T-words still not cricket at the NYT
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The New York Times is maintaining the policy criticized a few months ago by Clark Hoyt ("Separating the Terror and the Terrorists", 12/13/2008). Hoyt, the NYT's "Public Editor", said that
My own broad guideline: If it looks as if it was intended to sow terror and it shocks the conscience, whether it is planes flying into the World Trade Center, gunmen shooting up Mumbai, or a political killer in a little girl’s bedroom, I’d call it terrorism — by terrorists.
His paper, he says, is "more conservative in their use [of these terms] than I would be". This conservatism continues in the coverage of Tuesday's attack in Lahore on the Sri Lankan cricket team — the NYT story ("8 Die as Gunmen in Pakistan Attack Cricket Team", 3/3/2009) uses "gunmen", "attackers", and "assailants", and refers to the November attackers in Mumbai as "militants".
In contrast, the T-words were used by Bloomberg ("Terrorists in Lahore kill 5 police, Attack Cricketers", 3/3/2009), the (London) Times ("Cricket must support Pakistan after terrorists target the sport for the first time", 3/3/2009), the Telegraph ("Sri Lanka cricket attacks: Terrorists hurt international brotherhood of sport", 3/3/2009), the Guardian ("Sri Lanka cricket team attack echoes deadly Mumbai offensive", 3/3/2009), The Age (Australia) ("Pakistan terror nightmare", 3/4/2009), Xinhua ("Terror attack on Sri Lankan cricket team perpetrated by enemies of Pakistan-Sri Lanka friendship" 3/3/2009), the (Pakistani) Daily Times ("National Assembly condemns Lahore terrorist attack") and many other sources.
The Guardian's original story starts out with "gunmen":
Fourteen masked and heavily armed gunmen remain at large today after launching an audacious commando-style attack on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, killing six policemen and injuring seven players and officials.
but calls the Mumbai incidents "terror attacks"
In scenes similar to the terror attacks on Mumbai in November, the gunmen opened fire with AK47s, grenades and a rocket launcher, spraying the Sri Lankan team bus with bullets as it drove to the 60,000-seater Gaddafi stadium in Lahore.
and later in the article, uses "terrorists" in the reporter's own voice, though in a somewhat hypothetical context:
Today's attack in Lahore makes it appear that terrorists may have adopted new tactics, preferring guns to suicide bombings.
A later background story uses "terrorists" in its lead sentence to name the Mumbai attackers:
The attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan's cultural capital, Lahore, bears all the hallmarks of the terrorists behind the Mumbai offensive, the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba.
As Clark Hoyt wrote
What you call someone matters. If he is a terrorist, he is an enemy of all civilized people, and his cause is less worthy of consideration.
In the case of the Lahore attack, it's not yet clear what cause (other than political destablization in Pakistan) its authors espouse, because no group has claimed responsibility, and the police investigation (which the Guardian describes as "shambolic") seems unlikely to produce clear and believable results. But the attack itself seems to meet all the usual T-word criteria: non-state violence deliberately targeting civilians in order to promote fear for political ends. So the NYT is being consistent, at least, in refusing to change its editorial policy for a case in which no one, anywhere in the world, seems willing to publicly support or even excuse the, well, terrorists.
Several other news outlets, including Reuters, AFP, AP, etc. are also sticking with "gunmen", "assailants", "attackers", or "militants". But even Al Jazeera ("Cricketers wounded in Lahore attack"), which uses "armed men", "attackers", and "assailants" when describing the events in its own voice, quotes Lahore's police chief and the Punjabi governor calling them "terrorists" (which the cited NYT story did not do).
On the other hand, the NYT story does use T-words in expressing some generalities near the end, for example:
One South Asia specialist also raised the possibility that Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka might have asked Lashkar-e-Taiba militants in Pakistan to attack the cricket team. If true, this would be an ominous sign of collaboration between regional terrorist groups.
It strikes me as odd to call the Tigers and LeT "regional terrorist groups", while referring to the LeT members who might hypothetically have been recruited as "Lashkar-e-Taiba militants" — and using the usual "gunmen", "assailants", "attackers" etc. to describe the unknown individuals, of unknown allegiance, who actually did carry out the attack.
In the next paragraph, the story says that "American experts voiced concern that such attacks might be the new terrorist strike of choice instead of suicide bombings"; but then goes on to say that
The attack, which began at 9 a.m. Tuesday, appeared to have been well planned. Because it occurred on the third day of the cricketers’ match, the assailants had time to carry out reconnaissance on the previous mornings.
So curiously, the story uses terrorist several times in non-quoted contexts, but only to refer to groups as a whole, or to types of attack, never to individual group members or to the actual perpetrators of the latest "terrorist strike of choice". I wonder if this is an explicit editorial policy, or just a case where some opinion leakage is occurring in slightly more abstract referential contexts.
Tybalt said,
March 4, 2009 @ 11:12 am
"But the attack itself seems to meet all the usual T-word criteria: non-state violence deliberately targeting civilians in order to promote fear for political ends."
I think the claim is utter bollocks, but in the interests of balance I should point out that a very large proportion of Pakistani opinion believes that this is in fact state-sponsored violence and that India is responsible…
[(myl) Based on the reporting and commentary from Pakistan that I've seen (e.g. here), I'm not sure how large the proportion is, though clearly there are some who do think that way. But in any case, I don't believe that this possibility is involved in the NYT's editorial decision to avoid T-words in describing this incident. ]
Stephen Jones said,
March 4, 2009 @ 12:52 pm
Basically calling somebody a terrorist means you don't approve of their ideology; if you do you call them 'freedom fighters'.
As for many in Pakistan believing the attack was sponsored by the Indian intellgence services, it's also true that many in Pakistan, and elsewhere, believe it was sponsored by the Pakistani intelligence services.
SteveDT said,
March 4, 2009 @ 1:16 pm
Clark Hoyt:
This seems to be an admission that the use of the word terrorist is more of a value judgment than a descriptive term. Furthermore, it is an illogical value judgment. I can imagine a terrorist having a valid cause (even if terrorism itself is always wrong), and someone who engages in violence without a valid cause not being a terrorist. But many people use the word terrorist like Hoyt does and would not agree.
Mark Liberman said,
March 4, 2009 @ 1:22 pm
Stephen Jones: Basically calling somebody a terrorist means you don't approve of their ideology; if you do you call them 'freedom fighters'.
With respect, I think that this is pernicious nonsense, if it's taken to imply that approving of someone's goals means that you need to applaud (or at least fail to label in a pejorative way) any means that they choose.
Whoever the Lahore attackers were, and whatever their goals were, it seems appropriate to me for a news organization to disapprove of shooting up buses full of visiting cricket players, and to indicate this attitude by calling the attackers "terrorists". And in this particular case, none of the theories about who the attackers were and why they did it would support an analysis in which their goal was anything that it would be rational to call "freedom".
SteveDT said,
March 4, 2009 @ 1:49 pm
I wouldn't call terrorists freedom fighters, because that suggests approval of what they do, but why can't terrorists have freedom as a goal? That makes no sense.
To use a different example. A radical environmentalist engages in terrorism. That doesn't mean that environmentalism is not a valid goal.
[(myl) Exactly. ]
Nathan Myers said,
March 4, 2009 @ 2:48 pm
What seems peculiar to me is the inversion: they are happy to call the groups, and the individuals, terrorists, but not the act. From where I sit, it's easy to judge the act unambiguously "terrorist", but the individuals and groups less so.
Organs of the U.S. have very frequently sponsored or themselves engaged in terrorist acts, some under the auspices of the present administration. Does that make the U.S. as a whole a terrorist organization? Does that make each U.S. citizen a terrorist? Many U.S. citizens, and some legislators, have been doing everything we can to try to stop the U.S. participation in terrorist activity.
Mark P said,
March 4, 2009 @ 2:51 pm
I do not agree completely. I agree that people who shoot up a bus carrying cricket players have done a reprehensible thing that qualifies them as terrorists. However, I do not agree that it's a news organization's place to tell me that the people are terrorists. In principle, a news report should do only that: report. It should be up to the reader or viewer to decide what it means, like Fox News says (but, like virtually every news organization, does not practice). It is surely the place of an editorial writer to label people like that terrorists, but it is not the place of a reporter to do so.
acilius said,
March 4, 2009 @ 3:05 pm
I concur with Mark P's comment: "I agree that people who shoot up a bus carrying cricket players have done a reprehensible thing that qualifies them as terrorists. However, I do not agree that it's a news organization's place to tell me that the people are terrorists." I can form that value judgment for myself.
Mark F. said,
March 4, 2009 @ 3:17 pm
Nathan Myers: "What seems peculiar to me is the inversion: they are happy to call the groups, and the individuals, terrorists, but not the act."
I'm not sure that's quite right. The individuals were called things like 'assailants' or 'gunmen'. And the characterization of the act as terrorism was tacitly accepted in the sentence "American experts voiced concern that such attacks might be the new terrorist strike of choice instead of suicide bombings."
Frankly, the Times' guidelines feel about right to me. For them to have said "In scenes similar to the attacks on Mumbai in November, the terrorists opened fire with AK47s,…" would have felt like they were actively trying to stir up my emotions and direct my anger towards the perpetrators. (Not that they don't deserve it.)
For groups, on the other hand, there is often some official characterization of them as terror groups, so the Times isn't rendering its own judgment. And it's the only ready way to characterize the groups it's talking about.
Mark Liberman said,
March 4, 2009 @ 3:51 pm
acilius: I do not agree that it's a news organization's place to tell me that the people are terrorists. I can form that value judgment for myself.
How do you feel about a news organization telling you that people are "pirates", as the NYT has done on a dozen or so occasions in the past mont (some Somali pirates, some "digital pirates")?
Similarly, there have been a dozen or so stories that refer to people as "muggers".
Do you think that these stories instead should have used some euphemisms without negative connotations? The Somali pirates and the muggers were also certainly "attackers", "gunmen", "assailants", and perhaps also "militants"… The digital pirates (who in some cases were involved in large-scale enterprises for profit) might have been called "unauthorized manufacturers" or something of the sort.
mollymooly said,
March 4, 2009 @ 5:04 pm
One problem with the usual definition of "terrorist" is the "targeting of civilians" bit. In the age of Total War, who defines what a civilian is? Political-violence groups broaden the list of "legitimate targets":
Of course, one is not obliged to accept the gunmen's definition; of course, the far end of the preceding spectrum is clearly untenable for the non-brainwashed; and of course, foreign cricketers are at that end of the spectrum.
dr pepper said,
March 4, 2009 @ 5:12 pm
Terrorism is the use of violence to persuade. For instance, the IRA, somewhat illogically, blew up Irish people in a bid to make the British leave. The Mafia shoots judges and prosecuters to discourage legal action against them. There is always a message that people will stop dying if some other party complies with the killers' desires. If you just kill people and don't make such an offer, you may be causing terror, but you aren't a terrorist.
Mark P said,
March 4, 2009 @ 5:22 pm
I don't think those are the same things. If someone robs a bank, there is no question that a bank was robbed and the person who did it is a bank robber. If someone mugs a person, that makes the person a mugger. If someone murders someone, that makes him a murderer. In the same way, someone committing an act of terrorism is a terrorist. But the definition of an act of terrorism is not as clear-cut as the act of robbing a bank. Killing innocent civilians is sometimes an act of terrorism and sometimes an unavoidable and regrettable incident of collateral damage, depending on who does the shooting, who gets shot, and who is describing the incident. But robbing a bank is always just robbing a bank. Most of us probably judge that this incident was an act of terrorism, but that is a judgement not required when a bank is robbed or a person is mugged.
Calling someone a terrorist is a way of defining one's opponents, in the same way as calling an abortionist a murderer. The term is used to define "us" and "them" often enough that "they" might rightfully become suspicious of the motives of someone who uses the term.
Mark F. said,
March 4, 2009 @ 5:48 pm
I think 'terrorist', like 'racist' and 'cult', is a word for which the function of conveying an attitude has come to dominate the function of specifying a category. There's no sharp boundary between a word with negative connotations, like 'mugger', and a word whose connotations have come to dominate, like 'terrorist', but I think there is a difference between them. 'Terrorist', like 'racist' but unlike 'mugger', is often subject to manipulation by people who come up with an explicit, reasonable-sounding definition that happens to include something they want to condemn. I think it's entirely reasonable for a news outlet to be chary of using the term.
Philip said,
March 4, 2009 @ 5:53 pm
"One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" = "pernicious nonsense"?
What about state terrorism? Was dropping an atomic bomb on the civilian population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a terrrorist act?
The bombing of Guernica during the Spanish civil war appalled "civilized" people, but just a few years later, it was standard operating procedure.
If the allies had lost WWII, I think it's pretty safe to assume that many of our leaders and generals would have been tried as war criminals.
[(myl) Perhaps so. But from this, you conclude that shooting up a bus full of cricket players is a noble endeavor, or at least one that we should not judge by calling it a name with negative associations? ]
Katherine said,
March 4, 2009 @ 6:29 pm
My personal definition of the word "terrorism" is any act which makes a group of people fear that a similar thing could happen to them, and that isn't done with a specific goal in mind (other than causing terror!). So if an anti-whaling group blows up a whaling ship, I would not call that terrorism as it only affects a specific group of people, and is done with a specific goal in mind (to stop whaling, presumably). I'm not saying it is a bad thing, but it certainly does not have me in terror of being blown up. The world trade centre I would call terrorism, as people in any tall building could also fear it happening to them, and it was not done with any specific goal in mind (as far as I am aware) other than out of hatred and wanting to cause terror and so on.
A terrorist is someone who commits or intends to commit terrorism, or a group that encourages their members to commit terrorism I suppose.
Mark P said,
March 4, 2009 @ 6:38 pm
ML: who is "we"? I certainly don't object to calling the shooters terrorists. But to me the issue is not whether "we" should call shooting up a bus an act of terrorism, but how far reporters should go in defining the subjects of their stories. There is at least a fiction that reporters are disinterested observers who do not inject their judgement into their reports. If we go with that fiction, the reporter can describe (or show) the events in great detail, simply omitting the word "terrorist", while the editorial writers and everyone else can call them what they please.
[(myl) But why is this case different from (for example) one of the many recent stories about Somali "pirates"? You could also use words like "attackers", "assailants", "gunmen" to describe the individuals who use AK-47s and RPG launchers to take over ships on the high seas, "simply omitting the word [pirate]". But I've never seen a news story that did that. ]
Paul Kay said,
March 4, 2009 @ 6:49 pm
Maybe the tendency of reporters or editors to favor terrorist when talking in the abstract about the groups involved in certain attacks and words like gunmen, assailants, or attackers when denoting the individuals actually committing the acts has something to do with the descriptive content of the words: terrorist stresses the intended consequence of the action — terror, while words like gunmen, assailants, or attackers describe the physical nature of the action committed more than its effect. (The use of militants for the individuals involved in these acts of physical violence, I have to confess, doesn't fit this distinction very well.)
mae said,
March 4, 2009 @ 7:30 pm
Related to this discussion:
A recent article in the NYT explored Arab attitudes with regard to Hamas and other groups that target Israeli and other civilians (including school children), but would prefer to be known by some other word than terrorist.
The essence: Arabs interviewed think that Americans need to avoid the term "terrorists" no matter how we define it, because the Arabs don't like the word.
"Whether the United States has declined to speak with hostile groups because it considers them terrorists, or whether it slaps the terrorist label on groups it wants to sanction or marginalize, a battle over the term terrorist has become a proxy for the larger issues that divide Washington and the Arab public."
—"Disentangling Layers of a Loaded Term in Search of a Thread of Peace" by MICHAEL SLACKMAN, February 25, 2009.
Liz said,
March 4, 2009 @ 7:51 pm
If I put a gun to Bernie Madoff's head and demand all his money, what exactly am I? Does who I am depend on my knowledge and past history or lack thereof with him?
Scenario 1) I don't read the paper, have no investable money, have no idea who BM is either by sight or reputation.
Scenario 2) I read the paper, have investable money, know who BM is by sight and reputation (and therefore knew that I was assaulting BM), but did not invest with him.
Scenario 3) I read the paper, have (had) investable money, know who BM is by sight and reputation, knew that I was assaulting BM, and had invested a very large amount of money with him which is now all gone and I am dead broke and can't pay for my husband's cancer treatment.
For the sake of the scenario, let us assume that BM was carrying his wife's diamonds, and I now possess them as a result of my "interaction" with him.
S.V.Ramanan said,
March 4, 2009 @ 7:53 pm
The selection of words is determined by the stand one takes. For Islamic fundamentalists, a terrorist is a jihadi or martyr; the perpetrator of killing is assassin from the view of the assassinated or establishment. Therefore one must assume that the choice of words reflect the conviction/views of the writer, assuming he can handle the language, or he/she is deliberately misleading..
[(myl) The basic situation seems to me to be very simple. A group of civilians who use guns and grenades to take over an oil tanker and hold it for ransom are pirates. A group of civilians who attack a busload of visiting cricket players with guns and grenades in order to make a political point are terrorists. A journalist who refuses to use the words that fit, on any of the grounds so far suggested in these comments (that governments have sometimes done even worse things; that it's sometimes hard to determine where to draw the terminological line; that some people don't like it if you call things by their right names) is morally confused, at best. ]
Garrett Wollman said,
March 4, 2009 @ 9:24 pm
myl writes: "The basic situation seems to me to be very simple. A group of civilians who use guns and grenades to take over an oil tanker and hold it for ransom are pirates. A group of civilians who attack a busload of visiting cricket players with guns and grenades in order to make a political point are terrorists."
I assume that journalism schools still teach reporters that no killing is a "murder" until someone has been convicted of that crime. I hope they would make the obvious connection when alleged acts of "piracy" and "terrorism" are being reported. It may not be necessary to wait until there is a conviction in a court of law, but they really should wait until there is enough reliable evidence in the public domain to meet the definition of the crime in the legal system having jurisdiction.
[(myl) I don't believe that "terrorism" is a defined crime, though I don't know anything about Pakistani law. But anyhow, in this case, no individuals have been identified, so it's not like you're prejudging anyone in particular by calling the dozen or so unknown people who used guns and grenades on the convoy "terrorists". The time to (quite appropriately) use phrases like "alleged terrorist" would be when and if some specific person is arrested and charged with having taken part in the attack. At present, though, if you were being hyper-careful about not prejudging anything, questioning even whether the attack took place as alleged, shouldn't you also talk about the "alleged gunmen" or "alleged attackers"? But no one is doing that, anyhow not in the English-language media that I've seen. ]
Nathan Myers said,
March 4, 2009 @ 9:27 pm
Fine, somebody with a gun in his hand doing terrorism is a terrorist. But what about the driver who delivered him? How about the leader of the group that organized it? How about a member of the group, who didn't know it was going to happen? How about somebody who sent them money? How about the president of the country whose government sent them money? How about a citizen of that country?
Terrorism itself is easy enough to identify. "Terrorist" is more ambiguous, and therefore less meaningful.
Albatross said,
March 4, 2009 @ 10:05 pm
Garrett writes: I hope they would make the obvious connection when alleged acts of "piracy" and "terrorism" are being reported. It may not be necessary to wait until there is a conviction in a court of law, but they really should wait until there is enough reliable evidence in the public domain to meet the definition of the crime in the legal system having jurisdiction.
Shooting up a sports team's bus is enough reliable evidence for me. I'll go on the assumption that they are terrorists, even though I'm not an educated journalist.
dr pepper said,
March 4, 2009 @ 10:13 pm
@S.V.Ramanan
Overgeneralization. Not every islamic fundamentalist is an advocate or apologist for murder.
Skullturf Q. Beavispants said,
March 4, 2009 @ 11:58 pm
My two cents:
The first time I read about news agencies reluctant to use the word "terrorist", my immediate gut reaction was something like, "This is taking relativism or non-judgmental-ism too far. Certainly there are some violent acts, that deliberately target civilians, with the goal of instilling fear or terror in the population, and thus to try to intimidate people in power into doing something to support their political cause."
On reflection, though, I think that a news organization eschewing the word "terrorist" is actually a reasonable approach, or at least can be taken as consistent with some journalistic principles. And I wouldn't be particularly bothered if the same news organization decided they were no longer going to use the word "pirate". I guess a big part of my reasoning is that I see no problem if a group of journalists decides to take a "bare bones" approach. Describe gunmen as gunmen; describe people shooting athletes as having shot athletes, and so on.
An earlier commenter said something to the effect of "I can decide for myself whether the label of 'terrorism' applies." Somewhat similarly, if I read a news story about a young child who requires a multiple organ transplant, or a fast-living entertainer who has died at 35, it's fine with me if a more staid or restrained news outlet avoids describing the situation as "tragic" or "poignant" or what-have-you, and just presents the facts.
Of course, it depends a lot on the news organization in question, and the style and tone they have adapted for themselves. I'm just saying that for me, I no longer have much of a problem if a particular news organization decides to avoid the word "terrorist".
Stephen Jones said,
March 5, 2009 @ 12:44 am
The Sri Lankan case is bizarre, Mike, but in most cases one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. Perhaps you've forgotten all the 'Nelson Mandela is a terrorist' that came from the right (including the Conservative party in the UK) in the 1980s. Or the fulsome praise the Reagan administration gave to the Nicaraguan contra.
Stephen Jones said,
March 5, 2009 @ 1:02 am
The problem with this is that clear-cut cases are few and far between (and I don't think the fact I live in Sri Lanka and have long been a fervent supporter of the cricket team has anything to do with my judgement). And one has to presume that the immediate news one gets is accurate andcomplete. A blanket ban on the term 'terrorist' probably causes less trouble than asking for journalists to use their selective judgement in situations they don't have time to ponder the matter. I don't see any objection to using the word 'gunmen', perfectly accurate.
As for Mike's point about Somali pirates, I must confess bemusement. Piracy is a clearly defined crime, involving forcibly boarding another vessel at sea, which is precisely what the Somalis were doing. It's as much a legitimate job description (though not a legitimate job) as Professor of Computational Linguistics.
Another point is that the use of the word terrorist has knock one effects. You say a group is a terrorist group and then you can accuse of being terrorism apologists for all those who defend it, or even criticize those opposed to it. Are the LTTE a terrorist group? I would definitely say so. Are the hundreds of thousands in the Tamil diaspora in Canada, the US and UK who support them terrorist supporters? You could make a good argument in favour. Are those opposing action against them in cahoots with terrorism? And now we are on the slippery slope that enabled the Lankan government chief whip to call the UN deputy commissioner, Sir John Holmes a terrorist, because he criticized certain actions of the Lankan government.
Mark P said,
March 5, 2009 @ 8:42 am
ML: Regarding "pirate" vs "terrorist", don't look for consistency or even rationality from the news media. Sometimes they have rules and sometimes they make sense. And sometimes they follow the rules.
I agree that the act in question qualifies as terrorism, given the circumstances, but I continue to disagree that it is a journalist's responsibility to condemn it. A reporter's job is to report, not pass any kind of judgement. That's for the editorial writers and the rest of us.
Mossy said,
March 5, 2009 @ 10:08 am
I work for a newspaper with a stylebook/policy of not using connotative words in news reports, including the words “terrorism” and “terrorists,” which are hot-button derogatory words. It isn’t a blanket policy; “terrorists” and “terrorism” were used in reports about Beslan. But the paper generally sticks to descriptive words like assailant and bomb-thrower.
Pirates, mugger, murderer, etc. are different from terrorists in that they (generally) don’t commit these acts for political or ideological goals. Terrorism is “the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature.” By calling someone a terrorist, you imply that his cause is not legitimate. In most cases, most people would agree. The ends don’t justify the means. But in other cases it’s not so clear. (Are PETA activists who throw paint on people wearing fur coats terrorists?)
The policy has stopped day-long arguments among reporters and editors over what to call someone. If the paper wants to make its point of view clear, it has the OpEd page. And I don’t think it has made it difficult for readers to form their own opinions.
ajay said,
March 5, 2009 @ 10:29 am
I assume that journalism schools still teach reporters that no killing is a "murder" until someone has been convicted of that crime.
I shouldn't think so for a minute; or would you correct someone who talked about "the murder of John F Kennedy"? Or "the murder of Oscar Romero"? Or "the murder of Rajiv Gandhi"? Olof Palme? Dian Fossey? The Jack the Ripper victims? ("Well, I suppose it could have been self defence. Or accident!")
Trimegistus said,
March 5, 2009 @ 10:33 am
It's simple: since January, the Times can no longer admit any terrorism is occurring. Therefore they must use euphemisms.
Stephen Jones said,
March 5, 2009 @ 12:17 pm
There is another factor. The word 'terrorist' has been so misused and abused that any media outlet that puts the word in an article immediately loses credibility.
Then there is the question of deciding motive. Were the gunmen intending to kill the Lankan cricketers in the bus or kidnap them as initial investigations stated (and which would certainly have made more sense)? Does kidnapping a cricket team count as a terrorist action?
And then what happens when an organization sometimes carries out terrorist acts and sometimes doesn't. The LTTE has carried out countless acts of terrorism, but is also a conventional fighting force. Its recent attempt with light aircraft to bomb the military installations on Slave Island (it failed and hit the Inland Revenue Department next door) and the military airport at Katunayake, were however much more akin to conventional military actions in a civil war, and I would hesitate to describe them as terrorist actions. If the person who set up the bombs for the planes also set up the bombs for the bus bomb that blew up dozens of civilians some months back was the same person, would he have been a part-time terrorist?
dr pepper said,
March 5, 2009 @ 2:30 pm
I wrote this a while back:
Khadafi
Khadafi is an evil man
Because he puts bombs
In suitcases
We the good guys
Drop our bombs from airplanes
As God intended
Irene said,
March 5, 2009 @ 5:45 pm
To me, terrorism is like the term "hate crime", which I don't really get. If I harm you on purpose, does the reason matter? Regardless of what they might say, I think many terrorists just simply enjoy causing mayhem and go looking for a reason to do it. If I must call them a name, I prefer thugs.
Albatross said,
March 5, 2009 @ 8:27 pm
Irene,
The "reason" very much matters with terrorism. Terrorists perform violence on civilians to scare the populace into taking some action or refraining from some action for the benefit of the terrorists' cause. It worked in Spain in 2004 when terrorist bombs convinced the populace to vote in a government that would withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq. The terrorists won that one. So, no, they weren't simply enjoying "causing mayhem." They were sowing terror, and they succeeded.
"Terrorism" is a very good term for their actions.
Forrest said,
March 9, 2009 @ 5:10 pm
The pirates versus terrorists question has a simple answer: forcibly boarding other peoples' boats cleanly distinguishes pirates from most other types of gunmen. Terrorists don't seem to have a precise, technical definition, at least one that most people agree on.
Another comment alluded to environmental terrorism. Until the (second) Bush administration, it was rare or unheard of for people like "Earth Liberation Front" members to be called domestic terrorists; it's become a lot more common, in the public sphere. These people use violence against property to achieve political goals … and have been very lucky that nobody was working late in their target sites during any of their attacks. Does the lack of human injuries make these people not terrorists? Their tactics are a bit different from boycotts.