Terrorist

One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter.

The definition of "terrorist" has received a great deal of expansion by the current (2003) United States administration. The term seems to be serving the role that "bogeyman" does for children. To date, terrorism and terrorists have been linked to:


 * The ongoing War on Drugs, as evidenced by television ads, since drugs fund terrorism according to the DEA
 * Online file-swapping, according to John G. Malcolm of the DOJ
 * .. and even a Bush appointee to a key diplomatic position

David Fromkin suggested a definition in Foreign Affairs back in 1975. "Terrorism," he noted, "is violence used in order to create fear; but it is aimed at creating fear in order that the fear, in turn, will lead somebody else -- not the terrorist -- to embark on some quite different program of action that will accomplish whatever it is that the terrorist really desires." 

Arianna Huffington has proposed (with tongue only somewhat in cheek) that driving SUVs also contributes to terrorism, in that SUVs encourage high fuel consumption and that much of the oil so used is imported from countries such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia, both accused at times of supporting terrorists.

Related SourceWatch Resources

 * Imperial terror in South America
 * Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the prime training ground for foreign terrorists
 * Jundullah
 * Mutual Assured Destruction
 * Operation Northwoods
 * Plan Condor

External links and references

 * Daily news on the growing Islamic terrorism threat
 * An online journal describing how an Arab Christian and Christian Arab Americans feel about the war on terror
 * Wikipedia's Terrorists
 * "International terrorism" according to U.S. law
 * Al-Tawhid's Towards a Definition of Terrorism
 * Terrorism: No Prohibition Without Definition
 * What is Terrorism?