I have a hard time thinking of them as patriots, what with them being rebels and traitors taking up arms against their native country, and all.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
One could also point out that the barracks and the Cole were attacked essentially by means of a ruse: IIRC, the Beirut attacks used a civilian delivery truck to approach the base before crashing through a fence, and of course the Cole bombing was carried out by an unmarked small boat. I see that as quite a bit different than a marked military plane carrying out a suicide mission. In the latter case, the subjects of the attack are aware that they are being attacked, in the former, the attacker misrepresents himself as a non-combatant in order to carry out the attack.
I’m aware of that and I still have a hard time thinking of them in the same light as religious fanatics.
Marc
George Washington: Born in Virginia
Thomas Jefferson: Born in Virginia
Francis Marion: Born in South Carolina
Ben Franklin: Born in Massachusetts
Aaron Burr: Born in New Jersey
Nathaneal Green: Born in Rhode Island
Alexander Hamilton: Born in the British West Indies
I’m having a tough time thinking of them as natives of England and not just because they weren’t born there.
Marc
Which of those were not parts of the British Empire at the time of the American Revolution?
I think in a hypertechnical sense, you were wrong. A colony is not part of a country, so your use of “native country” isn’t precisely correct. They were, however, born subjects of Great Britain, which should be enough to question their patriotism. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that 
)
Nope, unless you are using the self-serving definition of terrorism; “A terrorist is what the big army calls the little army.”
Are Q Ships terrorism then ?
While a lot of poeple here say “no,” I may have to disagree.
It may have been a terrorist action in that it was an attack by a non-declared enemy hiding among a civilian population. The area between terrorist and guerrilla becomes pretty fluid at that point. The attacks were not intended to cause damage to the military in the traditional sense of defeating soldiers or damaging ships; rather, they were intended as psychological attacks to harm American morale.
I don’t know much about the Beirut bombing, but Al-Queda had certainly declared themselves a US enemy by the time of the Cole bombing.
Well, it appears the Beirut bombings killed or injured something like 15% of the US Marine force in Lebanon, so I’d say it did a decent job of defeating soldiers in the traditional sense. But even if that wasn’t the case, as I said before, if we define terrorist attacks to mean anything thats meant simply to undermine moral, then just about every military force thats ever fought a war has engaged in terrorist attacks.
So, Lord Haw Haw and Tokyo Rose were terrorists?
I apologize for not being clear; the acts committed were criminal in nature (or at least, ought to have been in any civilized society). They murdered by virtue of not being members of an recognized military and/or without identifying themselves as soldiers. In short, they were exacty like any psycho in the street, except they happened to kill soldiers. But someone who randomly kills soldiers just to inspire fear in their comrades, without any actual purpose beyond that, seems to qualify as a terrorist in my book.
Likewise, the mere fact that, say, the Mafia declares war on the U. S. (or whatever cenario you like) doesn’t give their killers any legitimacy.
And the Beirut Marines barracks bombing was not exactly a show of great skill, given than Reagan refused to allow them to defend themselves by setting up a perimeter or defenses. The marines were not allowed to defend themselves by their own government, and this was the greatest error of Reagan’s entire career.
Now, in fact, some enemies in Iraq are guerrillas and not terrorists (at least at the specific time and palce where they are engaged). Likewise for the Taliban, which has actual respectable soldiers at times.
In short, I think these acts were vicious, criminal, wanton, and beyond the pale of any military action.
Well, what attack is criminal or not is a little beyond our discussion, I’m just interested in whether or not its terrorism. I’d say that launching an attack without a uniform does not make one a terrorist. As in Der Tries’s link, there have been plenty of Ruse de Guerre that involve disguising a military force which I don’t think most people would say matches the definition of terrorism; and as you say yourself, many of the Iraqi insurgents are not terrorists but Guerillas, despite a lack of uniform.
Well, in Beirut and Yemen they had purposes, they weren’t just trying to scare the soldiers for the heck of it. In the case of Yemen, they hoped to goad the US into a war, in Beirut they wanted the peacekeeping force out of Lebanon.
Not sure whether the bombing took “skill” has anything to do with what we’re talking about?
I thought they weren’t terror attacks because the primary goal was to do some real material damage, sink ships and kill a lot of sailors etc.
If it was all about terror, why didn’t they ape the Germans and fit sirens to their dive bombers for example?
I haven’t heard of those ships before, but there is in my mind a very big difference between a truck bomb that is disguised as a civilian so that the perpetrators will lower the defenses of the intended target (especially when the target is part of a peacekeeping force trying to end a senseless civil war), and a ship that is disguised as a helpless civilian target so as to entice an attack upon itself.
It’s sort of the difference between someone dressing up as a li’l old lady in order to rob a bank and a cop dressing up as a li’l old lady in a bad part of town in order to entice nogoodniks to mug her, only to arrest them.
Going back to the OP, I’d be curious to know, Der Trihs, whether you think a uniformed military force can commit terrorism on another uniformed military force principally because the attack was suicidal. Were kamikaze pilots terrorists?
More like dressing up like a little old lady to get access to a military facility, in this case. The question isn’t if the people who killed those Marines/attacked that ship were the good guys ( or even if their targets were ), but whether they were terrorists. I don’t think they were. Going after a military force isn’t terrorism, in my book. I’d have called those sneak attacks, not terrorism.
No, just fanatic and foolish, along with their commanders. Also, I don’t think that whether or not they wore uniforms or were part of a military mattered as far as whether or not it was terrorism; only the goal.
Ram a plane into an enemy warship; not terrorism. Ram a plane into an office building; terrorism. Firebomb a city just to break the moral of an enemy; terrorism. Blow up a factory to keep it from producing Widgets of Evil, not terrorism.
I’m loathe to call an attack against an inarguably military target terrorism, because virtually every act in modern warfare has a terroristic aspect to it.
There are two ways to defeat an enemy. You can grind them into the ground until their continued opposition is physically impossible, or you can get them to give up, either surrendering outright or simply ceding you the field of battle. In most modern wars, the combatants not only attack the enemy, they constantly remind them of the cost of continued war and of the inevitability of defeat, hoping to force them into surrender, not only in non-violent propaganda campaigns, but through military force itself. Seeing your buddies die is the most effective form of propaganda. And really, what’s the difference between “shock and awe” and “terror” anyway?
In judging whether a particular attack should be condemned as terrorism, I like to borrow a concept I’ve heard in the context of medical ethics. A doctor may not administer a lethal dose of morphine to euthanize a terminally-ill patient. But he may give that same patient a large dose of morphine to lessen his pain, even if that has the dual purpose of hastening the patient’s death. In the same way, terrorism only occurs when an attack has the sole purpose of spreading fear, and not when it’s an attack against a military target that also spreads fear.
There’s plenty of gray area here, of course. I’m sure many guerrillas have no illusions that they can physically destroy the enemy, but they do know that every dead soldier hastens their withdraw. Likewise, many civilian administration, economic, and infrastructure targets have some military value.
Exactly. Well said.
The Kaiten “suicide” submarines, despite the article I cite, had a provision for the pilot to leave the sub just before impact and be picked up by the mother sub, although none of the mother subs returned to pick up the pilots. Did any of the kamikaze aircraft provide for the pilot to bail out?
Ram a plane into an enemy warship, not terrorism IN TIME OF WAR
Firebomb a city to break the morale of and enemy, not terrorism, IN TIME OF WAR
Ram a plane into an office building, terrorism, if no war declared.
Blow up a factory to stop production, not terrorism, IN TIME OF WAR
Blow up a factory to stop production, terrorism, if no war declared
Got that Der Trihs?
Just to continue a hijack, the Beirut bombing was in no way a terrorist act. The US government (out of ignorance of the situation in Lebanon) thought that the way to help bring peace was to strengthen Lebanon’s government. But by this time, the government was run by the Christians, and so the US was effectively entering the war as a partisan of the Christian militias. The Christians’ military opponents responded by blowing up US soldiers. Regrettable, but hardly an act of terrorism, since the bombers were responding to agression toward themselves, and responded by attacking a military target. So what if they weren’t in uniform–since when have guerilla fighers worn uniforms?