How does one define an act of terrorism? It seems obvious that a suicide bomber flying a plane into a government building and killing ordinary people would qualify. But apparently not. Apparently, in the United States, there is an important qualifier – the person must be a foreigner, and preferably a Muslim. If he is an American protesting “big government”, well, tut-tut, killing people is bad, but we should empathize with the poor guy, right? After all, this is a common sentiment among the right, even among elected officials. And yet, when a foreigner does something similar, forget empathy. Forget even giving him a fair trial – this same macho right will be first in line calling for him to tortured (to make sure we get all the information, you see) and thrown into a military brig like the dog he is.
I’ve come to expect these double standards on the right, but I don’t expect it from the media. Oh sure, I expect laziness, superficiality, and obsequiousness, but I do not expect this morally cavalier attitude, this seeping Palinization of discourse. Glenn Greenwald has a must-read on an internal Newsweek debate on whether they should use the word terrorist. And they all admit it – Americans don’t qualify. Managing Editor Kathy Jones says as much. And here is this whopper from reporter Dan Stone:
“Yep, comes down to ID. This guy was a regular guy-next-door Joe Schmo. Terrorists have beards in live in caves. He was also an American, so targeting the IRS seems more a political statement — albeit a crazy one — whereas Abdulmutallab was an attack on our freedom.”
Incredible. Journalists have bought fully into the phony ideological of American exceptionalism, the notion that America is God’s chosen nation where different rules apply. Hard-nosed secular journalists borrow liberally from hard-edged Calvinism. It now makes more sense that they will not use the word “torture” when it comes to America (or Israel, for that matter), but will use that word when other countries do exactly the same thing.
As usual, it all boils down to consequentialism. The act of political murder, or torture, is not intrinsically evil. It all depends on the circumstances, and who is doing it. Thus we get a bizarre situation – an Iraqi who attacks an occupying army in his own country is deemed a “terrorist”, but an American who deliberately targets civilians in America is not. If a communist government uses waterboarding, or sleep deprivation, ot stress positions, or persistent beating, it is torture, but if the American government does it, it is defending freedom. Words convey meaning.
Let’s have some greater clarity about the object of the act. Killing civilians, terrorism, torture are always evil, regardless of circumstances. Resorting to this kind of Orwellian language is just the first step on the road to moral relativism, the first act in a consequentialist nightmare.
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