Is terrorism ever justified Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Is terrorism ever justified - Essay Example Terrorism cannot be justified because it causes fear and anxiety among peaceful populations. To some extent, it must be acknowledged that the fear of Arab terrorism among the American population has been cultivated, and that this cultivation clearly implicates the American media. This does not mean that other of the "institutional means of influence" are without fault (Reich and Laqueur 71). For example, fundamentalist Christianity inside the United States (whose churches and televangelists frequently view Israeli dominance as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy) clearly contributes to the real anti-Semitism in the United States. However, compared to the other ideological institutions, media influence is virtually universal and potentially life-long for the population. In a context of alienation, the media becomes both a tranquilizer and a source of the sharpening of images for dramatic effect (Kushner 360). Violence as a part of the terror attack cannot be justified. In the dominant view, those who perpetrate outsider violence are often portrayed as irrational or crazed, exercising a twisted thirst for blood. A political economy of terrorism must take note of such efforts, probing theoretically the structure of ideological systems, and placing these in a material context. Following Singh: "There is almost an infinite variety of violence of anti-social nature-homicide, acts of vandalism, arson, destructive rage, or other expressions of an essentially irrational urge to strike at someone or something" (Singh 377). Beyond this, a political economy of terrorism must place statist behavior in a world system context. However, terror is not confined to purely instrumental linkages between specific nation states and the misdeveloping world. The modern state may be quite "rational" in its projection of national power on a world scale through military force, covert intelligence operations, and e conomic sanctions (Edwards n.d.). State power may be used quite "systematically" to maintain an order of inequality with both global and domestic dimensions. And all of this may be done in the name of national sovereignty and international law. Indeed, it may be a function of lawyers working for the state to find "lawful" reasons for policies of international and national intimidation (Egendorf 2004). Terrorism cannot be justified because it involves the systematic use of torture and the rise of military and police forces engaged in an internal war against a subject population. This form of terrorism may also be waged through shadow organizations, death squads, and the like that have no official power but that are clearly linked with the national elite (Egendorf 2004). However, to focus on regime terror is often deceptive. To cast the issue of terrorism as the abuse of state power by political deviants may be to ignore the more endemic, taken-for-granted, higher forms of sanctioned violence that avoid the terrorist label. It may also ignore state structural imperatives (expressed in policy and action, including the threat or use of force) designed to preserve a transnational market system. At the international level, the higher terrorism takes different forms. It is ironic that in the political lexicon of terrorism, war between states is routinely omitted. Indeed, the architects o f the state may subscribe to humanitarian codes