Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor (retired) at MIT, where he has been on the faculty since 1955.
He has written and
spoken widely on linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, international affairs, and social-political issues.
Terrorism, American Style
Noam Chomsky
I read Roberto Toscanos article with inter-
est. Well-intentioned Im sure, but I dont
agree that its a vexed linguistic matter. Its
vexed, but not for reasons of lack of clarity
of language.
There are perfectly good definitions of
terrorism: A succinct definition in a U.S.
Army Manual defined terrorism as the
calculated use of violence or threat of vio-
lence to attain goals that are political, reli-
gious, or ideological in nature...through in-
timidation, coercion, or instilling fear.
Theres a more elaborate definition along the
same lines in the U.S. Code, which states:
an act of terrorism means an activity that
(A) involves a violent act or an act danger-
ous to human life that is a violation of the
criminal laws of the United States or any
State, or that would be a criminal violation
if committed within the jurisdiction of the
United States or of any State; and (B) ap-
pears to be intended (i) to intimidate or co-
erce a civilian population; (ii) to influence
the policy of a government by intimidation
or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a
government by assassination or kidnapping.1
The British governments definition is
similar: Terrorism is the use, or threat, of
action which is violent, damaging or dis-
rupting, and is intended to influence the
government or intimidate the public and is
for the purpose of advancing a political, reli-
gious, or ideological cause.
Ive been quoting and using these defi-
nitions in books and articles ever since I
started writing on terrorism in 1981, as
soon as the Reagan administration came in-
to office declaring that a war on terror, par-
ticularly state-directed international terror-
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ismthe plague of the modern age, the
return to barbarism in our time, etc.
would be a main focus of their foreign poli-
cy. And I continue to use them after Bush II
re-declared the war on terror after 9/11.
Use of these definitions elicits great
anger, and for good reasons. If we use them,
it follows at once that the United States has
been a leading agent of terror, dramatically
so in the Reagan years, but later too. And
that is an unacceptable conclusion. There-
fore, there has been exactly what Toscano
describes: elaborate attempts to define
terror, abandoning the effort as too
difficult, etc.
Thats understandable too. Its hard to
craft a definition of terror that applies solely
to the terror that they carry out against us
and our clients, but excludes the terror (of-
ten far worse) that we and our clients carry
out against them. The same problem arises
with aggression. The official definitions
are unusable because they yield the wrong
conclusions.
Take one case that should be uncon-
troversial: President Reagans war against
Nicaragua. The International Court of
Justice condemned it as an unlawful use of
force, supported by two Security Council
resolutions that were vetoed by the United
States. The court does not have an official
definition of terrorism, but the judgment
clearly falls under the official U.S. and U.K.
definitions.
The Nicaragua case is quite interesting.
The lead counsel for Nicaragua was Harvard
law professor Abram Chayes. The case he
presented was quite broad, but the court
barred almost all of it, because in agreeing
2007 Noam Chomsky
to International Court of Justice jurisdiction
in 1946, the United States had exempted it-
self from all multilateral treaties, including
the UN and Organization of American
States (OAS) charters (of course, the Reagan
administration withdrew from all court ju-
risdiction when the case was filed, but the
court continued anyway). The court had to
rely on a bilateral U.S.-Nicaragua treaty,
and customary international law. I suppose
one could debate whether mining counts as
aggression (wed certainly consider the min-
ing of a harbor an act of war, no need to
mention the consequences). But the contra
war fits unambiguously under aggression, as
defined by Justice Jackson at Nuremberg,
later confirmed by General Assembly resolu-
tions.2
Underlying conventional discussion of
terrorism and aggression is the consistent
rejection of one of the most elementary of
moral principles: that we apply to ourselves
the same standards we do to others, if not
more stringent ones. Acceptable definitions
of the terms do, therefore, become a difficult
matter.
Sometimes the rejection of the principle
is dramatic. One striking example occurred
in 1999. Great outrage was focused on
Serbian crimes in Kosovo, with passionate
laments about toleration of such crimes
right near the borders of NATO. There was,
however, virtual silence about crimes right
within NATO, in southeastern Turkey, that
were vastly greater in scaleobviously so
before the NATO bombing, which, as antici-
pated, sharply intensified Serbian crimes.
The differential reaction is natural. The
United States was providing the bulk of the
arms for Turkeys violent repression of
Kurds, joined by other NATO powers. The
radical imbalance in concern and coverage
follows the normal pattern.
To underscore the conclusion even more
dramatically, in early 1999, Indonesian
crimes in East Timor were again escalating.
The scale was well above Kosovo at the
time, reaching a cataclysmic level in Au-
Terrorism, American Style
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gustalways with firm U.S. support, as in
earlier years, when the slaughter would have
surely been called genocidal if an enemy
were responsible, not ourselves. Concern and
reporting were slight.
To terminate these crimes would have
been very easy. There was no need for bomb-
ing, or sanctions. All that was needed was
withdrawal of support. That was pretty ob-
vious all along, and was clearly demonstrat-
ed on September 11, 1999, when, under
enormous international and domestic pres-
sure, President Clinton finally signaled to
the Indonesian military that the game was
over. They instantly withdrew, leaving the
land in ruins after 25 years of U.S.-backed
atrocities, with Britain joining in as atroci-
ties peaked in 1978, and participating ac-
tively until the end.
By any rational criterion, what hap-
pened prior to 1999 in East Timor was in-
comparably worse than anything that took
place in the Balkan wars. But the same
problem arose: wrong agent. Therefore, si-
lence or denial. Not because the facts were
obscure; rather, because they were very clear,
and clearly taught the wrong lesson.3
In brief, the problem of finding a suit-
able definition of terrorism reflects a
much deeper problem, which arises
throughout discussions of international af-
fairs and should, I think, be of no slight
concern.
Notes
1. United States Code Congressional and Ad-
ministrative News, 98th Congress, Second Session, ,
Oct. 19, 1984, vol. 2; par. 3077, 98 STAT. 2707.
2. See Howard Friel and Richard Falk, The
Record of the Paper (New York: Verso, 2004).
3. On what was known in the early years of the
massacres, see Chomsky and E. S. Herman, Political
Economy of Human Rights vol. I (1979), Chomsky, To-
wards a New Cold War (1982). On the whole period,
see Joseph Nevins, A Not-so-distant Horror (2005).
On the events of 1999, see Chomsky, New Military
Humanism (1999) and A New Generation Draws the
Line (2000).
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