Be Afraid... Be Very Afraid

One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter - or so the saying goes. This statement holds true, at least, as a cynical expression of popular perceptions. A divisive figures like Yasser Arafat may remain a hero to his supporters and an utter scoundrel to his opponents. And the line does sometimes blur. Even the generally respected Nelson Mandela had occasion to resort to unprincipled violence in his younger days. But the issue persists: do subjective considerations alone distinguish terrorists and freedom fighters?

The United Nations experienced intense difficulty last year when it attempted to draft a definition of terrorism acceptable to its member states. In order to avert further international controversy, I humbly offer a solitary criterion which substantially contributes towards distinguishing freedom fighters from terrorists: freedom fighters content themselves with attacking the people actually responsible for oppressing them. Terrorists, conversely, delight in assaulting symbolic targets, in slaughtering the innocent in order to “make a statement” or draw attention to their cause.

Do you know what strikes terror into my heart? The fact that certain individuals and organizations in the world today regard me as a legitimate target for assassination simply because I am white, or American, or Christian, or “Western.” That I have never committed a hate crime, that I have only the most indirect say in my country’s foreign policy, that I am centuries too young to have participated in the historical atrocities of my religion, and that the “West” has been systematically dismantling its cultural heritage for decades fail to detract from the overarching symbolic value that my head upon a pike would have. “The cause” takes precedence over my life - and yours. Do you want to know how to tell the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter? Ask yourself whether or not he wants you dead.

This strain of thought which justifies murder does not merely appeal to fringe groups of foreign nationals and religious extremists. Ward Churchill, until last year an ethnic studies professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, offered this startling terrorist apology in a February 2005 interview with the syndicated program Democracy Now!:

“As for those in the World Trade Center, well, really, let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire, the ‘mighty engine of profit’ to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved, and they did so both willingly and knowingly. . . . [They were] too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind, and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.”

Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann oversaw the logistics of implementing Hitler’s “final solution” during the Holocaust. The Jews who worked at the World Trade Center, having perished in the conflagration of September 11th, will never have a chance to respond to the accusation of being “little Eichmanns.” The immigrants working as cooks and custodians and the single mothers laboring as secretaries will not have the opportunity to address whether or not their days consisted of “power lunches and stock transactions.” But none of this matters to Mr. Churchill, who joins with Mao Tse-Tung in declaring that “you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.” Nor does it matter to my own school, Shoreline Community College, which invited Churchill to speak on campus late last year for a no doubt hefty honorarium. Churchill received a fast track to tenure at UC Boulder by masquerading as a Native American, prompting genuine Natives to dub him “Walking Eagle,” as in, “He’s so full of shit that he can’t fly.” If only the country, and the world, would so join in repudiating him, his ilk, and the homicidal ideology they advocate.