The Opinionated Bastard

I've been thinking about how to define terrorism,lately.

The dictionary doesn't give a very useful definition: “the employment of methods of intimidation”.

Well, that's broad enough that the IRS qualifies...as does my credit card company.

Wikipedia basically throws up its hands and says “no one can agree”. Some wags have opined: “Terrorism is what someone else does to you”.

So Terrorism is one of those things no one knows how to define, but “You know it when you see it.”

I think the distinction between terrorism and regular military action boils down to honor. Honor in warfare has become somewhat of an old fashioned concept, but when I see an action that strikes me as being terrorist, its is invariably an action without honor.

It strikes me that thinking about things in terms of honor makes everything simpler.

Is it honorable to kill innocents with a car bomb? No.

Is it honorable to kill soldiers with a car bomb? Yes.

See, I need not reference terrorism at all. Turnabout is fair play:

Is it honorable to kill innocents as “collateral damage” when attacking a foe? No.

But I'm not talking about some sort of absolute honor which can be suddenly lost as if we're all Klingons in a bad Star Trek episode. I'm thinking of honor more as a balance sheet. Every action you take has varying degrees of honor and dishonor attached to it. If you make more honorable actions then dishonorable actions, you are honorable. In our turnabout case:

Is it honorable to purposefully hide behind innocents? No.

Is it honorable to minimize killing innocents who are being used as shields? Yes

Is it honorable to provide medical treatment for innocents harmed by either one's actions or another's actions? Yes

Were the incidents at Abu Ghabib honorable? No

Is prosecuting the soldiers responsible honorable? Yes

Is deposing a ruthless dictator honorable? Yes

Going back to the terrorists:

Is forcing/tricking an innocent to carry a suicide bomb honorable? No

Is hiding in a mosque honorable? No

Is violating a flag of truce honorable? No

Is flying a plane into a building full of civilians honorable? No

Is flying a plane into the Pentagon honorable? Yes

It seems to me that honor is the basic concept behind all of codes like the Geneva Convention that we run our wars by. For each action, the military elements involved must strive to be as honorable as possible. Of course, now we need to define honor, but that seems simple:

An honorable military action is one that attacks the enemy, or helps innocents.

A dishonorable military action is one that attacks or harms civilians.

If both sides strive to be honorable both sides gain honor. However, if one side is dishonorable, there are times when even an honorable warrior may need to commit dishonorable actions: In a hostage situation, it may be necessary to endanger an innocent hostage. So if a warrior is facing a dishonorable enemy, he will be forced to do a certain amount of dishonorable actions himself.

Perhaps then, we can now define terrorist and thus terrorism. A terrorist is a warrior whose primary military actions are always dishonorable ones. Terrorism we can then define as actions carried out by those warriors, whoever they may be. The key point here is that we've discarded any notion of perfection by either side. An honorable warrior is honorable defined by the majority of his actions, not by any one action.

By this measure, the activities of the insurgents in Iraq long ago passed the bar from honorable to dishonorable. They have become terrorists.

So that's what I've been thinking about lately.