No, because a covert and unidentified group does not use terror as a tool (if it did, it wouldn’t be covert or unidentified) to further its goals; hence, it cannot be a terrorist organization.
And nice snark, I’m Ron Burgundy?, but not everyone responsible for deaths is a terrorist, and you’re probably smart enough to know that.
Bluntly answered, you can’t. They’re not targeting you personally, so there’s not too much you can do. They aren’t going to stop until either their goals are met or they’re all dead, so the long term solution is for you to either help them accomplish their goals, or help kill them.
And, as to what their goals are, their goals depend on the organization.
According to the head of the investigation:
So now we are getting somwhere. If we took those 500 Americans out of Saud, then 9/11 wouldn’t have happened? Or were there foreign armies in other Muslim states? I think that is the loophole right there. Is the Jewish army in Palestine?
I’m the OP and I changed the definition of terrorists somwhere along the line. The term is way to broad to include several governments and government agencies.
Lets not say terrorists for the sake of this and just say suicide bombers. That should confine the groups to a particular extreme state of mind.
Yeah, that was not the best choice of words to describe what I really meant. Sorry about that. I guess what I’m saying is that I consider the CIA to be a terrorist group.
The covert part is tricky, but I don’t think that the concepts of “unidentified” and “terrorism” are mutually exclusive. You can cause plenty of terror without identifying yourself, as in the case of the anthrax.
Well, he could always join them.
(It would be entirely wrong, of course, and illegal and possibly fatal, but it would technically solve the problem.)
Sometimes you can even cause more terror if noone knows who’s causing it. Problem is, if you don’t identify as having done it, you can’t spread word of your goals. So it’s a bit limited.
Oh wait a minute. We shouldn’t build tall buildings. They were religious American idols then.
I was thinking that the anthrax mailer might be a postal employee, or that we might glean the purpose from the victims. Then I got it.
The Tamil Tigers, already mentioned, are responsible for many suicide bombings, and were in fact the first group to use suicide bombings as a central tactic. By some estimates, they are responsible for more suicide bombings than Hezbollah and Hamas combined; as mentioned, the Tamil Tigers are a Tamil nationalist organization, whose members are mostly Hindu, and are quite hostile to Muslims.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party is a Marxist/Kurdish nationalist terrorist group that is responsible for many suicide bombings in Turkey, their agenda is secular nationalist.
So, no, the use of suicide bombers isn’t a tactic exclusive to Muslim terrorists.
That is not in line with #39 tho.
What reasoning lies behind your saying the CIA is a terrorist group?
Even if we can point to specific acts of terrorism that the CIA has done, that would not, in my opinion, make them a terrorist group. If “committing an act of terror” at any point in an entity’s existence makes said entity a terrorist group, then most governments in the world are terrorist groups. The UK and the U.S. engaged in terror bombing in Germany, designed to demoralize the German public.
Even if we believe the worst things about the CIA that conspiracy theorists believe (above and beyond the bad things the CIA has actually copped to), I still wouldn’t view them as a terrorist group anymore than I would view the Gestapo or the KGB as terrorist organizations. The Gestapo and KGB both did some terrible things, the Gestapo in 1943 started summarily arresting and executing student protest leaders on a wide scale. However, by and large the Gestapo wasn’t a “terrorist” organization, it was a security organization designed to control a population. An organization might commit terrorist acts without being a “terrorist organization.” A terrorist organization is to my mind, an organization designed to achieve certain goals primarily through the use of terrorism. The CIA, Gestapo, and KGB primarily didn’t use terrorism to achieve goals, nor was that even their primary purpose. Note I don’t really think the CIA deserves to be lumped in with the Gestapo or the KGB, but just for argument’s sake I am comparing them to those organizations because I think the “worst view” possible of the CIA wold put it in the same camp as the Gestapo/KGB, not Al-Qaeda. To my mind there is a big difference to a state intelligence/secret police force and a terrorist group, even though sometimes their tactics are very similar.
You’re right. The CIA does not fit the definition even though it has engaged in and sponsored terrorist activities. It’s clearly not a political movement and terrorism is only part of what it does.
I don’t want to highjack the thread but I would be interested in finding out more about what would be the best way to characterize the CIA.
Well, you changed the question, “tho”.
OP: This has turned into a definition of terrorism then.
Terrorism is not an enforcement of law. No matter how messed up the law was. Our enforcement of our law on Iraq isn’t terrorism.
Terrorism is a cowardly act. When the direct approaches have failed or are not avilable.
I don’t think the objective of the CIA was ever terror. Their objective was pretty much what they got done. That goes for many of the discussed groups. Where does the line stand between war and pointless acts of violence?
How about … All terrorists are the little guy? I think that one hold then.
Meh. It’s a childishly-worded question and any answer the OP doesn’t like is waved away by redefining the terms.
Yes, there are non-Muslim terrorists. They just haven’t been getting as much press in recent years.
Just beyond the politics of the beholder.
Yeah, hopefully bob_co realizes that “pointless acts of violence” is a very poor definition of terrorism. I will agree with the generalization,provided that it remains a general observation rather than a rule, that terrorists usually are “the little guy”; indeed, they tend to abandon terrorism when they cease to be marginalized. Like Sinn Fein, no?
Say, what ever happened to those guys? I can’t recall the last news item about right-wing militia nuts – except for Ed Brown, and he just don’t wanna pay his taxes.
Most terrorists have a political goal. The IRA wants the British out of Ulster, the ETA wants an independant Basque nation, the Tamil Tigers want an independant Hindu nation in Sri Lanka, Al Qaeda wants foreign countries out of the Middle East, Hamas wants the Israelis out of Israel, the KKK wants black people to stop voting.
You don’t see many Christian terrorist groups because there’s relatively few situations in the world where there are Christian populations being oppressed. But there are a few and Christians have shown they can use terrorism just like anyone else.
Terrorism is simply an act in which the prime or one of the important goals is to cause terror. War involves a lot of causing terror, but usually that isn’t the prime concern; you scare the enemy by killing them off, but the goal there is mainly the killing rather than the fear (though that’s a helpful side effect).
“Is it meant to cause terror?” If yes, terrorism. If no, not terrorism. Easy.