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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (2517)	7/29/2005 12:48:56 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542109

I don't know why there needs to be a democratic authority. I threw that in at the last minute and it's peripheral. But for terrorism to work as I've laid it out, the authority would have to be care whether its civilians were terrified or not, otherwise it wouldn't be coerced. That would likely be a democracy although I suppose it could be a monarch or even benevolent despot. I should have left it out because it unnecessarily complicates things. I think most people in this country would call it terrorism if Osama blew up an army barracks They might well, but then then would be missing a key nuance, methinks, not that lack of nuance by "most people" would be any surprise. Given all the discussion of terrorism that's been had and all the refinement of thinking that's been going on, my sense is that people differentiate between civilian and military targets although they may not do it at a conscious level. When people complain about what's going on, targeting "innocent civilians" seems to be a focus. That's a new paradigm in modern US warfare.