Conservatives are angry at President Obama’s initial avoidance of the word “terrorism” for yesterday’s bomb attack at the Boston Marathon. (Today he finally used the word.) I’m angry at him for that too, but for a very different reason.
Obviously I know as little as you do about who made and placed those two bombs, but it was clear from the get-go that this was a terrorist attack. That is, a planned, concerted attack on civilians, in a crowded space, designed to kill and maim as many people as possible at random, and to spread fear and panic.
So why avoid calling it what it was? The reason given by White House insiders yesterday was that they didn’t yet know who did it and why.
Excuse me? What exactly does that reasoning imply? That the bomber’s identity defines his actions? That “domestic” terrorism is somehow less fatal than “foreign” terrorism? That if the bomber turns out to be anything other than Muslim, then it’s not terrorism?
A similar tack was taken by many liberal online commenters. “Let’s hold off on determining if this is terrorism until we know more,” they kept saying. But it seems to me that their caution was based on the same underlying assumption — that what they meant was “Let’s hold off on calling it terrorism unless the bomber turns out to be Muslim.”
In effect, they were acting as a kind of mirror image to Fox News, where the instant assumption was that since this was terrorism, the perpetrator could only be Muslim.
So to use one of Obama’s own favorite phrases, let me be absolutely clear:
If the bomber turns out to be a lily-white right-wing Christian whose ancestors came off the Mayflower, he is still a terrorist. As clearly a terrorist as the stock image of the jihadi in a suicide vest.
Moreover, this was not “a tragedy,” as Obama called it — thus prompting countless television reporters to fall back on stock phrases like “a tragic day” and “this terrible tragedy.” This was murder. Mass murder.
“Tragedy” implies that it could not have been avoided, that it was somehow fated. That was the whole point of ancient Greek drama, where the idea of tragedy was invented. But terrorism is deliberate. It’s a cold-blooded decision made by humans (or rather, people who pass for human). And to call it tragedy is to imply one way or another that the perpetrator is somehow not quite responsible for his actions. (Yes, almost certainly ‘his’ and not ‘her.’)
Of course I realize that Obama probably decided on “tragedy” out of the earnest desire to avoid spreading panic and thus terrorizing more people. That’s part of the role of president, I guess: the national reassurer. But I was not reassured. Sure, his first response beat continuing to read from “My Pet Goat” by several miles, but that’s setting the bar about as low as it can get.
The so-called “war on terror” has been a disaster for the US not least because even when it happens right under our noses, we still can’t recognize that it’s not who does it that makes terrorism, or why. It’s what they do.
Whether they’re political or religious; white or brown or black; left-wing or right-wing; “domestic” or “foreign” or any combination of all of the above — if they target, kill, maim, and terrorize civilians, they’re terrorists.
And may every one of them — whether in Boston, in New York, in Oklahoma City, in Atlanta, in Beirut, in Jerusalem, in Baghdad, in Kabul, or in Benghazi — rot in whatever conception of hell you care to name.
Stop being so knee-jerk reactive, and angry. The word ‘terrorist’ has become so linked in Western minds with the Middle and Far East, it is a wise person who chooses words carefully to prevent listeners from vigilante actions.
Um, whose knee is jerking here?
Exactly. It’s time to “unlink” it then. Is your fear then that if the President had called this out as a terrorist action, then it would have sparked a wave of vigilantism across the country?
To be fair, though, if the perpetrator turns out to be a hallucinating whackjob who planted the bombs because the voices told him it was necessary to destroy the alien zombie pod people, that wouldn’t in fact be terrorism.
While I don’t dispute that US media are all too prone to assume that only jihadis count as terrorists, I think it’s reasonable to refrain from firmly and officially labeling any criminal attack as “terrorism” until we know for sure that it WAS terrorism: i.e., an attack specifically and sanely intended to kill random innocent people for the purpose of dismaying and demoralizing those whom the perpetrators consider ideological enemies.
And in fact, the administration is still refraining (rightly, I think) from conclusively attaching such a label to this attack. What Obama said in the linked article was merely that “given what we know about what took place, the F.B.I. is investigating it as an act of terrorism” and that the evidence points toward its being terrorism. But until we know who did it and why, we can’t conclude for certain that it IS terrorism, so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not being in a rush to call it by that name.
Well argued, Kim, and if I turn out to be wrong, I’ll apologize. The signs do all point to an act of terrorism, but even if it was a hallucinating whackjob, do we then call it a tragedy? The Newtown shooting massacre of five- and six-year-olds was repeatedly called a tragedy, but again, that was the wrong word, one that allowed the killer to evade real responsibility — and the rest of us to sit back as though there was nothing to be done, which helps explain the failure to pass much stronger gun laws.
A question, then: could withholding judgment enable us to take the easier way out, and settle for resignation? Is there a dangerously permeable line between non-judgement and passivity? I ask because I’m not sure.
From what I understand a mass murder carried out with the intention of furthering a political (or other) goal is terrorism, however a mass murder carried out just so some sicko can get his jollies is not. It is murder, it is a tragedy, it is a lot of things – but not terrorism. I’ve come to believe it is important to make the distinction because there is something especially contemptible in the use (or even attempted use) of violence to make a point. Also, in the case of terrorism there is something more substantial (a group, a philosophy) to act against – we are left with the feeling that there is a “them” to be fought and rightly so. In the case of a random sicko killing people for no real reason, on the other hand, there is no “them” – no philosophy or political aim to strive against in response. The filth who killed those children at Sandy Hook, for example – there wasn’t a group to work against or a philosophy to decry – just a random horrible act that still has no real explanation. To call such acts “terrorism” is to cast an unrealistically wide net, bringing us to a place where we feel like we should, for example, incarcerate every person with a mental illness so as to prevent another Sandy Hook. I don’t see it as passivity, I see it as recognizing where our efforts will be effective – and where they will not.
A very apt and sensible comment.Terrorism act does not premised on religion or race but the act itselt.Love your writing very much.Allah blessed you.
In US usage yesterday’s event was a tragedy.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/tragedy
trag•e•dy (ˈtrædʒ ɪ di)
n., pl. -dies.
1. a lamentable, dreadful, or fatal event or affair; calamity; disaster: a family tragedy.
I am looking at older dictionaries and I would still think tragedy would apply. There is nothing in the way the word is defined that absolves the actor or actors of guilt. (I don’t normally use online dictionaries but I am to lazy to carry the books to my computer and type it all out myself.
As far as the unwillingness to call it terrorism, I would agree with you there.
I think the terminology is different in different contexts, at least as far as I can interpret the conventional usage. For the semi-official “standard reference” for such an event, we should use a non-euphemistic but non-controversial term: e.g., “the Newtown school shootings” or “the Newtown massacre”, “the Boston Marathon bombings”, “the 9/11 attacks”, etc.
“Tragedy” can be used to describe such an event’s emotional impact (“the Boston Marathon bombings turned this into a day of tragedy”), but should not be part of the “standard reference”, except perhaps for an accident or suicide. We might speak of “the JFK, Jr. tragedy” but shouldn’t say “the Newtown tragedy” or “the Oklahoma City tragedy”.
I agree that too “soft” a vocabulary, like “the Newtown tragedy”, can seem to imply passively accepting or even condoning an atrocity. But too “hard” a vocabulary, especially shortly after an event, can seem to imply rushing to judgement. Remember the people who immediately started talking about “the Flight 587 terror attack” before it was determined that the plane had crashed due to operator error? We don’t want to be those people. I’m all in favor of bluntly calling the Boston Marathon bombings an “act of terrorism” when and if (and there’s little doubt in my mind that it will be “when” rather than “if”) it’s clearly determined that it WAS an act of terrorism.
Recently found your writings via a cite by Richard Seymour, btw; very impressed!
Interesting analysis of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ vocabulary, Kim. I agree — the terms we choose define not only how we think, but also how we act and react. The word ‘tragic’ seems to have been demeaned by thoughtless overuse and rendered into a kind of intellectual and emotional placebo (much like the word ‘spiritual’). And the word ‘terrorism’, in the US especially, has come for far too many people to be shorthand for ‘Muslim terrorism,’ which is why I wrote what I did.
Didn’t know Seymour had cited me. I’m kind of impressed too. Presumably re Hitchens? Will check out ‘Unhitched.’
Interesting semantic arguments – I am sure that equating ‘terrorist’ to someone of Middle Eastern birth or Muslim faith goes on in the media, and has spilled over to the public (non-sense)ibility.
If someone is mentally unstable does that mean they can’t terrorize? Seems like that happened yesterday no matter who did it…
True, but I think this is far more than a matter of semantics — it’s a matter of how we think, and thus of how we act.