (if theyhad ever suffered a slight at US hands, it passes unnoticed), and other anti-American forces worldwide.

Not everyone sees the world quite that way. The most obvious place to look is Latin America, which has hadconsiderable experience with international terrorism. The crimes of 9-11 were harshly condemned, but commonlywith recollection of their own experiences. One might describe the 9-11 atrocities as "Armageddon,"the research journal of the Jesuit university in Managua observed, but Nicaragua has "lived its ownArmageddon in excruciating slow motion" under US assault "and is now submerged in its dismalaftermath," and others fared far worse under the vast plague of state terror that swept through thecontinent from the early 1960s, much of it traceable to Washington. A Panamanian journalist joined in thegeneral condemnation of the 9-11 crimes, but recalled the death of perhaps thousands of poor people (Westerncrimes, therefore unexamined) when the President's father bombed the barrio Chorillo in December 1989 inOperation Just Cause, undertaken to kidnap a disobedient thug who was sentenced to life imprisonment inFlorida for crimes mostly committed while he was on the CIA payroll. Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano observedthat the US claims to oppose terrorism, but actually supports it worldwide, including "in Indonesia, inCambodia, in Iran, in South Africa,...and in the Latin American countries that lived through the dirty war ofthe Condor Plan," instituted by South American military dictators who conducted a reign of terror with USbacking.[20]