Are “terrorists” really “terrorists” or is that just a name given because their views aren’t on par with ours?
Uhhh … 9/11 … anyone anyone?
Well, if their views were on par with ours, either we’d be terrorists, too, or they wouldn’t be terrorists. Granted, we may also be terrorists if we don’t agree with them. So, we both might be terrorists even if we agree. What was the question again?
Ewe
“Terrorist is what the big army calls the little army”. If some group like Al Qaeda had drones and so forth and used them like we do, we’d call their behavior terrorism - but we are the ones with the drones, so it’s not terrorism. According to us.
Our terrorists are better than their terrorists. – Paraphrasing Tom Wolfe (not a terrorist).
Der Trihs: much depends on whom Al Qaeda would use their drones against.
Against military bases, military officers, even the military supply chain – truck drivers, helicopter repair personnel, etc. – that would be one thing.
Against schools, cafes, synagogues, athletes, office buildings, and commuter buses – their usual list of targets – that would be different.
Terrorism is largely condemned because it targets ordinary people who have no specific military role. If it took on an actual military purpose, then, yes, it actually would be “the little army.” But as currently constituted, it doesn’t behave like an army: it behaves in a barbaric fashion, striking at civilian targets.
If a person uses violence targeting non combatants to make a political point, they’re a Terrorist. You can agree or disagree with the political point all you want but that person is still a Terrorist.
You were way too creative with the thread title.
Slm, you NEED to have better descriptions in your thread titles, you were told about this just a few days ago. The next time you make a topic like this, it may be closed.
But what about the strategic bombing campaigns of World War II? They were pretty much just aimed at the general population of the enemy country. The Americans may have tried to put a figleaf over it by saying they were aiming at industrial targets but they knew they were usually just hitting the general area of whatever they were aiming at. And the British didn’t even make that much of a pretense - they admitted they were bombing civilian targets (although they used the euphemism that their targets were houses rather than the people who lived in those houses).
Not only that, they developed a science to mass bombings to increase the chance of a firestorm occurring. It was mass murder. Whether it was wrong is a tough call. War is all hell.There is an excellent book by a German academic that I cant remeber that documents the horror.
The Fire by Jorg Friedrich
Well we won so of course we are not terrorists :smack:
The firestorms of WWII were terrible, but were in fact intended to cripple industry and not to induce terror in the population.
The horror of those bombings led the US to develop more accurate bombing techniques (among other reasons), to the point that today we can put a bomb through a window on the other side of the world.
Terrorism is violence that is intended to induce later fear. Anybody getting on a plane today spends hours thinking about 9/11.
That’s terrorism.
And the bombing campaigns that came into full fruition during WWII were first deployed by the powers who would end up suffering the most from them in the end. Gernika anyone?
I would posit that answering in kind (and then some) to being attacked in a certain way is acceptable. Sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind and all that.
As a curiosity, allied aviators from bomber planes were called “terror fliers” by the Germans during the later part of WWII.
Ordinary people who have no specific miltary role…hmmm.
Man, that rings a bell. OH yeah! It sounds like drone strikes.
Missed edit window: The bombing of Dresden so late in the war was, in my opinion, not justifiable. But then neither was the bombing of Rotterdam in 1940.
(Ironically, it was the bombing of Rotterdam what prompted the British high command to renounce their original policy of not bombing Germany outside combat zones. Rotterdam was bombed on May 14 1940, and the first RAF raid in the interior of Germany took place in the night of May 15/16).
[QUOTE=JoseB]
I would posit that answering in kind (and then some) to being attacked in a certain way is acceptable. Sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind and all that.
[/quote]
I would like to rewrite that sentence, after thinking it over:
“I would posit that answering in kind (and then some) to being attacked in a certain way by military units is acceptable. Sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind and all that.”
Hope it is clearer now 
Concur. The common idiom “what we call terrorists, they call freedom fighters” is bullshit.
Terrorists attack civilian targets, with the express intent of causing public terror.
Probably the best definition (at least so far in this thread).
Even the smallest “military” operation concentrates on military targets, with military objectives, and at least loosely observes Geneva rules.
If they concentrate on public/civilian targets, with no military objective or goal, and use weapons and tactics forbidden by Geneva (including failing to wear identifiable uniforms) they’re terrorists, thugs or just plain scum.
Discussions of terrorism are always fraught by the high level of BS perpetrated by gov’ts trying to gerrymander a definition of terrorism that excludes their actions. I love the definitions of terrorism cited in this connection by CAJ Coady (who himself has intelligent things to say about the topic):
Interesting, in that both definitions pretty much right away classify all revolutionary activity as terrorism and illegitimate. Why not just classify terrorism tactically, as the deliberate targeting of civilians? It is the most plausible way of thinking about terrorism, allows for revolutionaries to pursue legitimate warfare, and also allows (sensibly) for us to talk about state-sponsored (or practiced) terrorism.
As for the so-called ‘supreme emergency’ exception (‘strategic bombing’, as the Allies carried out in WWII), you may think it was justified, but there is no reason at all not to call it terrorism. Just look at the explicit justification for why it was done, as stated by Arthur Harris, the man as responsible as anyone for the execution of the British strategic bombing campaign: