Causes of Terrorism: Western Common Sense and Expert Knowledge.
Autor: Rodrigo Guim | Publicado: 2017-01-28T17:34:00-08:00


Causes of Terrorism: Western Common Sense and Expert
Knowledge.



Rodrigo Gomes
Guimarães, São Paulo State University, Brazil&nbsp;



Abstract



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In this paper I discuss
the dominant discourse on terrorism in the West, arguing that it has defined
terrorism in ways that further the reproduction of terrorist acts, including
those of States, and that these same acts have been cause and effect of
discourses on terrorism.&nbsp;&nbsp; This discourse
has created psychological and moral foundations as the causes for terrorism,
thereby ascribing historical, political, and cultural causes for terrorism a
second place at best.&nbsp; I analyze this
discourse as it operates in different fields, from the speeches and writings of
statesmen/women to psychology and feminism.&nbsp;
The effects of psychologization are linked to global power and racism,
suggesting that an understanding of terrorism does not happen in this dominant
discourse on terrorism in the West in great part because of these culturally as
well as politically ingrained thoughts and acts.&nbsp; It is demonstrated that the dominant
discourse within Western statesmen/women tends to interpret terrorism as a
universal concept, by generalizing it to the most different political and historical
realities, and that “terrorism” in this sense has been functioning in the same
way that “communism” functioned as a term in the past: as a call to wipe out
individuals and groups.&nbsp; In a very
related manner, the term “terrorist” has been used as a universal concept that
serves to locate the problem in a single person or a group, only in order to
propose a seemingly agreed-upon solution: annihilation of the terrorist,
someone without a history or any value.&nbsp; On
another trend, I discuss American expert knowledge on terrorism and how it has helped
to deconstruct moralistic notions of the issue, thereby partially challenging
the dominant discourse.&nbsp; However, I argue
that this knowledge also needs to be analyzed in its claims to the truth of
causes of terrorism. &nbsp;One of these truth
claims is to terrorism as Strategy, so I analyze here Strategy as a discursive
practice of this expert knowledge, and its effects. Due to the cultural
dominance of these discourses, they are effective in making people align with
their proposals.&nbsp; This work therefore shows
that cultural discourses on terrorism and terrorists play an important role in
reproducing violence worldwide that must be tackled with in research and action
that is preoccupied with peace and cultural understanding.



Keywords: Psychologization of terrorists;
State terrorism; Causes of terrorism; Experts on terrorism; Discourse on
terrorism.



.



Introduction

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What causes
terrorism?&nbsp; This question is not examined
thoroughly in the Western world’s dominant society.&nbsp; When it is, a few answers are given, with few
or no historical contexts to sustain them.&nbsp;
These answers, I hope to show, have a cultural dimension which not only
marks them as Western, but also, accordingly, explains their hegemony.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This essay starts with
a recent history already known.&nbsp; At
least, known to those who have had access to its facts or wanted to believe
them.&nbsp; The facts presented here about the
recent history of terrorism were strategically chosen in order to prove what
will be argued at the last section of the essay: that terrorism and terrorists
are concepts used in the West dominantly as a way to label groups and
individuals by power.&nbsp; The dominant
discourse in the West on this subject frames the issue around the universality
and essentialism of terrorism and terrorists.&nbsp;
It is as if history is only the particular appearance of this universal,
which can be recognized by the specialist or the men/women in State power.&nbsp; But before I go any further, some of those
historical facts must be accepted in order for my wider arguments to be as
well.

&nbsp;

The rise of the modern nation-State



Nation-States depend on the construction of a History, which under feminist
critique has been termed His-story.&nbsp; This
unified History, a product of the Enlightenment and its operation of truth
discourse, usually glorifies the ‘birth’ of the nation by misrepresenting
history itself.&nbsp; Colonizers and brutal
explorers, murderers and their friends, are portrayed as the ‘discoverers’ of
lands that were inhabited for at least 30,000 years prior to their arrival (this
is today’s estimate for the Americas; in Africa and Asia it could be argued
that humans have existed for millions of years).&nbsp; With colonization and in the making of the
nation-State, different and disperse histories are erased, many times
annihilated, in the name of History (with capital letter).&nbsp; The story told will depend on the group that
aspires to take or hold power, and the stories neglected are innumerous<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; Mistreatment is thus legitimated through
historical narratives that tend to recognize no other being than a ‘modern’ or
‘civilized’ being.&nbsp; Those that are not
‘modern’ or ‘civilized’ are termed ‘backward’, ‘barbaric’, and ‘less than’
human.&nbsp; This is the discourse of Truth,
so in line with post-Enlightenment modernity and with the functioning of
nation-States.&nbsp; The nation-States,
through their supposed ‘impartiality’, paradoxically open up space for the
“True American”, the “True Indian”, the “True Muslim”, etc.&nbsp; These fundamentalisms arise and flourish
under the discourse of Truth enabled and foundational to nation-States.&nbsp; Thus, to be in line with modernity, and to
hold State power for themselves, nationalist Hindu Indian writers had to claim
an “ancient” India which would “become the classical source of Indian
modernity, while the ‘Muslim period’ would become the night of medieval
darkness.”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[2]<!--[endif]-->
What we see today in India, shown majestically in the film War and Peace, by Anand Patwardhan, is a nationalistic Hindu
fundamentalist State that aspires to be a global “superpower” and is proud of
its nuclear arsenal, even though great part of the population does not agree
with this stance, and many resist and are imprisoned.&nbsp; The fundamentalists are anti-Muslim,
anti-Pakistan, are on the verge of throwing a calamitous war on the region, and
are at war with Indian Muslims. “The extent of sexual
violence and brutality witnessed during the carnage in Gujarat since the 28th
of February [of 2002] is likened by many to the horrors of the post-Partition
riots in 1947. With an estimated 2,000 dead, more than 100,000 rendered
homeless and property worth millions of rupees destroyed, the toll is still
mounting”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[3]<!--[endif]-->. This
could not have come about were it not for the existence of the nation-State and
its privileged resource to military might and police repression, and for the
discourse of Truth according to a Universal Law that makes its existence
possible (for if it were to openly declare itself the domain of an élite, a
race, a religion, not to speak of a gender, it could be delegitimizing itself).&nbsp; 

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Even patriotism may take the form of
a fundamentalism, and they are indistiguishable in many contexts in India,
Pakistan, and the United States, and in many countries where one can see this
clearly.&nbsp; The danger that patriotism and
nationalism (also many times indistinguishable) present to the world today is
aggravated by the fact that these countries have nuclear weapons, and could
destroy the world in a few minutes.&nbsp; It
can be argued that patriotism and nationalism take many forms, some that might
be even forms of resistance against oppression, as in the case of anti-colonial
struggles, for example. Nevertheless they are also fundamental to terrorist
acts. Furthermore, one can also imagine a world where identity is not primary
to practice, where we recognize that the price to pay for the small comfort –
is it not fear? - of patriotism may be as high as a nuclear destruction of
millions of lives.&nbsp; In Leo Tolstoy’s
(1900) words:



“I have already several
times expressed the thought that in our day the feeling of patriotism is an
unnatural, irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of the great part of
the ills from which mankind is suffering; and that, consequently, this feeling
should not be cultivated, as is now being done, but should, on the contrary, be
suppressed and eradicated by all means available to rational men.”



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We must, of course, read Tolstoy in the context of a nineteenth-century
male world of Reason, therefore the appeal to the “irrational” side of
patriotism.&nbsp; This does not discredit his
claim, though, if we realize how much of twentieth-century history has been the
investment of “patriotic” peoples towards military interventions and wars, such
as the so-called ‘world wars’.&nbsp; Also,
Tolstoy would not agree with the eradication of patriotism through an imposed,
authoritarian power.&nbsp; However, history
viewed from an ethical perspective calls on us to reflect upon the links
between patriotism and State terror.&nbsp;
“Germany is for Germans”, Hitler said.&nbsp;
Today some Hindus in India are saying “Hindustan for Hindus”, and going
on their way to kill, rape, and burn Muslims alive.&nbsp; Many of them feel that India has to become a
“world superpower” no less than the United States.&nbsp; The patriotism of the United States, which
blinds its own people to its tragic consequences in the world, while being a
primary cause in these events, serves as a model for nationalist and
imperialist, terrorist, practices all around the world.&nbsp; One could think: “well, India is never going
to be a superpower”, but that would only show how the labeling of an identity
blinds one from the reality that India is
already a “superpower”, in that it has the means to destroy whole countries by
the pushing of a stupid button.&nbsp; India
would not have gone to this extreme were it not for the “patriotism” that is
exemplified by the United States (but this remark should not lessen the role of
the Indian élite in the process), which is for many Hindus an openly discoursed
reference in a post-Cold War world.



Where today’s
‘terror’ was produced: the post-World War II, Cold War World



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the aftermath of
World War II, when Western and some parts of Eastern Europe were destroyed and
local governments went into a deep crisis, the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. came out
as two “superpowers” standing.&nbsp; The criteria
for “superpower” is, of course, a self-identified one, although some of their
claims for that position proved to be true in the decades that followed.&nbsp; The U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. would make their
presence known in the world through the strengthening of ties – not between
themselves, though - across national borders, many times through direct
military interventions.&nbsp; The motivations
for these moves are the political-economic control of resources and the
arrogance of empires and their moral feeling of superiority.&nbsp; While both Moscow and Washington supported
dictatorships worldwide, the scope and number of atrocities committed by those
supported by the U.S., its “friends” was by far greater. Beginning with
President Truman, and followed up to this day, the United States has been the
leading global sponsor of the most terrible atrocities committed worldwide, by
rate and extension.&nbsp; As one expert on
this issue, Edward S. Herman (1982) notes:



“Now,
in point of fact, U.S. government aid to, and support of, the police states of
Brazil, Chile and Guatemala, among many others, measured by role in
origination, police training, military training, provision of military
supplies, diplomatic and economic sustenance, and even the provision of the
names of individuals to be picked up and ‘interrogated’ as subversives, exceeds
by a huge margin Soviet support of the Irish Republican Army, PLO [Palestine
Liberation Organization] or the Red Brigades.”



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Since the 1950’s the United States of America has been
encouraging right-wing extremists around the world into power, but only those,
of course, that show their subjection to the will of Washington.&nbsp; Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador,
Nicaragua, Indonesia, Angola, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, South Africa: the
list of dictatorial and oppressive regimes that the U.S. has favored through
arms, diplomatic, technical (including torture techniques) and financial
assistance, is endless.&nbsp; In the name of a
fiction called “democracy”, and against another fiction called “communism”,
peasants, nuns, priests, workers, academics, students, politicians and
civilians were killed, tortured, arrested, or exiled when they, the few, could
afford to.&nbsp; The tactics of torture and
persecution were openly offered by the United States’ military and police<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[4]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; The Brazilian police and military forces, for
example, were created before the military coup in accordance with U.S
expertise, and directly instituted by the U.S.<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[5]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; By 1975, people in the city of São Paulo were
more afraid of the police (an opinion poll showed seven out of ten) “than of
non-official violence”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[6]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; In Central America, hundreds of thousands of
people were killed, in the name of “democracy”, through the Reagan
administration’s “counter-insurgency” brutal techniques.&nbsp; In Chile, where the socialist, democratic and
mass-approved government of Salvador Allende was deposed by the 1973 coup of
Washington-sponsored Augusto Pinochet, at least 20,000 people were killed,
sometimes taken to a soccer stadium for mass exterminations.&nbsp; Why is it that the American public is so
unaware of what its government has done in the name of its people?&nbsp; For how long is the American going to believe
that all the U.S. has done was and is for the better sake of other people?&nbsp; This is part of the grief and anger that
people around the world feel against “America”.&nbsp;
In the name of “democracy” and against “communism”, the U.S. has
perpetrated the rule of the minority élites of countries throughout the
world.&nbsp; It has used the term “communism”
as a justification for an intervention to promote “democracy” when in fact the
majority of the people in Brazil, for example, already understood themselves to
be living under “democracy”, with an elected president that was doing a
relatively good social service to its workers.&nbsp;
Now, here lies the threat: the local élites and the foreign business
corporations do not want to see workers organized in unions and requesting
higher wages and government support.&nbsp;
Whenever the people start organizing and participating in the political
sphere – when they democratize themselves – the ‘threat’ of ‘communism’ is used
as a justification for the oppression and domination of those people.&nbsp; As Herman (1982) notes:



“The number of
communists in Brazil in 1964 was small; communism had no significant
organizational base; and the contention that Goulart [president at the time of
the coup] was a “communist” is a demagogic nonsense. The fact is that U.S.
officials were involved in talks with military conspirators about the ‘threats’
posed by Goulart’s predecessors, Quadros and Kubitschek, who were already
asserting some small degree of independence from local elites and U.S.
businesses and its support elements, and who therefore would have been found
after the fact of a coup to have been ‘communists’.”



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The examples where “communism” was used as a
fabricated excuse for the brutal military and dictatorial intervention in many
countries are endless. These were mostly indirect interventions, through the
use of ‘death squads’<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[7]<!--[endif]-->,
for example, but in the case of Indochina and others through direct ones. One
would have to look for the works of Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman to get an
idea of world history that is not taught in schools.&nbsp; In all the examples that history affords us,
the term “communism” is used for strategic gathering of public support.&nbsp; In primarily Christian countries, such as the
U.S., the equation of the “communist”, the “reds”, with “evil” and terrorism,
was a simple and effective one for Washington to make.&nbsp; The slogan of the “Evil Empire”, used in the
1980’s Reagan administration, was effective in making a simple statement pass
for reality, when in fact the only Empire that was really thriving and
disseminating terror throughout the world was the United States.&nbsp; As Chomsky (1980) states, referring to the
term “communism” as used by Washington:&nbsp;
“This is much more convenient than the truth: that the U.S. is resorting
to force to prevent moves toward national independence outside of its
control.”&nbsp; The U.S.S.R., of course,
worked with the same scheme, though reversed.&nbsp;
As Chomsky continues:&nbsp; “Similarly,
when the U.S.S.R. invades Hungary or Czechoslovakia or Afghanistan, it pretends
that it is defending “socialism” from the threat of Western imperialism, though
in fact it is defending or extending the power of the Russian state.”&nbsp; The U.S. considers as “friends” states that
open their markets for U.S. corporations to thrive in, by the safeguarding of a
“favorable investment climate”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[8]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; In plain words, this means low wages for
workers, no support for their unions, low taxes for multinational firms, and a
silenced and numbed atmosphere in democratic processes.&nbsp; It also means that environmental damages,
when and if they are addressed, will be paid by impoverished local taxpayers
and not by the corporations that caused them.&nbsp;
Today, under GATT<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[9]<!--[endif]-->
agreements on globalization, a corporation can counter-sue a country if that
country sues a corporation for environmental damages.&nbsp; And so today countries will pay for
corporations to destroy and exploit their natural resources.&nbsp; This is the modern form of dictatorship
called globalization<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[10]<!--[endif]-->.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Going back to the U.S.
and its “friends”, the tactics used for the control of entire populations
included the assertion that legitimate worker’s movements were in fact ‘foreign
imports’, coming from “reds”, when in fact they where local.&nbsp; The tendency of the U.S. government and media
to point to indigenous, local, movements and link these to the “red menace” of
the Soviets was flagrant and even fabricated ‘proofs’ were offered on that
regard<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[11]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; A book entitled Red Scare, A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920 and quoted by
Herman (1982) reads:



“The
general public was finally brought to believe that almost every union man was
opposed to the American way of life and was the unworthy, if not deliberate,
dupe of dangerous radicals.”



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;This shows how the persecution of the
‘communist threat’ did not only make the lives of “Third World” communities
difficult, but also endangered the lives of American workers, not to mention
the fact that many union workers where pro-capitalism<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[12]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; Today, working-class immigrants in the U.S.
are suffering deportation<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[13]<!--[endif]-->,
now that the anti-immigrant sentiment has a new excuse called ‘terrorism’.&nbsp; The real menace to Washington and U.S.
corporate interests, then, is not “communism”; it is rather a democracy that is
inclusive.&nbsp; It is also a menace for local
élites, and these are glad to contribute to the silencing of their own
people.&nbsp; With State and media propaganda
in their hands, together with State repression, the job is made easier.&nbsp; The ‘terrorists’ that exist today are the
direct fruit of U.S. interventions against ‘communism’, and of the U.S. support
for “friends” that are not so friendly towards their own countrymen.&nbsp; The dominant discourse on ‘terrorism’ is, in
many ways, the same as the old one on ‘communism’, as we will see.







The Discourse on
‘Terrorism’ in the United States



“A conservative number for those who have been killed by U.S. terror and
military action since World War II is 8,000,000 people.&nbsp; Repeat – 8,000,000 people.&nbsp; This does not include the wounded, the
imprisoned, the displaced, the refugees, etc.”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[14]<!--[endif]-->



On April 30, 2002, a television program was aired at
PBS channel entitled “Why did The Twin Towers Collapse?”.&nbsp; The program showed how the Towers had been
engineered to resist a crash of a plane a little smaller than the two boeings that hit them, and with no
substantial amount of fuel.&nbsp; Due to the
size of the planes that crashed, then, and to their being full of gas, the
Towers’ infrastructure could not have resisted.&nbsp;
What is interesting about this story showed in the TV program is that
the engineers of the Towers had already planned them as resistant structures in
the case of a plane crash.&nbsp; Is this
called preventive rationality, or passive condoning of terrorist
activities?&nbsp; Will the next Twin Towers –
if there ever are any – be technically thought out to be resistant to chemical,
biological, and other weapons, and will they be resistant to the crash of three
simultaneous planes?&nbsp; I mean, where are
we going with scientific, technotistic rationality?&nbsp; Will we plan a world where a half of it is
bazooka-proof – even maybe a-bomb-proof – and the other half is denied any
right to a voice that is not a scary face?

With this digression I just wanted to point out that
not every, and I would say only a few, difficulties that arise can be properly
managed through technical solutions.&nbsp; The
rush to bring more security to a place like the United States, that is
certainly one of the safest places to be in the world, cannot reinforce the
same methods that have been practiced already since much before September 11,
and have failed.&nbsp; The terrorism that
happened has changed many things, but others were just reinforced, and for the
sake of the freedom of everyone, the United States included.&nbsp; As long as problems are dealt with in the
manner of “we’ll be even more…” we will have no way out.&nbsp; As long as we don’t recognize that there are
things fundamentally wrong that must be changed in most societies around the globe, including the United States, we
will be reproducing the causes that bring about wars and terrors in the first
place.

We cannot rely on technical instrumentalities like
‘intelligence’ systems such as the CIA.&nbsp;
For one, they have been the ones that have disseminated terror throughout
the world in Chile, Brazil, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, and on and on.&nbsp; Neither ‘intelligence’ nor ‘security’ is
possible anymore in this globalized world if it is a unilateral process.&nbsp; The United States, not even with its Star
Wars project (the one of space missile defense), is safe from attacks.&nbsp; It is only mounting anger and lack of
confidence from people around the world.&nbsp;
Why would a country that possesses and that produces the majority of
arms in the world, and that practically and imperially governs the world, be so
afraid?&nbsp; Exactly because its aims, as a
State, are imperialistic.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 

What blinds most people in the United States from
having a real engagement and connection with the issue of terrorism is its
mainstream media’s accounts.&nbsp; Edward Said
wrote: “For journalists and politicians it was de rigueur to be “for Israel”, as if that automatically meant being
for civilization, against the Holocaust, and with the American way of life”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[15]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; Being part of the dominant discourse, and
serving U.S. corporate and State interests, the media will almost never make a
connection between “acts of terrorism” and their causes.&nbsp; The same, of course, can be said of the
American State.&nbsp; When asked to consider
the causes of Palestinian terrorism, 1985 Secretary of State George Schultz
“pounded the table and told the visiting foreign minister, ‘There is no
connection with any cause.&nbsp; Period.”’<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[16]<!--[endif]-->&nbsp; This is the vogue around dominant society
when discussing “terrorism”, and thereby justifying their own complicity to
conflicts waged by their own State.&nbsp;&nbsp; Not
even the slightest effort is made by most journalists or so-called
intellectuals that appear in the media to give any privilege to history, to
culture, to people. “Terrorism” has become a thing that now replaces “communism” as the “evil”.&nbsp; In this simplistic polarity of “Good vs.
Evil”, people die.&nbsp; Edward Said (1988)
wrote:



“Today’s
discourse on terrorism is an altogether more streamlined thing.&nbsp; Its scholarship is yesterday’s newspaper or
today’s CNN bulletin.”



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And
so with such a ‘high’ intellectual culture, ‘terrorism’ is now what replaced
‘communism’ as the alarm that sets out to call people to war.&nbsp; And, as much as ‘communism’, it is a term
that universalizes the issue and prohibits any consideration of the specific
histories of war and peace involved.&nbsp; The
idea that, for example, there is one, integrated, ‘international terrorism’,
annihilates the possibility of mindful and engaged interventions.&nbsp; In the same way that ‘communism’ functioned
in the past, today ‘international terrorism’ has become a word to name “enemy”,
an enemy without history and that is always something to be fought against,
never to be understood. The concept of ‘terrorism’ is a justification for
war.&nbsp; The term has no other function in
dominant discourse.&nbsp; It is produced as
such an abstracted and out-of-this-world concept that it can be used by the two
or more parties in a conflict, to insult each other.&nbsp; The Israeli State and the American State and
American media will go on and on showing the atrocities – and yes, they are
atrocities- committed by suicide bombers, but they will never call the Israeli
Army ‘terrorist’.&nbsp;&nbsp; How can we tell what
is more terrifying: to be killed by a fellow that blows himself up, or to see
your family gun-fired one-by-one in front of you, while you wait for your
turn?&nbsp; How can one not say that these are
both acts of ‘terror’, produced by both Israeli and Palestinian?&nbsp; The
Palestinians have suffered much more ‘terror’ at the hands of the Israeli State
than vice-versa.&nbsp; The whole world has
condemned the actions of the Israeli State, but the U.S. continues to send arms
and money to Israel, it being the State that receives the largest amount of
U.S. aid.&nbsp; On 19 October 2000, the United
Nations Human Rights Commission condemned Israel for “a war crime and a crime
against humanity”, and for “violating each and every one of the Declaration’s
provisions”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[17]<!--[endif]-->
for its occupation of Palestinian lands, mistreatment of the people, killing
even of children, and much more.&nbsp; What is
most interesting is that a great part of the Jews living in Israel would like
to see an end to the occupation and oppression, but their State does not listen
to them.&nbsp; Many Israeli military
personnel, including sergeants, colonels, and also many academics and students
have been raising their voices against what they see as Israeli brutality. “The price of the current quiet is total oppression [of the
Palestinians]. As people are asked to do worse and worse things, support for us
[the military refusing to fight Palestinians] will increase,” says Haim Weiss,
a captain in the armored corps [of Israel]”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[18]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp;
Another Israeli sergeant says: “This stupid war that we are waging, it’s
awful.&nbsp; Killing people, as many as
possible – there is no point in this”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[19]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; In 1994, the “leftist” government of Prime Minister
Rabin recognized the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), and also
recognized Palestine as a “nation”.&nbsp; One
year later, in 1995, he was shot by a right-wing Jewish man.&nbsp; From then on Israel has been governed by right-wing
supporters of the oppression of Palestinians, like Netanyahu, Peres, and
Sharon.&nbsp; Occupations have risen, and many
Palestinians are denied access to basic things like water, many are
incarcerated in their own cities.&nbsp;
Israel, as a Jewish State, violates the basic foundations of Jewish
religion itself; foundations of justice in this world (not that there exists
one kind of “ethical Jew” only).&nbsp; And
what is more frightening is that people that undergo terror once, such as the
Holocaust, do not become automatically ethical. When Ariel Sharon took office,
he “promised his voters to make peace.&nbsp; A
peace by force, peace of occupation, peace with settlements and without
concessions…”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[20]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; In what world does one have to live not to
recognize this as ‘terrorism’?&nbsp; How can
the U.S. media totally disregard the mistreatment of Palestinians?&nbsp; It is because they have been labeled
‘terrorist’, and because this serves the interests of some and the ignorance of
others.&nbsp; To quote As’ad Abukhalil (2002):



“I
lived through the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which resulted in the
death of more than 15,000 Palestinian and Lebanese, mostly civilians.&nbsp; U.S. media barely, if ever, reported those
deaths to Americans, while Israeli loss was mourned.”



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Indeed, as noticed by Tariq Ali<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[21]<!--[endif]-->,
the author of The Clash of
Fundamentalisms, a critique of the U.S “war on terrorism”, the U.S. media
is even more unilateral than the Israeli press itself.&nbsp; The president of CNN thinks that “too much
coverage of Afghani civilian deaths may be inappropriate while our nation is at
war”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[22]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; Now that is something to think about. To
understand ‘terrorism’ does not mean to condone it, it only means that one is
looking for the causes so that it will not happen again.&nbsp; And to look for the causes would take us to
question the efficacy of fighting ‘terrorism’ with a war.&nbsp; The U.S. could have also taken the stand of
realizing what has fabricated such grievances.&nbsp;
Of course, for a State that believes itself ‘sovereign’, maybe that
would be too much to ask.&nbsp; It would be to
ask that the United States recognizes its role in the making of the Taliban,
when&nbsp; the CIA recruited the most radical
Islamic fundamentalists from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other countries, and made
them believe that the best they could do with their future was to fight a “holy
war” against the “atheist” socialists.&nbsp;
To do this, of course, the U.S. could count on the fundamentalism of
Wahhabiysm in Saudi Arabia.&nbsp; The U.S.
then, for reasons of power and access to oil in the region, besides others,
like war profit, trained and disciplined ‘terrorists’, and gave a sparkling
start to the rise of Islamic ‘terrorist’ fundamentalism<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[23]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; The reaction of Islamic people through
fundamentalization cannot be explained only in the light of religion;&nbsp; terrorism always has political “causes”, no
matter how religion-sponsored it is.&nbsp;
September 11 was a joke compared to what the Afghanis suffered in the
hands of ‘terrorists’ produced by the U.S. and its oppressive ally, Pakistan.&nbsp; Not to see this is an ethnocentric and
self-destructive way of thinking, the same that led the U.S. to think that it
can implement terror in the world and never suffer from it.&nbsp; And to the question of why the U.S.
government would choose a war instead of following the international guidelines
for the prosecution of crimes of this sort, there are many points for
discussion: racism, imperialism, war profit and oil “security”, among other
factors.&nbsp; 

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Arab countries have
been targeted for a long time as sites of colonial and imperial
domination.&nbsp; Since the Crusades – a word
that George Bush uttered only once referring to the “war on terrorism” and, for
this reason, was later reprimanded by his associates – Arab territories have
been targeted by the Western States either as a people to be conquered by
British, French, etc…or as a place to be in direct alliance or confrontation
with for political-economic reasons.&nbsp; The
United States, in its imperialist manner so known around the world, has been
fostering “friendly relations” with the most hated dictatorships and monarchies
in the world, in exchange for their submission.&nbsp;
It approved the rule of the Shah in Iran in the 80’s, who devastated
that country while he was living himself pretty well selling the country to
U.S. corporations<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[24]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; After the Iranian revolution, the U.S.
conducted a terrorist operation.&nbsp; In 1988
they shot down an Iranian passenger airliner, killing 290 people, and later
claimed it was an “accident”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[25]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; The same claim was made when the U.S. bombed
the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, in 1998.&nbsp; As Chomsky states in his book 9-11, the toll of people directly
affected by this terrorist act is comparable to those that died on September
11.&nbsp; In fact, this U.S. action may have
been another component in the terrorists’ hateful vengeance on September 11,
since Sudan is a predominantly Muslim country.&nbsp;
Anyway, when Chomsky made that comparison, he was branded with “feverish
and fanciful condemnations”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[26]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; This leads us to the question: How much is a
human life worth?&nbsp; Is an American worth
more than a Chinese, a Brazilian, or an Afghani?&nbsp; The pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was the
only source of medicine in the country.&nbsp;
At the Twin Towers there were people from all over the world, not just
“Americans”.&nbsp; In the name of “freedom”, or
“values”, the U.S. led a war in an impoverished and already war-torn
country.&nbsp; From one day to the other,
Afghanistan was declared a site of ‘evil’, the Taliban was suddenly declared a
mysoginist regime, when before September 11 no one seemed to care<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[27]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; The discourse on ‘human rights’ is the new
justification, together with the one on ‘terrorism’, through which actions and
wars are waged in order to serve hidden – but not very well – interests at
stake.&nbsp; In order to “root out evil” – any
Christian fundamentalism here? – cities were bombed from the air, killing
thousands of people.&nbsp; The criminals that
were to be targeted, like Mullah Omar and Bin Laden, were not yet found,
although Operation Enduring Freedom was successful in killing Omar’s wife and
children (and therefore in “rooting out evil”?).&nbsp; The “war on terrorism” only shows that, yes,
there are Americans that are racist or ignorant enough to think that their
lives are worth more than other peoples’.&nbsp;
Indeed, on September 16, 2001, The
New York Times reported that the U.S.
demanded that Pakistan cut all food shipments and humanitarian aid to
Afghanistan<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[28]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; Millions of people were totally dependent on
those shipments.&nbsp; After much discussion
in the world media, and because of the response of people, the U.S. decided to
airdrop packages.&nbsp; These contained even
rotten food, they were dropped at night near the bombings, and some looked like
landmines.&nbsp; By mistake, many children
took land mines for packages, and got killed<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[29]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; The arrogance and racism are clear, for
example, when former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says on national
television, regarding the estimate that half a million Iraqi children had died
as a consequence of U.S. sanctions: “we think the price is worth it”.<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[30]<!--[endif]-->&nbsp; The U.S. and Israeli States are quite open
about their racist and imperialist attitudes.&nbsp;
In 1987 the UN General Assembly passed a resolution on the matter of
‘international terrorism’, and the resolution passed 153 to 2, the U.S. and
Israel voting against it. Honduras, by then a colony of the United States after
years of ‘terrorism’, abstained.&nbsp; The
passage of the resolution that offended the two “friends” states: “nothing in
the present resolution could in any way prejudice the right to self-determination,
freedom and independence, as derived from the Charter of the United Nations, of
peoples forcibly deprived of that right…, particularly peoples under colonial
and racist regimes and foreign occupation or other forms of colonial
domination, nor…the right of these peoples to struggle to this end and to seek
and receive support [in accordance with the Charter and other principles of
international law].”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[31]<!--[endif]-->

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This brings us to the
definitions of ‘terrorism’.&nbsp; At the UN,
the United States will not accept the definition above, it will only accept a
definition that will somehow exclude the ‘terrorism’ that is practiced by
itself and its allies; the ‘terrorism’ of the powerful.&nbsp; Under the U.S. Code’s definitions of
‘terrorism’, are included “violent acts…intended to…intimidate and coerce&nbsp; a civilian population; to influence the
policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of
a government by assassination or kidnapping…”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[32]<!--[endif]-->&nbsp; Well, since when is the U.S. against such
actions?&nbsp; It has used them extensively in
its support and training of ‘death squads’ throughout Latin America for thirty
years, training at least 8,659 Brazilian military in the 60’s, and rewarding
with economic aid the countries that used the learned methods of torture on
their own people<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[33]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; Not to mention the countless terrorist acts
committed against Cuba, for some time the target of the most significant and
constant of these acts in the world, including countless attempts to
assassinate Fidel Castro<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[34]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; In El Salvador, a U.S. mercenary army
massacred and slaughtered more than 60,000 people<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[35]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; In Nicaragua, the U.S. were supporting
‘counter-insurgency’ maniacs that had no ideology at all, that would mistreat
and kill peasants indefinitely in order to fight a ghost called ‘communism’.&nbsp; To quote Chomsky (1999):



“The
crime of the Sandinistas was to carry out successful development.&nbsp; Right after the revolution, they immediately
began to divert resources to the poor part of the population.&nbsp; And this, incidentally, is recognized.&nbsp; It’s recognized by charitable development
agencies, by the international banks and so on.&nbsp;
So, for example, the Inter-American Development Bank, in January 1983,
wrote a report stating that Nicaragua has made impressive growth advances in
socio-economic development and has laid the basis for extensive future
growth.&nbsp; That’s the crime.”



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The United States has
not allowed countries to do any kind of structural reform in order to bring
wealth to their people.&nbsp; It sees any
attempt, like the countless examples not mentioned here, of reform, as a threat
– the threat of the ‘good example’.&nbsp; It
figures that if a country is successful in bringing wealth, land, education,
health, and, most importantly, political participation to its people, that
others are bound to follow. So the U.S. exterminates any kind of state does
‘too much’ for its own people.&nbsp; Country
after country has tried to institute reforms in order to make their living
standards rise, and the U.S. has followed its principle of undermining all
forms of ‘democracy’.&nbsp; What the U.S. really
wants is not democracy at all, it is to know if a country will allow itself to
be robbed of its resources and if its corporations will be able to exploit at
will<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[36]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; These are its basic concerns, and if that can
be done through a ‘democracy’, a fascist regime, a monarchy, or whatever, that
doesn’t really concern the U.S.&nbsp; One just
has to look at the countless countries where the U.S. supported and still
supports military dictatorships, like Pakistan, monarchies such as Saudi
Arabia, and “neoliberal” democracies such as Brazil.&nbsp; The Pakistani dictator, Musharraf, took power
saying that he was going to save “democracy”, as did many other dictators
around the world<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[37]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; The United States, in its own denial, is not
realizing that, by fostering fascist regimes around the world, together with
oppressive ‘democracies’, it is dooming itself to terror.&nbsp; It was the U.S. that gave Saddam Hussein, the
Iraqi dictator, the arms and power that he used to have, before he became disposable.&nbsp; When he suddenly decides to go ahead and
realize to the full extent the imperialist tactics that the U.S. had so
cheerfully applauded before, and given support to, before the invasion of
Kuwait, the U.S. decides to call him “evil”.&nbsp;
When Saddam Hussein was fighting the “evil” Iran,&nbsp; he was “our man”.&nbsp; The same happened with Osama bin Laden, one
day called “our kind of guy” while he was killing the “Evil Empire of the
atheists”, fighting a “holy war” commanded by Washington. In fact, it was
Washington that first used the discourse of the jihad as “holy war”, for jihad
in Persian means “struggle”, not “holy war”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[38]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; When Bin Laden realized he had been betrayed
by the U.S., what for him was ‘good’, the U.S. with its money, became ‘evil’.
The irony of history is that those who fought in the war of ‘America’ against
‘communism’ now have turned themselves against both at the same time.&nbsp; As Chomsky says, “There are plenty of bin
Ladens on both sides, as usual”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[39]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; Regarding Saudi Arabia, the U.S. has
committed itself to support a monarchy that has its days counted, because it is
hated in that country by its people, and the people themselves are hating the
U.S. for this<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[40]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; In exchange for oil ‘security’, the U.S. has
committed itself to protect the regime of the royal family, which exploits its
people in many ways<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[41]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; 

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Terrorism is always
used by States as a weapon, but when States talk about it, it is always the
Other that commits terrorism, it is never Us.&nbsp;
In fact, to make a distinction between retail terrorism, the one committed by individuals or small groups,
and wholesale terrorism, the one
committed by States<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[42]<!--[endif]-->,
the only one that attracts attention in dominant discourse is the former.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Nevertheless, the scope and range of
wholesale surpasses by far the retail<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[43]<!--[endif]-->
type, thus the names given.&nbsp; The fact
that the sensationalist media portrays terrorism as a retail type only shows
how States hold enough power to be exempt of charges of the most criminal
types.&nbsp; This plays into the imagination
of people in the Western individualistic societies, with images of the ‘lone
fighter’, or the ‘hero’.&nbsp; It also plays
into the imagination of the Terrorist as a madman, as someone that had a tragic
infancy – which many times is the case – and that seeks revenge.&nbsp; The psychology of the Terrorist, the idea of
the “Terrorist Mind”, is a pervasive one in the United States’ discourse on
terrorism, and to this problem we shall now turn.





The “Terrorist
Mind” and the Death of History 



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Terrorist exists in
a discourse that frames every individual as representative of a ‘mind
type’.&nbsp;&nbsp; This is a discourse born in
Europe, solidified by Christianity and its moral separation of ‘good’ and
‘evil’.&nbsp; The latter is the most basic
arrangement of ‘minds’ that a Westerner will make, and it serves reasons of
power and order.&nbsp; The ‘evil’ mind, the
pathological, is recognized through the making of the ‘good’, or ‘normal’
mind.&nbsp; They are one and the same
process.&nbsp; The one that has the power to
announce abnormality – and normality – is the specialist, or the doctor, such
as the psychiatrist or psychologist, and nowadays, the media as well.&nbsp; It has become part of common sense discourse,
the targeting of some as ‘abnormal’, as ‘crazy’, as ‘out of his/her mind’,
etc.&nbsp; What we will do now is to
deconstruct these notions with regards to the “terrorist mind”, and comment on
the effects of this discourse of psychopathology as it affects world conflicts.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The discourse on the
“human mind” participates in a Western field of doctrine that establishes what
can be said, and who can say it.&nbsp; It has
the status of a “ human science”.&nbsp; It is
grounded on the dogma that the world is composed of individuals that have an interiority through which reality, the domain of the true, emerges.&nbsp; History is then the emergence and
re-emergence of the domain of a universal consciousness.&nbsp; The past can be made present through
consciousness.&nbsp; This could mean that
extinct cultures and ancient mind-sets come again and again into the world,
which makes their concrete disappearance obsolete, and their existence as
well.&nbsp;&nbsp; The discourse on the ‘nature of
the mind’ has come about as a product of modernity; it is in no way a
‘progress’ of science, but only an arrangement of the domains of the true, which carries an order of power
within itself that served to rearrange what gets included and what
excluded.&nbsp; One of these rearrangements
was the one regarding reason and folly.&nbsp;
Already since the Middle Ages the ‘madman’ was constructed as a subject
of both exclusion and inclusion into the domain of the ‘truth about the human
being’.&nbsp; Nevertheless, with the emergence
of “Man” as a subject of science, the opposition between reason and folly
gained new divisions and rejections<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[44]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp;&nbsp; These new divisions were permitted by a
network of institutions such as the mental hospital and the prison<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[45]<!--[endif]-->,
and the discourse on ‘madness’ gained new forms.&nbsp; For one thing, today every person can be
recognized, under the new discourse, as possessing a ‘neurosis’ or something of
this sort.&nbsp; On the other hand, the
discourse on ‘madness’ has become such a part of everyday life that it allows
for interventions&nbsp; - and
non-interventions, as well – in the name of ‘sanity’.&nbsp;&nbsp; The idea of the ‘integration’ of the human
subject with her/his ‘inner truth’ is a pervasive one that legitimates wars to
be waged in the name of a sane, peaceful world.&nbsp;
The Other is constructed as someone in need of intervention, social or
psychological, so that this Other will find out the true ‘consciousness’ that leads to peace, for example.&nbsp; With total disregard for
cultural-social-historical circumstances that lead a people to resist
oppression, the discourse on ‘consciousness’ legitimates interventions like
wars and other acts by powerful States, for example, to be made in the name of
‘sanity’.&nbsp; In the words of Michel
Foucault (1972):



“If
the history of thought could remain the locus of uninterrupted continuities, if
it could endlessly forge connections that no analysis could undo without
abstraction, if it could weave, around everything that men say and do, obscure
synthesis that anticipate for him, prepare him, and lead him endlessly towards
his future, it would provide a privileged shelter for the sovereignty of
consciousness.&nbsp; Continuous history is the
indispensable correlative of the founding function of the subject: the
guarantee that everything that has eluded him will be restored to him; the
certainty that time will disperse nothing without restoring it in a
reconstituted unity; the promise that one day the subject – in the form of
historical consciousness – will once again be able to appropriate, to bring
back under his sway, all those things that are kept at a distance by
difference, and find in them what might be called his abode.&nbsp; Making historical analysis the discourse of
the continuous and making human consciousness the original subject of all
historical development and all actions are the two sides of the same system of
thought.&nbsp; In this system, time is
conceived in terms of totalization and revolutions are never more than moments
of consciousness.”

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As one can note,
Foucault was not an adept of evolutionist thought that beholds that history
itself is a process of progress towards something more whole.&nbsp; He is saying that this discourse and the
discourse on the human subjectivity, as interiority, and as foundational of
history itself, is a particular “system of thought”, which has its links to
Christianity and to Metaphysics.&nbsp; This
discourse is pervasive in Western, modern societies, and allows for (in)actions
to be justified on the basis of the ‘good’ management of human consciousness.&nbsp; 

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Terrorist, then,
appears as someone that is in need of psychological intervention, and this is
posited as a solution, a resolution, of social-historical conflicts.&nbsp; The human subject, as foundational of
history, as the ground of what gets constructed as reality, can be intervened upon in order for ‘normalization’ to
occur.&nbsp; Under this same premise,
communities all around the world were intervened upon on the basis of the
assumption that they were inherently ‘lacking’ something more ‘human’, which
the European supposedly possessed.&nbsp; The
mass extermination of cultures all around the world under colonizations in the
Americas, Africa, Asia, Pacific Islands: all these places have suffered and
still suffer the effects of colonial prejudice and submission.&nbsp; Conceptualized as lacking by the European,
who self-identified as ‘civilized’ while calling other cultures ‘barbarian’,
these cultures were made into slaves of the colonial enterprise which in modern
discourse makes other cultures and communities ‘underdeveloped’<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[46]<!--[endif]-->,
‘primitive’, ‘traditional’, or just less than a true human.&nbsp; With regards to the notion of ‘civilization’,
Antonin Artaud (1958) has this to say:



…a
cultivated “civilized” man is regarded as a person instructed in systems, a
person who thinks in forms, signs, representations – a monster whose faculty of
deriving thoughts from acts, instead of identifying acts with thoughts, is
developed to an absurdity.



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This
interpretation can show how even the term ‘civilized’ itself is not free of a
pathologization.&nbsp; Indeed, on a
social-historical level, we could argument that the notion of a ‘civilized’
people has served to wage terror and war throughout the world in the name of
‘civilization’.&nbsp; We had an example of
this when George Bush described the September 11 attacks as an act of
‘barbarism’, and called for a war of ‘civilization’ against it.&nbsp; Embedded in this affirmation is a strong
racism and ethnocentrism<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[47]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; The terrible act of a few gets linked to the
essence of a people, regarded as ‘less than’ what “America stands for”.&nbsp; The arrogance of this view was embodied by
the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, when he affirmed that this was a
struggle between ‘Western civilization’, the superior one, and ‘Islamic
civilization’, the inferior<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[48]<!--[endif]-->.
Besides the arrogance, the portrayal of Islam as a monolithic entity is
violence in itself (as is the portrayal of the West).&nbsp; Islamic countries and other countries that
contain Islamic peoples in it – practically every one in the world – express a
variety of Islams with different histories and interpretations of the
Koran.&nbsp; The violence of the portrayal of
Islam as one thing corroborates and
increases the violence of the interpretation of Arabs as having a special ‘Arab
mind’ that, as an object of knowledge, is regarded as something to be managed
from an expert, scientific, or even
‘superior’ position, as Edward Said shows brilliantly in Orientalism.&nbsp;&nbsp; The idea of a
“Terrorist Mind” also enters here.&nbsp; Being
the lowest and most inferior form of being in this scale of “superior-inferior”
mind (and here the world leaves only these two options, it is dual), the
Terrorist functions as a scapegoat for the explanation of social-historical
conflicts.&nbsp; It can function as a simple way
of dismissing complex stories of oppression and resistance in favor of a
metanarrative, the one about the Mind, that seeks to explain away history in a
simplistic and arrogant framework which reproduces domination and does not
address it directly.&nbsp;&nbsp; It is this
pathologization of the Other, which allows one to disregard history, which
makes the U.S. media, for example, completely disregard the links of&nbsp; terrorists to the CIA.&nbsp; In the magazine Time Annual 2002, for example, no link is made between Bin Laden
and the CIA training and encouraging of a “holy war”, which, as we have seen,
was a CIA-sponsored construct, to which Wahhabiyyah ideologues contributed and
benefited from<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[49]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; Bin Laden’s history is portrayed simply as a
personal history in an ‘Islam’ enclosed upon itself, and Islamic fundamentalism
is also not linked to U.S. (or U.K.) support of the Saudi regime<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[50]<!--[endif]-->,
now or in the formation of that State as fundamentalist.&nbsp; All this can be forgotten because of an
assumption that the U.S. has a ‘natural right’ to intervene in places where
people supposedly lead ‘barbaric’, ‘mad’ lives.&nbsp;
History is once more cut off of the conversation.&nbsp; Global racism wins.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The ‘terrorist’ is
portrayed as one entity, with
disregard for the specific peoples and histories involved.&nbsp; Thus, in a U.S. magazine entitled “War on
Terror”, one of the first pages describes the ‘terrorist’ as the ‘Islamic
fundamentalist’ type only, of the ‘martyr that goes to heaven’ type.&nbsp; Indeed, the idea of ‘going to heaven’ through
fighting ‘evil’ is the dominant explanation given in the media for the terrible
actions taken by ‘terrorists’.&nbsp;&nbsp; It is a
thingification that disregards, for example, the fact that Palestinians are not
worried about going to heaven; they would rather stay on Earth if it were only
for the Israeli State to withdraw from their lands and let them have a
life.&nbsp; But instead they are treated as
less than human, as a people with no ‘values’ and against ‘freedom’ and
‘democracy’.&nbsp; The “Free World”, as a
self-identified morally superior element in the world, sees itself as the
‘good’ fighting ‘evil’, in a binary opposition that eradicates any relation to
thinking and to history itself.&nbsp; 

The sentiment of moral superiority also presents
itself as a “rational” and “impartial” position, in liberal discourse.&nbsp; In accord with the metaphysical tradition, if
this impartiality is directed towards ‘two’ parties in a conflict, that seems
like the perfect condition for a complete understanding of a situation.&nbsp; The doubles reinforce each other, and a
position that is considered ‘fair’ and ‘balanced’ is that of the
self-identified - morally superior - one from where the ‘liberal’ can see “both
sides”.&nbsp; From this comes the inability of
making a decision for one of the sides, when that becomes necessary.&nbsp; The inanition of liberal party politics in
the United States comes from its own construction of itself as a metanarrative
over life.&nbsp; The synthesis of “right” and
“left” is what is expected, and the power of both is thus maintained. Liberal
party politics cannot but be a promise that difference will be addressed, when
in fact it is regarded as representable through an inherently confrontational
and complicitous structure of the power of the few.&nbsp; ‘Left’ and ‘right’, like ‘good’ and ‘evil’,
can move the mass metaphysical imagination with extreme efficacy, while
maintaining the political “balance” and favoring stable oppressive
democracies.&nbsp; In this master-slave
relationship to life, we all loose our freedom.&nbsp;
When one considers him/herself free, as in the so-called ‘Free World’,
right then one is not free and is hindering on the freedom of others.&nbsp; To escape this requires that we approach
others without arrogance, which is not what nation-States have been prepared
for.&nbsp; When former Israeli prime Minister,
Benjamin Netanyahu, says that “we shall eradicate this evil from the face of
the earth”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[51]<!--[endif]-->,
he is not saying that the causes of terrorism will be addressed; that, for
example, the Palestinians will be given back their dignity.&nbsp; He is saying that people will die, and a war
will be waged on ‘terror’, and that it does not matter if Israel turns every
Palestinian into a dead body, even if “unintentionally”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[52]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; He will produce terror and then eradicate
people.&nbsp; This shows again how the
‘terrorist’ is not recognized as having been produced by historical circumstances.&nbsp; In the dichotomy of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, and in
the psychologization of history, where people are recognized as essentially terrorist, the injustice of
land occupation, abuse of lives and war carries on.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Netanyahu suitingly
claims that the “terrorists” are fighting against “the West”, and with this
call plays on the fears and moral superiority of the United States in order to
get support from it.&nbsp; His books and
speeches are a call for war, never a call for peaceful resolutions.&nbsp; The same can be said with regards to the
speeches of Peres and the mass-murderer, Sharon.&nbsp; Since September 11, they found new reasons
and new support for their war, and have devastated entire communities, killing
hundreds, maybe thousands of Palestinians.&nbsp;
The United States remains complicitous and George Bush continues to
condemn the terror of Palestinians, while allowing the much greater terror of
Israel to proceed.&nbsp; This is part of the
history that does not get accounted for in the discourse on terrorism.&nbsp; And it is part of the reason why “America” is
so hated throughout the world.&nbsp; Bin Laden
and his associates, for example, have expressed many times the reasons of their
grief: the mistreatment of Palestinians, the sanctions on the Iraqi people, and
the U.S. military presence and exploitation of local resources (mainly oil) in
the Middle East<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[53]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; These are not ‘psychological’ problems; they
are historical, and should be accounted for in this way by United Statians if
they wish terror to stop.&nbsp; The many
movements around the world that have been labeled ‘terrorist’ are fighting for
specific causes, which an unattentive perspective towards historical
circumstances will not grasp, and therefore will not be able to provide
effective decisions for peace.&nbsp; The idea
of the ‘madman’, a ‘rebel without a cause’, or with a ‘destructive cause’,
disregards that these struggles are political, they are fought at the level of
nations, and have their roots in the privileged access of States towards the
violent coercion of peoples, inside and outside their borders.&nbsp; The professors of ‘terrorism’, the States,
find that to understand the causes of terrorism is to justify it.&nbsp; In the same manner of unreflectedness, war is
considered a natural event in ‘human’ life. 

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Psychology is
contributing to the complicity and apathy of people towards worldly events in
many ways, particularly in the United States.&nbsp;
As an example, we will look into the uses made of Carl Jung’s theory of
an “archetype” – a recurrent form of subjectivity in history.&nbsp; In Jung’s lens, the world is primarily a
world of ‘natural laws’ that can be grasped, and history can be interpreted as
a history of “consciousness”, or of the “unconscious”.&nbsp; Edward Edinger, an American Jungian
psychologist of reputation, wrote a book entitled Archetype of the Apocalipse: Divine Vengeance, Terrorism, and the End
of the World (1999).&nbsp;&nbsp; Following the track of what we term psychologism – the reduction of all
historical-social-cultural-ethnic-religious-economic-political affairs to the
primacy of a human interiority – Edinger’s analysis of terrorism promises one
thing: to disregard peoples and actions in favor of occult intentions.&nbsp; Regarding ‘terrorism’, he says:



“Terrorism
is a manifestation of the psyche.&nbsp; It is
time we recognized the psyche as an autonomous factor in world affairs…To deal
with terrorism effectively we must understand
it.”



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To recognize “the
psyche as an autonomous factor in world affairs” means, under this perspective,
to disregard peoples, histories, politics, etc. in favor of the primacy of an interiority which, of course, only the expert has access to (and so the rest of
people are doomed?).&nbsp; To understand terrorism, through this lens
of course, will not mean that we need to address the political causes, but will
mean, instead, to address only the psychological level, understood here as
“universal”, and thereby aligning itself with a
Christian-theological-metaphysical approach.&nbsp;
The reason why Edinger and many Jungians think that history is “archetype”
is because they are embedded in this Christian-theological-metaphysical
tradition, and fail to recognize where they are coming from.&nbsp; When George Bush refers to the “Axis of Evil”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[54]<!--[endif]-->,
he at least would agree that he is a “good Christian”.&nbsp; The universalism and the references to
terrorism as “evil” in Edinger’s Jungian approach could only have come about
with Christianity which, since the Roman Empire, has been taming other
religions and founding a universalist intellectual approach to history and
culture which makes the annihilation of histories and cultures easier.&nbsp; In line with the ‘doctrinal’ philosophy, many
readers will think now that I speak with no knowledge of the issues because I
am not a ‘Jungian’.&nbsp; Well, I did try to
be one but I realized how privileged and alienated is the discourse on the
‘human mind’, and how terribly ethnocentric and arrogant it is to see ‘from
above’, or ‘behind’, etc., history and culture.&nbsp;
In anthropology, for example, the universalist approach has for long now
been condemned as a certain will to truth<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[55]<!--[endif]-->
and to power, and to the maintenance of the individual, expert, privilege and
comfort; an apathy zone with many terrible consequences.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The difference between
this psychologistic discourse and the discourse of politicians on the ‘evil’ of
terrorism has to be recognized.&nbsp; However,
this psychological discourse allows, for example, for an agreement with
Netanyahu, the Israeli State terrorist, when he states that “Terrorism against
Americans, Israelis, Spaniards, Britons, Russians, or anyone else is all part
of the same evil and must be treated as such”.&nbsp;
This discourse has the same Christian moral basis as Edinger’s with
regards to the dualism of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ (although Netanyahu is Jewish).&nbsp; They do nothing to help differentiate between
struggles in Colombia, where guerrillas (and here we are not condoning their
acts) are fighting against a State that killed more than 3,000 of their people
including politicians, activists, and presidential candidates<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[56]<!--[endif]-->
– the “democracy” supported by the U.S. – and the struggle of Palestinians
where the Israeli State occupies their land and refuses to let them be anything
more than second-class citizens of Israel.&nbsp;
All that the discourse on universalism
through psychologism helps to substantiate is a “moral superiority” in relation
to political issues, and the apathy and outright complicity towards the cruelty
that it bears on.&nbsp; Instead of solving the
issues, psychologism reproduces them, and is at the core of ethnocentrism, the
support for State terrorism and apathy.

Our conversation here on the effects of psychologism
should not lead us to reject psychological realities completely; what we are
thinking about is the manner in which history can be disregarded in favor of
psychology, which is a Christian-European tradition of many consequences, some
pretty terrible.&nbsp; We should, however,
note that the ‘terrorist’ does have a subjective experience, but to which we
can only make generalizations with regards to his/her history, which is what is
available to us.&nbsp; The one thing that we
can say all those labeled ‘terrorist’ have is a need of power, a “need to be
heard”, as Ahmad says.&nbsp; Of course, anger
is also involved, and in Bin Laden’s case, a strong sense of betrayal of the
U.S<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[57]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; Note, however, that our description of the
‘psychic’ aspects cannot reach very far, and in itself it certainly does not
serve anyone involved in the conflict for the practice of peace without turning
them into political considerations.

A book that has been celebrated in many circles as the explanation for terrorism is called The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism,
by Robin Morgan.&nbsp; In line with white-
American-bourgeois feminism, the author essentializes a universal ‘terrorist’,
a ‘He’ that is a form of a recurrent subjectivity in history, recognizable
across the times and cultures, in much the same way as Edinger’s “archetypes of
the apocalypse”. That universal, ahistorical “He” is said to be the “root” of
terrorism.&nbsp; She has an important point,
though, when she argues, for example:



“The
terrorist (or, depending on one’s view, the freedom fighter) is the ultimate
sexual idol of a male-centered cultural tradition that stretches from
pre-Biblical times to the present: he is the logical extension of the
patriarchal hero/martyr.&nbsp; He is the Demon
Lover, and society is (secretly or openly) fascinated by him.”



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I have to agree that there is certainly the
sexualization and the idolatry of a hero/martyr.&nbsp; And this has certainly been otpimized with
patriarchy, as has the State, and the image of the ‘hero’ works to the advantage
of the protagonists of the establishment, like governors, as well as for
so-called “rebels”.&nbsp;&nbsp; I have to disagree,
though, that we can portray every terrorist under the same category of a “Demon
Lover”.&nbsp; This can only come from a
privileged, bourgeois, ‘morally superior’ position that, as I pointed out here
many times, can have disregard for history in the name of one’s self-centered
moral ‘values’.&nbsp; This position allows one
to not engage with issues as they play out in the world and instead to live in
an alienated, privileged “comfort zone”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[58]<!--[endif]-->.&nbsp; The day-to-day struggle for survival of
millions of peoples and communities throughout the world, the suffering and
powerlessness, is reproduced exactly through the attitude of disengagement and
moral arrogance of privileged communities that expresses itself, for example,
in the following portrayal of ‘terrorism’:



&nbsp;“The terrorist is a logical incarnation of
patriarchal politics in a technological world.”

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; “The myth [of the ‘hero’] – and arraying
oneself in its power – is the message.” 

“…the
old battle of death between fathers and sons.”



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; These are beautiful words, and there lies their
rational power.&nbsp; But they are beautiful
words that tell a unified story that undermines any understanding of world
conflicts as they happen now or in the past.&nbsp;
These words aspire to an ultimate, total knowledge that by its very
nature excludes other possibilities of history, or story.&nbsp; In this lies its power of seduction and
safety: the alignement of oneself, through rationalization, with ‘Reality’, in
a static, paralized manner.&nbsp; In saying
this, we are not looking for AN alternative, but rather trying to open up space
so that many others stories, histories, might be told, the histories of Colombians,
Palestinians, Chileans, Indonesians, Brazilians, and many others that had some
day to fight ‘terror’ with ‘terror’.&nbsp;
“Doctrine” has allowed state power to go on unquestioned.&nbsp; Michel Foucault explains brilliantly what the
process of making fields of “doctrine” always already entails:



“Doctrine
links individuals to certain types of utterance while consequently barring them
from all others.&nbsp; Doctrine effects a dual
subjection, that of speaking subjects to a discourse, and that of discourse to
the group, at least virtually, of speakers.”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[59]<!--[endif]-->



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The author, Robin
Morgan, believes she can save the world by naming the overall framework of what
terrorism essentially is.&nbsp; It is no surprise then that she asserts that
she is doing “metaphysical feminism”.&nbsp; By
providing essentialist, metaphysical notions of what terrorism is, she evades history, context,
culture, in the favoring of a doctrinal metanarrative.&nbsp; She provides an overall framework through
which we are supposed to understand this
thing called ‘terrorism’, and this is
an understanding that reminds us that whenever we hear the word ‘terrorism’
being used, that we should run to annihilate that ‘evil’, the “Demon Lover” –
any Christian fundamentalism here?&nbsp;&nbsp; She
plays into the hands of the powerful States, which are always hungry for
justifications for atrocities against whatever they call ‘terror’.&nbsp; Again, I do not wish to condone ‘acts of
terrorism’, but only to point out that to disregard history and specific social
processes that lead a community to terrorism is exactly what reproduces and, in
a very direct way, condones it.&nbsp;
Certainly, patriarchy is a very relevant matter to be taken into account
in discussing these issues, and issues of politics in general.&nbsp; Nevertheless, to go from there to the
positing of an archetypal “Demon Lover” is what condones terrorism as something inevitable in ‘human’ life.&nbsp; Instead of looking at specific areas of
conflict and acting to resolve them, the psychologism of ‘Euro-Western’ and
‘Euro-Westernizing’, individualistic, egotistical societies allows people to
remain somehow comfortable in their morally superior, arrogant position.&nbsp; This position is in many ways one of
self-annihilation, for it invites terrorism, as we see today in the
Israel-Palestine conflict, where terror is made into a justification for more
State repression, and so more terror, instead of the liberation of occupied
Palestinian lands.&nbsp; The pathologization
of the ‘other’ can become violence to the ‘self’.&nbsp; Robin Morgan does not stand up to her own
assertion that:



“No
serious attempt to find a definition [for ‘terrorism’] can be made in a vacuum,
in the absence of social, political, national, and cultural context.&nbsp; Nor can it be made in the absence of
historical context.”



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; If only.





Expert
Knowledge: Challenge to the Moralistic Assumptions on Terrorism, or New Frame
of Terrorism as a Natural Phenomenon?



…



In Conclusion



This
text had as a main objective to expose a cultural difficulty in differentiating
understanding from legitimation with regards to the fact of terrorism.&nbsp; In part, this may be due to the violence of
terrorist acts themselves, and certainly these escape any total understanding,
which would render them transparent.&nbsp;
However, I hope to have shown that this is not the case in the dominant
approaches to the subject, academic or State motivated, and that in order to
explain why terrorism and terrorists are considered as flaws in a human nature
by those power brokers, a cultural discourse has to be analyzed.&nbsp; In this work, we have seen that in order for
social change to happen in the direction of peace and cultural understanding,
terrorism and terrorists must be historicized, and much effort needs to go
towards unmaking or deconstructing the discourses that dominate in the West,
which place these historical, cultural, political acts in a foundation (human
nature, or an interiority) which is created by these same discourses, with
terrible consequences.&nbsp; After one starts
the task of historicizing, one thing becomes obvious: the difficulty in differentiating
State terror from non-State terror.&nbsp; And
this comes about as a necessity, since terrorism in all of its forms is
despicable.&nbsp; However, State terrorism has
lived through unlabeled and legitimized.&nbsp;
On the other hand, non-State terror has been conspicuously studied,
labeled, through a language that finds its causes as pre-determined, in a human
nature or interiority.&nbsp; Clearly, human
nature in this dominant discourse is only a gene or spiritual pool from which
an individual can be determined to be a terrorist or not.&nbsp;&nbsp; This makes us assume that this discourse
needs an “outside” for its completion, and this is the “outside” of history,
politics, culture, etc.&nbsp; Moreover, if
this discourse assumes the importance of this “outside”, when it assures us
that terrorism needs to be understood in historical context, then what assures
it that human nature or interiority has any relevance to an understanding of
terrorism and terrorists?&nbsp; My answer is
that the dominant discourse on terrorism and terrorists in the Western world
has a cultural dimension and shows this exactly when it tries to explain the
issues as a problem of “humanity” having to deal with its “ills”, which is a
very legitimated story in the West.&nbsp; In
this way, terrorism is never a particular reaction to a particular problem, but
a universal reaction to an unbalance in human nature.&nbsp; It is as if the problem is always totally
understood and controllable.&nbsp; The
“outside” then, the historical, cultural, political contingencies, in this
discourse, can come as second in importance to interiority, at best.

The
process through which we will have to go in order to come out of the danger to
all that ‘terrorism’ posits has to be one in which we take what we mean by
“democracy” seriously.&nbsp; In order to do
this, the voices that until now have been kept silent, the lives that have been
regarded as less valuable, these have to be accounted for.&nbsp; We can no longer live in a world where the
labels of ‘communist’, ‘terrorist’, ‘anarchist’, or whatever else that is simplistically
equated with ‘evil’, allows us not to listen to what these people are saying or
to pay attention to the historicity which turns a mass of people towards
radically engaged social change.&nbsp; In
fact, self-labeled communists and anarchists have been leading movements for
peace and justice worldwide<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[60]<!--[endif]-->. Clearly, these
groups have had their flaws, but they are only human.&nbsp; The idea that “ideologies are dead” is
just a justification for one’s own complicity with injustice.&nbsp; Many thinkers of anarchism, for example, like
Leo Tolstoy and Errico Malatesta, have always stressed that anarchism is
against violence.&nbsp; Malatesta writes:



“Anarchists are opposed to violence; everyone knows that.&nbsp; The main plank of anarchism is the removal of
violence from human relations…Violence is justifiable only when it is necessary
to defend oneself and others from violence.&nbsp;
It is where necessity ceases that crime begins.”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[61]<!--[endif]-->



This
rule of necessity applies to terrorism as well (even if it remains vague as a
rule).&nbsp; To understand necessity, if for
hope, prestige, communion with others, for resources, etc. that a “terrorist”
struggles for, is the task the we need to accomplish in diverse cultural,
political, and historical contingencies.&nbsp;
In the end, we may even conclude that we do not understand terrorism, we
just have hints to its causes, but it is imperative that we find - at least
partial - solutions to the diverse problems and causes of terrorism through our
engagement with all those whose lives and relatives are on the line.



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 

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&nbsp;




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<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->



<!--[endif]-->




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]--> See, for a discussion of nationalist History construction, Partha
Chatterjee: 1993.&nbsp; For a presentation of
‘subaltern’ histories, see Guha &amp; Spivak: 1988.&nbsp; For the role of Christianity in colonization,
see R. S. Sugirtharajah: 2001.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[2]<!--[endif]--> See Chaterjee, Partha: 1993.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[3]<!--[endif]--> By Laxmi Murthy, CorpWatch India, April 23, 2002.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[4]<!--[endif]--> Herman, Edward.&nbsp; 1982.&nbsp; The
Real Terror Network.&nbsp; (South End
Press: Boston, 1982).






<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[5]<!--[endif]--> See Haines, Gerald
K.&nbsp; The
Americanization of Brazil.&nbsp; A Study of
U.S. Cold War Diplomacy in the Third World, 1945-1954.&nbsp; (Scholarly Resources Inc.: Delaware, 1989).








<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[6]<!--[endif]--> Cited in Herman, Edward.&nbsp; The Real Terror Network




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[7]<!--[endif]--> See Herman, Edward: 1982.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[8]<!--[endif]--> See Haines, Gerald:&nbsp; 1989.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[9]<!--[endif]--> General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[10]<!--[endif]--> Here I do not propose that this is the only structure we may call
globalization.&nbsp; Other forms of
globalization exist; see for example Mander &amp;Goldsmith, The Case Against the Global Economy.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[11]<!--[endif]--> Ibid.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[12]<!--[endif]--> Ibid.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[13]<!--[endif]--> Brazil Today. April 20,
2002.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[14]<!--[endif]--> See Alternative Press Review.&nbsp; (V.7, N.1.&nbsp;
2002).




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[15]<!--[endif]--> See Said, Edward.&nbsp; The Politics of Dispossession.&nbsp; The Struggle for Palestinian
Self-Determination, 1969-1994. &nbsp;(Vintage Books: New York, 1994).




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[16]<!--[endif]--> Quoted from The New York
Times in Ahmad, Eqbal.&nbsp; Terrorism: Theirs &amp; Ours. (Seven
Stories Press: New York, 2001).




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[17]<!--[endif]--> Quoted from The Israeli
Occupation.&nbsp; Pamphlet published by
‘Jews for Justice in the Middle East’.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[18]<!--[endif]--> See Lynfield, Ben. Christian Science Monitor. 5-7-02.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[19]<!--[endif]--> San Francisco Chronicle.&nbsp; 4-18-02.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[20]<!--[endif]--> Ibid.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[21]<!--[endif]--> Speech given on April 25 at the University of California at
Berkeley.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[22]<!--[endif]--> Quoted from Kurtz, Howard from The
Washington Post&nbsp; in Abukhalil,
As’ad.&nbsp; Bin Laden, Islam, and America’s New “War on Terrorism” (Seven
Stories Press: New York, 2002).




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[23]<!--[endif]--> See Abukhalil: 2002.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[24]<!--[endif]--> See Rushdie, Salman.&nbsp; Imaginary Homelands. (Penguin Books: New
York, 1992).




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[25]<!--[endif]--> Why Are We Despised?
List of US Interventions, Invasions &amp; Assassinations -- Boulder Weekly, 2001.






<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[26]<!--[endif]--> Chomsky, Noam.&nbsp; 9-11.&nbsp;
(Seven Stories Press: New York, 2001).




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[27]<!--[endif]--> In fact, during the Soviet regime, rooted out by Islamic radicals
with the full command and arms support of the U.S., the women were allowed to
go to school and have other activities.&nbsp;
See Abukhalil: 2002 and also the documentary film Inside Afghanistan, an excellent portrait of the 80’s war.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[28]<!--[endif]--> See Abukhalil: 2002.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[29]<!--[endif]--> Ibid.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[30]<!--[endif]--> Chomsky, Noam: 2001.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[31]<!--[endif]--> Ibid.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[32]<!--[endif]--> See Alexander, Y. &amp; Brenner, E. (eds.)&nbsp; U.S.
Federal Legal Responses to Terrorism.&nbsp;
(Transnational Publishers, Inc.: New York, 2002).




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[33]<!--[endif]--> See Herman, Edward:&nbsp; 1982.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[34]<!--[endif]--> Ibid.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[35]<!--[endif]--> See Chomsky, Noam.&nbsp; Latin America.&nbsp; From Colonization to Globalization.&nbsp; (Ocean Press: New York, 1999).




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[36]<!--[endif]--> Ibid.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[37]<!--[endif]--> See Patwardhan:&nbsp; 2002.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[38]<!--[endif]--> See Ahamd, Eqbal:&nbsp; 2001.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[39]<!--[endif]--> See Chomsky, Noam: 2001.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[40]<!--[endif]--> See Abukhalil:&nbsp; 2002.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[41]<!--[endif]--> Speech by Tariq Ali, April 2002.&nbsp;





<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[42]<!--[endif]--> See Herman, Edward: 1982.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[43]<!--[endif]--> Ibid.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[44]<!--[endif]--> Foucault, Michel. “The Discourse on Language”.&nbsp; In The
Archaeology of Knowledge. (Pantheon Books: New York, 1972).




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[45]<!--[endif]--> As Michel Foucault has shown in his works Madness and Civilization and Discipline
and Punish, besides others.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[46]<!--[endif]--> See Escobar: 1995.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[47]<!--[endif]--> For examples of ethnocentrism affecting the Arab world, see Said,
Edward.&nbsp; Orientalism. (Vintage Books: New York, 1978).




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[48]<!--[endif]--> See Abukhalil:&nbsp; 2002.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[49]<!--[endif]--> See Abukhalil, 2004.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[50]<!--[endif]--> Ibid.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[51]<!--[endif]--> Netanyahu, Benjamin.&nbsp; Fighting Terrorism.&nbsp; How Democracies Can Defeat the International
Terrorist Network.&nbsp; (Farrar, Straus
and Giroux: New York, 2001).




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[52]<!--[endif]--> Ibid.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[53]<!--[endif]--> See Ahmad: 2001.&nbsp; Also
Abukhalil: 2002.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[54]<!--[endif]--> The “Axis of Evil” are countries targeted by Bush as the ones that
are supposedly ‘terrorist’.&nbsp; This term,
used to refer to the populations and States of China, Russia, Iraq, North
Korea, Syria, Iran, and Lybia, has provoked revolt even in the U.S.&nbsp; The racism of the affirmation is flagrant.&nbsp; See San
Francisco Chronicle. 3-9-02.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[55]<!--[endif]--> See Clifford, James &amp; Marcus, George E.&nbsp; Writing
Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography.&nbsp; (Univ. of California Press: Berkeley, 1986).




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[56]<!--[endif]--> See Chomsky, Noam:&nbsp; 2000.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[57]<!--[endif]--> See Ahmad: 2001.




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[58]<!--[endif]--> See Churchill, Ward.&nbsp; Pacifism as Pathology.&nbsp; (Arbeiter Ring: Winnipeg, 1998).




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[59]<!--[endif]--> Foucault, Michel. “The Discourse on Language”.&nbsp; In The
Archaeology of Knowledge. 




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[60]<!--[endif]--> About 300,000 people mobilized for global justice in Genova in
2001, when an Italian anarchist was killed by the police and several others
arrested.&nbsp; In web http://www.mwaw.org/




<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[61]<!--[endif]--> See Malatesta, Errico.&nbsp; Life &amp; Ideas. &nbsp;(Freedom Press: London, 1993).