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The Terrorists are Inside the House
After 9–11, the FBI changed its core mission from ‘investigating crime and gathering evidence’ to ‘preventing terrorism’.
So how has it come about that the terrorists are now inside the building? Not just the FBI, but the Justice Department, the Military, the Oval Office?
‘Terrorist’ is one of those words that’s used so much it loses common meaning. At its core, our often vague definition of terrorism involves some combination of violence, illegality, and political motive. The key distinction, of course, is that last bit, ‘politics’, since violence and illegal more or less cover all crime, and how we both judge and prosecute hinges less on legal codes than the reason it’s committed. As a general rule, once the crime is established, we’re most interested in the why rather than the what. It’s why murder ranges from 1st degree to 3rd and more. Why theft can get you ten years or probation. Why a crime of passion is different than one carefully premeditated.
Every definition of ‘terrorism’ — and globally there are many, both legal and societal — anchors the crime to the motive of politics. For most, ‘illegal’ and ‘violence’ are joined by an ‘or’. Terrorism doesn’t necessarily involve the terror of violence.
Of course, ‘politics’ is also a muddy word, used in so many different contexts that it too loses concrete…
