Defining The Enemy

I’m a bit late to the party on this because I have been studying articles for several days, trying to find out the basis upon which the United States is declaring the Haqqanis as a terrorist network. So far I see nothing which I think justifies that designation.

They have made attacks on US forces in Afghanistan and on the American embassy there, but that seems to me to be a legitimate effort by insurgents to drive an occupying army out of their land. I know we regard that as “terrorism,” but I don’t think it fits the actual definition of the word. They engage, our government says, in extortion, bribery, kidnapping and smuggling to fund their operations. Those certainly are criminal acts, but are not terrorism by any definition of the word.

We claim that they “are affiliated with Al Queda in Yemen,” but don’t provide any actual evidence of that other than the statement itself. Of course in the modern American system of justice, a mere accusation is sufficient to proceed to execution, so perhaps that is all that is needed to put them on the terrorist list – a government declaration that they “are affiliated” with some terrorist group or another.

We’ve been killing them for several years, in Pakistan using Hellfire missiles fired from unmanned drones, based on them being “militants” or “insurgents,” so with this declaration we can use our missiles and kill them for being terrorists. More importantly, in addition to killing them, if they are terrorists we can take any money they have in bank accounts, while if they are militants or insurgents we have to leave their money alone.