Various mini-cons on Twitter are trying to convince me that I’m supposed to be outraged that Obama did not immediately declare the Boston Marathon bombings acts of terrorism:
9:25 pm on April 15, 2013Obama is refusing to call this a terrorist attack.
Obama is refusing to call this a terrorist attack.
— Matthew Boyle (@mboyle1) April 15, 2013
Declaring something terrorism is mostly a political act. It tells us nothing about the crime perpetrated, or even about the perpetrators. It does tell us how the regime feels about the perpetrators. For example, Anders Brevik, the pro-Israel, anti-Muslim Norwegian who gunned down dozens of teenagers and set off a bomb in central Oslo, is not a terrorist. He’s a “mass murderer” not a terrorist. Nevermind that Brevik’s acts were politically motivated, and he perpetrated his killings to achieve a political goal. Nope, Brevik’s politics are “good,” so he’s not a terrorist. Muslims, of course, are automatically terrorists, as is anyone whose politics might be perceived as anti-Israel or “anti-government.”
The whole point of labeling something “terrorism” is to win support for federal action against whichever group you can blame for the murderous acts being discussed. If the killing in question is simply a matter of crime and criminal prosecution, then it might be possible for local law enforcement to simply handle it, or at least a federal law enforcement agency. On the other hand, if something is terrorism, well then, that demands federal laws, regulations, wars, bombs, and a host of other gigantic Acts of Government.
There’s no objective measure of what’s “terrorism” of course, and anyone can play this game:
April 19th is coming up, so I’m reminded of this picture of a bunch of terrorists who started shooting some heroic boys in uniform as they tried to enforce duly constituted gun-control laws.
