The German pilot who intentionally crashed a plane this week with 150 souls on board was a terrorist. Some people have bristled at that contention, I believe inexplicably. “Terrorism” should be defined by much more than the driver of the act (meaning both actor and motivation), and should include the consequence. It must also incorporate scale. I grant, however, that the definition is not subject to a bright line test.
In thinking about this for example, I wondered whether the demise of the Branch Davidians and those in Guyana under Jim Jones qualified as acts of terrorists? I conclude that they do not since the deceased were mostly there by their own volition and for the most part participated in their suicides or suicidal actions. Certainly, there were some murders interspersed, but overall few surprises. Perhaps the element of surprise should be factored in to definition. I went on: Are school shootings as we know them acts of terror? Would they be if we substituted those pimply, maladjusted, adolescent middle and upper class Americans for similarly disturbed Arab or Somali teens? Beyond “motivation” and “actors” must be “consequence”. In employing that standard, there is greater clarity.
The world has been conditioned to see terrorists through the lens of specific religions and geographies, even a predominant age and gender. The political, social, or religious motivations are used as a definitional crutch, as well as a blinder. If the pilot was a non-religious Algerian would we be more prone to use the “T-word”? Conversely, don’t some Muslims also get depressed? Were one to get drunk, drive the wrong way and hit and kill a group of pedestrians, would the world not more readily call that an act of terror or a “lone wolf attack” even if it pertained more closely to a personal shortcoming and individual action? There would be no macro motive, just the selfish act; yet the T-label would stick quite firmly.
Some people are eager to call this a suicide or to at least have that factored in prominently as a descriptor of this situation. Suicide is distinguished and certainly distinguishable from Murder-Suicide, for example. Society recognizes that the two are not the same, and acknowledges the victims, even putting them first in the label. I believe that crashing a plane resides much further along that spectrum, and that “suicide” is reasonably dismissed from the conversation at a ratio of approximately 150 to 1. In the symbolic act of remembrance, and in the garden of my mind, I have planted 149 trees.
I am empathetic to those in distress and who feel that suicide is an appropriate or only remaining response to the life they live, but my empathy has clear bounds. In fact, it becomes indiscernible, not only at the ratio of 150 murders to the one suicide, but due to the qualitative impact and ripple effect of the thousands of lives directly shattered as a result. I would much rather that you not kill yourself, but if you must, please do so quietly.
That man was whatever he was, but he is and shall remain a terrorist.
INENARRABLE 