The Not-Terrorism of Abortion Clinic Bombings and Assasinations

The War for Our Constitution. (0.00 / 0)

Terrorism is not strange to our land. We have seen it in battles for labor rights and civil rights. It is often waged by backwards thinking political leaders using the tools of force and coercion that they have at their disposal. Sometimes terror comes from the hands of a small group or an individual, who cannot match the scope of power that their advesaries possess..

My aim is not to write a thesis here, but to create a simple counter to the issue of Ayers.

I know that Barack Obama is in no regard, associated to the actions taken by Ayers when Obama was a young boy. I know that the GOP Rovian slimebuckets care little about reality and that "guilt by faintest of associations" gets traction when the chattering class and the pundits will it to be.

If that is the game on hand, which I loathe, let's consider some acts of terrorism that can easily be tied around Gov. Palin's neck, if we use the Rovian/FOX standard. Surely, one, who is a successionist at heart and one who rejects a woman's choice, even in the cases of incest or rape, must sympathize with the perpertrators of the hate crimes/acts of terrorism detailed below.

www.KusterforCongress.com - www.paulhodesforsenate.com

www.nikitsongas.com - www.devalpatrick.com

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by: Jack Mitchell @ Fri Oct 24, 2008 at 20:08:48 PM CDT

What a long list. (4.00 / 3)

The history of domestic terrorism, from the Ku Klux Klan to Timothy MacVeigh to the abortion clinic murderers, with the occasional dud like Ed Brown, comes from the right. The talk about the Weather Underground is intended to hide that plain fact.

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by: elwood @ Sat Oct 25, 2008 at 05:49:10 AM CDT

Well, it really depends on how you define terrorism. (0.00 / 0)

If you define it on the basis of how an act of violence makes the victims and their associates feel, then killing people because of their beliefs or the assistance they provide to others is terroristic.
However, if you define it as a strategy which targets inoffensive by-standards with physical assaults or death in order to influence some more powerful entity which it would be foolhardy to assault directly, then the assassination of health care providers is not terroristic.
When you come right down to it, most people killed in domestic or community situations are killed by people who don't like what they think or how they behave.  We call that murder, except when it's done by the state.  Then we call it capital punishment.

What's really scurrilous in the targeting of health care providers for injury or death is that, instead of prosecuting the participants on a charge of conspiring to commit these deeds, the agents of government have given some people tacit permission to threaten others because of a claim of good intent.

That the moral value of an action is to be assessed on the basis of WHO carries it out and for what purpose (e.g. the state keeping order), rather than on the basis of the effect (the victim is injured or dead) is characteristic of the conservative mindset.  And it's this mindset which approves of the slaughter of Iraqis to make their country democratic, as well as the threat to assassinate medical providers for performing certain procedures here at home.

Would I go so far as to argue that the state executing individuals whose beliefs or behaviors are disliked sets an example for individuals who come to similar conclusions about their relatives and associates?  No.  
Nevertheless dealing with people we don't like by killing them is a rather primitive response and New Hampshire should be ashamed of declaring the execution of individuals to be a lawful matter.

BTW, I happen to consider fetal tissue to be an integral component of the organism on which it feeds and, if that organism is distressed or injured by the continued development of that tissue, its removal should be considered a matter of self-defense.
Of course, that argument is somewhat less likely to find acceptance in an environment in which all kinds of people dying prematurely (whether in car crashes or on the battle-field) is accepted with equanimity and even honored.

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by: hannah @ Sat Oct 25, 2008 at 05:54:16 AM CDT

I'm reaching the conclusion that (4.00 / 2)

the standard definition of terrorism - something like "attacking innocent civilians to instill fear in the general population" - doesn't really work.

Every group promoting political change through violence seems to come up with an argument that its particular targets are actually "guilty" - somehow involved in their political struggle. Whether it is the clinic bombers attacking health care providers, or MacVeigh targeting federal workers, or al Qaeda targeting workers in global financial firms, there is some claimed connection between their targets and their cause.

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by: elwood @ Sat Oct 25, 2008 at 07:06:02 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Or the Weather Underground attacking (4.00 / 2)

What they believed were the merchants of death. Or Palestinian terrorist groups targeting people they believe to be invaders. And I think your example of the KKK is very on the mark.

Either it's all terrorism or none of it is.

For Palin, however, the definition of terrorism is non-state violence by people she disagrees with. I suspect the same is true of McCain.

The scary thing is I bet if you asked her about the actions of ELF, the radical environmental group which focusses on property damage (much like the early radical anti-abortionists, actually, and there's probably a lesson there) -- I bet she would see ELF as terrorism. I bet she wouldn't even hesitate.

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by: Mike Caulfield @ Sat Oct 25, 2008 at 09:24:57 AM CDT

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Thank you Mike (4.00 / 3)

I was in grad school in Boston in 1991, and saw first hand the destruction of John Salvi.  The grieving friends he left behind.  I was instructed by doctors not to mention that I got my birth control at planned parenthood, lest I be putting myself at risk.  I went through bullet proof glass, showing my ID through a 2-lock sliding drawer to a safety officer, in order to refill my pills when I did go there.  Talk about fear.  How many women weren't willing to go through those motions?  How many unintended pregnancies have resulted from these terrorist acts?

The double standard makes me want to vomit.

Feeling hopeful since 2004...now "Secretary" of the New Boston Democratic Caucus

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by: Kelly Nordstrom @ Sat Oct 25, 2008 at 06:58:17 AM CDT

John Salvi (4.00 / 1)

Used to get coffee at the Elvis Room in Portsmouth because he was going to some professional school down the street. A friend of mine used to talk to him occassionally, and said in certain ways he was a nut job, but not more than a lot of other kids.

It was devastating after the incident to everybody there, not because anyone particularly liked him, but because that kid, that sat on that stool, did this.

I don't know what the point is about that -- I guess that most terrorists are fucked up people that sink into a culture of hate. We like to think they aren't like the people we know, but most of them were once. I'm not sure what that kid's history would have been had that rhetoric not been swirling around. But I'm pretty sure that that particular incident did not have to go that way, that like most terrorism a large well of hateful rhetoric is needed to support a small bit of violence.

I'm a freedom of speecher, but as they say -- with freedom comes responsibility. Palin's answer was the abdication of that responsibiliy.

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by: Mike Caulfield @ Sat Oct 25, 2008 at 09:35:32 AM CDT

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Salvi (0.00 / 0)

My brother went to Virginia to bring Salvi back to face charges. He screamed at the locals to drop the gun charges. I know this because the local official said, "I have to drop the charge, or else this guy [my brother] won't stop yelling at me" or words to that effect, live on CNN.

During the case my friend Paul recalled walking home one night, too late for the T, and seeing a man bowed in prayer in front of the clinic. Bowed in prayer, all by himself, at something like 2:30 am. He said it was totally creepy, and creepier still to think that was probably Salvi.

After Salvi went to prison, I called a friend who is a reporter, just to say hi. I was surprised to find her working on the day after Thanksgiving. I asked why, and she said, "Because John Salvi killed himself last night."

There's a high-profile defense lawyer down here named Jay Carney. Nice guy -- I met him once, at a political event. But I'll bet most people remember him as the guy who defended John Salvi.

I think I agree with Elwood, the label is flawed. And as my friend who once ran a NARAL state chapter pointed out, they think abortion is murder, so reasonable arguments sound like defenses of murder. Who was it -- some newspaper editor -- who suggested the term "homicide bombers?" Maybe we should call the Salvis of the world homicide activists.

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by: JimC @ Sat Oct 25, 2008 at 11:08:01 AM CDT

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Timothy McVeigh (0.00 / 0)

was a nice guy once.  And also, someone's son, who used to be bounced on his parents knee and kissed and cuddled.  Someone who's parents had great dreams and aspirations for him, someone who people felt proud of when he joined the Army to serve his country.

The task for us as a society, is to figure out when, and intervene somehow, when they go from being that person, to the one who can commit such atrocities.


Feeling hopeful since 2004...now "Secretary" of the New Boston Democratic Caucus

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by: Kelly Nordstrom @ Sat Oct 25, 2008 at 14:20:50 PM CDT

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