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What are the causes of terrorism and are all terrorists opposed to democracy? Do some want to find avenues for political dissent and power that could include participation in democracy?
posted by Ken Hacker @ Friday, July 22, 2005
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It is interesting to see that the Irish Republican Army, most clearly a terrorist organization, yesterday swore off violence as a political tool of communication. Representatives of Sean Fein were part of the organization linking the IRA with FS. What level of trust can we have for both and why?
What evidence is there that the IRA can be trusted now if they could not in the past?
I am fairly certian that an individual's support of democracy is independent of his or her use of terrorist tactics. While I would not be arguing from the "right" position (might makes right), the nucelar attacks on Japan at the end of WWII were terrorist attacks. These attacks were intended to terrorize the Japanese people and governement into surrender. There were some coincident military objectives in the attacks, but thses objectivers might actually viewed as collateral to the psychological terrorism agengda. Obviously these attacks were effective in acheiving the terrorism objectives. Obviously, the terrorists operating as agents of the U.S. government were advocates of that government's forms of democracy. So, the answer to the question posed is "No", a terrorist agenda doen not imply an anti-democracy agenda.
We can also look at revolutions and wars of independence like our own. We see that terrorism can be part of warfare and also part of revolutionary violence as in in French Revolution which employed Robespierre's argument that terrorism is swift justice. Political violence is alsways ugly and we must understand why people turn to violence rather than assuming that they are crazy because they abandon peaceful means of expression.
Thermo argues that a terrorist can endorse democracy. Clearly, a politically violent or crazed indidividual can endorse terrorism which is a methodology. But to say that terrorists can endorse democracy is like saying that prostitutes can support abstinence. Perhaps Thermo sees valor in the Hezbollah, but I cannot support her opinion.
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