Terrorist Tactics vs. Military Tactics

Great Debates
1

It’s tough to pin down a specific definition of terrorism, but our society seems to have general agreement that there is a definite division between terrorist tactics and legitimate military tactics. Further, the widespread assumption seems to be that terrorist tactics are somehow less civilized, more cruel, and less acceptable (even within the context of warfare.)

The accepted definition seems to indicate that any tactic which a first-world country would want to use while invading a third-world country is a legitimate military tactic, while almost any tactic that the people of a third-world country might use to fight back is a terrorist tactic. Thus, the division is defined in such a way as to automatically make first-world invaders look superior and their third-world targets look inferior. I’ve come to suspect that the division was created for exactly that purpose.

But before I jump to conclusions, can anybody offer any different explanation?

2

I think you’re looking for a specific arguement. I’ll see if I can help you out here.

Warfare: A nationstate against a nationstate (or similar collective) in order to achieve a political goal. Opponents engage in destroying each others military assets, and damage infrastructure in order to lessen the will to fight. As a general rule, in modern warfare, collateral damage is limited as much as possible while acheiving these goals. During warfare, once the opponent ceases to exist as a political entitiy or military force, both sides will stop fighting, and create a peace (one way or the other).

Terrorism: A creed-driven group opposing another creed-group or nation-state. As indicated by the name, terrorists will use terror to influence the body politic of the force they are opposed to. These tactics often include indiscrimnate bombing, specifically designed to kill and damage non-combatants. These creed-groups also often engage in activities that are considered criminal, usually to forward thier aims, or aquire assets to further their creed-driven ideology.

Please Note– This is in respect to the modern situation. In times past, warfare often involved the indescriminate killing of civilian populace. Most nation-states have agreed that this is no longer an acceptable practice, and have devoted a great deal of resources to further the goals of minimizing civilian impact (within reason).

further note: creed can be politics, racial ideology, religion, or any other of a number of sociatal factors.
How’s that sound?

3

You’ve totally missed it, sorry.

Beginning with the terminology. Tactics are the methods used to gain advantages in the short term. These advantages are combined to accomplish STRATEGIC goals.

Strategy involves the actual setting of goals, developing long-range plans to attain them, and choosing individual targets and sub-goals along the way. Often the goal is set by political needs, and strategy is wholly consumed in firuring out an over-arching plan on geting there.

Terrorism has nothing to do with tactics in any way, shape, or form. It is a strategic and political doctrine. There are a lot of twits in the media who ought to know better but don’t, and they often confuse guerrillas, terrorists, soldiers, and politicians. And the fact that some individuals have been all of these (sometimes at once) blows their tiny minds.

Terrorism is a practice by marginal groups seeking to attain political power. It operates by carrying out attacks upon targets of an “oppressing,” “colonial” or “intruding” power (note that these descriptors may be entirely in the minds of the terrorists and need not bear any reltionship to reality). The oprtations will nt distinguish between military personnel and civilians, because the terrorists do nto consider them to be morally seperable, and generally consider them unworthy of any moral consideration(i.e., they’re vermin to be exterminated).

The purpose of these attacks is NOT to damage the targeted power (this is where Al-Quaeda fell down; they thought they could do so), because the damage is ultimately trivial. They are intended to incite a furious but disorganized response which strikes at members or potential members of the terrorist’s own “resource group.” That is, whomever they want to draw recruits from (this is where Al-Quaeda fell down again; the U.S. response was overwhelming but aimed to attract, if erratically, local groups, thereby undercutting Al-Quaeda’s base and humiliating it even in Arab nations)

In theory, these reprisals by the targetted power will simply hit whatever national, political, or racial group the terrorists are “championing.” (Scare-quotes again because it’s usually BS.) This is supposed to enhance the terrorist’s power-base and increase its money and people. They carry out more attacks, enhancing their prestige and making the targetted power look weak.

At some point, this is supposed to transition into a normal guerrilla war, with actual armies. This generally requires significant foreign support. Note that most “oppressed nations” do NOT actually have a notable terrorist movement before achieving independance; they either work it poltiicall or begin the guerrillas directly.

The purpose behind those “first world” practices (none of which are tactics) are in fact to decrease civilian casualties by clearly removing them from the danger of war to the greatest possible degree. This is not always easy; it’s often impossible, and technological and logistical issues always contrain it.

For example:

Uniforms. Uniforms are meant to distinguish soldiers from civvies. Terrorists not only do not wear them, but do not consider them when attacking others. This is a big no-no, and no legit guerrilla would follow that practice.

Having bomb traps (the roadside bomb thing) is a grey area. It’s probably permissable but most armies frown on random mines and take a dim view of those who use them. It’s also another serious danger to civvies.

Hostages. hostage-taking and demands for money are the actions of criminal gands and terrorists, not soldiers. At one point in the past it was more normal, but the fact that knights and kings don’t dominate the battlefields made this entire practice moot. Of course, traditionally hostages weren’t murdered if the money wasn’t forthcoming, either; they were simply held.

Note that in Afganistan and Iraq, indivduals were both terrorists AND guerrillas silmutaneously, moving from one to the other as the situation required. In my view, the fact that they engage almost all their time in terrorist work and only come out to fight as guerrillas on rare occaisions in their momentary best interest doesn’t cut it. Not even close.

4

I think I disagree with smiling bandit; yes, tactics is about bringing about your overall strategy, but terrorism is on the tactical level, too. An individual bombing or attack is the tactical subset of the overaching strategic political goals. It might be shitty tactics, but I think it’s the right word.

Anyway, I certainly don’t think that Military tactics and Terrorist tactics are mutually exclusive terms, though I can see how they might be considered so. Tactics can take many forms; it might be a direct assault to bring down enemy numbers; it could be an attack on supply lines to weaken support. Intelligence tactics likewise might mean tapping your enemy’s communications, or interrogating a high-level captive. Terrorist tactics are similar; rather than the goal being a direct attack on numbers or the enemies’ ability to fight, or to undermine or co-opt their ways of fighting, terrorism aims to make them not want to fight.

Military tactics can involve all of these and more. To address the OP, where I see the difference being drawn is not in that terroristic attacks aren’t inherently less legitimate because they attack morale, but because in most people’s minds they’re connected to attacks on civilians. Of course, the hypocrisy of mounting a war on terror and then deciding to use “Shock and Awe” tactics is damnably impressive and requires enormous balls, but there you go.

5

Are you a part of a nationally recognized force that answers to a chain of command? Do you attack military or civilian (noncombatant) targets?

If you answered:
Yes/Military, you’re a soldier in a military.
Yes/Civilian, you’re also a soldier.
No/Military, you’re a guerilla fighter.
No/Civilan, you’re a terrorist.

6

The reason I don’t agree with that is that any single terrorist attack is generally trivial in scope, and usually very long-term in result, if any results occur at all.

7

Well, in terms of grand strategy, you could say the same for a lot of general tactics. One battle doesn’t (usually) make a war. As for triviality in scope… yeah, i’d probably give you that one. But I would say that’s generally because of a lack of manpower and funds rather than something inherently terroristic; your garden variety terrorist group can’t put out the people and cash an army can.

8

Sorry, but this is not entirely correct. Hidden anti-vehicle mines is a completely legal tactic and most armies training for defensive fighting will practice deploying them as a matter of course. A “roadside bomb” is just another word for a command-detonated mine, and again, a completely legal tactic under any convention you’d care to mention. If anything, command detonation prevents accidentally taking out a non-combatant.

Anti-personnel mines are legal under the conventions, but most countries are giving them up voluntarily.

The crime is when the people deploying an otherwise legal tactic are not in uniform and not following the customs of warfare.

IntelSoldier, good list. I’ll steal that, if you don’t mind?

9

Well, yes, because terrorists generally do things like blow up hotels and train stations. They don’t answer to anyone but themselves. They don’t wear uniforms or identify themselves as combatants and they often attack people who don’t know they are at war.

10

My definition of what seperates military actions from terroristic ones is simply that terrorists often target civilian non-combatants intentionally, while most recognized militaries do not, or at least make a varying degree of effort not to.

Now, you could make a case of “terrorist” activity in the guerilla sense across years of human warfare, indeed, I’m sure the Brits considered some of our tactics as “terrorism” and “ungentlemanly” during the Revolutionary War, like sneak-attacking supply convoys, or intentionally targeting officers.

The same could be said of the current conflict in the Middle East…as in, what do you expect a Hamas/Al Quadea/Taliban “fighter” to do? Stand in the middle of a field and fire an AK-47 at an Israeli/American fighter plane?

Of course not, but you can draw a distinction between a “guerilla” (or in the modern sense to a degree, an “insurgent”) as an opposition fighter, uniformed or no, against a superior sized military force. It’s why they are called “guerillas” after all, and it can be a VERY effective means of taking out or demoralizing a superior force.

The IED’s that “insurgents” use against the US military is all well and good in terms of ye olde “All’s fair in love and war” tenet…

It’s when suicide bombers walk into a shopping plaza and kill women, children and random old people that I draw the line…especially like what’s occurring in Iraq with Shia vs Shiite…they’re all Muslms for God’s sake!

Palestinians doing the same in an Israeli marketplace are also terrorists, but at least they are attempting to kill “the enemy”, because with tactics like these, as well as firing a continual barrage of rockets into Israel, groups like Hamas can at least plead their case to their followers (especially in the wake of a particularly harsh Israeli response, which only furthers to engender their “See, they bomb our women from the skies and drink our babies blood” response that is self-perpetuating).

So, anyone that uses violent force for whatever reason against innocents on purpose is a terrorist, regardless of their grievances, perceived or otherwise.

11

Thing is, most terrorist groups are just cells of nutcases, brutes, and crooks. Their “strategy” is to raise unholy hell for as long as they can. Their only tactic is… to raise unholy hell for as long as they can.

You’ll note I said it was a grey area. And it is. The problem is that the bombings we’ve seen in Iraq and occaisionally elsewhere are aimed at an ally of the legitimate government, and are largely placed there by foreigners (to Iraq). And AFAIK, it’s not like all of them are being real careful about whom they blow up. That puts it into a deep grey area. The former pretty much makes anything they do an act of terrorism by definition, and the latter would presumably make it so otherwise.

It’s not the mines I have a problem with. I love mines and think the idea that they’re *Eeeevil * is a matter of stupid people mistaking causes: the “evil” mines instead of bad governments and callous armies.

12

It would not be difficult to recast these words to relate to strategic bombing or the deployment of cluster bombs. The idea that war can be moral is a falsity; no major modern conflict has ever operated with purely volunteer troops and actively restricted fire to avoid killing non-combatants and damaging non-military, non-industrial property. With the advent of the concept of “total war” in the modern conception, the dividing line between legitimate warfaring and terrorism has essentially been reduced to a fashion argument; legal combatants wear a regulated uniform and are (at least nominally) due certain privileges if captured, while “terrorists” don’t wear uniforms. The firebombing of Dresden–a historic city with virtually no industry–was merely an act of terrorist writ large, albeit by the victors.

One can make the distinction that legitimate combatants are in the direct service of a nation while terrorists are partisans or mercenaries for hire, but one wouldn’t want to make that point too loudly, given the large number of private combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan in the contracted employment of the United States government. Certainly the United States and other Western nations have not been adverse to the funding of “insurgents” whose primary virtue was opposing a regime–often legimately elected–which was found to be unfavorable to American interests.

I don’t mean to argue for the legitimacy of terrorist actions, particularly those directed at civilian and non-military targets, but the distinction between this and the targets of military action often differ only in the scope of the attack, not the legitimacy of focus. “Terrorists” are (or percieve themselves) as being disenfranchised from legitimate governence–see the French and Polish Resistances in WWII–and thus act without government sanction, even though their causes are often regarded as just through the bifocals of history.

Stranger

13

I don’t usually see eye to eye with you on stuff, but damn good post.

14

Well, I’d agree with that strategy, but I carbombs, IEDs, shootings, and the like I would call their tactics.

15

But as Smiling Bandit said above many combatants in Iraq (and elsewhere) go from guerilla to terrorist and back again. A specific example, the IRA often targetted noncombatants but also targetted the British Army.

16

Hence why terrorism is a tactic, not a strategy or a body one can declare war on. The Red Army used terror many many times in it’s history; so did the Nazis. So did the Americans. So did the Brits. Note the capitalisation.

The confusion is because the definition of Terrorist / Terrorism (with a capital T) is non-traditional armies or even nation-states (i.e. Mujahedin, Taleban, Hamas, Al Queda, etc…) who often use terrorist tactics and do not have traditional command and control structures, but potentially also use more traditional warfighting tactics (i.e. guerilla) as well. I think it’s also because many of these groups do not report to an ultimate civilian leadership.

The idea of declaring war on a tactic, used by armies throughout the centuries, has always sat wrong with me. Better to more accurately define who you’re at war against.

17

Didn’t Frederick the Great say that “artillery lent dignity to what otherwise would be a vulgar brawl”?

The problem is that people keep throwing out examples of military use of terror tactics as if to say “Look! There is no distinction between the military and terrorists! They are the same!” Taking morality out of the equation, terrorists simply are not part of an organized military or government. At least not directly. They are usually just a group of people who decided to stir up trouble in order to pursue some political or idealogical goal. If me and my buddies decide to march over the boarder into Canada and blow up some hockey rinks, we aren’t acting as agents of the United States.

18

How are nations supposed to respond to an ideological group who blows up their buildings and busses and citizens, then?

19

It’s not what I mean by it, though certainly I have seen people claimin moral equivalence from one act of terrorism-by-army. I think the best way to highlight the difference is that a lot of what we call terrorists are terrorists only - those are the only tactics they will use, whereas an army uses terror as just one possible tactic.

20

And can we modify it to read:

Oh, sorry. Or of merely causing “collateral damage.”