Terrorists and resistance fighters

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Saddam Hussein’s capture does not mean the end of armed resistance to the American occupation of Iraq. But whom are we fighting? Let me begin my answer by quoting some verse.

You know the rest. In the books

you have read, how the British

Regulars fired and fled, –

How the farmers gave them ball for ball,

From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,

Chasing the redcoats down the lane,

Then crossing the fields to emerge again

Under the trees at the turn of the road,

and only pausing to fire and load.

Obviously, this is from “Paul Revere’s Ride,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. And the poet drew some conclusions. The image of civilians ambushing an occupying foreign army in order to drive it out from their land he considered powerful and deeply inspiring.

And so today, are we not again inspired by the example of resistance fighters, civilians risking their lives to drive an occupying army out? Hey, something’s wrong here. In Iraq, we are the occupying army. Those ambushing and bombing our troops, are, according to the present administration, not traditional resistance fighters but terrorists, presumably supported by al-Qaida. And this is deeply misleading.

However, the real issue is not whether Saddam Hussein had links with al-Qaida, but the nature of the present conflict. Ninety-five percent of the armed resistance, according to Ambassador Paul Bremer, are Baathi, Saddam loyalists. These are resistance fighters, not terrorists. The confusion is a common one. During World War II the Germans in occupied France routinely referred to the French Resistance as “terrorists.” That is hardly how history remembers them. Can we distinguish the French Resistance from the Iraqi Resistance? Not easily.

What motivates terrorists? The first characteristic you notice is cruelty. For men and women predisposed to violence and cruelty and seeking outlets for them, terrorism offers many and varied opportunities. Our captors were no exception. As one of them told us, “Don’t ever forget, we can keep you tied to a chair for the rest of your time with us, or we can kill you any time we want!” The predisposition to violence can be exacerbated by fear. Particularly in the early hours following a hostage taking, or hijacking, before they have settled into their new roles, or if something goes wrong with their plan, terrorists can panic, and turn violent, striking out at captives who refuse to cooperate.

No assessment of terrorist motivation is complete without idealism. A 19th-century Russian terrorist, Alexander Ulyanov, declared, “[Terrorism] is the only form of defense to which a minority, strong only in terms of its spiritual strength and in its knowledge of the rightness of its beliefs, can resort against the physical strength of the majority.” Alexander’s execution following a bungled assassination attempt on the tsar. His execution left a lasting impression on his younger brother, Vladimir, who was later to take the name “Lenin.”

Terrorists generally have a cause – a nation to be liberated; rankling political, social, economic, or, recently, environmental abuse to be corrected; animal rights to be vindicated; certain obstetrical procedures to be forestalled; a political cultural identity to be recognized and defended; a God-given or secular belief system and accompanying way of life advanced or defended; globalization to be thwarted; or a more equitable distribution of the world’s goods and opportunities made possible. Whatever the cause may be, it provides for terrorists a greater purpose in life, for which many are ready to sacrifice their lives.

Much of what I have termed idealism will strike some of you as simple hatred of the United States. Yet, for many Middle Eastern terrorists, there is a sense of being invaded by the United States. For example, al-Qaida’s most recent foray was against the Saudis, not the Americans. From the beginning, they have argued that by admitting American troops, non-Muslims, into the land of the Mecca and Medina, the Saudis have betrayed Islam.

Terrorists often entertain mixed feelings about the dominant cultural forces that they are pledged to resist. Much as they reject our values and resent American success, they envy it. Such mixed feelings often take the form of love/hatred or admiration/low self-esteem. On Sept. 11, among other reasons for those atrocities, the perpetrators were hitting out at symbols, economic and military, that made them feel inferior. At the same time, they want the influence of the West, for which substitute America, ended because, as they argue:

. Our personal values, epitomized by recreational as opposed to family-centered sex, are decadent.

. Our social and economic values are wasteful and greedy, favoring the rich instead of the poor.

. The gap between self-proclaimed American political values, and its foreign policy, is hypocritical.

. Superficially appealing secular Western values will undermine their own Muslim values, which they consider superior.

. The acceptance of Western values and ideas impedes the development of their own sense of identity.

Terrorists often start out as idealists, with a concern for justice, and a rankling sense of injustice. Itself a denial of justice to its victims, terrorism can corrupt any idealism that might have brought its practitioners into terrorism in the first place. Before too long, terrorists who know no other way of life find it difficult to re-enter the mainstream of human activity. Over the longer term, terrorism can corrupt a seemingly laudable larger purpose.

On the practical side, terrorism offers employment. Highly labor-intensive, hostage holding provides jobs for the unskilled. More importantly, it offers meaning and excitement to rootless, unemployed and unskilled young people without hope of opportunity in legitimate occupations. For example, after the failed rescue attempt of April 1980, a group of us hostages were moved to Isfahan for three months. At the end, as we were led away to be returned to Tehran, one of the locally hired guards began to cry. Guarding us had clearly been the biggest moment of his life, never again to be repeated.

Terrorism is about having power. If frustrated by existing political, social and economic circumstances, they hope to gain power by irregular means. At the same time, it has been argued that many captors in fact suffer from feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem. Especially when combined with prestige and publicity, including TV coverage on prime time, the exercise of power bolsters self-esteem.

How do we distinguish the violence perpetrated by terrorists from “collateral damage,” the civilian casualties inflicted by our own armed forces? The difference is that we impute to the sovereign state an ultimate degree of moral authority to which terrorists cannot aspire. In the pursuit of its broad national interests, which are presumed to be moral, a sovereign state, even when it may be dreadfully mistaken, is justified in using violence in ways not tolerable in terrorist groups.

Upon this differentiation depends the future of ordered liberty, and of our society. For if every subnational group felt justified in realizing its individual aspirations, or redressing its grievances, through violence, anarchy would take the place of national and world order. So we, as a sovereign state, had every right, indeed the duty, to pursue Osama bin Laden into Afghanistan. He attacked us.

Let me close with other questions. Has our intervention in Afghanistan repressed al-Qaida? Is terrorism invariably susceptible of solution by military means? Probably not. What other means have we? In parallel with necessary intelligence, military, financial and economic measures, we need to find ways to undercut some of terrorism’s appeal by making convincing our concern for justice for all peoples. Too easily, we forget that the terrorist often is sounding a wake-up call about perceived injustices that need to be addressed, and which we fail to heed at our peril.

The best long-term remedy for terrorism is enlightened and pragmatic American leadership. This means cooperating with others, including the United Nations, and listening, showing that we take others’ concerns seriously, and reflecting them to the extent possible in our popular attitudes, and in governmental policies and programs. At best, we will satisfy our critics only in part. At least, we can project the idea that they need not resort to terrorism to make their case.

Otherwise, to the extent that we fail to evidence what our founding fathers called a decent respect for the opinion of mankind, there will always be terrorists around to bring serious issues forcibly to our attention.

Moorhead Kennedy, a former Iranian hostage and frequent lecturer on international terrorism, resides in Somesville.