Here's the gist of recent punishments:
The largest prosecution of eco-sabotage in U.S. history hit a milestone last week. A federal judge in Eugene sentenced Stanislas G. Meyerhoff to 13 years in prison, and two others to long terms, for their roles in a serial arson campaign that crossed the West and caused at least $40 million in damage to corporate and government property. Seven more people in the ring are scheduled to learn their punishments by early June.
She then goes on to show the complete inconsistency in their actions, including times when attacks had the exact opposite of the intended effect:
My take:...they caused a lot of damage without coming anywhere near a global hub of power. They terrified scores of innocent people without sticking anything to The Man.
I think anytime you use destruction of property and killing of innocent people to make a political point, no matter how apparently valid the point, you become a terrorist. And you do something evil. There is simply no getting around it.
1 comment:
Arson is a vicious crime, not least because the destructiveness of fire is hard to control.
That said, equating the destruction of property with murder is morally vacuous. The greater viciousness of using arson for sabotage than some other means is exactly wreckless raised risk of loss of life.
Ten or fifteen years ago when attacking "political correctness" was the highly fashionable thing to do, there were some serious arguments put forward about anti-hate crimes laws, saying that in effect by having harsher sentences based on motive, a category of thought crimes was being created. Motive enters into some other legal distinctions of crimes, e.g. levels of homicide related to intention, so this argument is complicated. But it did give me pause. The argument went on that most of the crimes legally were crimes anyway and should be prosecuted and punished just on that basis.
However, very many of the same people who advanced that kind of argument support the debasement of the idea of "terrorism" by a) supporting harsher punishment for acts undertaken with a political motive, and b) equating property destruction with bodily injury or murder.
Arson, intimidation and extortion are all illegal, prosecutable and punishable. These idiots should have been dealt with under those laws. Equating them with Al Qaeda is just wrong, though.
This broad brush definition of "terrorism" perverts justice. Thirteen year sentences are much longer than are given for most crimes of personal violence including rape, battery that leads to permanent injury, and crimes actually causing death, as well as much more destructive property crimes, e.g. white collar crimes that destroy livelihoods and retirement funds. The discretion to charge either with a simple crime or the same crime with the word "terrorism" attached & harsher penalties can be used to coerce innocent people into plea bargains. And putting the word "terrorism" in to the picture now invokes and allows the unconstitutional but as yet ineffectively challenged abuses of police powers allowed under the "anti-terrorism" laws since 1996.
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