The New York Times summarized the US Senate's activities today.
The Senate approved a resolution today urging the Bush administration to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, and lawmakers briefly set aside partisan differences to approve a measure calling for stepped-up diplomacy to forge a political solution in Iraq.I thought the Senate was supposed to play a "cooling saucer" role? It was designed to be the calmer, less passionate chamber full of wise souls carefully deliberating matters of national interest. To be fair, the bill came out as less aggressive than the AIPAC would have preferred -- but it still lays the groundwork for another assault.
Though it is not a declaration of war, it is a declaration of the willingess to use war -- again putting the pro-Israel lobby several steps ahead of the US public in the use-American-lives-to-defend-Israel camp.
This bill, if successful in getting Bush to name Iran's Revolutionary Guard a "terrorist organization," would answer a long-running debate I've had with some as to whether a state's military can be a terrorist organization. As one of the more vocally critical Senators, Webb (VA - D) pointed out, this would be the first time a foreign army is officially listed a terrorist organization.
When getting into this discussion, I normally start with a claim that Israel and the United States militaries are both terrorist organizations, using coercion and the threat of it against populations to secure political objectives (the US government's definition). By this definition, most armies are, by the way.
One common response I get is that terrorist organizations are non-state actors, which is a condition of some classifications. I normally would say, who cares? Is it better to be terrorized by a government's military than it is by a non-state actor?
If Bush does this, we can say the "non-state actor" element no longer matters. It would be a rhetorical gift to my little discursive world. Yay! Of course, the piss splashing on my parade will come when the bombs start dropping on Iran.
1 comments:
In colloquial newspaperese English, if not in US-Govt-ese, 'Terrorist' has long referred to
a) non-state actors who blow up kids or who know someone who might have blown up kids
or
b) brown, yellow and black state actors who blow up kids or who know someone who might have blown up kids
White state actors (and a few white non-state actors such as Exxon, Lockheed-Martin and Haliburton) that have blown up kids are called "the international community". As in "the international community condemns [insert brown dictator's name here]" or "the international community has isolated [insert brown sanctions-beseiged nation here]".
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