Whereas founded as a diplomatic forum to prevent armed conflict between states, the UN as yet has failed to define terror or terrorism, the primary means used by insurgents in asymmetrical warfare that now seems to be the defining mode of conflict of our time. The failure is illustrative of the political schisms that divide the world today. Even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the UN failed to produce objective definitions on which there was agreement.
The impasse has prevented the adoption of a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism. The prime reason is the standoff with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), who seek to define terrorism in terms that are sympathetic to armed campaigns waged by the Palestinians against Israel.
Such insurrections, say the OIC, represent legitimate resistance against occupation and should not be classed as terrorism. The report of the Chairman of the Working Group on terrorism dating October 24, 2008 gives no hope that the OIC's stonewalling of a comprehensive convention against terrorism will come to an end any time soon.
Meanwhile, countries like the US and the UK have been calling for a definition which includes that “deliberate and unlawful targeting and killing cannot be justified or legitimized by any cause or grievance.”
Terrorism is primarily a tactic - a means of conflict. Defining it as a means (IEDs, suicide killings, car bombs) makes terrorism appear less legitimate than as an end (such as insurgency, revolution, or uprising). Ends always depend on subjective interpretations, while means do not.
Generally speaking, terrorism is widely viewed as violence towards a political end. But this perspective is not universally accepted. Some scholars associate it with the deliberate evocation of terror. Others argue that motivations are irrelevant. Such readings, as also including violence against or by the military, risk so generalizing the term terrorism, making it practically meaningless.
The word "terrorism" itself compounds the difficulty of the 'international community' agreeing on a definition. A 2003 study by the US Army counted 109 definitions, covering a total of 22 different definitional elements. During the 1970s and 1980s, a UN attempt foundered mainly due to differences of opinion between various members about the use of violence in the context of conflicts over national liberation and self-determination.
The problem is not new. The definition dispute between states rages since the laws of war were first codified in 1899. There are entities like francs-tireurs, unlawful combatants, armed conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation, and racist regimes. That resistance movements may or may not be labeled terrorist, are considered lawful or unlawful combatants, and their right to resist occupation is recognized, is seen as a political judgment rather than one of ethics - or even an objective description.
What it comes down to is that to a number of UN member states, terrorism is seen as a legitimate means, in which the distinction between civilians and armed forces is immaterial. To a collectivist, no sole individual is ever completely innocent.
It is astonishing in the light of history that in a civilized world we do not differentiate between ends. Over 100 million dead in order to realize totalitarian 'paradises' of various hue have failed to discredit collectivism in the eyes of the international community; the cultural and moral relativism of political correctness has failed to denounce these systems as anti-human and evil.
Democratization doesn't make a collective less evil. On the contrary, it legitimizes it to outsiders, leaves dissenters in the lurch and it rationalizes it in the eyes of the leadership, indeed emboldens them even further.
In the course of its bloody history only National Socialism, Fascism and Cambodian egalitarian agrarianism have drawn enough outrage to be condemned, as if its ideological siblings of Communism, Arab Nationalism and Islamofascism are not affected by the same anti-human tribalism. But on the contrary, these ideologies have made it to the ranks of unofficially recognized forms of government.
We know from experience that collectives subordinate human beings to ideologies and the whims of the ones in power, usually in the name of an imaginary 'common will'. The notion has killed more people world-wide than the bubonic plague ever will.
Scowering down a list of ongoing cataclysms, save one notable exception, we are unable to produce a legitimate struggle for freedom in the sense that it actually aims at bringing liberty to its people, whether it be the Marxist IRA, or the Basque question, Sri Lanka, Colombia, or the Islamofascist varieties in Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Thailand, Indonesia, Nepal or Chechnya. Even the Kurdish (PKK) struggle is Marxist in nature. The jury is still out on the regions of the former Yugoslavia.
The exception is telling the true story: the Tibetan struggle is largely peaceful in its execution, and respects the lives of the people. All others have no qualms of sacrificing individuals to the collective cause.
The terror tool subordinates everything and everyone. Honest people understand that only criminal sociopaths use that sort of unconscionable methods. Greek intelligence analyst Ioannis Michaletos has concluded there's a relation between terrorism and organized crime: where there are IEDs and chopped heads, armed robberies and trafficking are usually not very far off.
Criminality may be described in terms of taking shortcuts, either to money, goods or some other value. Terrorists could be seen as political criminals in that they seek a shortcut to power by subordinating all to their 'cause'. Where they succeed, we see the outcome. Instead of a liberation of the people, the result is a den of crime and oppression, often a failed state, from Taliban Afghanistan to the pirate ridden seas off the coast of Somalia.
The UN, egged on by the relativist world view that every intent goes to self-determination, ignore the reality that entire populations are enslaved to evil and the whims of power-hungry collectivists. In the end, surprised and caught off guard they can but stand by helplessly and condemn the latest instance of mass human rights violations, waiving their deontological 'get-out-of-jail' cards to absolve themselves from the bad consequences despite the good intentions. But on the contrary ... by their fruits you shall know them.
"One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" is relativist bromide that plasters over all distinctions in intent. The fallacy is a mental enemy which prevents us from making moral distinctions, prevents us from defending against such evils. The good has nothing to gain from evil, evil has everything to gain from the good.
The UN is the primary global platform for diplomatic relativism. In the ethical vacuum that ensues, the wannabe world government cannot be entrusted to pass judgment even on the most basic of questions, the condemnation of human sacrifice to the gods of tribalistic ideology.
- Caption: photo by David Paul Ohmer- a visit comes highly recommended -
- Filed on Articles in "Transnational Bankruptcy" -
