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Nov 13, 2009 7:20 am US/Central
Good Question: Were Ft. Hood Shootings Terrorism?
(WCCO)
There's no debate that the killing of 13 innocent Army soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas was a horrific crime. But there is debate as to whether the killer, a Muslim Major, is a terrorist. What makes a crime an act of terrorism?
"This man was a Muslim extremist terrorist," said Bill O'Reilly on his Fox News program "The O'Reilly Factor." "I don't get it, I don't get it why you don't call it what it is? He's a jihadist!"
WCCO-TV viewers have been e-mailing, asking why there's so much hesitance to use the word "terrorist."
"How long will it take for the news media to acknowledge the Ft. Hood murders as a terror attack borne out of extreme Islamic beliefs?" wrote Azeez Onifide, a Circle Pines resident.
"A terrorist is somebody who kills people in order to get them to do something, like withdraw from Afghanistan," said John Haiman, a professor of linguistics at Macalaster College.
Haiman said there's been considerable debate over this word since the 1980s, when the rhetoric about terrorism reached a fever pitch.
"An awful lot is ballyhoo. It was ballyhoo in the 1980s that terrorism is the number one threat to the world," said Haiman.
There is a debate among scholars about the meaning of the word terrorism. It's hard to define. According to Time Magazine, a government research project found 109 different, nuanced definitions of the term.
"This is a new kind of terrorism, self-generated act of terrorism," said Richard Stengel, editor of Time Magazine.
The idea is that terror groups want lone wolves to take action without direction. This is a shift from the old way where a group-directed terrorist activities. It used to be more coordinated.
Today, Haiman said that it's pretty clear that Oklahoma City Bomber Tim McVeigh meets the definition of a terrorist. And a religious extremist who kills a doctor performing abortions would also be considered a terrorist.
"It's a crime and it's terrorism. In the narrowest definition, he is doing that in order to change the law, in order to intimidate," said Haiman.
But a workplace shooting or the work of a serial killer would not qualify as terrorism because, according to Haiman, the perpetrator there would be committing the acts in secret. The point of a terrorism is that the act is a public one. The FBI definition of terrorism requires an intent to intimidate or influence public opinion.
"They're trying to get someone to do something," he said.
And it doesn't have to be a religious message to qualify as terrorism, it could be a protest against war policy. Haiman says terrorism can be totally secular in nature.
So if Hasan just lost it, it's a crime. But if he was protesting U.S. war policy, it's terrorism.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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