| Was George Washington a Terrorist? |  |
By John Freivalds
Duluth News Tribune
With George Washington's Birthday upon us (February 22) I think it is time to reexamine how we interpret our history. If you would believe some historians the revolutionary war which brought America freedom was nothing more than dumping tea in Boston Harbor. But George Washington, by today's American terrorism standards, was not a freedom fighter but a terrorist. We frown and condemn terrorists as they engage in asymmetric warfare as the military would term it. But we need to take off our rose-colored glasses and see what's really at play: terrorists are seldom considered "legitimate."
However, Menachem Begin, former Prime Minister of Israel, was a really tough guy and part of the infamous Irgun terrorist gang which in 1948 blew the King David hotel in Jerusalem which was known as the nerve center of oppressive British rule in Palestine. The terrorist act killed 91 people, mostly civilians, and injured 46 more. But Begin did not consider himself a terrorist, he said "Terrorists target everyone but freedom fighters only target the military." Begin and Egypt's Anwar Sadat jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 for ending their conflict.
Freedom from oppresive rule is seldom won peacefully and always with civilian casualties. In my lifetime there are only a few examples. In 1989 the various freedom groups in the Baltic States formed a human chain 300 miles long and sang to protest Soviet rule. It worked. The Soviet soldiers didn't know what to do. Shoot people singing?
The Council of Foreign Relations states "Conservative politicians tell us that terror groups can never change their stripes yet history begs to differ." To wit, the African National Congress which fought to end apartheid, Hezbollah, Haganah, the Kosovo Liberation Army and the IRA are now all involved running their country's governments. Menachem Begin is a prime example. The last list I saw on Wikipedia listed almost 200 organizations classified by one government or another as terrorist.
Michael Smith put this in perspective in writing When Patriots are Terrorists. "George Washington was a terrorist. Were he a citizen of the United States, which did not then exist, he could be convicted of a felony and given life imprisonment. We know that Washington was a terrorist and not just patriot because of an act of Congress fittingly called the Patriot Act . . . that tells us the revolutionary army was a Tier III non-designated terrorist organization . . . any group of two or more individuals whether organized or not (Washington's army was not always organized) which engage in or has a subgroup which engage in terrorist activity . . . in the use of explosives, firearms or other dangerous devices with intent to endanger directly or indirectly the safety of one or more individuals to cause substantial damage to property." Ergo the Boston Tea Party.
But back to our own terrorist past. Also, during Washington's time were the Sons of Liberty who were against tariffs. Dennis Fradin, author of Defiance of Patriots: the best part of the making of America. "The sons enforced the boycott by sending boys to smash windows and smear excrement on the walls of local shops that didn't comply. If that didn't work the proprietor faced the risk of being tarred and feathered, painful humiliating torture that could leave lasting scars."
But why would a terrorist adopt the tactics that would face the wrath of its major oppressor? John Tierney, Executive Director of the National Security Research group put it this way "The outrage voiced by most Americans against guerilla kidnappings, ambushes and raids for example stand in contrast to approval and sanctioning air assault against enemy positions including the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
H. R. McMaster, former National Security Advisor to President Trump, probably would have advised George Washington when he said there are only two ways to fight a bigger, stronger power "be stupid or fight asymmetrically." McMaster put it this way "Bad guys (and to the British Washington was bad) knew what works."