Types of Political Violence

I think there is a lot of confusion expressed here about conventional warfare, guerrilla warfare, protest, genocide, and terrorism. Largely because I taught a seminar about this once, I feel I have something to offer, but I'm not trying to be canonical. Let me explain. All of these might be classified as forms of political violence, and they all have certain things in common: (1) the motivation for action political; (2) violence, including civilian/bystander death, is legitimate under certain circumstances. The primary difference for this discussion is not the level of violence per se, but the circumstances under which civilian death is acceptable.
At one end of the spectrum are terrorists like Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda had a political motivation, which is different from a political goal. Its primary purpose was to kill civilians. The difference between this activity and criminal activity (e.g., any serial murderer) or mass murder/suicide like Jonestown is entirely in its distinctly political motivation. The difference between this activity and genocide is that the killing of civilians was meant to send a political signal; it was not the desired end in itself. Hamas is not a genocidal organization in the sense that genocide is not its purpose.

The next gradation are terrorists like the ETA, and the PLO. These groups believe killing civilians is a primary means of achieving a political end, but they have a clear political goal in mind, unlike Al Qaeda, which simply wants to inflict a political cost on the USA, period. Al Qaeda cannot negotiate, because it has no purpose behind its violence other than to cause disruption – i.e., we cannot trade the threat of disruption for something else. Negotiation with such groups as the PLO is theoretically possible, and has in fact been done, because – tactics aside – what they desire is not simply to harm the enemy, but to achieve certain political results. Hamas, I believe, is in this category.

The next slight gradation is the IRA, which has both military and civilian targets, and often sends pre-attack warnings, being willing to accept fear as a substitute for civilian death. Whether this is more "moral" is not the point – it is a kind of terrorism that includes guerrilla tactics and is explicitly political in its goals. Put another way, the IRA only wants to threaten English civilians to get what they want – conquest of Protestant Northern Ireland – not for its own sake. Guerrilla warfare involves threats to the civilian population – usually civilians perceived as part of the power structure they oppose – but usually carries out its terrorist-type attacks on military targets (i.e., throwing a bomb in a police station or at a military checkpoint). Guerrillas often terrorize the civilian population as well, burning crops etc., but do not typically engage in killing of random civilians for its own sake.

Conventional warfare also differs in type. Total War, such as WWII, accepts horrific violence against civilians as acceptable so long as the ultimate goal is military, whether tactical (better) or strategic (worse, e.g., achieving surrender). The debate over Dresden and Hiroshima, for example, usually revolves around the military goal, not the legitimacy of targeting a civilian population to achieve that end, whether it was even strategic or just revenge. There is a mythology of Conventional Warfare that marginalizes total war, although that is probably its modal type.
Non-Total conventional war, of the sort the US employed in Iraq or on the Falkland Islands, is warfare where the killing of civilians is considered unacceptable except by a very high degree of military necessity. We like to believe that this is how we have always fought.

Paying attention to differences and to these creteria helps us see the problems of political violence more clearly. All groups that deliberately target civilians are not alike. Deliberately targeting civilians is not even unique to terrorists. September 11th did not change any of the realities of warfare, just American politics.

The distinction between war and crime is the distinction between military and civilian law. Maintaining that distinction is the core of our liberty. We risk losing the "Rule of Law" if we return to a Medieval world where all acts of violence are considered political violence and punished by the military authorities. At the far (Al Qaeda) end of the spetrum, terrorists differ from criminals (destroying lives and property) only because the motivation is political, rather than just anti-social, pathological, or financial. (It is interesting that those who oppose hate crime legislation on the theory that it punishes motivations fail to see that the entire distinction between terrorism and crime is not degree, but motivation). On the West Wing once, a supposedly liberal character said "Of course he's a terrorist, he took a shot at the White House." That was among the most dangerous things I've ever heard.

Let me put this another way. If we cannot find a place for Al Qaeda-type terrorists in the law, it will destroy the law. That is what Bush, Ashcroft, Gonzalez, etc. are doing. The law is a seamless web, covering all situations. Guantanamo, a place with no law, is a black hole eating away at the web. Destroying the Rule of Law in the west may be Al Qaeda's real objective. If so, they cannot do it -only we can. To my mind, the best way to handle Al Qaeda is to think of it as a criminal organization - like the mafia - that requires military and paramilitary tools to attack. But their prisoners belong in the criminal justice system, not a military system. The reason is that the Uniform Code of Military Justice may be the finest achievement of Anglo-American law, and it cannot bear the weight of punishing terrorists as if they were soldiers.