Research and Discuss Justification Of Using Terror Tactics (Term Paper Sample)

THE QUEST FOR NATIONAL FREEDOM OR NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE AND THE USE OF TERRORIST TACTICS
Introduction
Terrorism and terror tactics denotes the unlawful use or threat of violence especially against the state or the public as a politically motivated means of attack or coercion. The main rationale that drives of terrorists to use violent tactics is largely in an effort to create political change, threaten or induce fear in the public and/or government, raise media attention and/or further their political cause CITATION Bre08 \l 1033 (Bree, 2008).
The quest for national freedom as well as national independence has been recorded in various historical accounts from across the world, the North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa as various people’s sought to relieve themselves of the yoke of colonialism and occupation that brought about domination, humiliation, subjugation among other kinds of –ations as Malcom X would refer to them in his famous “By Any Means Necessary” speech.
In order to realize this dream or aspiration of national freedom and national independence, these people have been forced to resort to a number of means that are aimed at realizing this desired end. Among the methods that have been employed include non-violence methods such as the Satyagraha method employed in the 1930s and 1940s as India, led by Mohandas Mahatma Gandhi, sought to relieve herself of the colonial yoke of British rule.
During the American civil rights movement, this method was also employed as blacks who had long been inhumanely treated with discrimination, segregation, lynching and being denied rights sought to fight for their freedom using boycotts, sit-ins, bus rides, demonstrations, court cases among other methods.
However, it is important to note that others have used to terrorist tactics in order to acquire national freedom and national independence. These methods have divided opinion both in and outside academic circles as some see the means as justified as long as they seek to achieve the desired noble ends. Others have seen the ends as important just like the means and thus attack these terror tactics as unjustified. To this end therefore, it is nearly impossible to draw a consensus amongst scholars. Against this backdrop, this paper seeks to examine one of the questions that has dogged the academy for eons as posed by scholars such as Gus Martin, i.e., whether the quest for national freedom or national independence justifies the use of terrorist tactics CITATION Mar10 \l 1033 (Martin, 2010). The paper argues that the usage of terror is justifiable but under certain conditions.
WHEN THE QUEST FOR NATIONAL FREEDOM OR INDEPENDENCE JUSTIFIES THE USE OF TERRORIST TACTICS
There are a number of grounds that justify the usage of terror as a tactic in the quest for national freedom and/or national independence. First, terror may be justified where the definition of terrorism is a political one which doesn’t differentiate between revolutionary violence and terrorism. According to Melayna Lamb, the concept of terrorism and its connotation and denotation has been subject to political distortion to suit the power arithmetic of the day. While the quest fro freedom or independence will not necessarily lead to the use of terrorism, empirically speaking, most freedom and independence movements at some point have engaged in some kind of terroristic activity. However, in one instance, when it suits the world overlords or interests of the West, it is normally referred to as freedom movement and whole it is against the interests of the West, it is referred to as terrorism CITATION Lam10 \l 1033 (Lamb, 2010).
A good example is the Mau Mau movement in Kenya which was labeled terrorist despite the fact that it was using terrorist attacks to marginal levels as compared to the terrorism being used by the then colonial government against Mau Mau and against the Kikuyus who were perceived as the main antagonists CITATION Elk05 \l 1033 \m And11 (Elkins, 2005; Anderson, 2011). Another example is during the Cold War whereby there was widespread Western support and engagement with terrorism, as it was seen to serve a political purpose. The over-riding fear of the spread of communism was seen to legitimize the use of terrorism in pursuit of capitalism, democracy and freedom. Of course the Western policy-makers would never describe their tactics as constituting a form of terrorism CITATION Lam10 \l 1033 (Lamb, 2010).
In Europe, the Nazi occupiers characterized the work of the resistance movements such as the French, Czech, and Polish as terrorism. For the resistance movements, they were not terrorists but freedom fighters and their clandestine work of sabotage and ambush-destroying bridges and railroads and assassinating German officials as well as their local collaborators-was a wholly justifiable tactic of a war of national liberation. This same justification was used by a series of anti-colonial movements across the world as the wave of independence swept across the world. The Viet Minh were against French rule in Vietnam and they used wartime tactics of resistance to attack the French with the classic weapons of terrorism, raiding remote plantations to kill French overseers, random shootings and bombs in crowded cafes, all designed to destroy the morale of the French civilians. These tactics were also used against the British in Palestine by Israeli freedom fighters where they blew up civilians in hotels, assassinated British troops, and ambushed British patrols, all in the name of the national liberation of Israel CITATION Wal01 \l 1033 (Walker, 2001).
Another justification for the use of terrorism in the quest for national independence and national freedom is that it leads to a noble end which will lead to the betterment of many. Under this argument, it leads to the highest pleasure to the highest number of people thus is justifiable under the utilitarian thinking of Jeremy Bentham CITATION Mil03 \l 1033 (Mill, Bentham, & Troyer, 2003). Under such conditions, terrorism is justified. This is because in the face of an enemy who is insurmountable through conventional means, the resort to terrorism which assures freedom and independence since the realization of the same ably shows that the ends did justify the means CITATION Lam10 \l 1033 (Lamb, 2010).
Another justification for terrorism is that it is justifiable from a contractarian viewpoint in that only through embracing terrorism in a given where a people are fighting for their national independence and national freedom. According to Hobbes, fear is a characteristic of a people living in a state of nature which must be shed if they are to live in a community of civilization. Since a people who live under domination are subjected to fear such in the case of the colonial state, they must expunge this continual fear CITATION Hob11 \l 1033 (Hobbes, 2011).
Continual fear, Hobbes further postulates, is the unrelenting fear of imminent violent death, like the one that characterized colonial Kenya especially in Central Kenya CITATION Elk05 \l 1033 \m And11 (Elkins, 2005; Anderson, 2011), is unspeakably awful. It is, Hobbes opines, worse than ignorance. A life of continual fear is scarcely a life at all. Someone who is in the grip of chronic terror is in a state of constant distress as he has his heart all the day gnawed on by fear of death, poverty, or other calamity and has no repose, nor pause of his anxiety, but in sleep. This condition must be expunged by all means where possible and if terrorism is the means, then so be it CITATION Hob11 \l 1033 (Hobbes, 2011).
Critics of terrorist tactics in liberation movements striving to achieve national independence and national freedom often point out, borrowing from Max Weber’s philosophy, that the state has a monopoly on violence, which therefore legitimates the use of it, and that any other group using violence is illegitimate. However, those who support the use of terrorism by resistance movements counter-argue that if this were true, then, Nelson Mandela should have been universally condemned as nothing more than a terrorist and murderer, something the Thatcher government, a critical ally of the apartheid regimes of South Africa, liked to call him. This is not a serious position to hold, Brian Brivati argues, since alternatively, we might say that the violence employed by all states, at least if they are Western democracies, is illegitimate CITATION Bri09 \l 1033 (Brivati, 2009).
Brivati further argues that the many cases of the necessity of war, September 1939 where Nazi Germany invaded Poland, for example, invalidate this position. To this end, he argues, violence is an ethically acceptable extension of the struggle. While we may not reach an objective basis for the support of the armed struggle in one context as against another, Brivati argues, we can at least suggest principles that are reasonable and then defend those principles. He finds fault in the forced position to accept that the use of violence against “soft targets” is terrorism in whatever cause it is employed arguing that there is a difference in that we might support some causes and not others because we see them as morally virtuous or vicious CITATION Bri09 \l 1033 (Brivati, 2009).
To this end therefore, Brivati argues that the use of violence, whether by states or other groups, should be based on the same argument as that used to justify a declaration of war, the just war theory. He dichotomizes his distinction as one not based on the difference between freedom fighter and terrorist but between murderer and terrorist whereby the former simply kills nihilistically because they are killing in a cause that the common do not believe in, and the latter using violence as part of an achievable and just political project with which the common agree CITATION Bri09 \l 10...