State-Sponsored Terrorism - Term Paper Example

State-sponsored terrorism Introduction State terrorism or state sponsored terrorism is a diplomatic concept that refers to refers to unique acts of animosity that a government may carry out against foreign citizens or other countries. The United States, a country that has championed the war on terrorism sanctioned the interment of Americans of Japanese descent soon after the Second World War owing to the bombing of the Pearl Harbor in 1941. President Franklin D. Roosevelt permitted the internment of Japanese-American in a move that remains the country’s worst act of human rights abuse amounting to an act of terror (Gordon & Gary, 2006). Terror is a unique form of crime characterized with abject disregard to human rights. Acts of terror affect large number of civilians with the terrorists using the civilians to communicate to respective governments. The internment of Japanese in the United States in 1942 was an act of terror conducted by the American government as the discussion below justifies. The United States of America had led the world in wars against terror among other subjective traits. The country had therefore succeeded in developing a democratic and liberal social structure that respected the value of humanity. The country that has a citizenry of mixed origin had become home to millions of people from different parts of the world with such people considering the country their home. This explains the high number of Japanese in the country during the interment. It thus became ironical that such a country would carry out a massive exercise targeting particular communities. The president ordered the interment thereby commanding the military to carry out extensive searches in different parts of the country with the view of rounding up Americans of Japanese origin. The move resulted in abject disregard to human rights that the country’s constitution had championed thus constituting a humanitarian crisis in the country. Firstly, the Second World War, just as the name suggests was a war that had resulted from numerous diplomatic rows among government. During the wars, different countries including the United States had committed numerous war crimes in different antagonizing countries. However, in wars governments strive to protect civilians as they engage in military warfare. The United States for example led the western allies in the war animating their enemies while protecting her civilians (Elleman, 2006). The country had for example carried out extensive bombing of different parts of Japan among other countries forming the eastern bloc. At the end of the war, the countries abandoned the animosities thereby concentrating in rebuilding their economies. This implies that after the war, the countries including the United States abandoned the animosity and began rebuilding. The rounding of a particular group as was the case in the United States thus amounted to an act of terror and was not part of the war. Among the features of the internment of Japanese that succeeded in quantifying the process as an act of terror included the magnitude of the swoop. As explained earlier, terrorists use the civilians to pass messages to governments. The success of a terrorist activity relies on the number of casualties in such attacks (Robinson, 2001). The American military rounded up more than one hundred and fifty thousand Japanese in the country with the American government hoping to use such in making Japan recognize her might. The American government thus portrayed disregard to human rights as they interred the Japanese arbitrarily thereby denying them some of the basic rights and freedoms of humanity. Such factors that quantify the interment process as a state sponsored acts of terror. The American government sponsored the entire swoop as the country used its military among other resources to concentration camps for the Japanese. Suspicion was among the major factors that had compelled the government to concentrate Japanese in the country. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the American government felt suspicious that the Japanese government was planning a series of yet other attacks in the country. Such suspicion began influencing the American public opinion in the country thereby instigating a wave of fear (Robinson, 2009). The rising number of Japanese in the country appeared as the easiest way for the Japanese government to carry out unsuspected terror attacks in the country. The interment of the Japanese was therefore both a political and a military move that sought to redress the rising fear in the country. The American government sought to use the process as a way of curbing the growing terror threat in the country. The American government later rolled out a massive operation as it sought to round up thousands of Japanese in the country. The operation targeting a section of the population was a response to the growing public fear especially owing to the fact that the attack on Peal Harbor was a major factor that instigated the world war. The American government thus thought that by rounding up the Japanese, it would eliminate the threat thereby making the population safer than it already was. The move targeted a section of the country’s population amounting to a terror attack on both Japan and the United State itself since some of the people the military rounded up in concentration camps were legitimate American citizens albeit of Japanese descent. The operation sought to contain the Japanese in centralized facilities thereby making investigation easier since such would make it possible for the American government to carry out dedicated investigations into the Pearl Harbor attacks among other similar attacks that the country’s intelligence had alluded to in the past (Drinnon, 1989). Additionally, the country was under immense political pressure especially owing to the fact that the country was recovering from the effects of the world war. Japan was a fast growing economy in the eastern bloc (Mackey, 1998). With its economic might in the bloc, Japan needed a means of proving her military power to qualify as a global super power. Furthermore, the United States was a common enemy to all the countries in the eastern bloc. The growing speculation on Japan’s growing economic and military power coupled with the foul diplomatic relations the country had developed with the united states motivated the American government to proceed with a move that would end up as one of the worst human rights abuses in the world. Apparently, the interment of the Japanese was to make the Japanese government appreciate the American power possible acting as hostages in case Japan would attack the country again as it had during the Pearl Harbor attacks (Hirabayashi, 1999). The success of the interment was relative since Japan was not planning any of such attacks thereby implying that the internment of Japanese only instigated the worst diplomatic relations between the two countries besides the numerous human rights abuse cases the country faces from the public to date. Among the terrorist tactics that the country employed in the interment exercise, included the employment of the military in the exercise. Firstly, the exercise was unconstitutional since it would result in the abuse of some of the fundamental human rights in the country. The arbitrary incineration of personas in the country without any judicial trials was an abuse of human right that that limited such basic rights of the populace as the freedom of movement among many others. The use of the military was a portrayal of the government’s disregard to human rights among many other standards in the process (De & Klancy, 2004). The military, unlike the police do not uphold the basic rights and freedoms of the populace. Employing the military in the exercise thus made it appear that the country was in a state of war against a section of its population. The military committed major atrocities at the concentration camps most of which the government could not investigate and try even after the entire exercise. In a summary, the interment of the Japanese citizens in the country was an act of terror. State sponsored terror as the military terrorized a section of the population most of who were innocent Americans in search of descent lives. The American government carried major attacks and abuses of human rights factors that qualified the interment of the population as a terrorist attack (Connell, 2002). While the country had major security concerns, concentrating a section of the population was a portrayal of the government’s disregard of human rights thereby amounting to a state sponsored terrorist attack. References Connell, T. (2002). America's Japanese Hostages: The US Plan For A Japanese Free Hemisphere. Westport: Praeger-Greenwood. De, N. & Klancy, C. (2004). The Colonel and the Pacifist: Karl Bendetsen, Perry Saito, and the Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Drinnon, R. (1989). Keeper of Concentration Camps: Dillon S. Meyer and American Racism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Elleman, B. (2006). Japanese-American civilian prisoner exchanges and detention camps, 1941 45. New York: Routledge. Gordon, L. & Gary, Y. O. (2006). Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment. New York: W.W. Norton. Hirabayashi, L. R. (1999). The Politics of Fieldwork: Research in an American Concentration Camp. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. Lyon, C. M. (2012). Prisons and Patriots: Japanese American Wartime Citizenship, Civil Disobedience, and Historical Memory. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Mackey, M. (1998). Remembering Heart Mountain: Essays on Japanese American Internment in Wyoming. Wyoming: Western History Publications. Miyakawa, E. (2006). Tule Lake. New York: Trafford Publishing. Robinson, G. (2001). By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Robinson, G. (2009). A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America. Columbia: Columbia University Press. Read More