One Man’s Terrorist is Another Man’s…Workplace Violence?
Defining Terrorism — More Confusing Than Ever
The debate over the definition of terrorism has always been controversial and an agreed upon universal meaning will likely never be settle upon. Dr. Bruce Hoffman, an authority on terrorism and the author of Inside Terrorism devotes a chapter of this informative book to the evolution of the term terrorism from its origins during the French Revolution in the 18th Century as a instrument of the newly established state to the common post modern meaning that is centered on acts against a state . The quote, “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”, from Gerald Seymour’s 1975 novel Harry’s Game that chronicles the effort to hunt down an IRA assassin by a British secret agent, has often been used to frame the often dichotomous lens terrorism is seen through.
An internationally agreed upon definition of terrorism has eluded the United Nations for the same reasons succinctly phrased in the above quote. Additionally, there is a legitimate concern that military “counterterrorism” intervention will be used as a pretext for politically motivated acts as was recently justified, in part, by Russia for its invasion and annexation of Crimea. There are also those historic examples that further blur terrorism’s meaning. Respected statesmen such as Menachem Begin and Nelson Mandela who where once considered terrorists but history ultimately interprets their causes as just and the violence associated with their realization is all but forgotten.
Domestically, the United States has only added to the debate due to the way it has framed some of the more recent violent acts that have occurred in the country. Jared Loughner’s was determined to be competent to stand trial for his intended assassination of then Congresswomen Gabrielle Giffords, the murder of a federal judge and the shooting of 16 others including five additional fatalities. Although there was a distinct political target and a federal official was killed by his actions, Loughner’s offense proceeded through the judicial system in purely criminal terms.
The motivation behind the crime therefore must be the determinant factor in distinguishing mass murders from acts of terrorism — or maybe not so. Take the case of Major Nidal Hassan, the former Army psychiatrist and notorious Fort Hood shooter who fatally shoot 13 people and wounded another 30. At his court martial, he openly admitted he realized he was on “the wrong side” and was motivated to kill his fellow soldiers so they would not kill other Muslims. He also communicated directly with Anwar al-Awlaki a designated terrorist killed by an American drone strike in Yemen in 2011. Yet his attack clearly motivated by extremist beliefs was designated a case of “workplace violence” by the Department of Defense.
The argument against designating this an act of terrorism is that there is not a legal charge of “terrorism” under the military’s Uniformed Code of Justice and that even officially referring to this as an act of terror would have unfavorably tainted the judicial proceedings. However, the U.S. Department of State and the National Counter Terrorism Center both counted the incident as an act of terrorism in their annual assessments for that year. Others claim it is politically motivated to lessen the attention to the fact that Major Hassan was on the radar of federal law enforcement and Army officials prior to the shootings.
The legal terminology and the political semantics only further cloud the meaning of terrorism. Those who use terror to justify their cause overseas will use the technicalities of law and language to hold their actions in a positive light. The United States needs to standardize its definition of terrorism before it can expect the rest of the world to reach an agreed upon standard.
