Dead Cant Rant

John Kerry’s book A New War details the rise of international crime and attempts to outline a plan to internationalize the response to crime. In the process, he defines terrorism as a crime and suggests that terrorists be treated as criminals — extradited to the United States, put on trial, and sentenced for their “crimes.”

There is one major flaw in this idea, despite the fact that liberals have attached themselves to the idea for so long. Terrorism is not a crime, plain and simple.

There is a split between factions here: (a) Terrorism is a crime and should be treated as such, and (b) terrorism is an act of war and should be dealt with militarily.

The fundamental difference is between the group that wants to see terrorism treated as just another type of criminal activity, and the group that sees the Geneva Convention requires updating to handle the new form of war run by non-state actors.

The problem with the “terrorism is a crime” mentality is that terrorism is simply not a crime. Crime is the violation of law for the express purpose of gaining a benefit, typically financial. So for example, the burglar, the drug smuggler, and the Mafia don are all criminals because they knowingly violate the law of the land for personal financial gain.

Terrorism, however, is an act of war. “War” is defined as: A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties. Terrorism is carried out not for financial reasons — although those may be tangential goals — but for the express purpose of cowing a population into submission. It directly targets a civilian population for death and destruction, whereas a criminal is content to simply prey upon the same.

Put another way: To say that Terrorism is Crime is to say that a wolf is content to walk into a sheep pen with a flamethrower, kill all the sheep, then walk away without eating anything. Crime preys on a population, Terrorism wants to eliminate the population.