If one accepts that broadened definition of "terrorism" -- that it includes violence that targets not only civilians but also combatants who are unarmed or not engaged in combat at the time of the attack -- it seems impossible to exclude from that term many of the acts in which the U.S. and our allies routinely engage. Indeed, a large part of our "war" strategy is to kill people we deem to be "terrorists" or "combatants" without regard to whether they're armed or engaged in hostilities at the moment we kill them. Isn't that exactly what we do when we use drone attacks in Pakistan? [...]The "goodness" of one side against another doesn't matter much in the laws of war. Either way, I suppose I'm less interested in whether Hasan committed "terrorism" than I am in what right-wing ideologues want to do with the label. As Matt Duss put it: "the definition of terrorism is not 'any violence by any Muslim anywhere at any time for any reason'." Unfortunately, that was the working definition used by the Bush administration since 9-11: picture for a moment the breathless press conferences and raised terrorism Amber alerts had the attack happened at this time last year.It's likely that there will always be a lack of clarity about exactly what motivated Hasan -- some combination of mental instability, religious fervor and political conviction -- but, regardless of motive, the only way to define an attack on soldiers as an act of "terrorism" is to indict ourselves in the same way.
Emblematic of neo-conservative attempts to portray Islam as violent, today David Brooks inarticulately stated in his column that the "struggle against Islam is the central feature of American foreign policy." This is wrong. The struggle is against Islamofascism. Just as the violence committed by anti-choice activist Scott Roeder when assassinating Dr. George Tiller did not stem from Christianity, but from Christianism. They are both a radical, political perversion of religion. Sadly, a writer of Brooks' caliber knows exactly what he is doing.
