Justus For All

Glenn Reynolds wrote this a couple of days age:

Nor do I think that high-profile diplomacy, or an invasion, is an appropriate response. We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and iranian atomic scientists, supporting the simmering insurgencies within Iran, putting the mullahs’ expat business interests out of business, etc. Basically, stepping on the Iranians’ toes hard enough to make them reconsider their not-so-covert war against us in Iraq.

There have been quite a few, predictable, people outraged over this.  Most of them I don’t think are worth addressing, but Kevin Drum wrote something that is I think at least worth talking about:

After all, killing civilian scientists and civilian leaders, even if you do it quietly, is unquestionably terrorism. That’s certainly what we’d consider it if Hezbollah fighters tried to kill cabinet undersecretaries and planted bombs at the homes of Los Alamos engineers. What’s more, if we took this tack against Iran, we’d be doing it for the same reason that terrorists target us: because it’s a more effective, more winnable tactic than conventional war.

At its face, this seems reasonable, and I certainly agree that many, including those whose partisan feelings align fairly closely with my own, would accept that definition of terrorism, and have indeed employed it in the past.

I however don’t think it is accurate.  Killing civilians is not unquestionably terrorism (even if we decide that Iranian nuclear scientists and radical mullahs fit the definition of civilian.)
Terrorism is, as a tactic, is specifically designed to inspire fear (the terror that it is named for) in the general civilian populace.  It has little to do with the methods employed, a roadside bomb can be a terrorist weapon, but it can also be a legitimate weapon in a guerilla war.  How it is used, and what the purpose is determines whether it is a terrorist attack or not.

Similarly, I certainly do think conventional military weapons can be used for terrorism.  It is who the target is, and the purpose of the attack that makes the difference.

I also don’t claim that it is necessarily a bright line between the two, however many specific instances are quite easy to differentiate.

A policy of assassinations against nuclear scientists in Iran and the mullahs that lead the government is not a terror campaign designed to inspire fear in the general populace.  One can make a variety of arguments as to the wisdom or morality of such a policy, but equating it with terrorism would be factually incorrect, just as it is factually incorrect to claim that attacks on American military personnel in Iraq are terrorist attacks (while attacks on civilians at Mosques, whether with a bomb or an AK-47 are terror attacks.)

Of course just because an act of war isn’t terrorism doesn’t determine whether it is just or not, although most (myself included) believe that an act of terrorism automatically is outside the bounds of just war.

On the specifics of Glenn Reynolds propossal, I think that classifying nuclear scientists and the leaders of a nation as military targets is reasonable.  If a war with that nation is justified, a small unconventional war against just those targets would be even easier to justify.  Obviously I think any of my readers are aware that I think we have just cause for military action against Iran, and I won’t review that particular case here.

It is of course difficult to imagine a moral code that would allow for bombing a nuclear facility, in part with the hope that the human resources of that facility would be destroyed, but not allow for a sniper bullet to accomplish the same thing.

That said, while there are no moral objections, there are some practical reasons that we may want to avoid normalizing this sort of behavior.  First and foremost, is that while we may be marginally better at getting an assassin into position to target an enemy asset then our adversaries (this is questionable,) we are certainly much much better at getting a bomber into enemy airspace and hitting a target then anyone else.  Therefore it is in our self interest that the first be widely regarded as ‘illegitimate’ but that the second be considered a legitimate use of force.

It is of course mildly ironic that so many who are concerned with American hyper-power and the negative effects that result from it are seemingly quite willing to shore it up by maintaining that an assassination policy is always illegimate.