-----Original Message----- From: Carl Remick <cremick at rlmnet.com> To: 'lbo-talk at lists.panix.com' <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>I'm willing to stand corrected, but, IMO, today's column by Thomas
>Friedman of the NY Times is the most obscene thing he has ever written.
>He states: We are at war with the Serbian nation, and anyone
>hanging around Belgrade needs to understand that. This notion that we
>are only at war with one bad guy, Slobodan Milosevic (who was popularly
>elected three times), is ludicrous.
Let's be clear: the NATO bombing of Belgrade is terrorism, and I say that not as a condemnation but as a description.
The logic and morality of terrorism is specific to nations whose leaders are democratically elected or at least obviously legitimated by the majority of the population, so Friedman's point is no more obscene than any other justification of terrorism. But it is worth evaluating it in those terms, since many NATO critics may argue that the Kosovars have a just cause but this is an illegitimate means - exactly the argument used against terrorism by the PLO, the IRA, the Kurds and many other forces that have used terrorism to greater or lesser success over the years.
As with most left interventionists, I think a military intervention was the moral choice, since one of the moral justifications of terrorism is as a tool of those facing military forces that they cannot hope to match - obviously a justification that NATO cannot use.
But there are other justifications of terrorism. There is an argument that citizens voting for a brutal government are more responsible for actions of that government than soldiers drafted to defend that state. We treat the killing of a soldier as more legitimate than the bombing of a hospital, but if the soldier voted against the regime leading the war, while the hospital is full of government partisans, why is killing the soldier a more moral act?
One argument against terrorism is that it is indiscriminate and violates the division we make (however arbitrarily) between legitimate spaces for violent conflict and the preservation of civility. But erasing that division is the point of much terrorism, as the characteristic phrase of terrorism, "no business as usual", indicates.
In fact, there is an argument that the very "civility" of war rules can extend war and associated death by allowing protected civilian sectors to keep sending waves of soldiers off to die without facing the consequences themselves. Sherman's March was an act of war-related terrorism to "bring the war home" to Southern civilians, just as Hiroshima was an act of terrorism that obstensibly was aimed at ending the war early and preventing the deaths of even more soldiers. (We can skip the debate on whether other motives dominated, since the explicit goal was justified in terms that can only be deemed terroristic, and justified as moral on that basis).
Terrorism like any other strategy can be condemned for being used for an unjustified cause or being ineffective in a particular situation - different propositions stated by those opposing the bombing - but I find the whole moral condemnation of the act of terror unto itself somewhat hypocritical, since almost everyone will justify versions of terrorism if the side using it has good cause and it is effective.
(Note: One of my favorite Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes was gave a full hearing to justification for use of terrorism by the Bajorans (read PLO) against the Cardasians (read Israel).)
--Nathan Newman