Terrorists and pirates

Are terrorists the pirates of today? That's the case Douglas R. Burgess Jr. makes. Burgess also believes international laws, treaties and prosecutions will be effective at combating terror.

TO UNDERSTAND THE POTENTIAL OF DEFINING TERRORISM as a species of piracy, consider the words of the 16th-century jurist Alberico Gentili's De jure belli: "Pirates are common enemies, and they are attacked with impunity by all, because they are without the pale of the law. They are scorners of the law of nations; hence they find no protection in that law." Gentili, and many people who came after him, recognized piracy as a threat, not merely to the state but to the idea of statehood itself. All states were equally obligated to stamp out this menace, whether or not they had been a victim of piracy. This was codified explicitly in the 1856 Declaration of Paris, and it has been reiterated as a guiding principle of piracy law ever since. Ironically, it is the very effectiveness of this criminalization that has marginalized piracy and made it seem an arcane and almost romantic offense. Pirates no longer terrorize the seas because a concerted effort among the European states in the 19th century almost eradicated them. It is just such a concerted effort that all states must now undertake against terrorists, until the crime of terrorism becomes as remote and obsolete as piracy.

There are certainly similarities between the two. As Burgess points out, neither pirates nor terrorists are bound to any state--though both have been sponsored by various states at various times.

But there are differences, too. For one thing, pirates were interested in pecuniary gain. Today's terrorists are not. This leads to a second difference: Pirates employed terror in order to scare their victims into forking over the goods. If Blackbeard could scare his opponents into giving him their money without resorting to violence, so much the better. But a suicide bomber has no such fears for his own safety. Finally, Burgess suggests that the way to combat international terrorism is through international law. This would lead to prosecutions by the International Criminal Court.

Call me a unilateralist, but I'm not prepared to hand over terrorists to the body whose major concern involves Israel's decision to build a wall to protect itself from terrorists while it ignores the depradations in Sudan.

If we're going to treat terrorists like pirates, let's follow the lead of Julius Caesar--not Kofi Annan.