Yes, Dr. Tiller’s Murderer Is A Terrorist
Yes, Dr. Tiller’s Murderer Is A Terrorist
I completely agree with Cara Kulwicki and Ann Friedman: The murder of Dr. George Tiller was an act of terrorism. It’s goal was to intimidate women against exercising their right to choose abortion, and to intimidate doctors who perform them. The government has a duty to see that this intimidation fails — protecting the legal right of women to choose and secure a safe abortion is a U.S. national security issue.
I also think Adam Serwer is on to something important when he writes that “despite the fact that American politics has been fixated on terrorism for almost a decade, we’ve failed to establish a clear and concise definition for terrorism”:
I don’t think it’s because terrorism is so amorphous that it requires the pornography standard (”I know it when I see it”), but rather because any proper definition might implicate us as a nation in having participated in terrorism in the past. [...]
My working definition of terrorism is pretty simple: Terrorism is the deliberate murder of civilians or destruction of property in order to achieve a political objective. I think this definition works because it covers everything from cross-burnings and lynchings to the Weathermen bombings to the attack on the World Trade Center.
It’s not so much that we’ve failed to establish a definition of terrorism — I think the one Adam gives is generally accepted — as much as we just neglect or simply refuse to apply it to political violence on behalf of causes to which we’re sympathetic. Terrorism is what the other side does.
Greg Sargent makes the excellent point that the intent of the much-maligned Dept. of Homeland Security report on right-wing extremism “which was chock full of warnings about ‘lone wolf extremists’ capable of violence, now looks perfectly defensible, even reasonable.”
Despite the predictable whining of anti-choice extremists (is there any scenario in which conservatives can’t cast themselves as the real victims?), it is perfectly appropriate to ask what effect the sort of inflammatory rhetoric coming from Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter and others had on the Dr. Tiller’s murderer. We certainly shouldn’t lump all anti-choice Americans, the vast majority of whom are of course non-violent and seek to enforce their preferences primarily through the legal system, together with the terrorist who killed Tiller, but neither should we pretend that O’Reilly’s ominous promises of “judgment” to come and Coulter’s assassination humor had no effect at all.
8 Responses to “Yes, Dr. Tiller’s Murderer Is A Terrorist”
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According to the Obama “preventative detention” policy, anyone who is ideologically supportive of this act can be indefinitely detained and interrogated.
June 1st, 2009 at 1:12 pmAnd for the other side of the story:
http://allanerickson.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/abortionist-dr-george-tiller-killed/
June 1st, 2009 at 3:36 pmWell said – nothing short from TERRORISTS.
June 1st, 2009 at 4:43 pmThe US is pretty eager to fight terrorism abroad (and in the case of Afghanistan they had appropriate justification), so what about the same determination at home?
Or is Christian terror, with rhetorics well worthy of 20th century hideous, hatred inciting regimes (”judgment day… Dr. Tiller got blood on his hands.. everyone who does not stop him is guilty too”), and actual murders and bombings less of an atrocity compared with Islamist terrorism?
Isn’t this a man-caused disaster and not terrorism?
June 1st, 2009 at 4:47 pmI agree the murder of Tiller was terrorism. If murder of an adult is terrorism, what does that make murders of 50-70 million innocent unborn babies for decades, who unlike Tiller, are completely helpless at the hands of those who are suppose to care for them and preserve them til they are born?
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:38 amWhy are you trying so hard to buttonhole someone into a term that has no legal definition?
The person who did this appears to be guilty of murder, humankind’s highest crime.
But “once you label me, you limit me.” Is that what you are trying to do?
The U.N., in 2004, said that terrorism is any act “intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act”. It would appear that the murder of Dr. Tiller may fit this (non-legal) description. So does that make the act any better or worse?
One may guess that the murder would have taken place in a medical setting, if the intent was to intimidate people seeking to have a medical procedure performed (I avoid the use of the word “right” as no such right to abortion exists in the U.S. under its Constitution). But since the act reportedly took place in a church, what was the “intent” regarding “purpose”?
None, apparently. The violent actor appears to have been intending to stop the activities of the victim in a setting that was most likely to avoid armed resistance, and allow unfettered escape. This appears to this writer to be a garden-variety murder, which is still a violation of the highest law of the land.
Yau may call it anything you like, even to the point of re-defining words if you like, but it doesn’t change the facts.
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:54 amI am a pro-choice woman, a nurse, and a mother. I will always fight tooth and nail for a woman’s right to contraception, to choose an early elective abortion, and to choose a second trimester abortion in the case of severe fetal malformation. However, I will never, ever support the right of a late term elective abortion. There is simply no need to EVER perform a third trimester abortion. Even when a fetus dies in-utero, a woman has no need to set foot in a clinic such as the one Tiller was running. She is admitted to the hospital, labor is induced, and the child is stillborn.
I do not agree with calling this “terrorism” and saying it was intended to scare women out of abortions. What I think is that someone in the world knew there were tiny bodies piling up by the hundreds if not, thousands each year at this clinic, and that Tiller would continue to violently end the lives of so many innocent human beings unless he was stopped.
Am I happy that he was murdered? NO. I’m relieved that he isn’t able to go back to work, and that whoever he had on his schedule to kill today might just have a chance to take his or her first breath.
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:03 amThis was not a killing, it was an execution. Bottom line; Tiller was a killer. You live by the “sword” you die by the “sword.”
I have no sympathy for money grubbing doctors (Yes, Tiller did it for the money – just follow the money trail) acting like they are doing something good for women but they are no better than a televangelist ripping off widows and orphans for their last cent!
“Pro choice/death” people are such hypocrites; never seeing the forest because of the tree of their selfishness; never shedding a tear for the children torn to shreds by this man’s seared conscience.
June 4th, 2009 at 1:19 pm