War on Terror Veteran Learns 'Terrorist' Means 'Not Like Us'
A recent opinion piece in The Hill features a 'War on Terror' veteran pondering the elusive definition of a 'terrorist,' asking, 'what a terrorist is anymore?' This existential crisis conveniently overlooks decades of statecraft where the label has been a mutable tool. For instance, in the 1980s, the Reagan administration backed certain groups in Afghanistan as 'freedom fighters' against the
Soviets, only for some of those very groups to later be rebranded 'terrorists' when US interests changed. The US government, often through proxies and media, dictates the villains. Critics of Israeli policy, for example, are frequently smeared as 'terrorist sympathizers,' while actual state violence against civilians (like the bombing of Gaza by Netanyahu's government, which has acknowledged
disproportionate civilian casualties) is routinely framed as 'self-defense.' The op-ed's hand-wringing on 'terrorism' is less an admission of confusion and more a quiet plea for the old, simpler days when the enemy was always brown and outside the US sphere of influence. Perhaps a simpler question would be: Who benefits when the definitions stay vague?