I was going to stay away from the tragedy at Fort Hood, and I will, sort of. But I wanted to talk briefly about Sen. Lieberman's rather idiotic remarks on--you guessed it--Fox News.
Here we go (via Glennzilla):
And therefore, if that is true, the murder of these 13 people was a terrorist act and, in fact, it was the most destructive terrorist act to be committed on American soil since 9/11.
But I want to say very quickly we don't know enough to say now, but there are very, very strong warning signs here that Dr. Hasan had become an Islamist extremist and, therefore, that this was a terrorist act.
I want to start be agreeing with Joe. "We don't know enough to say now...." Amen.
Now for something else.
To label x a terrorist act attaches to x a certain moral significance. Consider the case of x and x1, where x is a terrorist act and x1 is simply a violent act. We would consider, I think, x to be morally worse than x1. (To be clear, I'm making a descriptive, not a normative claim.)
Now, for x to be considered a "terrorist act" is--I'd reckon--a contingent matter; that is there is a possible world where x isn't considered a terrorist act. I'm not making the (obviously) controversial claim that "it's all relative"; I'm making the somewhat trivial claim that a community sets the standards for use of the label terrorist act and then applies some sort of text to x to determine if it merits the label.
The difficulty is that the label of terrorist act covers a broad range of acts, yet the moral seriousness remains attached to it. That is, once we accept the label, x is affixed with greater moral significance--with only a very little regard to the actual events of x.
There doesn't seem to be a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of the label of terrorist act. There certainly isn't an exhaustive one. Even the most plausible necessary conditions are contentious at best. Consider, for example, the putative condition that If x is a 'terrorist act,' then x is physically violent. Now consider claims that such-and-such is "cultural," "economic," or even "ecological" terrorism.
One might argue, of course, that terrorist act is vague predicate. So, there are clear examples of "acts that are terrorist" and clear examples of "acts that are not terrorist," but there are many examples that are less clear--much as how there are clear examples of "colors that are yellow" and clear examples of "colors that not yellow"...
I think this is more likely the case, and, of course, you can attach significance to vague predicates; they're not trivial. But the question should be, of course, can you attach significance in the same way you can to not-vague (or less-vague) predicates (like first-degree murder)?
The answer, I think, is no. And most people know that. For those things closer to the not-terrorist side of the spectrum, the label should carry less moral significance. The problem is that, descriptively speaking, we don't often consider terrorist act to be a vague predicate, and, as such, worthy of vague moral significance.
Lieberman's statement is, thus, reprehensible on "epistemic" grounds (it's also reprehensible in other ways, too; I'll get to that later). That is, he acts as though terrorism has clear a sufficient (and, I'd imagine for Lieberman and the gang at Fox, necessary, too) condition. It doesn't, and by pretending that it does, Lieberman is affixing a great deal of moral significance irresponsibly.
What makes it worse is that the sufficient condition is irresponsible in other ways. He claims that:
there are very, very strong warning signs here that Dr. Hasan had become an Islamist extremist and, therefore, that this was a terrorist act.
I take this to mean that If x is committed by an Islamist extremist, then x is a terrorist act.
But it isn't so simple. I'm pretty sure that, for a clear example, if an Islamist extremist, in a traditional war (wearing uniform, with a clear chain of command, under the auspices of a nation-state) fired on an enemy soldier, that would not be a terrorist act. And this example isn't even all that conditional. Lieberman and neocons consider Iran to be a state of Islamist extremist (I'm not so sure that's true, but, whatever...). During their war with the Baathist (and secular) Iraq, they committed many atrocities. But these atrocities were not, by and large, considered terrorism. And, certainly, there was "conventional" warfare (or, maybe, "conventional" atrocities). Those were definitely not considered terrorist acts.
The notion that any act (probably I should add, "of violence") committed by an Islamist extremist is terrorism, adds the moral significance of terrorism to acts that may or may not be terrorism, and, as such is morally irresponsible (and reprehensable).
Now, there might be something to the argument that acts committed by religious extremists are morally more signifagant than acts that aren't. I might be inclined to agree with that, but that's not the argument Lieberman was making. What's more, he was clear that its specific to Islamic (oops, 'Islamist') extremism. Why didn't he say 'religious'? Because, it seems, Christian extremism isn't a sufficient condition for terrorism--and probably won't be. Would Lieberman call the killing of Dr. Tiller murder? I don't know; he didn't say, but I'm guessing Fox wouldn't have him on a panel to discuss the matter. Nor, am I guessing, would Fox have panels about the potential for terrorism every time a so-called "Christian" beats a queer because "God hates fags."
I can hear the counterargument now: "Islamist extremism is an 'existential threat' to the U.S., and, thus, we talk about it more." That's bull. First, it's bull because Islamist extremism isn't an existential threat to the U.S. It's terrible. Horrible. Maybe even evil. But it isn't an existential threat. Guys with box cutters managed to do evil things, but they didn't bring down the Government or end the U.S., and they won't. Second, it's bull because there's no way that Fox or Lieberman or whoever would say that in order for something to be news and worthy of panels it has to be representative of an existential threat. The bias toward stories of violence committed by Islamic extremists is best explained, not by some imaginary existential threat, but by the fact that Fox turns a blind eye things that don't conform to the narrative that Muslims are bloodthirsty.
The conflation of Islam and terrorism is wrong and reprehensible, and Lieberman and Fox are pushing a narrative that, if it lasts, will keep us mired in conflict for all the wrong reasons.
There are enough things wrong with what Islamic extremists do; we don't need to make shit up.
SIDENOTE: I don't agree with everything Greenwald says in his column on this. But this post has gone on long enough, and I decided not to include. In short: there's good reason to think that attacks on soldiers can be terrorism. Greenwald is doing a milder form of what Lieberman did, that is he's making an epistemic mistake--making up nec. and suff. conditions for a term that doesn't really have any.
SIDENOTE 2: I didn't go back over this and do any editing, so it's pretty rough. Sorry. I'm on my way to the Writing Center, and I simply don't have the time. So, enjoy many spelling errors, overstatements, and too-thick prose.
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