Blog Post #2

What is Terrorism? There are numerous ways to define terrorism. According to Jonathan White terrorism is a pejorative term where it is a term that is loaded with negative and derogatory meanings. Where these negative ideas are brought into our homes through television screens, the newspapers and magazines, and sometimes we experience it in a direct manner. People never worry about the definition of terrorism until they experience terror through violence. For example when a passenger plane gets bombed it might be called acts of terrorism, but when military forces kill families in a foreign country, it is said to be a tragic mistake. Jonathan White believes because of this there is dual standards and contradictions that lead to confusion about what terrorism is.

There has been heated debates on the definition of terrorism. Social scientists, policy makers, lawyers, and security specialists are unable to come to an agreement on the definition of terrorism. H.H.A. Cooper has stated that there is "a problem in the problem definition." This idea that everyone can agree that terrorism has become a huge problem, but there is no definite agreement of what terrorism really is. The term is so difficult to define that in fact, the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI), U.S. State Department, and the Department of Defense all define terrorism differently. Some political scientist have said that terrorism is a social construct defined by, "people within changing social and political realities." This idea that one person's terrorist may be another person or governments "freedom fighter".

The official FBI definition separates terrorism by two spectrums of domestic and international. Domestic terrorism is a violation of criminal laws of the U.S. and/or states by influencing government policy by mass destruction. International terrorism involves the same things as domestic terrorism except that it is outside of U.S. borders. The FBI definition focuses on criminal behavior, because they play an integral part of the Criminal Justice System. The FBI is one federal agency where their definition is based around the idea of the criminal behavior.

Terrorism has to be defined according to Jonathan White in the social context aspect. We can trace modern terrorism all the way back to the French Revolution in the 1780's. During the time of the French Revolution it was the French government against the people and throughout the 1800's terrorism was acts of revolutionaries. By the early 1900's terrorism was violent acts carried out by labor organizations, anarchists, nationalistic groups revolting against foreign powers and political organizations.From the late 1900's to early 80's terrorism was violent acts by left wing groups and nationalists. In the 21st century terrorism is consisted of large groups independent from states, that are violent and religiously motivated.

The reality that we have to realize is that there is no common, accepted definition of terrorism. The issues that we have seen in this post is that there are many different aspects that you can define terrorism. In way we all have to agree with Jonathan White when he describes terrorism as perojative because it makes it politically charges our reponses. The many ways that terrorism is defined has either life or death consequences. Terrorism can be defined within social and political contexts, and for this reason there will never one singular definition of terrorism.






Websites:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/etc/modern.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19728-2004Jul27.html