It might help since, you know, we are mobilizing the military machine. It might help, you know, to let allies and prospective allies know just who we want to crush and what we want to dismantle.
It might help some dopers (like -----) see that there is a difference between guerilla warfare and terrorism, or it might help some dopers (like me) realize there isn’t, and its a revisionist definition.
Can we make a rather generalized but sufficiently clear definition of what terrorism is so that it doesn’t mean everyone should be at war with everyone else?
I have proposed that terrorists are persons or groups of persons that have a political agenda they wish to impose by using force and threatening further force. The force in question is arbitrarily applied (everyone not with the agenda is an enemy). Whether or not the terrorists are governmentally funded is irrelevant: they are not representing any governments politically.
But, even this seems a little convoluted. Any other ideas out there on how we should define terrorism now?
Revisionist definitions of terrorism? Maybe. I suppose it depends which side of the fence you are standing on. The winners usually decide how history sees them. I sure the British didn’t view American rebels very fondly and I doubt we’d see Hitler in the same light had he won.
In general I would say guerilla fighters mostly stay focused on the military (or police) of the government they are trying to defeat and at least attempt to style themselves as a proper army. Guerilla fighters seem to want to take territory and overthrow a government they disagree with. They may even style themselves as some sort of alternative government.
Terrorists on the other hand seek some political change but don’t want to outright conquer anyone and setup their own shop. Instead they seek change through random infliction of pain upon their enemy in the hope that that enemy will alter its policies to avoid future trouble.
Anyway you slice it is ‘us’ against ‘them’. Maybe you believe in the cause of Al’Queda and reject the term terrorist. Fine…that’s your lookout. Call them whatever you want. Most Americans view them as thugs and consider them as the enemy. They consider us the enemy.
Can we make definitive value judgements on who’s got the more just cause? Probably not definitively. The US has some skeletons in its closet. Nevertheless from where I stand I think the US is more in the ‘right’ than the terrorists are. The terrorists invoke their holy scriptures as a basis for their fight. However, any reasonable reading of the Koran shows the terrorists interpretations to be major perversions of the writings therein. The foundation of their cause is a lie rendering anything they may gain suspect and weak. Simply put they are building on a foundation that is already majorly flawed.
While not perfect I think the US is closer to its central tenets as a country (or group of people) and as such is more capable of surviving in the long run.
This is by no means an iron-clad definition, but here goes …
Terrorist actions are actions designed specifically to cause fear for psychological or political reasons. Terrorism is not aimed at traditional military goals. Traditional military goals would include:
–Gaining territory.
–Destroying military installations, bases, or troops.
–Cutting lines of communications.
–Destroying the enemy’s ability to wage war.
Thus Luke Skywalker destroying the Death Star would not be terrorism, as the Death Star was an explicitly military target, and the Rebel Alliance’s goal was not to create terror. Luke offing the Emperor at the end wasn’t terrorism either, as the Emperor was the CIC of the enemy army.
You could make a respectable argument that many conventional wars have included elements of terrorism, from burning villages in the Middle Ages to intentionally bombing civilians in WWII. However, it’s hard to argue the converse–that OBL’s terrorism is aimed at conventional military goals. The WTC attack didn’t gain territory, destroy military targets, cut lines of communications (and no, jamming civilian phone lines for a few hours doesn’t count) or have any appreciable affect on the enemy’s ability to fight. The only purpose of the attack was to dismay the victims and hearten the perpetrators.
erislover:
[wuote] I have proposed that terrorists are persons or groups of persons that have a political agenda they wish to impose by using force and threatening further force.
[/quote]
So would the police fit in this category? They ave a political agenda (law and order) that they impose by using force.
So does Bush’s statement that everyone that is not with us is against us put him in that category?
Are you saying that terrorists cannot represent a state? Is that simply part of the definition? If it turns out that the WTC attack was actually voted on and approved by a government, does that make it not terrorism?
That’s an incredibly broad description. Would random drug tests be considered terrorism?
What if a military goal is an incidental target (e.g. a nuclear attack on a city that has a military installation; the military installation is destroyed, but so is the city)?
What about drug interdiction efforts? That’s not a traditional military goal. Is that terrorism?
What about the Pentagon attack? Was that terrorism?
ok, first of all, guerrila warfare can be taken to the point of extemeity,in which it could be called ‘Terrorisim.’ A guerrila is defined as
Therefore it can be inferred that what the terrorists are doing is not only trying to harass us, but to put fear in all of us because they ovbiously hate the US. That is, as I said before, Guerrila Warfare at a high extreme. The Reveloutionaries used this kind of warfare against the Brits during the War For Independence. (Not that it’s ok for terrorists to do what they did just becase the reveloutionaries did)
Nope. The police are part of your contract with the society you live in. You know the laws (or should) and know you will get a visit from the police if you break those laws.
You don’t know when or where the terrorists are coming from next and they may get you although you have done nothing wrong (at least not directly…as a part of the society they hate they consider that culpability enough).
I think that piece was poorly phrased. Just considering someone an enemy doesn’t make anyone a terrorist. It is your actions that define whether or not you are a terrorist.
Technically I would say no. If it turned out a state pulled off the attack then it would be an outright act of war. Killing innocent civilians that way would certainly give it the flavor of a terrorist attack but it would be war nonetheless.
Nope. Again random drug tests are something you can expect and are, again, part of your agreement to live in this society. If you don’t like it you can peacefully petition the government to change it.
For random drug tests to be terrorism you’d have to A) Never expect it and get pulled off the street at some completely random time; B) Have drugs be legal (i.e. you’re doing nothing wrong by taking them) and C) Have some bad outcome as result of testing positive.
That’s not terrorism. It might be an overzealous attack but not terrorism. Anyone living near the nuclear missile silos out west can expect nuclear missiles to fly there way if we ever go down that road. It sucks for them but isn’t terrorism.
Drug interdiction is merely policing. Even if they use the military it is still just policing. As a drug runner you know the risks you face. While you may experience terror being chased down by a destroyer the destroyer chasing you is not committing an act of terrorism.
The attack on the Pentagon was terrorism but it was closer to a conventional attack than the WTC was. The Pentagon could expect to be a target as a military installation…fair game in war.
That said I don’t believe the attackers impaired our ability to fight in any noticeable way. Had they dropped all four planes on the Pentagon and followed-up with an assault somewhere else in the world then maybe I could see the attack as a piece of a larger puzzle meant to better their odds in the other attack. Still, it’d take a lot more than blasting the Pentagon to disable or cripple our forces.
Americans practised a form of guerilla warfare against the British but I don’t think anyone on either side of the pond would have called the Americans terrorists. We focused on killing enemy soldiers, not killing innocent civilians. The closest I can think of the Americans coming to a terrorist attack back then was the Boston Tea Party.
The Ryan: Drug testing and drug interdiction are not terrorism. Their goal isn’t fear, it’s reduced drug consumption. Regardless of whether you think they’re good policies, it’s easy to draw a direct link between the policy and the goal of lower drug consumption. In the case of the WTC attack, though, you simply cannot make a link between the attack and the (presumed) goal without going through fear first.
By the way, when I use the word fear, I mean just that, and not “aversion” or “avoidance.” The purpose of random drug tests is to cause aversion, not the far more primal and irrational feeling of fear.
As you say, a terrorist attack may incidentally encompass a military target. The key is whether the attacker meant the attack to cause fear or actually cripple the enemy’s military. Which brings us to the Pentagon. If the Pentagon had been the sole attack, and had been followed by other attacks on military targets, then you might classify it as a (lame-brained) conventional military attack. However, it happened as the same time as the purely terrorist attack on the WTC, so it’s clear to me that the purpose of the Pentagon attack was terror as well. If they were really interested in affecting America’s ability to wage war, they wouldn’t have wasted 2 jets on the WTC.
The Boston Tea Party was an act of pacific protest (Although America did not gain independence through playing pacifist). It was in protest of the King’s ridiculous taxing, which taxed the sale of tea. And I did mention that I do not consider the Reveloutionaries terrorists. Oh, most of the Americans’ Guerrila warfare was performed by pacifists (such as the Quakers) who did not attack and vanish, but rather use psycological warfare by doing things such as placing nonfunctional cannons outside their homes.
Allow me to state that as it stands, I do not consider guerilla warfare to be terrorism, but this is based on a somewhat intuitive definition of terrorism as outlined above. This leads me to say to The Ryan that when you break my definition up into its disparate parts then you will find problems with it. All conditions are meant to be met simultaneously for the definition to hold. So no, police wouldn’t fit into that category as they specifically represent a government.
The real fuzziness comes into play when we consider the phenomenon of revolution. That phrasing reminds me that I have a book by the same title. Allow me to quote a relevant passage (forgot I had this book until I just typed that :))
[sup]the Phenomenon of Revolution, Mark N. Hagopian, 1974[/sup]
Though this is more referring to the distinction between localized terrorism before, during, and after localized revolution, it does lend some credence to the idea that terrorism is, in fact, an exaggerated form of typical warfare.
sigh this makes a Manichaeanistic struggle against terrorism a pretty bad idea since the definition seems to be sufficiently flexible.
Last week, when Vlad the Impaler Putin wasn’t on our side, the Chechens were Freedom Fighters. Today, they are terrorists. Same Chechens. Same Putin. Different day.
Not all that good at cite-mining. Heard it on PBS news radio, which has absorbed alot of my time lately. I am unlikely to spend much time on this, being lazy and easily distracted, so I must withdraw that assertion until I can prove otherwise. Still believe it, mind you, just will not assert it as fact.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, it isn’t that I don’t believe you, it is that I seriously want to read about it. Don’t hurt yourself over my account I don’t often ask for cites to back up an argument, because I try to avoid those kinda’ arguments. So usually when I ask for a cite, it isn’t because I disbelieve you. I’ll toss ya a rolleyes if I don’t believe you
To be fair, the administration wasn’t referring to the Chechens as terrorists, but rather the people who might be supplying them with weapons. I doubt that we’ll raise much of a fuss about human rights over there in the near future, though.
I don’t know about you, but I never signed a contract giving power to the police.
No, if I break the laws, I might get a visit from the police.
I don’t know when or where the police are coming, and they get me for an indirect crime (like buying stolen goods: I didn’t steal the goods, but by buying them I participated in the crime).
So whether some group’s actions are terrorsim depends on whether we’ve recognized them as a government?
If I expected them, they would, by definition, not be random.
A)That happens.
B)Why is whether something is illegal the criterion for whether is wrong?
C) Something bad does happen.
How does assigning a name to it change its nature?
So if terrorists made their attacks more predictable, would they cease to be terrorists?
I see this as splitting hairs. The purpose of drug testing is to create concern, worry, apprehension. This is exactly what the purpose of the WTC attacks were. The exact degree to which they intend to create these emotions is a poor criterion for deciding whether they are terrorism.
I’m glad that you realize that it is intuitive. This is one of my main points: the distinction is based mainly on subjective factors rather than explicit criteria.
Yes, that is true. I hope that you do not think that I was trying to refute your definition by picking it apart; rather I was trying to clarify it. Please note that I asked such questions as “does this fit in that category that you’ve described?” That is, I was trying to find out whether methods usually though of not terrorist would fulfill a particular part of your description; I was not trying to say that simply because it fits one part it fits all parts. But before we know whether something fulfills all the criteria, we must know what each criterion is.
While that certainly would be consistent with your description, I don’t like the idea of the nature of an act depending on who does it.
Hence my suggestion that I may be a definitional “revisionist.” No small concern, really. I know what I mean when I say “terrorist” but I’ll be damned if I can find a way to explain it. This usually tells me that I’m failing to grasp the situation entirely, and has provided no small source of argumentation over whether or not a government can perform terrorist actions, whether guerilla warfare is a brand of terrorism, and so on. I’m with you: I would hope to avoid a definition which requires an arbitrary (and unstated!) matter of degree. My concern here is that one cannot be found.
I am not sure I agree with this. Do you feel there is a context-free definition of “terrorism” and “terrorist?”
I don’t often ask for cites to back up an argument, because I try to avoid those kinda’ arguments. So usually when I ask for a cite, it isn’t because I disbelieve you. I’ll toss ya a rolleyes if I don’t believe you 