Live Free or Die Hard... really?

[Frelga]

Let's say you live in a very nasty tyranny. You are oppressed, your rights are denied, maybe a few people you care about were disappeared. Bricks without straw, that sort of thing. Yet your life is not in any immediate danger as long as you do not openly oppose the tyrannical government. If you do, you die. You know that if enough people do defy the government so that it feels threatened, the retaliation will be instant, brutal, and result in the loss of thousands, tens of thousands lives. And they will probably win.

Is it moral to promote an uprising under such conditions? How far would you have to be pushed, how many rights would you have to be denied before it would be worth it to sacrifice your life for freedom, and probably lives of many, many others along with yours?

Personal speculation and historical examples are welcome.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I. Don't. Know.

[Primula Baggins]

Major change usually seems to involve sacrifice. The ripples spread out and can have effects long after the ones who sacrificed are dead. If freedom ever comes to China, it will be partly because of Tien-an-men Square. Even if it's a hundred years later.

Doing the right thing is never the wrong thing to do. It can be ineffective, and personally harmful, but it's not wrong.

[Impenitent]

I agree with Prim - but (big but) I would not act openly, being a coward of the first order (but not the second order).

I would do whatever I could covertly, not dissimilarly to the organisational tactics used by Osama bin Laden and his ilk (yes, they are bad men doing bad things, but that doesn't mean we cannot learn from their tactics).

An underground movement working for years and years, perhaps even using guerilla tactics, to overthrow tyranny. I could see myself being involved in something like that without being cowed by my own cowardice.

On the other hand, maybe that's just fantasy and that kind of approach could not, would not, work in this Big Brother society.

[Primula Baggins]

But, Impy, can any of us really predict what we would do in the situation Frelga describes? We'd certainly have a lot less to lose. Maybe giving hope to our children would be worth risking their safety. Or maybe not.

[Alatar]

I admit, its a question I wonder about, given my own country's recent history. Its why I get uncomfortable when people talk about terrorists as cowards hiding and not fighting openly. Without terrorists, my country would not be free. I can't approve of the tactics, but neither can I denounce them. When faced with a police state who are well armed, how exactly should the local populace fight back? March to the GPO and nail a proclamation to the door? They were captured and executed. In truth, it was not these brave sacrifices that made the difference (except as rallying points). It was the hit and run tactics of the IRA that eventually forced the withdrawal of British troops. Every one of them lived in fear and constant danger. They did not consider themselves terrorist, but patriots.

People now try to differentiate between the "Old IRA" and the Provos as if there's some sort of moral difference. And maybe there is. The Provos run organised crime in the North, including drug running, gambling and prostitution. These things were supposedly fundraisers to fuel the "war effort", but since the peace accord, they don't appear to have slowed significantly. That said, the "Old IRA" were not above robbing a bank or police barracks for guns. Is there really that much difference? Where do we draw the line?

When is a terrorist a Freedom Fighter, and vice versa?

[axordil]

One can accomplish nearly as much with a lifetime of carefully honed passive-aggressive behavior as with a bomb. But the bomb is easier.

Fomenting open rebellion that has NO chance of succeeding is the same sort of activity as the monks who set themselves on fire to protest the war in Viet Nam, only with enough gasoline for others to share. It's a sacrificial protest.

If it has SOME chance, even small, of succeeding, it's a very different ethical equation. The hard part is of course being able to tell the difference in advance.

[Northerner]

I've been thinking about this topic since I watched The Wind that Shakes the Barley last week. Certainly, in today's world, we would call the Irish who were part of the IRA terrorists, and certainly they performed terrorist acts. That said, how else does an underequipped force fight well armed troops that outnumber them?

This film really does force the viewer to confront how far one would go to remove an oppressor, and that even 'winning' comes at a great personal cost to the ones that are part of it. Terrible deeds become a part of the person and his/her life is changed by them.

[Crucifer]

The IRA in the wind that shakes the Barley era were not terrorists. The IRA then were fighting against a system that was unjustly destroying their culture.

The IRA now are very much a terrorist organization, but then, they had a just cause.

[Alatar]

I suspect that many Ulster people of the 70's would disagree with you Crucifer, much as many disagreed that the Old IRA were not terrorists at the time. History is always written by the victor.

[Crucifer]

Written from my point of view, of course. It's all subjective...

[MithLuin]

I think that the difference between terrorists and resistance fighters is in the cause, not the methods/tactics. If you are fighting a just government just because you'd rather be in charge...that's terrorism. If you are fighting an unjust, oppressive gov't, to free the people...that's freedom fighting. It's all fighting, but some of it is better than others.

But then, I'm from the US, and we got our independence by rebeling . Most people from the South felt they were justified, too. Those are both cases of 'traditional warfare', but it's still rebelling.

Who doesn't sympathize with the Rebel Alliance fighting off the evil Imperial Army? Who cares if there were a million people on the Death Star when Luke blew it up, most of whom were tech types, not evil overlord types?

So, I can't answer that question well. I think the difference between 'terrorist' and 'freedom fighter' is very dependent upon point of view, because they both do the same types of things. But sometimes that might be right/justifiable, and other times it certainly seems very wrong to me!

I like the OP though - what would I do, faced with such a dilemma? I'm not sure - the nature of a what-if is that I am currently sitting comfortably in relative freedom. If I want to help change the world, I don't have to fight (at least, not like that). But it's still a fair question - what should I do? What risks are worth it?

I do not think you should look to the final end to justify behavior. It is true that all actions have consequences, and it's only fair to evaluate them. But you can't say "this might happen." Yes, there will be reprecussions and crackdowns. Maybe they will be against your family, who had no call in what you did. But that...that's not the starting point.

I think...I think I would look at what was being destroyed, and see if there were some way to save it. Getting shot doesn't sound like fun, so I wouldn't stick my neck out randomly. Nor would I do it just to be against something. I would have to be...for something. And if I were, strongly enough, for it...yes, I'd even risk my life. And my family's lives? Harder to say. I'd probably try to get them out of the country, if possible.

There are other forms of resistence that don't involve weapons. Oppressive gov'ts shut down education and discussion. They kill culture. They take away a people's hope. If I could preserve or restore that...well, that's worth fighting for.

But I love the idea of fighting for what's right!
"Will you join in our crusade, who will be strong and stand with me?
Will you give all you can give so that our banner can advance?
Some will fall and some will live, will you stand up and take your chance?
The blood of the martyrs will water the meadows of France!"
Do You Hear the People Sing?

But Les Mis is about the student rebellion, not the French Revolution. It was ineffective and they all just died for nothing. I don't know if that's sobering or dissapointing.

That's why that song has a reprise, though

[solicitr]

When is a terrorist a Freedom Fighter, and vice versa?

I would very much beg to differ with Mith's answer. The difference lies precisely in the tactics employed. 'Terrorism' after all is defined as the use of random massacre to inspire fear, for political purposes. I would define a rebel/guerilla/freedom fighter as one who attacks the instrumentalities of an oppressive state or occupier- the soldiers, the police, the government ministries. This in the main is what the 'old' IRA did in 1916-22. It also was the principal on which Washington* and later Lee operated (interestingly it was Cornwallis and Sherman, respectively, who introduced deliberate atrocity as a policy of 'terrorizing' the populace into submission).

I'm fully prepared to distinguish in the present conflicts between insurgents who carry out attacks on US troops, and terrorists who set off car bombs in crowded markets: which is in fact completely consonant with the distinction drawn in the Geneva Convention on Armed Conflict (albeit under the Laws of War the insurgents have problems, specifically in operating in civilian disguise in civilian areas thereby putting the residents at risk, a forbidden tactic). Whether you're part of a regular national armed force or not, Thou Shalt Not Target Civilians.

After all, doesn't Tolkien tell us that the means as well as the end must be right?

*The old myth beloved of Hollywood depicting the Continental Army as a bunch of ragtag guerillas is just that- a myth. The sober fact is that the Redcoats handed our asses to us until we mastered European drill under instructors like von Steuben (and brought in thousands of French regulars).

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I am inclined to agree, soli. After all, the "cause" is such a subjective thing. Certainly al-Quaeda and other hardcore Islamic extremists (whether in Iraq or elsewhere) believe that they are fighting oppression.

On the other hand, wouldn't the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo (not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki) be considered terrorism? How about attacking "military targets" knowing that there will be "collateral damage" such as the recent strike in Iraq that killed 15 civilians, including 9 children? Morality in war is a fuzzy thing.

[Alatar]

I was about to mention the Blitz, Berlin and the atomics. Surely those were acts of terrorism by Solicitrs definition.

[solicitr]

In fact the mass-bombing of German and Japanese cities was called by its planners and practitioners "terror bombing" (it was outlawed in 1949).

The example Vor brings up is rather different. Nothing in the law of war says that military targets are immune from attack just because there is a chance of hurting civilians. It is a sad fact that hundreds of innocent Normans were killed in the D-Day bombardment. There is a very fuzzy rule of proportionality: but there is no crime (under existing law) in a case like the airstrike that killed Zarqawi, and apparently his wife and kids too since they happened to be in the house. Actually combatants who place civilians in harm's way (human shields) are, under Geneva, war criminals.

[MithLuin]

Oh yeah...that too.

I agree that means are as important as ends, I was just pointing out that freedom fighters are still fighters, and thus part of the 'fuzzy' morality you get in a war. But it is true that it isn't fair to lump insurgents with terrorists and say they are 'the same thing' - they're clearly not.

[Jnyusa]

Well, the distinction I have always heard is as described by sol and Voronwë above.

Targetting civilians is a crime against humanity; placing civilians in harm's way as a shield is a crime against humanity. Fighting regular forces is guerrilla warfare and as such subject only to the rules of war (which are quite bad enough, thank you).

Terrorism, as we've seen it practiced in the second half of the 20th century, goes one step further, in my opinion. The earliest analysis I've seen of this was written by Lawrence Durrell about the fighting in Cyprus (two decades before the Turkish invasion); and then I read it re-iterated and formalized by a Temple professor who wrote a book about the strategy of terrorism in the 1970s.

Modern terrorism not only strikes at civilian populations to inspire terror, it also attempts to draw reprisal against civilian populations by hiding within them, in the hopes that the reprisal will create so much anger against the 'oppressor' that more people will join the ranks of the terrorist.

The implications of this are not, I fear, fully comprehended by our military strategists, who appear to be continuing to treat the war on terror as if it were a territorial war and a war in which other goverments can be brought to our aid as enforcers. The whole focus of modern 'low-intensity conflict' has shifted rather to the civilian population and all the ways in which it can be manipulated.

The example I like to point to is the response of Marriott Inc. following the 9/11 attacks. Within a very short period of time, a month or two iirc, they announced the overhaul of their security systems and something like a doubling of their armed security forces. You're safe at a Marriott, all you fearful travelers!

But Mohammed Ata did not stay at a Marriott while he was hiding out in the US; he stayed at EconoLodge. Civil defense in the 21st century means security forces in the EconoLodge, and of course there are none. There are not even ordinary people in an EconoLodge who are willing to call the attention of the FBI to their own existence, and so they are most unlikely to report other suspicious characters.

We are looking at the wrong arena, in other words. The terrorists are winning against our system not because our system is democratic and its wheels grind slowly but because we have created marginalized populations which the terrorist incorporates into his/her strategy very effectively.

When people who are not very good at thinking things through and articulating their thoughts very carefully say that "we asked for it" I believe that what they are understanding intuitively is that this arena in which the terrorist finds cover is an arena which we did in fact create and hand over to him. It irritates me to hear this kind of statement brushed away as unpatriotic because it really is more astute than the stuff coming out the oval office.

The Al Qeyda cell that was arrested in Philadelphia was living five-guys to a one-bedroom apartment in a 'hood' where crime rates and unemployment are through the roof. They lived there for more than two years without being detected, building their bombs and waving to their neighbors. Now, I'm not wealthy by any means but I live in a nice, safe, employed neighborhood and you just couldn't hide six Arabs building bombs in my neighborhood! I mean, we're probably 30% Jewish here and a heck of a lot of us look like Arabs but an Al-Qeyda cell would stand out. You know? And for that reason, no Al-Qeyda cells are hiding in my neighborhood and my vigilance, noble though it might be, is a futility.

The new arena of warfare and civil defense is the arena in which the terrorist hides, not the arena that he/she attacks. That is what we have to eliminate. And like every other enforcement objective, it really depends mainly on the voluntary cooperation of the population targeted for enforcement. If we have to fill every 'hood' in Philly with policeman watching out for Al-Qeyda cells, we can't afford to do it. We have to rely on the local populace to do that on behalf of everyone, and they will only do it if they have a stake in the outcome, which, at present, they do not. What's it to them that a building full of lawyers and stock brokers went kaboom?

Change "neighborhood in Philadelphia" to "neighborhood in Baghdad" and you've got the picture, as well as the reason why we are not winning this struggle.

To get back to Frelga's original question, though, I'm not convinced that the scenario is one that occurs in real life. I'm not convinced that anyone feels safe within a dictatorship rampantly violating human rights. I'm not convinced that anyone has a strategy, such as non-involvement, which they truly believe will keep them safe. I think much of it is that people are looking away because they are simply terrified to look. Delusion and denial, sliced on rye, while hoping that something bad will happen to the bad guys before they do something bad to you. We get involved only when we can no longer pretend. Something comes home when we aren't looking, or we realize (as the peasants did in Nicaragua in 1979) that the only two choices are fast death and slow death, and then the choice becomes easy.

As for the vanguard of those movements, yes there are true heroes, a handful out of the world population in every generation perhaps, but most of the time when I meet some of those people I want to recommend that they read "Dirty Hands" by Sartre. Very few of us are entirely pure in our motivations.

[WampusCat]

Any revolution is fertilized by the blood of martyrs. Even a brutally suppressed insurrection can have long-term effects. So I would like to think that I would act against oppression.

But until put to the test, I can't be sure that I would.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Great post, Jn! Thank you.