Terror and Terrorism

You cannot solve any problem by blowing up innocent people. —Chinua Achebe

Terrorism remains a crime against humanity no matter who commits it or for what reason. As one of the six children who survived the Oklahoma City bombing, Chris Nguyen, has said, "Terrorism is terrorism, no matter where it comes from." To be free of violent attack is a primary human right; yet violence against civilians continues in many forms. In this light particularly, to limit the definition of terrorism to specific acts of violence committed in one region, in a single period of history, or by one kind of perpetrator is to harness the meaning of the term to a polemical purpose and thus reduce its meaning. For over a century, terror has been used as an instrument of power many times by every political faction, left, right, and center. The modern use of the word came into being during the French Revolution. In the Soviet Union, Stalin was famous for using terror to suppress opposition; the Nazi regime used terror, including the Holocaust, to gain and retain power; terror has been used within the United States in the service of racism, and similarly all over the world to curtail human rights.

Both the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11 and the aerial bombings of cities or villages that result in the death of civilians are forms of terrorism, as are the lynching of African Americans that occurred throughout America through the first half of twentieth century, the massacre of civilians that occurred in 1981 in El Mozote, a village in El Salvador, and the assassination of doctors who provide abortions.

If our consideration of terrorism is to be truthful and fair, along with suicide and car bombs, we must include land mines, drones, and strategic bombing (which by military definition means bombing off the battlefield, behind enemy lines, often in areas where civilians live). In the same vein, nuclear armaments are by definition terrorist weapons, especially because, even when uranium-tipped bullets are used, the radioactive materials stay in the environment long after a battle is waged, causing harm even to the unborn children of future generations.

Without acknowledging the broad range of suffering caused by terrorism, we cannot fully understand the current and serious threat we are facing in America today. This acknowledgment is also crucial if we are ever to break the cycle of violence that terror and terrorism fuel. We must see the problem clearly and acknowledge our own role before we can undertake any steps toward transformation. As Chinua Achebe has said, "You cannot solve any problems by blowing up innocent people."

Taken together, the essays in this chapter open up the boundaries of thought and imagination by inviting us to enlarge our picture of terrorism by including the purposeful creation of conditions that lead to destitution and starvation, for instance, or by reminding us that whether speaking of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, religion does not cause terrorism. The essays in this chapter also explore unconscious elements that prevent us from thinking clearly about terrorism, including the use of terms such as "War on Terror" that truncate our ability to reflect on the nature of the crisis. To underscore the gravity of this issue, we have reprinted an address by Jan Egeland, former Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator for the United Nations, on the prevalence of civilian casualties. In many conflicts civilian casualties are still not being counted or reported, and for this reason we have also included an excerpt from the biography of Marla Ruzicka, the young woman who gave her life to assess and redress civilian deaths in Iraq.

It is our hope that if terrorism is perceived as a threat to women, children, and men throughout the world, the worldwide movement against violence aimed at civilians that began to form after 9/11 can rise up again and turn the world away from a path of mutual, murderous violence.

Susan Griffin

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CIVILIAN CASUALTIES: THE NEW FRONTLINE

Susan Griffin

These days I sense in myself a muted, nearly inexplicable unease. The cause is not just global warming and a frail economy, but a shadowy sense that right now, just under the skin of public awareness, something terrible is occurring. It is as if, in rare moments of silence, beneath the joys and vicissitudes of daily life, I can almost detect a muffled sound. Is this the sound of weeping, a cry of terror? Or a warning?

That we are currently engaged in more than one violent conflict and losing young men and women in battle every day is disturbing enough. But almost daily, another kind of casualty occurs, one that seems hidden from public scrutiny. As planes without pilots called drones fly over villages looking for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan, they drop bombs that kill far more civilians than terrorists. At the height of the war in Iraq, a war of words ensued over how many civilian deaths occurred since the war began in Iraq. Was it 650,000 as a study by Johns Hopkins estimated, or only 10,000 as the Bush administration once claimed? At least the subject of civilian casualties was in the news. Yet the horrific dimensions of these events do not seem to register in public consciousness. Since the Hopkins study received far less attention than the plight of a young family of four lost in the snow that week, the accidental juxtaposition of these events awakens another question in me, one that is filled with doubt, irony, and hope all at once. Why is the great feeling of care that was inspired by a single family not aroused equally toward the countless families who have been injured or have died because of the war in Iraq? This question takes on an especially urgent dimension since at this moment in history, as civilians, we are all in great danger.

A terrible shift has taken place during our century, a momentous change not only in international events but also in military tactics practiced all over the world. Though there has never been a time in recorded history when civilians did not die in warfare, over the last five decades civilians have become the primary target of warfare. The fact that at the present time more civilians are dying in battle than soldiers is at the front line of an accelerating advance, one that moves in a terrible direction. While at the beginning of the century civilians represented 10 percent of casualties and soldiers 90 percent, now those numbers are reversed. This means that today 90 percent of those injured in warfare are unarmed,...