On the Internment of American Prisoners: IV

Before one can really discuss the internment issue, viz., Gitmo, terror, the Geneva Convention, in any meaningful way, we need to literally go through a glossary of newspeak, so multifaceted and already so deep in its penetration of the U.S. consciousness, that I am sure it would have impressed even Goebbels. The first word in the right wing glossary that requires our attention is "terrorism." Just to get the glib stuff out of the way, the historical use of the word is that terrorrism consists of anything that terrifies the power structure. Think of the long list of terrorists from Western history and you will come up with names like Robespierre, Thomas Munzer, John Brown. One can be certain that the prospect of noble heads rolling will get the attention of the propertied classes. As should be obvious even to a neophyte student of history, the total number of individuals killed by all of history's terrorists would be virtually insignificant next to those who have died at the hands of (we like to think) perfectly rational heads of various states. And the statutary status of the killers is important, since the right has conveniently defined terror as violence perpetrated by non-state operators. You may recall that I asked the question in an earlier blog, "Why weren't kamikaes known as Shinto terrorists?" Robert Pape, whose Dying to Win I praised in that same blog puts it this way: "The Japanese kamikazes in World War II are not normally considered terrorists because they targeted solely soldiers and sailors, not civilians, and because their actions were authorized and directed by a recognized national government." On the other hand, it is hard to see how kamikazes could be called anything other than suicide bombers. Yet, in films like Empire of the Sun, made by Steven Spielberg of all people, we see the depiction of young kamikaze pilots, wearing white silk scarves, clad in glamorous leather jackets and helmets, their handsome young profiles silhouetted by the setting of the sun in a lovely amber sky. They are clearly depicted as national heros. What gives Speilberg license to do this? They didn't, we are told, kill civilians and they had the imprimatur of their emperor. The killing of civilians during WWII was the exclusive right of those "recognized national governments."