Now Can We Call Them Terrorists?

This is amazing on multiple levels. The Iraqi government has released figures for how many civilians have been killed by the enemy in the last 18 months and the numbers are staggering. To be clear, this is the count of civilians killed, pretty much the threshold test for any reasonable definition for terrorism and terrorist activity: the intentional targeting of civilians.

Did some of those civilians die in attacks on legitimate military targets? Sure. But if you are targeting police recruits standing in line in the midst of a market place, grey area activity since some would argue police recruits are not yet combatants, and you do that over and over again while you are also engaging in clearly terrorist activities at the same time, I'd say you're a terrorist who sometimes engages in legitimate military action, not a legitimate guerrilla fighter who sometimes strays, and these numbers prove it. There are more civilian than legitimate military deaths by almost an order of magnitude, less, obviously, when you factor in American casualties, but even then, still the vast, vast majority of casualties are still civilian.

So now that we have the conclusive and empirical proof, now, now for the love of God can we finally call them terrorists?

Guess not.

Interior Ministry statistics showed 12,000 civilians killed by insurgents in the last year and a half, Jabr said. The figure breaks down to an average of more than 20 civilians killed by bombings and other attacks each day. Authorities estimate that more than 10,500 of the victims were Shiite Muslims, based on the locations of the deaths, Jabr said. (My emph.)

And how's this for adding insult to injury:

Jabr said security forces had detained 700 "terrorists" and killed 28 during the operation. The Defense Ministry said Wednesday that 680 people had been detained but that all but 95 had been released for lack of evidence warranting prosecution.

Get that? Just like Reuters, the Post will now use the word "terrorists" when it's a direct quote, and indicate that with quote marks.

Is this terrorism?

Two more people died at Arafah, the site of one of Iraq's first oil wells. A suicide car bomber there detonated his explosives at the entrance to a compound for the national oil company and the U.S. and British consulates, Lt. Col. Adel Zain Abidin said.

Is this?

In Baqubah, in central Iraq, a suicide car bomber killed Hussein Alwan Tamimi, the deputy chairman of the Diyala provincial council, as he was accompanying his ill sister to the hospital, according to a fellow council member, Khadija Khuda Yakhsh. Four of the official's bodyguards also died. The sister was wounded.

Short answer: YES.

Could you make an argument that this isn't?

In Mosul, also in the north, attackers blew up two motorcycles rigged with explosives next to a coffee shop frequented by police officers, killing five people, the Associated Press reported.

You could make an argument. Does that mean they aren't terrorists, or that they're terrorists who sometimes do other things?

Is this terrorism?

Gunmen firing randomly from three speeding cars killed nine Iraqis in a crowded market area in Baghdad, a Defense Ministry official told the AP. Interior Ministry officials gave a slightly different account, saying the victims had been waiting at a bus stop.

Yes.

Is this?

A bomb caused the deaths of three motorists at Mahmudiyah, 15 miles south of Baghdad, and attackers with guns and a bomb killed a woman in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood, police and hospital officials told the AP.

Most definitions share some verion of the following clauses:

Politically motivated violence

conducted by sub-national groups

intentionally targeting civilians (non-combatants.)

for psychological reasons

You can get more elaborate, to be sure, but that's the guts of it.

I would like the Post to either defend their alternative definition for terrorism, a definition which defines what these bastards have been doing out, excludes it from the universe of terrorist acts, or provide their definition of "insurgent violence" and explain why it fits what's going on in Iraq more precisely. Either that or I'd like to see them explain why the imprecise use of language by a newspaper is a good thing.

I'd love to see them explain their formal policy guiding the use of the words "terrorist" and "terrorism" if they have one, because it sure is starting to look more and more as if they've adopted the Reuters cop out.

Either that or the soft cop out of some papers who know certain acts are terrorism but prefer not to use the word anyway, because it packs so much, you know, baggage. (My subscription has expired so they won't even let me put up the abstract, but the article you want is The New Republic Online: Word Games.)

Comments

[Ryan]

Prof Dauber-

Your post seems to suggest that police are combatants ("police recruits are generally not yet combatants"). That is a debatable proposition, at best, under international law. The generally accepted view is that combatants are members of military units. (This is a separate issue from whether combatants are lawful or unlawful.) In Iraq, police are civilians falling under the Ministry of Interior, not the Ministry of Defense. While certain types of police in Iraq may approach the level of combatants in terms of arms, training and methods (Commandos), at the end of the day, those folks are still civilians and hence not "combatants."

Of course, we don't know if Jabr's numbers of "civilian deaths" incudes police killed. My guess is that they do . . . . (but that's just a guess)

[dauber]

I have no problem with that at all. What I meant to suggest here is that under the most liberal possible position, it is still the case that most of the victims would have to be defined as non-combatants. (I believe some might argue in this conflict police might be considered combatants b/c they're used in anti-"insurgent" actions.)

[Agopian]

Prof Dauber
I would suggest the terrorists in Iraq be called ' theocratic fascists ' . Or we could simply call them ' gangsters ' , or my personal favorite ' fascist scumbags ' . What else would one call ' people ' who as a matter of political/religious ideology , kill innocent women and children ?

[Agopian]

Prof Dauber
I would suggest the terrorists in Iraq be called ' theocratic fascists ' . Or we could simply call them ' gangsters ' , or my personal favorite ' fascist scumbags ' . What else would one call ' people ' who as a matter of political/religious ideology , kill innocent women and children ?

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