Antora Rahman
POLI
480 W
Professor
Shirk
Discussion Paper on Transnational and Non-State Violence
What exactly
is terrorism? Well, according to the Department of State, it is “the unlawful use of violence or threat of violence to instill
fear and coerce governments or societies. Terrorism is often motivated by
religious, political, or other ideological beliefs and committed in the pursuit
of goals that are usually political”. Hence, it has become the world’s
duty to engage in a war on terror. That sounds very noble but there’s just one
problem: how does one exactly attack terrorism when there’s something called
globalization infecting everyone and everywhere? And is the war on terror really
a new problem that we all suddenly decided to tackle? Not really. This calls
for a trip down the world’s memory lane.
Mr. Philip Bobbit has kindly broken it down
in three sections: princely state, kingly state, and territorial state
terrorists—or in other words, mercenaries and pirates. During the era of
princely states, each battle in the name of religious ideologies birthed groups
of soldiers whose sole purpose in life was to go the extra mile in obliterating
innocent lives just because they could. Kingly states gave rise to authority backed
privateers, or groups of Black Beards, in the open seas to cut each other off,
all in the name of Great Britain, France, Spanish, Portugal, and etc.
Territorial states, in the good hearted belief in sovereignty, decided that
pirates weren’t needed anymore so they were told to walk the plank. So what
happened to these pirates? Well like the evolving world, terrorism also played
the game of survival of the fittest.
Now terror isn’t just attributed to mercenaries
and pirates; it can be anyone anywhere. We hear of terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda
all the time but what have they actually done as terrorists? They instilled
fear in all of us. If it’s fear they’re instilling, what’s to say the neighbor
next door isn’t a terrorist if this neighbor happens to be someone who creeps
on children? What’s to say our governments in the name of keeping us safe aren’t
terrorists if they are listening in on civilian phone conversations and
internet searches? What’s to say multi-national corporations aren’t terrorists
if they’re working poverty ridden folk in third world countries to the bone in
hazardous conditions with bare minimum wages? What’s to say we aren’t
terrorists ourselves for trying to force our ideals on the rest of the world?
Take the drone issue, for example, the US
government is involved in drone strikes in Pakistan, clearly interfering with
this country’s sovereignty on the basis that Pakistan has been missing in
action in battling non state actors who pose a terror threat to the US. While many
understand why it must be necessary in the interest of national security, isn’t
such preemptive action also considered terrorism? Moreover, such action was
never decided upon by the common people of the US, so doesn’t that pose some
threat to the nation, that the US government can start making decisions to use
drone strikes domestically without our consent? There’s already the NSA playing
big brother, instilling some sort of vulnerability in us so what’s next?
The point being made here is that terrorism
has been a part of the world for a long time and it will continue to exist as long
as we are human and we feel fear. The Department of State can define terrorism
however way it wants but if we really look at it, as long as society can feel
exposed and unprotected, terror can come from any direction be it Al Qaeda or
one’s own parents. There’s no way to root out the cause or label who’s a
terrorist and who’s not. All we can do is keep fighting this battle blindly and
hope that one day we can all become robots. Until then, good luck and good
night.
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