Everyone’s a Terrorist
At least according to a Pentagon video series.

By John J. Miller
February 20, 2002 8:40 a.m.

f there's a single message President Bush has communicated effectively to the world since September 11, it's this: You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists. It's all black-and-white. There are no gray areas.

In 1998, however, the Pentagon expressed the exact opposite idea in a series of antiterrorism training videos: "Often there are no absolute answers and very few black-and-white concepts in dealing with terrorists." It even comes perilously close to suggesting that the 1986 bombing of Tripoli, in retaliation for Libyan-sponsored violence, was itself an act of terrorism.

The Washington Times made a brief reference to the video series last month; NR has obtained a copy. Much of its content is harmless — and even commendable in offering sensible advice to U.S. personnel at home and abroad on preventing terrorism. Yet the first episode, called "Introduction to Terrorism," theorizes on the nature of this grisly business — and is quick to sink into the moral insensibility of cultural relativism.

"The use of terrorism to influence political, religious, or social change goes back hundreds of years," says the narrator. "For example, Christian crusaders from Europe killing Muslims who refused to convert to Christianity was a form of terrorism in the 12th century." It is hard to know what purpose this statement serves, except to make the inheritors of Western history feel less confident in the rightness of their own causes.

If that were an isolated statement, it might be forgivable. But the confusion continues a few minutes later, when the program notes, "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." It turns out that some of the people we consider freedom fighters were in fact terrorists: "We think of the French resistance in World War II as freedom fighters even though they used terrorist tactics, such as blowing up bridges, troop trains, and power plants against the occupying Nazi force."

I've always thought that bridges were legitimate military targets, but perhaps not. The more important point is the moral equivalency of that statement; it puts the French resistance on the same plane as the Nazis, and cautions us against using such loaded terms as "freedom fighters" and "terrorists." In this view, there's no such thing as right and wrong, just different opinions.

What follows is the most bizarre and jaw-dropping segment of the whole program. "Sometimes governments are forced to place their own national interests ahead of international efforts to reduce terrorism," says the narrator, as an image of Ronald Reagan appears on the screen. "In 1986, the United States conducted an air raid on terrorist training camps in retaliation for terrorist acts committed in Europe by agents of the Libyan regime. While some Arab nations condemned the raid as a terrorist act itself, most countries supported the U.S. action, including a call for international economic sanctions against the government in Tripoli. As we noted earlier, rarely is anything black and white when it comes to terrorism. We are usually dealing with varying shades of gray."

Got that? The United States attacks a regime directly responsible for death and destruction, and the actions it takes in response are morally suspect. This is an extremist form of cultural relativism — and its existence at the Pentagon four years ago is one of the keys to understanding why the federal government was not prepared for September 11.