> Terrorism and legitimate violence against combatants can and must be
> distinguished. My problem with Doug's way of speaking about "the
> Iraqi resistance" is that he refuses to clearly and consistently make
> such a distinction, e.g., his passing off of a terrorist action of an
> Al-Qaeda-linked group as what characterizes "the Iraqi resistance" as
> such:
I hesitate to wade into this, but let me offer one simple sociological point: whether or not X is "terrorism" or "legitimate violence" is a social fact generated by social interaction in a particular community of people. --Were the Mujahiddin in Afghanistan "freedom fighters" or "Islamic terrorists"? It depends on the social negotiation of the meaning of their actions among particular communities of people. There is not some essential "terrorist" essence of their actions that makes them terrorists; rather, there is a complex social process that allows people to interpret their actions, create a meaningful consensus, and stigmatize them as "terrorists" or valorize them as "freedom fighters".
Rather than trying to distinguish whether X is "truly" a terrorist act or legitimate violence, it's far more important and interesting to ask: what social processes lead people in a specific context to identify X as terrorism? Who benefits from the systematic stigmatization of those actions as terrorism?
I realize that this is tangential to the thread here, but I think it's a worthwhile tangent to consider.
Miles