A Freedom Fighter won the war and a Terrorist lost the war. Hmmm…I might be a bit harsh here, so is there a real difference besides who won.
The winning side gets to write the history.
Not all Freedom Fighters use terrorist acts in an attempt to reach their goal.
“If fire fighters fight fires and crime fighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight?” - George Carlin
A terrorist doesn’t merely kill civilians collaterally in an effort to strike military targets, a terrorist intentionally inflicts violence and terror on the civilian populace as a political tool.
You hit a military target (let’s say an enemy’s HQ or a weapons factory or a vehicle carrying enemy commanders) and some civilians die = non-terrorism.
You hit a civilian target (a commuter bus, a pizzeria, a wedding hall) and some civilians die = terrorism.
To make it clearer: the attack on the World Trade Center was terrorism. The attack on Pentagon wasn’t.
So in WWII when U.S. bombed Hiroshima, they were freedom fighters? If the Japanese had won WWII would they have called the U.S. terrorists.
Yeah. Terrorism is a tactic. Fighting for freedom is overall strategy. The two don’t need to have anything to do with each other.
What was the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut during the Reagan administration? The US government insisted it was terrorism.
Words mean different things to different people, and the meanings constantly change. Cynically if the killer is on your side = freedom fighter, killer on the other side = terrorist.
They were wrong.
It’s a judgement of the act. It might equally be described as, for example, an ‘attack’.
The terms are:
- “Freedom fighter” - an individual is not “a strategy”
- “terrorist”
The two are opposite sides of the same coin.
George Carlin hit the nail on the head. There’s never been a war fought so that a person could be enslaved.
Normally, both sides think they are fighting for freedom. However, the combatants differ drastically in the type of freedom they fight for.
A case in point is the U.S. Civil War. The Union was fighting to end slavery and the South was fighting for economic freedom. Of course, this is an over-simplification but this is just an illustration.
Who gets to conduct these attacks? If it had been Timothy McVeigh or Ted Kaczynski who blew up the Pentagon instead of al Qaeda, would that have been a legitimate military attack? Can an individual declare war on their own country?
When a freedom fighter misses a target, civilians die.
When a terrorist misses a target, civilians live.
- We need to kill everyone wearing an enemy uniform who’s not surrendering
(Everybody agrees that’s OK) - We need to bomb the factories that makes their weapons and equipment
(Everybody agrees that’s OK) - We need to bomb the houses where the factory workers live
(Everybody agrees that’s OK)
We did the third item by thinking that they all had the option of going to air raid shelters, and that myth will last for a long time. It wasn’t until the 1990’s that it was OK for popular histories to admit that Bomber Harris and Curtis LeMay had overdone the civilian killing. And that still isn’t the mainstream consensus: tens of thousands of Germans had starved due to the blockade in WWI, and they still denied they’d been defeated, and rose up again in a generation. We had to smash their cities and destroy their lives.
There’s always been an ambiguity in our support for the dirty work. The British yelled “give it 'em back!” at Churchill when he toured the ruins of the East End, but after the was bomber command wasn’t given the same hero status as the plucky Spitfire pilots. After the US Civil War there was a 2-day victory parade through Washington. One the first day the Army of the Potomac in their cute little kepi hats marched, and everybody cheered. On Day Two it was Sherman’s Army of the West’s turn, wearing menacing black slouch hats. This was the army that had burned its way from Atlanta the Charleston. There wasn’t the same enthusiastic cheering.
Was Bush W. freedom fighter or terrorist? And what does that make US?
False dichotomy.
Probably.
These are orthogonal terms. “Freedom fighters” are defined by objectives, “terrorists” by methodology. A combatant may be a freedom fighter, or a terrorist, or both, or neither.
Suppose you were from a primitive tribe. A modern culture was encroaching on your territory burning down your forest and habitat that you needed for survival. All you had was primitive weapons and you had no way to go head to head with the men and soldiers in the new culture. Would you be wrong to plan sneak attacks killing the women and the children of the invaders to convince them the price was too high.