Moral Understanding Terrorism: Insurgency or Acts of Aggression

“Moral understanding”

Terrorism: insurgency or acts of aggression?

During the French Revolution Maximilien Robespierre led the Jacobin party along with leaders of France’s own government. They targeted people whom they believed supported the return of a monarchy style government. They where sought out, arrested and butchered without trial. The dead were buried in mass graves. The Jacobin party used violence against potentially dangerous groups in order to protect liberty and subdue tyranny. Four hundred thousand people of varying social classes and political views were imprisoned and forty thousand were executed within a year. A speech given in February of 1794 Robespierre said, “Subdue by terror the enemies of liberty, and you will be right, as founders of the Republic. The government of the revolution is liberty’s repression against tyranny.” Today modern terrorists turn to Robespierre’s idea that violence is needed to protect and liberate citizens from an allegedly tyrannical government. Terrorism can be justified through the social, political religious and moral values of the perpetrator; because in the world that we live in today, there is no right or wrong way to think and there is no standard of moral, political, religious, and social values.

To fully understand terrorism you have to know what it means. Terrorism is defined as the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature. People view terrorism single-mindedly; it is not just a group with social or political aspirations killing anyone who is in their way. No, it is in a sense a more direct way to get what you want. Your only argument against terrorism is its moral infractions.

As stated earlier terrorism was used in the French Revolution as a weapon against one another and ultimately against all the French. Under totalitarian regimes it becomes the part of specialized agencies within the state to preserve the values of the regime. This is evident in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, or Mao’s China. Those regimes used specialized police trained in torture and murder to hunt down dissenters, whether political or cultural in intent. Yes terrorism has led to the death of many innocent people, and I understand that, and I now way am I trying to down play the seriousness of the subject. But what you have to understand is that the Terrorist’s goals are to induce panic and create a state of fear in thousands of people while at the same time getting their message across.

Many people speculate on the motives of a terrorist after they carry out there action. In actuality there are three motives in which terrorists base their action on. First there is the rational motivation, this is when a person tries to find a less costly and more effective way to achieve there objective other than terrorism. The crucial question is whether terrorism will work for the desired purpose, given the social conditions at the time. The terrorist’s rational analysis is much like that of a military commander considering available courses of actions. Many groups consider whether or not terrorism can induce enough panic and anxiety to attain its goals with out causing a backlash that will destroy the cause and possibly the terrorists themselves. This was the case in 1970 when the Tupamaros in Uruguay, ERP (People’s Revolutionary Army) and the Montoneros in Argentina misjudged a hostile popular reaction to terrorism. They pushed the societies past the threshold of tolerance and were destroyed as a result.

Now jihad or holy war is justified in order to end Israel’s occupation of Palestine. The Palestinians believe that this violence is just because Palestine is a Muslim country that should not be in the control a Jewish nation. The Zionists (people who support the establishment of a Jewish homeland) in Israel have sought total control of the Middle East and in doing so used terrorism and illegal peace treaties to destroy Palestine.

When terrorism happens during war it is not called terrorism. It is called insurgency the difference is that insurgent actions are accepted by the government and the perpetrators are not held liable for there actions. That raises the question;