1ac terror aff

Whitman College 1Tournament 2009 File Title

1AC Terrorism Aff

The United States federal government has an ethical obligation to kill terrorists


The impact of terrorism is not just some big bang - it takes place throughout the world each and every day through suicide bombings which transform society to a life of permanent suffering.Beres and Messing 2004

(Prof: of International Law) (Cook County radiologist) [Dr. Louis Rene and Michael L, http://www.israelforum.com/board/archive/index.php/t-5251.html. February 10, 2004]

But what exactly, does the Palestinian suicide bomber really seek? Consider this: He wants , above all, to transform Jewish pain into Islamic power. He reasons , carefully, that such pain must point recognizably toward the victim's death, but always takes steps to ensure that even 'survivors' will suffer terribly. Violating the inviolable, he also declares with unspeakable cruelty that no Jew can ever be or feel immune. Although he contends convincingly in the arena of world public opinion that the enemy is entirely political, that the enemy is the "Zionist," it is evident in all of his writings and holy teachings that the enemy is actually defined along religious lines. For him the enemy, at least the main enemy, is any and every Jew on the face of the earth. The cruelty is palpable . During the routine rotation of a radiologist in a busy city hospital, the variety of patient problems reveal just another difficult workday. But things are now very different in Shaare Zedek and Hadassah Hospitals in Jerusalem, and in many other hospitals scattered across Israel. With the seemingly endless waves of suicide bombings, unique and hideous trauma, evident on radiographic images, has even become a 'regular' part of the Israeli physician's daily practice. X-rays of suicide bombing victims often show hundreds of metallic fragments, ranging in size from millimeters to whole nails, grotesquely embedded in the victims' bodies -literally from head to foot. What had been created originally for constructive purposes has been

transformed by Arab terrorists into the very deadliest of destructive projectiles. Nails, screws, nuts and ball-bearings are packed by the suicide bombers into their explosive vests to maximize lethal effects and to inflict unimaginable pain and suffering on" Jewish bodies. These. perversely transformed objects , usually after being dipped in rat poison or other available toxins, are propelled with the force of bullets, penetrating skin, flesh and bone with a furious indifference to all notions of minimal human decency . The nails fly head first, presenting themselves in a strangely surreal yet orderly arrangement within the victims' bodies. Many are embedded 'only' to the depth of their entrance sites. Others burrow their way in more deeply and lodge under the skin, where the examining physician can actually touch and feel their alien presence. Others must be removed after hours of meticulous exploration. Still others enter the body far deeper, perforating and lacerating vital organs at random. CT scans of these victims' heads show blood, air, metal and bone fragments displacing normal brain tissue. The 'lucky' patient who survives the initial explosive insult may often require extensive surgery to repair damaged organs. Others may sustain fractures, burns, amputations, vascular injuries, paralysis, blindness or brain damage. A collapsed lung or perforated colon - what would ordinarily be considered a major injury - is now taken as a blessing for these merely 'wounded' victims of Arab terrorism. Although some of the victims recover physically and return to a 'normal' life, many more require a lifetime of ongoing rehabilitation. Some are assuredly impaired permanently . And all suffer serious psychological effects that need to be treated. Post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety affect not only the victims of the attack, but all of Israeli society. Anecdotal reports have indicated a dramatic rise in the use of prescription antidepressants and sedatives. How could it be otherwise, in a society living under constant attack by those who cry out: "When the martyr dies a martyr's death, he attains the height of bliss...." The Palestinian 'martyr's' unheroic weapon has now literally and figuratively penetrated the hearts and souls as well as the bodies of an entire nation. Too often, unfortunately, television and print media are unable or unwilling to transmit the full human measure of such penetration to viewers and readers. The result is that too few people all over the world are able to understand the true horror of the Palestinian suicide bomber. For them, Israeli 'wounded' are little more than an anesthetized statistic, an abstract list of numbers that elicits barely a nodding sigh of concern. It is already too late to transform those Arab terrorists who would blow themselves up to murder Jewish men, women and children, but their uniquely hideous methods must at last be acknowledged.


We have an ethical obligation to kill terrorists.Beres, 2005

(Professor of International Law) [Dr. Louis Rene, http://www.think-israel.org/may05bloaed.html May 25, 2005]

Our world is "normally" silent in the face of evil . At worst, many are directly complicit in the maimings and slaughters. At best, the murderers are ignored. In this unchanging world Israel must soon decide whether to face the evil of Palestinian terrorism as a pitiable victim or to use whatever reasonable force is needed to remain alive. The use of force is not inherently evil. Quite the contrary; in opposing terrorist mayhem, force is indispensable to all that is good, .In the case of Israel, Palestinian terrorism is unique for its cowardice, its barbarism and its genocidal goal. Were Israel to depend upon the broader international community for relief - upon the so-called road map - its plea would be unheard. All states have a right of self-defense. Israel has every lawful authority to forcibly confront the still-growing evil of Palestinian terror. Facing even biological and nuclear forms of terrorism, it now has the clear legal right to refuse to be a victim and to become an executioner. From the standpoint of providing security to its own citizens, this right even becomes an obligation Albert Camus would have us all be "neither victims nor executioners," living got in a world

in which killing has disappeared ("we are not so crazy as that"), but one wherein killing has become illegitimate. This is a fine expectation, yet the celebrated French philosopher did not anticipate another evil force for whom utter extermination of "the Jews" was its declared object. Not even in a world living under the shadow of recent Holocaust did Camus consider such an absurd possibility. But Israel lacks the quaint luxury of French philosophy. Were Israel to follow Camus' genteel reasoning, perhaps in order to implement Mr. Sharon's disengagement, the result would be another boundless enlargement of Jewish suffering. Before and during the Holocaust, for those who still had an opportunity to flee. Jews were ordered: "Get out of Europe; go to Palestine." When they complied (those who could), the next order was: "Get out of Palestine." For mv Austrian-Jewish grandparents, their deaths came on the SS-killing grounds at Riga, Latvia, Had they made it to Palestine, their sons and grandsons would likely have died in subsequent genocidal wars intended to 'get the Jews "out of Palestine." Failure to use force against murderous evil is invariably a stain upon all that is good. By declining the right to act as a lawful executioner in its struggle with terror, Israel would be forced by Camus' reasoning to embrace its own disappearance. Barring Mr. Sharon's disengagement, the Jewish state would never accept collective suicide. Why was Camus, who was thinking only in the broadest generic terms, so mistaken? My own answer lies in his presumption of a natural reciprocity among human beings and states in the matter of killing. We are asked to believe that as greater numbers of people agree not to become executioners, still greater numbers will follow upon the same course. In "lime, the argument proceeds, the number of those who refuse to accept killing will become so great

that there will be fewer and fewer victims. But Camus' presumed reciprocity does not exist, indeed, can never exist, especially in the jihad-centered Middle East. Here the Islamist will to kill Jews remains unimpressed by Israel's disproportionate contributions to science, industry, medicine and learning. Here there are no Arab plans for a "two-state solution," only for a final solution. In counterterrorism, Jewish executioners must now have an honored place in the government of Israel. Without them, evil would triumph again and again. For Hamas. Islamic Jihad. Hezbollah and Fatah, murdered Jews are not so much a means to an end as an end in themselves. In this unheroic Arab Islamist world, where killing Jews is both a religious mandate and sometimes also a path to sexual ecstasy and personal immortality, an Israeli unwillingness to use necessary force against terror will invite existential terror. Sadly, killing is sometimes a sacred duty. Faced with manifest evil, all decent civilizations must rely, in the end, on the executioner . To deny the executioner his proper place would enable the murderers to leer lasciviously upon whole mountains of fresh corpses.


Truth is objective and can be accessed by empirical scientific analysisSokal, Professor of Physics at New York University,96 (“A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies”, http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/lingua_franca_v4/lingua_franca_v4.html) [Elliot]

Why did I do it? While my method was satirical, my motivation is utterly serious. What concerns me is the proliferation , not just of nonsense and sloppy thinking per se, but of a particular kind of nonsense and sloppy thinking: one that denies the existence of objective realities, or (when challenged) admits their existence but downplays their practical relevance. At its best, a journal like Social Text raises important questions that no scientist should ignore -- questions, for example, about how corporate and government funding influence scientific work. Unfortunately, epistemic relativism does little to further the discussion of these matters. In short, my concern over the spread of subjectivist thinking is both intellectual and political. Intellectually, the problem with such doctrines is that they are false (when not simply meaningless). There is a real world; its properties are not merely social constructions; facts and evidence do matter . What sane person would contend otherwise? And yet, much contemporary academic theorizing consists precisely of attempts to blur these obvious truths -- the utter absurdity of it all being concealed through obscure and pretentious language . Social Text's acceptance of my article exemplifies the intellectual arrogance of Theory -- meaning postmodernist literary theory -- carried to its logical extreme. No wonder they didn't bother to consult a physicist. If all is discourse and ``text,'' then knowledge of the real world is superfluous; even physics becomes just another branch of Cultural Studies. If, moreover, all is rhetoric and ``language games,'' then internal logical consistency is superfluous too: a patina of theoretical sophistication serves equally well. Incomprehensibility becomes a virtue; allusions, metaphors and puns substitute for evidence and logic . My own article is, if anything, an extremely modest example of this well-established genre. Politically, I'm angered because most (though not all) of this silliness is emanating from the self-proclaimed Left. We're witnessing here a profound historical volte-face. For most of the past two centuries, the Left has been identified with science and against obscurantism; we have believed that rational thought and the fearless analysis of objective reality (both natural and social) are incisive tools for combating the mystifications promoted by the powerful -- not to mention being desirable human ends in their own right . The recent turn of many ``progressive'' or `` leftist '' academic humanists and social scientists toward one or another form of epistemic relativism betrays this worthy heritage and undermines the already fragile prospects for progressive social critique . Theorizing about ``the social construction of reality'' won't help us find an effective treatment for AIDS or devise strategies for preventing global warming. Nor can we combat false ideas in history, sociology, economics and politics if we reject the notions of truth and falsity .


1. Existential questions should always supersede epistemology Kateb, Prof of Politics @ Princeton, 1992 (George, The Inner Ocean, pg. 144)

To sum up the lines of thought that Nietzsche starts, I suggest first that it is epistemologically impossible for humanity to arrive at an estimation of the worth of itself or of the rest of nature: it cannot pretend to see itself from the outside or to see the rest, as it were, from the inside. Second, after allowance is made for this quandary, which is occasioned by the

death of God and the birth of truth, humanity , placed in a position in which it is able to extinguish human life and

natural life on earth, must simply affirm existence as such. Existence must go on but not because of any particular feature or

group of features. The affirmation of existence refuses to say what worth existence has, even from just a human

perspective, from any human perspective whatever. It cannot say, because existence is indefinite; it is beyond evaluating; being undesigned it is unencompassable by a defined and definite judgment. (The philosopher Frederick A. Olafson speaks of "the stubbornly unconceptualizable fact of existence.") The worth of the existence passed on to the unborn is not measurable but indefinite. The judgment is minimal: no human purpose or value within existence is worth more than existence and can ever be used to justify the risk of extinction. Third, from the moral point of view, existence seems unjustifiable because of the pain and ugliness in it, and therefore the moral point of view must be chastened if it is not to block attachment to existence as such. The other minimal judgment is that whatever existence is, it is better than nothing. For

the first time, in the nuclear age, humanity can fully perceive existence from the perspective of nothing, which

in part is the perspective of extinction.


1. Nuclear Terrorism is likely, causes nuclear retaliation, and triggers a new arms race – Iraq proves

Rhodes Richard, affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, Former visiting scholar at Harvard and MIT, and author of “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” which won the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction, National Book Award, and

National Book Critics Circle Award. 12-14-09“Reducing the nuclear threat: The argument for public safety” http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/reducing-the-nuclear-threat-the-argument-public-safety

The response was very different among nuclear and national security experts when Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar surveyed PDF them in 2005. This group of 85 experts judged that the possibility of a WMD attack against a city or other target somewhere in the world is real and increasing over time .The median estimate of the risk of a nuclear attack somewhere in the world by 2010 was 10 percent. The risk of an attack by 2015 doubled to 20 percent median . There was strong, though not universal, agreement that a nuclear attack is more likely to be carried out by a terrorist organization than by a government. The group was split 45 to 55 percent on whether terrorists were more likely to obtain an intact working nuclear weapon or manufacture one after obtaining weapon-grade nuclear material. “The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is not just a security problem,” Lugar wrote in the

report’s introduction. “It is the economic dilemma and the moral challenge of the current age. On September 11,

2001, the world witnessed the destructive potential of international terrorism. But the September 11 attacks do not come close to approximating the destruction that would be unleashed by a nuclear weapon. Weapons of mass destruction have made it possible for a small nation, or even a sub-national group , to kill as many innocent people in a day as national armies killed in months of fighting during World War II. “The bottom line is this,” Lugar concluded: “For the foreseeable future, the United States and other nations will face an existential threat from the intersection of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.” It’s paradoxical that a diminished threat of a superpower nuclear exchange should somehow have resulted in a world where the danger of at least a single nuclear explosion in a major city has increased (and that city is as likely, or likelier, to be Moscow as it is to be Washington or New York). We tend to think that a terrorist nuclear attack would lead us to drive for the elimination of nuclear weapons. I think the opposite case is at least equally likely: A terrorist nuclear attack would almost certainly be followed by a retaliatory nuclear strike on whatever country we believed to be sheltering the perpetrators.That response would surely initiate a new round of nuclear armament and rearmament in the name of deterrence, however illogical . Think of how much 9/11 frightened us; think of how desperate our

leaders were to prevent any further such attacks; think of the fact that we invaded and occupied a country, Iraq, that had nothing to do with those attacks in the name of sending a message.


US retaliation to a terrorist attack causes global nuclear war.

Corsi Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University 2005 [Jerome Corsi (Expert in Antiwar movements and political violence), Atomic Iran, pg. 176-178]

The United States retaliates: 'End of the world' scenarios - The combination of horror and outrage that will surge upon the nation will demand that the president retaliate for the incomprehensible damage done by the attack. The problem will be that the president will not immediately know how to respond or against whom. The perpetrators will have been incinerated by the explosion that destroyed New York City. Unlike 9-11, there will have been no interval during the attack when those hijacked could make phone calls to loved ones telling them before they died that the hijackers were radical Islamic extremists. There will be no such phone calls when the attack will not have been anticipated until the instant the terrorists detonate their improvised nuclear device inside the truck parked on a curb at the Empire State Building. Nor will there be any possibility of finding any clues, which either were vaporized instantly or are now lying physically inaccessible under tons of radioactive

rubble. Still, the president, members of Congress, the military, and the public at large will suspect another attack by our known enemy –Islamict e r r o r i s t s .T h ef i r s ti m p u l s ew i l l b et o l a u n c han u c l e a rs t r i k eo nM e c c a , t od e s t r o yt h ew h o l er e l i g i o n o fI s l a m . M e d i n acould possibly be added to the target list just to make the point with crystal clarity. Yet what would we gain? The moment Mecca and Medina were wiped off the map, the Islamic world – more than 1 billion human beings in countless different nations – would feel attacked. Nothing would emerge intact after a war between the United States and Islam. The apocalypse would be upon us . Then, too, we would face an immediate threat from our long-term enemy, the former Soviet Union . Many in the Kremlin would see this as an opportunity to grasp the victory that had been snatched from them by Ronald Reagan when the Berlin Wall came down. A missile strike by the Russians on a score of American cities could possibly be pre-emptive. Would the U.S. strategic defense system be so in shock that immediate retaliation would not be possible? Hardliners in Moscow might argue that there was never a better opportunity to destroy America. In China, our newer Communist enemies might not care if we could retaliate. With a population already over 1.3 billion people and with their population not concentrated in a few

major cities, the Chinese might calculate to initiate a nuclear blow on the United States. What if the United

States retaliated with a nuclear counterattack upon China? The Chinese might be able to absorb the blow and recover. The North Koreans might calculate even more recklessly. Why not launch upon America the few missiles they have that could reach

our soil? More confusion and chaos might only advance their position. If Russia, China, and the United States could be drawn into attacking one another, North Korea might emerge stronger just because it was overlooked while the great nations focus on attacking one another. So, too, our supposed allies in Europe might relish the immediate reduction in power suddenly inflicted upon America. Many of the great egos in Europe have never fully recovered from the disgrace of World War II, when in the last century the Americans a second time in just over two decades had been forced to come to their rescue. If the French did not start launching nuclear weapons themselves, they might be happy to fan the diplomatic fire beginning to burn under the Russians and the Chinese. Or the president might decide simply to launch a limited nuclear strike on Tehran itself.

This might be the most rational option in the attempt to retaliate but still communicate restraint. The problem is that a strike on Tehran would add more nuclear devastation to the world calculation. Muslims around the world would still see the retaliation as an attack on Islam, especially when the United States had no positive proof that the destruction of New York City had been triggered by radical Islamic extremists with assistance from Iran. But for the president not to retaliate might be unacceptable to the American people. So weakened by the loss of New York, Americans would feel vulnerable in every city in the nation. "Who is going to be next?" would be the question on everyone's mind. For this there would be no effective answer. That the president might think politically at this instant seems almost petty, yet every president is by nature a politician. The political party in power at the time of the attack would be destroyed unless the president retaliated with a nuclear strike against somebody. The American people would feel a price had to be paid while the country was still capable of exacting revenge


1: There is no justification for terrorism – it legitimates the worst barbarism ever imagined. One cannot justify, explain or understand terrorists – you must only reject themNetanyahu 1995

Former Prime Minister of Israel [Benjamin,Terrorisrn: how democracies can defeat domestic and international terrorists.]

The salient point that has to be underlined again and again is that nothing justifies terrorism, that it is evil per se -- that the

various real or imagined reasons proffered by the terrorists to justify their actions are meaningless. In its long and unfinished march from barbarism to civilization, humanity has tried to delineate limits to conflict. It has developed laws of war which proscribe, even in wartime, the initiation of deliberate attacks on defenseless civilians. Without this limitation there is no meaning to the term “war.” For if anything is allowable, then even the gassing of a million babies in Auschwitz and Dachau is also permissible. But by their uninhibited resort to vio lence and their repeated attacks on civilians, the terrorists brazenly cross the line between the permissible and the impermissible. By conditioning us to accept savage outrages as habitual or normal responses to undesired political circumstances, terrorism attacks the very foundations of civilization and threatens to erase it altogether by killing man's sense of sin, as Pope John Paul II put it. The unequivocal and unrelenting moral condemnation of terrorism must therefore constitute the defense against its most insidious effect . Yet it is precisely this defense that has been weak ened by the rush to "explain" and "understand" the terrorists' motivations after the

Oklahoma City bombing. A vast instant literature Sprang forth seeking to explain the motivations and psychological makeup of America's newfound terrorists, just as a similar literature was produced at the height of European terrorism in the 1970s. A clinical understanding of terrorist psychology is of course important for fighting terrorism, but it must not spill over into die other connotation of understanding, that of acceptance. "Understanding" the personal hang-ups of Nazi leaders was perfectly justifi able as a means of advancing the total war against Na zism, but it never should have become an excuse to weaken the resolve for fighting Nazism as an absolute evil. The citizens of free societies must he told again and again that terrorists are savage beasts of prey, and should be treated as such. Terrorism should be given no intellectual quarter . Like organized crime, the battle against terrorism should be waged relentessly resisting the attempt to glorify or mystify its perpetrators or their cause in any way.

2: Extinction is Inevitable - Morality before Justice makes Responding to Future Attacks Impossible. And, this turns case – their ethical moral claims make extinction inevitableHannity 2004

(Sean [debater extraordinaire], Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism, HarperCollins publishers in NY, pg 9) IB

This kind of moral relativism is disturbing to me as an American. It discounts the very idea of accountability, devalues our right to fight for our principles. A nd without an unwavering grasp of what is right and what is wrong, how can we ever expect to stand in judgment of our terrorist enemies? Even after 9/11, some voices have charged that one man's terrorist may be another man's freedom fighter. To that I ask: How many noble freedom fighters target innocent women and children? How many build torture chambers in the basements of their official buildings? By blurring the lines between good and evil, liberals have rendered our society more vulnerable to evil's influence. With secular liberals largely in charge of our cultural institutions - not to mention their influence on the courts and even our churches -America is increasingly ill- equipped to recognize, much less respond to. the evil that threatens our nation.

3: Language is the strongest weapon in WOT going easy on terrorists creates more attacks.Murdock, ' 5

[Deroy, nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service "terrorism and the English language" www.heritage.org/Research/ HomelandDefense/hl867.cfm March 9 Heritage Lecture #867]

I live on Manhattan Island and vividly recall watching Mohamed Ada fly American Airlines Flight 11 right over my apartment balcony in the East Village on the morning of September 11, 2001. The horror, sadness, and fear of that rotten day quickly unfolded and remain palpable even now. Yet within a week, some incredibly detached language emerged to describe what happened on 9/1 1 . Consider this message that Verizon left in my voice mail box on September 19: "During this time of crisis, we are asking all customers to review and delete all current and saved messages that are not essential,'' a nameless female announcer stated. "This request is necessary due to extensive damage that was recently sustained in the World Trade Center district." Time of crisis? Did a tidal wave cause the "recently sustained" wreckage in Manhattan? Similarly, a company called Tullet & Tokyo Liberty referred to "the disaster that has hit New York and Washington." The use of the passive voice in these and similar instances suggested that the World Trade Center


and Pentagon were smashed by unguided, perhaps natural, forces. Kinko's was even more elliptical. Shortly after the massacre, the photocopying company placed in its stores some very colorful posters with the Stars and Stripes superimposed upon an outline of the lower 48 stales. The graphic also included this regrettable caption: The Kinko's family extends our condolences and sympathies to all Americans who have been affected by the circumstances in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania." Circumstances? That word describes an electrical blackout, not terrorist bloodshed. Likewise, I kept hearing that people "died" in the Twin Towers or at the Pentagon. No, people "die" in hospitals, often surrounded by their loved ones while doctors and nurses offer aid and comfort The innocent people at the World Trade Cente r, the Defense Department, and that field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, were killed in a carefully choreographed act of mass murder. _A Terrorist By Any Other Name The more this passive, weak, euphemistic language appeared as the war on terrorism began , the more I thought it was vital to pay close

attention to the words, symbols, and images that govern this new and urgent conflict. The civilized world today faces the most anti-Semitic enemy since Adolf Hitler and Josef Goebbels committed suicide in Berlin nearly 60 years ago.

Militant Islam is the most bloodthirsty ideology since the Khmer Rouge eliminated one-third of Cambodia's people. The big difference, of course, is that Pol Pot had the good manners to keep his kilting fields within his own borders, as awful as that was. Islamo-fascism is a worldwide phenomenon that already has touched this country and many of our allies. Yet Muslim extremists rarely have armies we can see, fighter jets we can knock from the sky, or an easily identifiable headquarters, such as the Reichs Chancellery of the 1940s or the Kremlin of the Cold War. While basketball players and their fans battle each other on TV, actresses suffer wardrobe malfunctions, and rap singers scream sweet nothings in our ears, it is very easy to forget that Islamic extremists plot daily to _end all of that and more by killing as many of us as possible. Language can lull Americans to sleep in this new war, or it can keep us on the offensive and our enemies off

balance. Here are a few suggestions to keep Americans alert to the dangers Islamic terrorism poses to this country: September 11 was an attack—not just a series of coincidental strokes and heart failures that wiped out so many victims at once.

Victims of terrorism do not "die," "nor are they "lost" They are killed, murdered, or slaughtered . _We should be specific about the number of people terrorists kill. Three thousand" killed on 9/11 sounds like an amorphous blob. The actual number-2,977-forces us to look at these people as individuals with faces, stories, and loved ones who miss them very much. The precise figures are: 2,749 killed at the World Trade Center, 184 at the Pentagon, and 44 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Likewise, the Bah disco bombings killed 202 people, mainly Australians- The Madrid train bombings tailed 191 men, women, and children. Somehow, a total of 191 people killed by al-Qaeda's pals seems more ominous and concrete than a smoothly rounded 200. Terrorists do not simply "threaten" us , nor is homeland security supposed to shield Americans from "future attacks." All of this is true, but it is more persuasive if we acknowledge what these people have done and hope to do once more - wipe us out . Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said (his on NBC Nightly News last Sunday: "We need to tighten up our drivers' license provisions and our immigration laws so that terrorists cannot take advantage of the present system to kill thousands of Americans again" That is a perfect sound bite. There is no vague talk about "the terrorist threat" or "stopping further attacks." Sensenbrenner concisely explained exactly what is at risk, and what needs to be thwarted-no more killing of Americans by the thousands again. Quote Islamo-fascist leaders to remind people of their (rue intentions. President George W. Bush, Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner, or Deroy Murdock can talk about how deadly militant Islam is and bow seriously we should take this gravely dangerous ideology. Far more persuasive, however, is to let these extremists do the talking. However, their words are nowhere as commonly known as they should be. For instance, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri said in their 1998 declaration of war on the United States: The ruling to kill all Americans and their allies-Chilian and military-is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do il in any country in which it is possible to do it." The late Iranian dictator, Ayatollah Ruholtah Khomeini, put it this way in 1980: "Our struggle is not about land or water.... It is about bringing, by force if necessary, the whole of mankind onto the right path." Ever the comedian, he said (his in 1986: "Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious." Asked what he would say to the loved ones of the 202 people killed in the October 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, Abu Bakar Basbir, leader of Indonesia's radical Jemaah Islamiyah, replied, "My message to the families is, please convert to Islam as soon as possible." The phrase "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) has been pounded into meaninglessness. It has been repeated ad infinitum. Fairly or unfairly, the absence of warehouses full of anthrax and nerve gas in Iraq has made the whole idea of "WMD" sound synonymous with "L-I-E." America's enemies do not plot the

"mass destruction" of empty office buildings or abandoned parking structures. Conversely, they want to see packed office buildings ablaze as their inhabitants scream for mercy. That is why I use the terms "weapons of mass death" and "weapons of mass murder." When speaking about those who are killed by terrorists, be specific, name them, and tell us about them. Humanize these individuals. They are more than just statistics or stick figures. I have written 18 articles and produced a Web page, HUSSEINandTERROR.com, to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein did have ties to terrorism. (By the way, I call him "Saddam Hussein" or "Hussein." I never call him "Saddam" any more than I call Joseph Stalin "Joseph" or Adolf Hitler "Adolf." "Saddam" has a cute, one-name ring to it, like Cher, Gallagher, Liberace, or Sting. Saddam Hussein does not deserve such a term of endearment.) To show that Saddam Hussein's support of terrorism cost American lives, I remind people about the aid and comfort he gave to terrorism master Abu Nidal. Among Abu Nidal's victims in the 1985 bombing of Rome's airport was John Buonocore, a 20-year-old exchange student from Delaware. Palestinian terrorists fatally shot Buonocore in the back as he checked in for his flight. He was heading home after Christmas to celebrate his father's 50th birthday. In another example, those killed by Palestinian homicide bombers subsidized by Saddam Hussein were not all Israeli, which would have been unacceptable enough. Among the 12 or more Americans killed by those Baathist-funded murderers was Abigail Litle, the 14-year-old daughter of a Baptist minister. She was blown away aboard a bus in Haifa on March 5, 2003. Her killer's family got a check for $25,000 courtesy of Saddam Hussein as a bonus for their son's "martyrdom." Is all of this designed to press emotional buttons? You bet it is Americans must remain committed- intellectually and

emotionally- to this struggle . There are many ways to engage the American people. No one should hesitate to remind Americans that terrorism kills our countrymen—at home and abroad—and that those whom militant Islam demolishes include promising young people with bright futures, big smiles, and, now, six feet of soil between them and their dreams. Finally, who are we fighting? Militants? Martyrs? Insurgents? Melinda Bowman of


Brief Hill, Pennsylvania, wrote this in a November 24 letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal: "And, by the way, what is all this 'insurgent' nonsense? These people kidnap, behead, dismember and disembowel. They are terrorists." Nicely and accurately put, Ms. Bowman. Is this a war on terror, per se? A war on terrorism? Or is it really a war on Islamo-fascism? It is really the latter, and we should say so. Tim Guirard runs the TrueSpeak Institute in Washington, D.C. He has thought long and hard about terrorism and the English language. He informed me Tuesday—to my horror—that three years into the war on terrorism, the State Department and the CIA have yet to produce a glossary of the Arabic-language words that Middle Eastern terrorists use, as well as the antonyms for those words. Such a "Thesaurus of Terrorism" would help us linguistically to turn the war on terrorism upside down. Why, for instance, do we inadvertently praise our enemies by agreeing that they fight a jihad or "holy war?" Why not correctly describe them as soldiers in a hirabah or "unholy war?" A Weapon at the Ready In closing, I would say that America and the rest of civilization can and must win this new twilight struggle against these bloodthirsty cavemen. We can and we will crush them through espionage, high-tech force, statecraft, and public diplomacy overseas. Here at home, we can and will vanquish them through eternal vigilance. One of our chief weapons should be something readily available to each and every one of us-the English language.

4: To understand terrorists and not regard their actions of the worst of crimes, it means forgiving. The impact is the end of civilizationElshtain 3

Jean Betake Elshtain, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics, University of Chicago Divinity School, 2003 (Just War Against Terrorism)

We must never lose the capacity for judgment , especially the capacity to judge ourselves and our people... Standards of morality matter no less than standards of excellence . There are black people who commit heinous crimes, and not all of them are driven by hunger and neglect. Not all of them turn to crime because they are victims of racist social policy.... To understand all may indeed be to forgive all, but no civilization can survive when the capacity for understanding is allowed to supersede the capacity for judgment. Otherwise, at the end of the line lies a pile of garbage: Hitler wasn't evil, just insane.5

5: Turn – Making terrorists into victims justifies any evil that is perpetrated by them. This is similar to trying to find justification behind death campsElshtain 3

Jean Betlike Elshtain, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics, University of Chicago Divinity School, 2003 (Just War Against Terrorism)

The journalist Andrew Sullivan comments that there is a word for Fisk's casual claim- racism. For Fisk "believes that the color of a person's skin condemns him automatically and justifies violence against him," that his own skin color and ethnicity exonerated or at least nullified the responsibility of the mob who beat him up, leaving him smashed and bleeding. " Alleged victimization ," Sullivan concludes, " sanctifies any evil perpetrated by the oppressed race. " The important point here is that the cynical but very common notion that all of us arbitrarily

describe events to our self-advantage and then decide which, if any, morality applies, is invalid. Not only is a moral evaluation imbedded in the description itself, but any description of an evil act as good is false to the facts. Think of how we would react to an attempt to make a death camp or a gulag look good . Telling it straight, on the

other hand, evokes the horror. As the theologian Robin Lovin puts it: To say that a person or a state of affairs is morally good, to conclude that an action is the right thing to do, to identify a goal as better than the existing conditions— all these moral statements express our understanding that a particular constellation of facts links aspirations and limitations in that peculiarly satisfying way that we call "good ." If me get me facts wrong, we will be wrong about the ethics, too; for the reality to which moral realism refers is not a separate realm of moral ideas, independent of the facts. Moral realities are facts about the world, properties that we judge persons, actions, and situations to have precisely because they have identifiable factual characteristics that link up in appropriate ways with other sets of facts and possibilities.

6: There is no solution to the naming or correct discussion of "terrorists" when the point of "terrorism" is to kill innocent civilians. A terrorist, by definition, is one who sows terror. Elshtain 3

Jean Betlike Elshtain, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics, University of Chicago Divinity School, 2003 (Just War Against Terrorism)WHAT IS A TERRORIST? This line of reasoning pertains directly to how we talk about terror and terrorists. Just as me words martyr and martyrdom are distorted, whether in the Western or the Islamic tradition, when applied not to those prepared to die as witnesses to their faith but instead to those who commit suicide


while killing as many civilians as possible, so terrorist is twisted beyond recognition if it is used to designate anyone anywhere fighting for a cause. Terrorists are those who kill people they consider their "objective enemy." no matter what those people may or may not have done. Terrorist and terrorism entered ordinary language to designate a specific phenomenon: killing directed against all ideological enemies indiscriminately and outside the context of a war between combatants . According to the logic of terrorism, enemies can legitimately be killed no matter what they are doing, where they are, or how old they are . The word terror first entered the political vocabulary of the West during the French Revolution. Those who guillotined thousands in the Place de la Concorde in Paris were pleased to speak of revolutionary tenor as a form of justice. 12 Since the era of the French Revolution, a complex, subtle, and generally accepted international language has emerged to make critical distinctions between different kinds of violent acts. Combatants are distinguished from noncombatants. A massacre is different from a battle. An ambush is different from a firefight. When Americans look back with sadness and even shame at the Vietnam War, it is horrors like the My Lai massacre they have in mind. Those who called the slaughter of more than four hundred unarmed men, women, and children a battle were regarded as having taken leave of their senses, perhaps because they were so determined to justify anything that Americans did in the Vietnam War that they had tost their moral moorings. 13 A terrorist is one who sows terror. Terror subjects its victims or would-be victims to paralyzing fear. In die words of the political

theorist Michael Walzer, terrorism's "purpose is to destroy the morale of a nation or a class, to undercut its solidarity; its method is the random murder of innocent people. Randomness is the crucial feature of terrorist activity. If one wishes fear to spread and intensify over time, it is not desirable to kill specific people identified in some particular way with a regime, a party, or a policy. Death must come by chance."14 Terrorism is 'the random murder of innocent people." The reference is not to moral innocence, for none among us are innocent in that way, but to our inability to defend ourselves

from murderous attacks as we go to work, take a trip, shop, or ride a bus. In other words, Chilians are not combatants. Terrorists are not interested in the subtleties of diplomacy or in compromise solutions. They have taken leave of politics. Sometimes elements of movements that resort to terrorism—say, the Irish Republican Army—may also develop a political arm and begin negotiating a political solution. No political solution is possible, however , when the terrorism is aimed at the destruction of innocent civilians —when that itself is the goal.

7: Our definition of terrorism distinguishes between the different types of wars. This increases our ability to combat such violence by shifting the activities to alternate courses, reducing the scope of international terrorismGanor 1

Boaz Ganor, Director of the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism. 2001 (Defining Terrorism: "Is One Man's Terrorist Another Mail's Freedom Fighter?")

We face an essential need to reach a definition of terrorism that will enjoy wide international agreement, thus enabling international operations against terrorist organizations. A definition of this type must rely on the same principles already agreed upon regarding conventional wars (between states), and extrapolate from them regarding non-conventional wars between organization and a state. The definition of terrorism will be the basis and the operational tool for expanding the international community's ability to combat terrorism. It will enable legislation and specific punishments against those perpetrating, involved in. or supporting terrorism, and will allow the formulation of a codex of laws and international conventions against terrorism terrorist organizations, states sponsoring terrorism, and economic firms

trading with them. At the same time, the definition of terrorism will hamper the attempts of terrorist organizations to obtain public legitimacy, and will erode support among those segments of the population willing to assist them

(as opposed to guerrilla activities). Finally, the operative use of the definition of terrorism could motivate terrorist organizations, due to moral or utilitarian considerations, to shift from terrorist activities to alternative courses (such

as guerrilla warfare) in order to attain their aims. thus reducing the scope of international terrorism . The struggle to define terrorism is sometimes as hard as the struggle against terrorism itself The present view, claiming it is unnecessary and well-nigh impossible to agree on an objective definition of terrorism, has long established itself as me "politically correct" one. It is the aim of this paper, however, to demonstrate that an objective, internationally accepted definition of terrorism is a feasible goal, and that an effective struggle against terrorism requires such a definition. The sooner the nations of the world come to this realization, the better.

8: The War on Terrorism is not constructed, nor can it be deterred. Our criticisms of the government won't deter those who are ready to strike us. This is analogous to how the reactions to post-WWI did not inevitably produce Nazism, it was a group of people taking over state power independently.Elshtain 3

Jean Betlike Elshtain, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics, University of Chicago Divinity School, 2003 (Just War Against Terrorism)


Certain critical events in the past remind us of this mordant fact- Looking back on twentieth-century fascism, we do not wring our hands and blame everyone but the Nazis for their murderous policies. Of course, it is important for historians and political analysts to take account of the political, social, and economic milieu out of which National Socialism emerged. But the difficulty and desperation of post— World War I conditions—runaway inflation, a war-torn economy, and war reparations, all of which Germany faced—do not add up to the inevitability of the evil that was Nazism, To claim such is to set in motion an exculpatory strategy that, whether intentionally or inadvertently, rationalizes political pathology. The overriding truth and most salient fact of National Socialism is simply stated: A group of people took over state power , aimed to

expand an Aryan Empire through ruthless force, and , as dictated by their ideology of biological racism, murdered whole categories of people not because of anything they had done but because of who they were. Why, then, in the context of America's war against terrorism, do so many tick off a list of American "failures" or even insist that America brought the horrors of September 11. 2001. on herself ? Let

me be clear that I exempt from this mode of argument the ludicrous claims that have arisen since that day, such as the slander that Israel carried out the attacks after having first warned Jews who worked in New York's World Trade Center towers to

stay home that day, or the preposterous charge that American officials, up to and including the president of the United States, engineered the attacks to bolster their popularity. This sort of inflammatory madness exists outside the boundary of political debate and festers instead in the fever swamps of conspiracy theory. Conducted within the boundary of reasonable political debate, however, are those arguments that an international "war on poverty and despair," or a change in the direction of U.S. Middle Eastern policy, or a different U.S. policy toward Iraq will stay the hands of murderous terrorists in the future. Certainly these arguments deserve a hearing. Pushing more programs that deal with poverty and despair or rethinking American foreign policy, including our approach to Iraq, may have desirable outcomes. But no such change, either singly or together. will deter Osama bin Laden and those like him . To believe such is to plunge headfirst

into the strategy of denial characteristic of the citizens of Oran in Camus's novel. We could do everything demanded of us by those who are critical of America , both inside and outside our boundaries, but Islamist fundamentalism and the threat it poses would not be deterred.

9: The acts that we describe are definitionally acts of terror. An attempt to describe them using any other word does not pass judgment on them, but rather legitimizes the acts that they commitSt. Petersburg Times, 2003

(Philip Gailey, "Word choice matters in Mid East Reporting," August 31, Lexis)

For me, it's not a hard call. Acts of terror are committed by terrorists, and the horrific bus attack on Israeli civilians, like

the dozens of suicide bombings that preceded it, was an act of cold, indiscriminate terror. So why do so many news

organizations insist on describing terrorists as militants? 1 don't think militants set out to deliberately kill children. Dr.

Bruce Epstein wonders if the St. Petersburg Times is part of the problem, intentionally or not. In a recent letter, this Pinellas County

physician complained that newspapers appear to want to "legitimatize" Palestinian terrorists by describing them as militants. I happen to believe the Palestinian cause - an independent and free Palestinian state - is legitimate and that the Palestinian people do have legitimate grievances over the Israeli occupation. That said, I believe Epstein raises a fair question about news coverage of Mideast violence. He objected in particular to a recent headline in the Times on a story about the assassination of a senior leader of the Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group - "Militant's death sparks vengeance threats." He later noticed another headline - "Dealer sympathized with terrorists." That headline was on a story about the arrest of a man in the New York area who was trying to sell surface-to-air missiles to terrorists (they turned out to be undercover agents) to bring down U.S. commercial airliners. Epstein writes: "In my mind, this double standard is both appalling and disturbing. If Americans are killed in a terror attack, the killers are called terrorists. If Jewish Israelis are killed in a terror attack, the killers are called militants....By using the word "militant' to describe a terrorist, the Times legitimizes the terrorist. When the Times substitutes the word "militant' for terrorist. the newspaper conveys to its readers that these Palestinian (terrorist) groups are legal, legitimate and even moral." Contrary to what Epstein and other readers suggest, the Times has no such motive or policy. It needs a policy on how to distinguish a militant from a terrorist, and newsroom editors are in the process of drafting one, as are editors at other newspapers around the country. The Orlando Sentinel has been getting similar complaints from readers, and earlier this year its style committee reviewed the use of militant and terrorist and came up with this standard: "Use caution when using these terms (militants, terrorists), which can show bias toward one side in a conflict. Generally, "bombers', "attackers', or "suicide bombers' are preferred terms." Manning Pynn. the Sentinel's public editor, recently wrote that despite the style committee decision, the paper will continue to use "militant" to describe Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, both of which are on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. "The term "terrorist' certainly expresses judgment: It imputes to the person or organization being described

the motive of trying to instill fear. "Militant' seems to me much more neutral," Pynn wrote. Foolish me. 1 thought instilling fear is exactly what Hamas and Islamic Jihad mean to do when they send their suicide bombers into markets,

restaurants and buses to kill and terrorize Israeli civilians . I'm all for fair and balanced reporting (I hope the Fox cable news

network doesn't slap me with a lawsuit for trademark infringement), but I also believe that words do matter. And if the word


"terrorism" is to have any real meaning, then blowing up a bus crowded with women and children must be condemned for what it is - an act of terrorism.


Recognizing the Reality of Terrorism Allows us to Establish Concrete Initiatives that Strike At Their Supporters – To Do Nothing Ensures our DestructionHannity 2004

(Sean [debater extraordinaire], Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism, HarperCollins publishers in NY, pg 3-4) IB

The trouble with tolerating evil , of course, is that while we’re averting our eyes, the evil itself only grows and festers around the world. This has been true throughout history. Neville Chamberlain assured a wary England that an appeasement pact with Adolf Hitler would lead to “peace in our time.” Cold War liberal elitists ignored or downplayed the atrocities of communism, from the gulag of “Uncle Joe” Stalin to the killing field of Cambodia. Bill Clinton stood idly by while Islamic terrorists attacked American targets throughout the 1990s, in a long prelude that should have alerted us to their burgeoning war on America. The primary evil we face today is terrorism. Butwe will never triumph over the terrorists until we realize that groups like al-Qaeda are not working alone. Without the deep pockets of terrorist-friendly dictatorships like

Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to support them, the loose networks of Islamic terrorism would pose only a fraction of the danger to civilization they currently do . And those dictatorships, we must realize, are the same brutal regimes that have

oppressed their own people for generations. As President bush has declared,we can no longer wait around for terrorists to attack us. We must take the war to them, rooting them out of their swamps and destroying the despotic regimes that furnish their lifeblood.But the president also warned that this would be a war like no other. It would be fought on a variety of levels, against a largely invisible and unconventional enemy. Sometimes our efforts would be conducted out in the open, for all to see; at other times, though, they would be as invisible to the public as the terrorists themselves. And they would be ongoing, because new terrorists are being born and trained every day, raised to hate us with every fiber of their beings. One challenge of a long and drawn-out war is that public commitment to the war effort can flag – especially in an unpredictable situation like the War on Terror, where a few weeks of dramatic battle can be followed by months of difficult activity behind the scenes. Andif the public should lose its resolve to win , if its attention should wander from the evil that confronts

us and the necessity of defeating it, victory will only stray further from our reach.Under such circumstances, some of the most dangerous attacks our nation faces can come from those on the home front.

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