Article Writing Homework Help

You will prepare and submit a term paper on The Terrorist: Criminal or Freedom Fighter. Your paper should be a minimum of 1500 words in length. Since 911 terrorism has taken on the identity of a “new” way of waging war. However, violence fueled by fanatical ideology is nothing new. Borum quotes Jonathon White, “the idea of terrorizing civilians to further a particular political, social, or religious cause has existed for centuries” (p. 7). Latin America is a good example, with left-wing political groups such as the Shining Path terrorizing villagers if they do not go along with their political goals against the established government. Scholars agree that terrorism is a disputed term, and very few of those labeled terrorists, if one asks them, not only see their missions as valid political causes against an enemy they can not possibly defeat in with the methods of traditional warfare. In fact, you will rarely hear a fighter described in the press as a terrorist refer to themselves in this vernacular. So then the term itself is deceiving, as is the way in which it is used.

The Irish Republican Army, for example, generally considered a terrorist organization, sees itself as the only valid force of counterforce against British injustice in the country. History is rife with other lesser familiar examples dating back to the first century and the Sicarii Zealots, a Jewish group which attempted through dagger attacks to drive the Romans from Judea. Other examples come to mind. The Reign of Terror and subsequent anarchism in Europe and America’s own terrorist organization, the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, backed by a good number of southerners in fear of black freedom, emerged following the Civil War as America’s first true terrorist group. Interestingly the group is rarely referred to as “terrorist,” which brings us to the issue of conceptualizing terrorism as a criminal activity.

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