MILNET Opinion: Parsing Terrorism

MILNET Opinion
Parsing Terrorism

Why the War on Terrorism Moves So Slow

One of the greatest difficulties in the War on Terrorism is just getting the world's nations to agree just what is terrorism. From claims that public protest is terrorism, to the treatment of Hezbollah as a "resistance group", the definition of terrorism and who or what political action groups are terrorists creates difficulties in agreeing who to go after let alone what to do. Seems ridiculous? Well, that is only the beginning.

For instance, let's take up the case of Hezbollah. Next to Al-Qaeda which is more of an umbrella organization in reality, Hezbollah is the largest, most well armed terrorist group in the world. With ties in all hemispheres, Hezbollah has both a political wing and an external action group. The external action group is hardly distinguishable from the political group -- personnel flow freely between the two sections of the organization as does financial aid. This last part is key...giving funds to the political group in no way ensures the funds do not go to the external action group.

Finances are extremely important in the world of terrorism. Being international means having the ability to move around the globe. This means airfare, train fare, supplies, and of course acquisition of weapons at your destination. All this takes money, big money. And in the case of terrorists, they never seem to be lacking. Oh there is clear evidence it is a hassle for them, especially after the crackdowns in financial transactions destined for terrorist money launderers, however all that has been done is clearly not enough.

Take Hezbollah again. Because some nations refuse to recognized the political wing of Hezbollah as a terrorist group, their citizens can readily provide donations to them. And their citizens do. Saudi Arabian, Iran, Jordan, Egypt, and others have their wealthy citizens freely sending moneys to Hezbollah. And that cash is used for political purposes to be sure, but unfortunately, some goes into the coffers used to buy weapons, vests, and plastique explosives which eventually turn into suicide bomber vests. Or buy rockets and mortar rounds that are used to fire into Israeli settlements.

Let's make sure we are clear on this. Only six nations have recognized Hezbollah (or at a minimum recognized the external action group) as terrorists: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Israel and the Netherlands. All others are free to contribute to Hezbollah without having to admit they are supporting a terrorist group.

Similar B.S. occurs with Hamas, Fatah, and several other clearly violent international terrorist groups.

This parsing of the word terrorist then becomes the key element in fighting terrorism. The United Nations no longer has a terrorist group list. Therefore, how does the U.N. expect to be able to refute terrorist acts if there are no terrorists? Are all terrorists simply freedom fighters? The great humanitarian organization called the U.N. has no concept of how to parse terrorism either. Even a simple definition of "targets civilians" or "targets civilians whose nation is not at war", or any other attempts at precision won't fly with the U.N. Why? Because the U.N. is such a humanitarian organization, all war is abhorrent to it, and thus any definition they attempt to draft also leaches over into describing any two warring nations as terrorists. Moreover, the U.N. General Assembly is composed of nations that not only willingly condone terrorism (Iran and Syria) for example, but also directly fund Hezbollah or other terrorist organizations on a routine basis (Russia for instance). So in the end, the U.N., because of its very nature, is helpless against Terrorism. It is supposed to facilitate diplomatic resolutions to war...terrorism isn't war in their eyes, it is armed resistance. Never mind that the armed resistance kills innocents 100 to one over soldiers engaged in war.

Thus when Israel forays into Lebanon to go after Hezbollah, the United Nations wakes up and screams at Israel for attacking Lebanon without provocation. Why? Because acts by armed resistance groups don't fall onto U.N. radar, thus never happened. Let Israel respond with its army and suddenly this is an act of war out of nowhere. Ridiculous? It gets worse.

Hezbollah, for a short period of time, actually had representatives as part of the government of Lebanon. Hezbollah has donation plates in Mosques throughout Lebanon. How can this be? The political party gig again. See, if you have a political party, you can do things that a terrorist group can't. To occupants of the British Isles, this is all too familiar. Senn Fein and the IRA comes to mind immediately. The political wing of the IRA has representatives in the Irish government today. Former terrorists serve in office. They move from the terrorist group to the political wing with ease. All is forgotten. Similarly, Arafat, a notorious terrorist, became the leader of the Palestinian Authority, a political group which has degraded now into a bickering two headed monster attempting to pull together the shatters of the Middle East peace process and define a Palestinian State. His death removed a terrorist from the position of figurehead, and the real dichotomy of the Palestinians has come to light...they can't agree to diagree at times.

The Israelis are not immune to this double faced lie...many of its former leaders were at times resistance leaders bombing British rulers prior to the declaration of an Israeli nation. Some more parsing there...un-uniformed Jews attacked British soldiers on the job...in our definition that would make them terrorists, perhaps of a lesser degree because the British soldier on the job is a valid target of war -- any soldier could be considered a target one would suppose, although there is a certain cowardice implied when attacking a soldier while he is sleeping or having a beer.

In any case, the parsing continues at a fervent pace, while nations that stand up to say they abhor terrorism, routinely pay directly or their citizens pay into the coffers of terrorist groups on a daily basis.

Why would anyone want to support a terrorist group? That is actually the simple question to answer. Some people will do anything to put across their political agenda. Take for instance, nutball animal lovers who will kill scientists in a laboratory that uses animals for medical testing. The humans involved are reduced, by the political calculus, to less importance than the animals. The twisted political agenda of the animal rights folk truly believe this, and thus the scientists can easily be murdered by setting the place afire. This is all just fine all of a sudden. Of course, if caught, the animal rights people will have all kinds of support from the left, but eventually, the legal system will find them guilty of murder and send them away. In some cases, however, a liberal judge has been known to reduce their sentences to mere trifles...after all they had a valiant cause, right?

So, given that serving your political agenda makes it okay, then nations like Russia can easily support terrorists -- they want to see chaos in the Middle East, it makes Russian oil more valuable. Oh come on, that can't be true. Fine, go look at the price of crude paid to the Russians over the decades of the infatada in the Middle East. Argue with that.

Also, while some want to believe the Russians are now the great friends of the U.S., the reality is that anything that brings the U.S. down a peg is fine with them. With U.S. support for Israel still strong, the Russians figure anything that creates havoc for that alliance is fine with them.

But the problem isn't only Russia. Many of our European Allies like the idea of creating problems for the U.S. as well. This gives the Europeans more leverage in politics and world finances. Think this is B.S.? The European Union also fails to recognize Hezbollah as a terrorist group. In fact, the European Union has so few terrorist groups on its list, it makes one laugh. Spain put the Basques on there...that makes sense for them. Al Qaeda is on the list...no duh? But Hezbollah? Nope.

Thus, it is even hard to restrict travel of Hezbollah members as they move around Europe. Oh Interpol knows who they are, and presumably tracks them. But it becomes difficult to report them to the U.S. agencies interested, since in the eyes of most Europeans, Hezbollah are simply innocent civilians...untrackable, non-threatening entities. By the way, Russia believes Hezbollah is no threat to Russia, so why bother declaring them terrorists. Italy has indicted CIA agents for grabbing a well known terrorist cleric while in Italy, how's that for cooperation in the war on terror? The guys fighting the fight are now considered by the Italians to be worse than the terrorists.

Now you see the problem. Defining terrorist organizations becomes key to the war on terror and no one seems all that anxious to agree on the definitions, let alone define which groups are terrorists rather than resistance groups or freedom fighters. And while this should be a number one diplomatic priority, there doesn't seem to be much action on this critical front. Go figure.