Preface to the First Edition (1986)
Noam Chomsky
St. Augustine tells the story of a pirate captured by Alexander the Great, who asked him “how he dares molest the sea.” “How dare you molest the whole world?” the pirate replied: “Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an Emperor.”
The pirate’s answer was “elegant and excellent,” St. Augustine relates. It captures with some accuracy the current relations between the United States and various minor actors on the stage of international terrorism: Libya, factions of the PLO, and others. More generally, St. Augustine’s tale illuminates the meaning of the concept of international terrorism in contemporary Western usage, and reaches to the heart of the frenzy over selected incidents of terrorism currently being orchestrated, with supreme cynicism, as a cover for Western violence.
The term “terrorism” came into use at the end of the eighteenth century, primarily to refer to violent acts of governments designed to ensure popular submission. That concept plainly is of little benefit to the practitioners of state terrorism, who, holding power, are in a position to control the system of thought and expression. The original sense has therefore been abandoned, and the term “terrorism” has come to be applied mainly to “retail terrorism” by individuals or groups. Whereas the term was once applied to emperors who molest their own subjects and the world, now it is restricted to thieves who molest the powerful – though not entirely restricted: the term still applies to enemy emperors, a category that shifts with the needs of power and ideology.
Extricating ourselves from such practices, we use the term “terrorism” to refer to the threat or use of violence to intimidate or coerce (generally for political, religious, or other such ends), whether it is the terrorism of the emperor or of the thief.
The pirate’s maxim explains the recently evolved concept of “international terrorism” only in part. It is necessary to add a second feature: an act of terrorism enters the canon only if it is committed by “their side,” not ours. That was the guiding doctrine of the public relations campaign about “international terrorism” launched by the Reagan Administration as it came to office. It relied on scholarship claiming to have established that the plague is a “Soviet-inspired” instrument, “aimed at the destabilization of Western democratic society,” as shown by the alleged fact that terrorism is not “directed against the Soviet Union or any of its satellites or client states,” but rather occurs “almost exclusively in democratic or relatively democratic countries.”
The thesis is true, in fact true by definition, given the way the term “terrorism” is employed by the emperor and his loyal coterie. Since only acts committed by “their side” count as terrorism, it follows that the thesis is necessarily correct, whatever the facts. In the real world, the story is quite different. The major victims of international terrorism in the past several decades have been Cubans, Central Americans, and inhabitants of Lebanon, but none of this counts, by definition. When Israel bombs Palestinian refugee camps killing many civilians – often without even a pretense of “reprisal” – or sends its troops into Lebanese villages in “counterterror” operations where they murder and destroy, or hijacks ships and dispatches hundreds of hostages to prison camps under horrifying conditions, this is not “terrorism”; in fact, the rare voices of protest are thunderously condemned by loyal party liners for their “anti-Semitism” and “double standard,” demonstrated by their failure to join the chorus of praise for “a country that cares for human life” (Washington Post), whose “high moral purpose” (Time) is the object of never-ending awe and acclaim, a country which, according to its Pirates admirers, “is held to a higher law, as interpreted for it by journalists” (Walter Goodman).
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