A new tradition has emerged in American public discourse. After a suicide attack occurs on U.S. soil, the public debates whether or not the attack is “terrorism.” This happened last fall after the Hasan shooting and it’s happening again after the IRS attack. At Discovery News, Ian O’Neill looks to the dictionary, the FBI’s web-site, and the UN General Assembly to find an appropriate definition of terrorism. Each definition differs, though each one requires the attacker to have some sort of political objective, leading O’Neill to conclude that the attack was not terrorism:
But in Stack’s mind, he wasn’t furthering a social objective (no matter how it looks from the outside); he was taking personal revenge for what he perceived as mistreatment by the IRS (as outlined in his suicide letter). He wanted to strike out against “Mr. Big Brother IRS man,” and no matter how insane or selfish his plan, he wanted to go out in a proverbial “blaze of glory.”
Whether Stack walked into the IRS offices with a gun, a bomb, or crashed into it with a plane, the outcome is the same; he was taking revenge.
O’Neill is incorrect. Joseph Stack, the IRS attacker, outlined his political rationale quite clearly is his suicide letter:
Nothing changes unless there is a body count (unless it is in the interest of the wealthy sows at the government trough). In a government full of hypocrites from top to bottom, life is as cheap as their lies and their self-serving laws.
I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at “big brother” while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won’t continue; I have just had enough.
I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less. I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are. Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. The cruel joke is that the really big chunks of shit at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at and using this awareness against, fools like me all along.
Since Stack’s goal is to encourage others to engage in suicide attacks to force a change in government behavior, his attack classifies as terrorism by most definitions of the word. Accordingly, both sides of the political spectrum claim Stack as an appendage of their political enemies. The Left claims Stack was a man of the Right. The Right claims he was a man of the Left. In actuality, most of Stack’s stated objectives – health care reform, tax code revision, etc. – are shared by majorities on both sides of the political aisle. The difference between Stack and the majority of Americans is tactics. Should violence be used to further mainstream political objectives? The “terrorism” label is linked to legitimacy of violence in this context.
The Stack case contrasts interestingly with the recent Nigerian military coup. The FPA Human Rights Blog asked last week if the Nigerian coup could be considered right. Since Nigerian President Mamadou Tandja unconstitutionally extended his time in office, was it right for the military to use force to take over the government with the goal of reinstating a constitutional regime? Stack, in his suicide note, reveals that he thinks he’s using violence similarly, to make America what he was taught it was supposed to be:
We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was “no taxation without representation”. I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse.
Stack seemingly hopes that his act of violence will lead to the creation of the mythical America of which he learned about as a child. Unfortunately, this America never existed, as the Founding Fathers took deliberate steps to curb democracy and ensured that the country would not serve the interests of the poor. Furthermore, unlike the Nigerian coup, Stack will almost certainly fail. He will not inspire others to rise up as he did, and the changes he hopes for will not occur. The reason was stated eloquently by Tolstoy in a quote posted at Lapham’s Quarterly:
One would think it was perfectly clear that if men, who consider it unjust (and all the working classes do consider it so nowadays), still pay the principal part of the produce of their labour away to the capitalist and the landowner, and pay taxes, though they know to what a bad use these taxes are put, they do so not from recognition of abstract laws, of which they have never heard, but only because they know they will be beaten and killed if they don’t do so…
Just as a trained tiger, who does not eat meat put under his nose, and jumps over a stick at the word of command, does not act thus because he likes it, but because he remembers the red hot irons or the fast with which he was punished every time he did not obey: so men submitting to what is disadvantageous or even ruinous to them, and considered by them as unjust, act thus because they remember what they suffered for resisting it.
