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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (84768)	3/21/2003 8:11:36 PM
From: kumar	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

IRA : teror org or freedom fighter group ? cheers, kumar@withusoragainstus.pov

To: Ilaine who wrote (84768)	3/21/2003 8:19:11 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I kind of like your definition but I'm trying to examine it a bit. If a government uses military force not specifically aimed at civilians but indiscriminantly in a way that is certain to kill many civilians (and more civilians then enemy soldiers) is that terrorism by your definition? Is it not terrorism? Or is it terrorism in some circumstances and not in others? What about Al Qaeda's attacks on the Pentagon and on the Cole, terrorism? Tim

To: Ilaine who wrote (84768)	3/21/2003 8:33:16 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

<Terrorism is an attack on civilians> That's way too easy to knock down. Then the U.S. is a terrorist state, as we have done this on a massive scale, and repeatedly, in the 20th Century, and 19th, and before, beginning when George Washington ordered ethnic cleansing against the "Civilized Tribes" of upper New York. Hiroshima, firebombing of dozens of cities in WWII, almost every war against dozens of Native tribes. You can try to wriggle out of this by: 1. saying that these were legitimate military targets. This requires a willfull systematic disregard of the historical evidence. 2. a very creative definition of the word "legitimate". 3. saying that if there is one munitions factory sitting in a city of a million civilians, it's OK to carpet-bomb the entire city. In addition to the above, whenever we have fought against a guerrilla army (from 1780s upper New York to 1890s Phillipines to 1960s Vietnam), it has proven impossible (except in theory) to distinguish guerrillas from the supportive civilian population, so we end up doing massive systematic violence against them. No U.S. General said, "When enough Natives have died from hunger and exposure, because we burned their houses and fields, the __________ (Apaches, Seminoles, Moros, Vietcong, etc., etc.) will give up." But that's exactly how it worked out in practice, and the Generals in charge knew it.

To: Ilaine who wrote (84768)	3/22/2003 9:31:33 AM
From: Clarksterh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Cobalt - Terrorism is an attack on civilians and other non-legitimate military targets. I agree this an important factor in determining when something is terrorism. But another factor is whether there are clear, self-consistent objectives for which the act is clearly a step towards those objectives. If you do not include this factor then it would have been war had Timothy McVeigh attacked a military installation. Of course whether a particular attack is terrorism or not will inevitably be a judgement. Is the defense industry a military institution or civilian? How about a trading organization in a 'war' against colonialism? There is rarely a totally clear demarcation between terrorism and 'legitimate' war. BTW - I too find the attack on the Pentagon much less offensive than the attack on the trade center. But I think that the attack on the Pentagon is still over the line into terrorism because of my additional criteria. Clark