Are you a terrorist if you disarm the weapons of a terrorist? If you knew a terrorist in your town had weapons ready to use and you went and destroyed those weapons, are you a terrorist? The U.S. government answers yes.
Something seems wrong with that situation. Most folks support disarming terrorists. In fact, the entire “War on Terrorism” was launched on that thesis.
That was then, after 9/11, 2001; today the U.S. position has changed. Now, if you disarm a terrorist weapon, even peaceably, you are a terrorist. The illogic is, in fact, logical. It all depends on who defines who is a terrorist.
If the U.S. says you are a terrorist, then you are a terrorist. If the U.S. says the terrorist whose weapons you disarmed is not a terrorist, then they are not a terrorist, even if their weapons are sold for profit to commit terrorism, or worse, genocide. Some genocide is OK, per the U.S. government, if the terrorist is our buddy, or is an arms maker arming our buddy who uses the weapons for terror or genocidal actions.
The United Kingdom a year ago banned the group Palestine Action because they had damaged materials at a weapons factory run by Elbit Systems. Elbit provides its weapons to the Israeli military for use in the Gaza Strip, in a military action the United Nations, Holocaust scholars and others have called genocide. Now, a year later, the Trump administration has designated Palestine Action a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.
The Department of the Treasury said in a statement: “The group’s actions include multiple high-profile instances of breaking into defense infrastructure and British military installations, and causing millions of dollars’ worth of damage to military equipment.”
Unlike the Israeli military actions in Gaza, Palestine Action harmed only weapons, not people. Harming weapons is terrorism, but mass murder of human beings is not?
More than 3,500 people have been arrested in the UK at Palestinian Action nonviolent protests, charged with support of terrorism, and the group has accused the UK government of conflating protest with terrorism. And indeed, the Trump administrationhas done just that, calling Palestine Action “violent.”
Perhaps it is this foundational confusion that resulted in the jury in a London court being unable to reach a verdict in the trial of Palestine Action defendants accused of a raid on the Israeli owned Elbit arms factory. Juries are the final triers of facts in criminal cases under Anglo-American law and their decisions are deserving of respect because they are the last, best check and balance against governmental error. Terrorism is such a debauched legal concept, incapable of rational definition, that the jury simply could not get their heads around it.
Clearly, neither can the U.S. government, nor its poodle, the UK.
If you are a terrorist for destroying the weapons of a terrorist, then where is sanity? This question is of critical importance today because the U.S. is formulating a policy that will make using nuclear weapons, just “little ones,” more likely. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, is drafting a classified nuclear strategy that would shift the United States away from its longstanding reliance on long-range strategic weapons and toward a greater emphasis on shorter-range and smaller tactical nuclear warheads — expanding the menu of options available to President Donald Trump in a potential regional conflict with China or Russia. (Or other stalemated conflicts such as Iran or Ukraine.) As the likelihood of use of nuclear weapons rises, legitimated by “new and improved” policy, are you a terrorist if you peaceably try to disarm those nukes?
Or is it simply rational “self-defense and defense of others” to do so? I suspect the jury in the Palestine Action case wrestled with such questions in their deliberations. They saw their government was complicit in genocide, an extreme form of terrorism and they perhaps thought the action taken reasonable and justified to try to stop governmental terrorism. Persons speaking for the government of Russia have reportedly noted Russia’s use of tactical nukes in the Ukraine war could occur. North Korea keeps testing their nuclear delivery systems. India and Pakistan prompt discussion of nuclear use should war between them expand. The U.S. is enabling Saudi Arabia to have a nuclear enrichment program. The taboos seem to be weakening, if not being sabotaged on purpose.
If your government becomes a terrorist, are you a terrorist for opposing it? Remember, a nuclear war can never be won, so it must never be fought. A government fighting one is a terrorist by any definition.
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