Traitor, Bomber, Soldier, Spy (and my comments)

Stop crying "terrorism" every time we're attacked.

By William Saletan

Slate.com
January 11, 2010

Two weeks ago, a Jordanian suicide bomber blew up seven CIA employees at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan. The CIA called it a "terrorist attack." So did the Associated Press in a report published in dozens of news outlets. Other journalists, analysts, commentators, and TV news anchors followed suit. In a Washington Post op-ed published yesterday, CIA Director Leon Panetta said of the fallen officers, "When you are fighting terrorists, there will be risks."

Terrorists? No, sir. The bombing of the CIA base, like the November massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, was an act of war. It was also espionage. But it wasn't terrorism. Terrorism targets civilians. The CIA officers killed at the Afghan base, like the soldiers shot down at Fort Hood, were not civilians. They were running a war.

According to the U.S. Code (Title 22, Chapter 38, Section 2656f), "the term 'terrorism' means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents." That's the definition we apply to other countries when we designate them as state sponsors of terrorism.

The Sept. 11 attacks, which used planes full of civilians to hit the World Trade Center, fit this definition. So did the attempt to blow up Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day. So did the Taliban's 2008 bombing of a hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan.

The Afghan base bombing doesn't fit the pattern. The CIA personnel who died in the attack were combatants. In interviews with multiple newspapers and wire services — for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here — U.S. intelligence officials have confirmed that the personnel at the Afghan base were closely engaged in selecting drone targets in Pakistan and orchestrating special-operations attacks on the Taliban-allied Haqqani network. In the Afghan theater, the CIA is becoming a paramilitary agency. It runs our drone war in Pakistan, and the Afghan base struck on Dec. 30 is "a targeting center for Predator strikes and other operations inside Pakistan."

That's why the bomber, Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, targeted the base. Read the accounts of his will and his farewell video. "This is a message to the enemies of the [Islamic nation], to the Jordanian intelligence and the CIA," he says in the video. "We will never forget the blood of our Emir Baitullah Mehsud." He vows to "retaliate" for the death of Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban boss who was killed in August by a CIA drone strike. In his will, al-Balawi reportedly names other militants blown away by the agency's unmanned aerial vehicles. He wants to kill the drone masters.

And because the officers at the Afghan base were drone masters, they let him in. He was offering them hot intelligence on Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's deputy leader. They hoped his information would lead them to al-Zawahiri. They were going to do to al-Zawahiri what they'd done to other al-Qaida commanders: wipe him from the face of the earth. If they'd been ordinary intelligence analysts, they never would have whisked al-Balawi into their base for an urgent meeting. They did it, and they died, because they were fighting a war.

Al-Balawi was a jihadist. He wrote nasty, crazy stuff about martyrdom and killing Americans. But those were just words. He was, as one terrorism expert put it, a "cyber-activist." Presumably, that's one reason the CIA took a chance on him: He had never actually tried to kill anybody.

Well, now he has. But his victims weren't civilians. Neither were the victims of Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter. Read the job titles of the Fort Hood casualties: major, sergeant, captain, specialist, specialist, sergeant, private, private, captain, private, lieutenant, private. Then check out the video of Hasan calmly buying coffee at a 7-Eleven before the shooting. He didn't target civilians. He targeted soldiers.

Within days of the Fort Hood massacre, everybody and his brother was calling Hasan a terrorist. As Slate's Juliet Lapidos noted, even Sen. Joe Lieberman and former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who should know better, said it was terrorism. Lieberman cited evidence "that Dr. Hasan had become an Islamist extremist and, therefore, that this was a terrorist act."

Therefore? You mean, anybody who kills anybody in the name of Islamic extremism is a terrorist? If that's all we mean by terrorism, then our enemies are right: It's just a code word for people whose religion we don't like.

This isn't what we meant by terrorism when we went to war against it. But one of war's perils is forgetting your principles. You torture, you lie, you change the meaning of your commitments. You win the war by losing your bearings.

Al-Balawi's father understands what terrorism means. Two days ago, he said of his dead son, "Had he killed innocent civilians I would have denounced him." But his son hadn't done that. He had killed intelligence agents. And the fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the father argued, was "a war of intelligence agencies."

He's right about that. In the skies over Pakistan, our agents have the means to incinerate al-Balawi's masters. And I hope they succeed.

But imagine the reverse scenario: an armada of Afghan drones hunting American militia leaders in the United States. Would you retaliate by slaughtering Afghan civilians? Or would you identify the drone masters, infiltrate their intelligence network, and kill them? Does it matter which path you choose?

It certainly does. And if we can't tell the difference anymore — if we need lessons in the meaning of terrorism from the father of a suicide bomber — then it's time to remind ourselves what we're fighting for.

Mark says:

We need to be more careful in how we use language — although I'm not going to hold my breath that that's going to happen anytime soon, if ever.

One way we should take care is to not label or characterize attacks on military targets as "terrorism." And yet...

I know, in some quarters, all enemy targets are "military" targets, "by definition," simply because they are occupied or used by "the enemy." And in other quarters, the enemy, "by definition," are terrorists and everything they do are acts of terrorism.

When combatants hide or position themselves and their equipment among civilian populations while engaging in fighting, is that an act of terrorism? Or are the attacks of their opponents on those combatants hiding among civilians, and which cause civilian casualties, acts of terrorism? It's easy to make judgment calls sitting behind a desk or watching TV but it's much harder when you're in the combat zone and bullets, mortar shells, and RPGs are flying around you.

Although the times and circumstances were different, the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was called many things — including infamy and treachery — but never terrorism, because it was an attack against a military target. I don't think anyone is going to go back and relabel it either.

Maj. Nidal Hassan did not commit an act of terrorism — he committed, inter alia, high treason and murder. He will be tried by court martial in a military court and, if found guilty of those charges, he will be subject to the death penalty under military law.

Fort Hood: What the right and the left have gotten wrong about Hasan

The tragic shooting has spawned plenty of hysteria but little discussion about what we should do about potential Islamic terrorists in our midst.

By Jonathan Zimmerman

The Christian Science Monitor
November 6, 2009

New York - Can we talk?

That is, can Americans really communicate? The word means, literally, "To make common." And at times like this, I wonder if it's possible.

I didn't hear about the Fort Hood shootings until several hours after the news broke, but when I did, much of what I heard wasn't true. Some people told me that the suspect, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan was a "convert" to Islam; others, that he had several Muslim accomplices; still others, that he had links to Al Qaeda.

False. False. False.

I got home to find the Internet aflame with vitriol, much of it directed at Islam itself. "Hasan is a BLACK MUSLIM," read a typical blog post. "This was a sleeper Muslim cell terrorist attack ... WITH MORE TO FOLLOW.... Unite AGAINST Islam now people!"

But I also found posts defending Hasan, who was reportedly facing overseas deployment. "They wanted to send him away to kill his own brothers and sisters in Iraq," one post screamed. "I would have done the same thing!"

Finally, others argued that any discussion of Hasan's ethnic or religious background was itself a form of discrimination. "I think giving out the Middle Eastern sounding name of the perpetrator is hate speech," a blogger argued. "No doubt this will give ammunition to patriotic Americans who value national security over diversity."

But that's precisely the discussion that we need to have: how to balance security and diversity, unity and freedom. How can we keep our country safe, but still respect the cultures of its different peoples? How can we join hands as a nation, but remain free as individuals?

And it's the same debate we've been having since 1776, when a Congressional committee suggested e pluribus unum — "out of many, one" — for our new national seal. But this discussion — like any real dialogue — requires agreement on a few basic ground rules: civility, reason, and tolerance.

During wartime, to be sure, Americans have often lost sight of these values. Consider attacks on German-Americans during the World War I, when several states banned the speaking of German in schools and on the streets. Or think of the internment of Japanese-Americans — and the confiscation of their property – during World War II.

The Internet attacks on "Islam" since Thursday's tragedy lie firmly within this tradition of nativism, bigotry, and hysteria. The shooter was Muslim, and what else do you need to know? Apparently, not much.

But irrationality and bad faith are hardly exclusive to the political right. The Fort Hood shootings have also triggered bouts of left-wing hysteria.

An extreme variation takes the form of the old syllogism, "My enemy's enemy is my friend." You don't like the war in Iraq; neither did Hasan; ergo, he must be OK in your book.

Never mind that Hasan gunned down more than three dozen innocents, or that he reportedly defended suicide bombers in Web postings. He's against all the right things, so you're for him.

More commonly, left-wing posters have refused to acknowledge any tension between freedom and security — or any threat to the United States from radical Islam. Hence the bizarre attacks on news organizations for noting Hasan's ethnic and religious background, as if any such information is irrelevant.

It isn't. There are people living here who want to commit acts of terror, and more than a few of them are radical Muslims. And Texas has seen its fair share.

In 1993, Kuwaiti immigrant Eyad Ismoil was living in Dallas when he was recruited to drive a bomb-laden van into a parking garage beneath the World Trade Center. Five years later, Lebanese-born Wadih el Hage — Osama bin Laden's personal secretary – was arrested in Tarrant County, Texas, for his involvement in the bombings of two US embassies in Africa.

After 9/11, a federal jury convicted five members of a Texas-based Islamic charity of funneling money to terrorists. And just last month, authorities arrested a 19-year-old Jordanian immigrant, Hosam Smadi, for allegedly attempting to blow up a Dallas skyscraper.

None of that means that Hassan was part of a terrorist conspiracy, of course, or that we should view every Islamic immigrant with suspicion. But it does mean that we have a serious security problem on our hands. And it's simply irrational to deny it.

Indeed, by wishing the problem away, we put off the discussion that we so urgently need. What should we do about potential Islamic terrorists in our midst? How can we protect national security and individual liberty, all at the same time?

These are tough questions, as old as the republic itself. But we'll never get good answers unless we really talk about them. So far, it's not clear that we can.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author, most recently, of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory."