Conor Friedersdorf passes along a bit of “insight” from Jonah Goldberg’s The Tyranny of Cliches. Goldberg wrote:
It is simply absurd to contend that because people may argue over who is or is not a terrorist that it is therefore impossible to make meaningful distinctions between terrorists and freedom fighters.
As usual, Goldberg has missed the point. The phrase “one’s man terrorist is another man’s 
freedom fighter” is a cliche because the truth it conveys is so banal and obvious that it often seems redundant to mention it. A group can employ terrorist tactics while also seeking to achieve self-determination for the people it claims to represent. While the phrase may sometimes be used to justify terrorist attacks, it expresses a truth about the nature of political violence that partly explains but does not excuse the atrocious acts carried out by “liberation” groups.
The LTTE (Tamil Tigers) really were terrorists (they pioneered suicide bombing), and for the Tamils in Sri Lanka and southern India they were also freedom fighters. The IRA really were terrorists, and Irish republicans and more than a few Irish-Americans saw them as fighting the good fight against the remnants of the British Empire. The KLA really were terrorists, but many Albanians in Kosovo and elsewhere perceived them as the “liberation” army they claimed to be. The point is that terrorists can be perceived by many people in their own community as freedom fighters in spite of their atrocious tactics. Their status as terrorists is determined by the civilian targets they attack or the indiscriminate tactics they use to attack them. Their political reasons for targeting civilians or killing indiscriminately don’t change anything.
Some governments refuse to tolerate the use of terrorist tactics under any circumstances, but some tacitly or openly endorse the use of such tactics when the targets happen to be the “right” ones. Unfortunately, when it comes to dealing with Iran, the U.S. has adopted the second approach. The U.S. attitude towards the MEK over the decades is a good example of how very changeable governments can be. At one point, the MEK was obviously an anti-American terrorist organization responsible for the deaths of American citizens. Later, Hussein’s support for the MEK was unimportant, because Hussein was perceived as the lesser of two evils in the conflict between Iran and Iraq. Once Hussein’s Iraq became the main regional enemy, his support for the MEK was suddenly turned into part of the indictment against him. Once Hussein was overthrown, not only was the MEK no longer to be considered a terrorist group, but in some circles it was seen as a valuable ally in opposing the Iranian regime. According to some reports, the Obama administration is on the verge of capitulating to the disgraceful campaign to have this terrorist group removed from the FTO list. It is somewhat fitting that the MEK is a terrorist group that is not recognized by the vast majority of Iranians in Iran or in the diaspora as “freedom fighters.” The only people foolish enough to believe that the MEK is interested in anyone’s freedom are those paid to say so and those so hostile to Iran that they will ally with anyone with the same goal of regime change.
By Daniel Larison
on organizations deemed ‘terrorist’ by the US government.
"One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter," writing, "It is simply absurd to contend that because people may argue over who is or is not a terrorist that it is therefore impossible to make meaningful distinctions between terrorists and freedom fighters." Is that what those who invoke the phrase are saying? Like a lot of cliches, it doesn’t really make literal sense and is probably best avoided, but I suspect what many people mean when they use it is something like, "As a descriptor, terrorist is almost never applied rigorously and consistently to describe the tactics a group is using — rather, it is invoked as a pejorative to vilify the actions only of groups one wishes to discredit. People who agree with the ends of the very same groups often don’t think of them as terrorists, the negative connotation of which causes them to focus on what they regard as the noble ends of allies they’re more likely to dub freedom fighters."
program. Media coverage on the region this week has also centered on the hanging of a member of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad by Iran. Majid Jamali Fash, was executed for killing one of Iran’s nuclear scientists in 2010. While this news is in deed pertinent, another story from Iran has received less media attention and could have long-term implications for the State Department’s handling of terror groups moving forward.
obsessive ideological infrastructure allows it to dehumanize its opponents and to engage in a war that eventually leads to tragedies that await the opponents, itself and the world in general. The insistence of Massoud Rajavi, the ideological leader of MKO terrorist cult, on clearly defining his animus struggle against the Iranian regime as an ideological war is an indication of strongly moving on the path of an obsessive ideological cult. In fact, MKO’s alleged terrorist operations and plots against Iranian people and interests can be viewed as the beginning of an ideological war through the manipulation of terrorism in order to first achieve certain ideological and then strategic goals.
and two children goodbye, and entered a waiting car with his colleague, Lt. Col. Jack Turner, whose wife was getting their three children ready for school. It was the last time the families of these two US servicemen would see them alive.
NBC that Israel had teamed up with a violent, cultish, US-terror listed Iranian organization called the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) to assassinate Iranian scientists.
This, after years of praise and advocacy from elite members in American politics, from Ed Randell to John Bolton to Howard Dean and Rudy Giuliani. These types of people collected payments from the MeK for their advocacy to get the group removed from the State Department’s list, which amounts to “material support” for terrorist groups, a felony. Of course, such well-connected, high-society types don’t get prosecuted for unlawful behavior unless it involves betraying the sanctity of marriage. And the fact that the U.S. government secretly trained MeK fighters in recent years and is now being employed by Israel to conduct acts of terrorism inside Iran probably won’t increase the likelihood of such prosecutions.