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Originally posted by citizen:
Oh and the only person who's done any obvious insultin' here would be you, I'm not full of shit, I await your apology for the unsolicited personal insult.

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I didn't define anything, you're having that conversation with SignyM,

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do try to keep up please. I said the situations of WW2, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and hell the first Gulf War bear no relation to the current situation in Iraq.

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But since you want to drag me in too the "Is Bush a terrorist?" argument, for whatever reason I don't know:

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A terrorist is someone who specifically TARGETS civilians in order to produce fear in a civilian population to bring pressure to that populations governing body, in order to satisfy a political end.

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Simply put Bush doesn't need to be a terrorist. If the IRA or Al qaeda had the resources of the American Military they wouldn't be Terrorists either.

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Is Bush a Terrorist? I don't think so, for a start he lacks the subtlety (yes it requires a degree of subtlety) and intelligence to operate a terrorist network. Secondly the coalition forces aren't specifically targeting civilians, though that having been said the coalition forces have attacked civilians, whether this is a case of mistaken identity or actual targeting of civilians, or whether that puts the coalition in the realm of 'terrorists' is something I'll leave to the reader to decide.

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Having seen firsthand what the Viet Cong did to innocent civilians on a daily basis, I agree, there is no way to justify what they did.

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Originally posted by chrisisall:

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Originally posted by Geezer:

Terrorist - A person who uses violence, terror, and intimidation, primarily against non-combatants, or one who supports, directly or indirectly with full knowledge, such a person or organization, to achieve an end.

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I'd go with this.

Chrisisall

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Originally posted by SignyM:
And of course our mass bombings and support of a regime that put people in tiger cages and threw lye on them was better!

So here we go again with the same old argument: They did it too, so that makes us better.

I wonder, just on sheers numbers of civilians killed- who killed more? "Them" or "us"?

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Originally posted by Geezer:
Never said you were full of shit. Learn to read please.
"So if I were to say "You're full of sh*t, Citizen." You would just take it as "I respectfully disagree" and not consider it personal? Cool."
I was asking a question. I take it your answer would be No, then.

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Hey, that's right. SignyM and I were discussing the definition of terrorism. Are you Signym?

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Neither did I. So?

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Seems to me I was discussing it with SignyM, and you butted in, but whatever.

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Pretty good. Similar to what I came up with in another post here. I think they both need a bit of work still, though.

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Yet various totalitarian governments who had massive armies have waged campaigns of terror, sometimes against their own citizens. I'm not sure availability of means is as important as intention in the definition.

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Well, at least we agree that Bush is not a terrorist. Champagne all round!

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Does a country's recognition of the Hamas-led Palastinian government make that country terrorist?

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Originally posted by Geezer:

But seriously, I'd prefer to limit "terrorist" to the person or organization taking the action. The "...or one who supports, directly or indirectly with full knowledge, such a person or organization," gets us on a real slippery slope.
If you have a way around this, please feel free.

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Originally posted by chrisisall:

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Originally posted by Geezer:

But seriously, I'd prefer to limit "terrorist" to the person or organization taking the action. The "...or one who supports, directly or indirectly with full knowledge, such a person or organization," gets us on a real slippery slope.
If you have a way around this, please feel free.

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I mean, the Red Cross giving food to civilians is way different than the U.S. giving arms to Saddam...

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Sherman's March to the Sea followed his successful Atlanta Campaign of May to September 1864. He and U.S. Army commander Ulysses S. Grant believed that the Civil War would end only if the Confederacy's strategic, economic, and psychological capacity for warfare were decisively broken. Sherman therefore applied the principles of scorched earth, ordering his troops to burn crops, kill livestock, consume supplies, and destroy civilian infrastructure along their path. This policy is often also referred to as total war.

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Does a country's recognition of the Hamas-led Palastinian government make that country terrorist?

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If we define the Hamas-led government as Terrorists why can't we also define the Israelli government as such?

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Originally posted by citizen:

Simply put Bush doesn't need to be a terrorist. If the IRA or Al qaeda had the resources of the American Military they wouldn't be Terrorists either.

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Originally posted by Geezer:
OK. Just to move things along, I apologize for any unintentional slight or insult you may have preceived in anything I have ever said.

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I'll also skip over the you said/I said aout who is butting into who's post.

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Because the Israeli government has that massive military force which you say disqualifies them as terrorists.

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This is not to say that I consider the Israeli government's actions aganst the Palestinians acceptable by any means.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
I'm not sure I'd agree with the "primarily" part of the definition. Civilians don't generally expect to be targeted- they're not psychologically conditioned or trained- so taking out 3000 civilians may have a much more profound effect on mass psychology than taking out 10,000 soldiers.

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As far as the March to the Sea

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Sherman's March to the Sea followed his successful Atlanta Campaign of May to September 1864. He and U.S. Army commander Ulysses S. Grant believed that the Civil War would end only if the Confederacy's strategic, economic, and psychological capacity for warfare were decisively broken. Sherman therefore applied the principles of scorched earth, ordering his troops to burn crops, kill livestock, consume supplies, and destroy civilian infrastructure along their path. This policy is often also referred to as total war.

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Isn't this where "war is hell" came from? I suppose this could be compared to the Gulf War bombing, which targeted infrastructure like water treatment plants, power generating stations, bridges etc. Is that terrorism? I don't know. It's borderline. Civilian (humans lives) aren't being taken, but civilian assets are being targeted.

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Originally posted by citizen:
So what do you consider the actions of the Israeli government to be?

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Hey Fletch- I gotta get to work. But your scenarios are pretty limited. I brought up several more that you didn't discuss that I think would have a good chance of working, altho it would take a few more years than invasion.

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What if we imposed tarrifs that would be lifted for "good behavior"?

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What if we retained the "no-fly" zones?

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What if we expanded inspections? What if we placed area nations in charge of inspections in various regions?

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What if we used increased trade and the attendant increased presence of foreigners to infiltrate Iraq?

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Originally actually posted by Geezer:


Terrorist - A person who uses, or provides support for the use of, violence, terror, and intimidation, primarily against non-combatants, to achieve an end.

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Is one man's terrorist really another man's freedom fighter?

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Originally posted by Fletch2:
Except the French Resistance --- surely the most recognisable "Freedom Fighters" punished and killed collaborators even after hostilities were ended. The number of people they executed runs into 1000's and they all represent a civillian population.

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Originally posted by Fletch2:
Except the French Resistance --- surely the most recognisable "Freedom Fighters" punished and killed collaborators even after hostilities were ended. The number of people they executed runs into 1000's and they all represent a civillian population.

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What if we imposed tarrifs that would be lifted for "good behavior"?- signy
Well we had sanctions that would be lifted in the case of good behavior. Since they are more extreme and complete than a tariff and they were shown to be failing how exactly would a tariff system be any better? -Fletch

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Originally posted by Geezer:

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Originally posted by Fletch2:
Except the French Resistance --- surely the most recognisable "Freedom Fighters" punished and killed collaborators even after hostilities were ended. The number of people they executed runs into 1000's and they all represent a civillian population.

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Collaborators may have been civilians, but hardly innocent bystanders. They provided aid, comfort, and information to the enemy, which is usually considered treason. Not that I sanction illegal punishment or executions, but they certainly had crimes to pay for, though it should have been before a court.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Originally posted by Fletch2:


Personally I'm far more comfortable viewing this as an eye of the beholder issue, there are two sides to every story and each side has to see themselves as the heroes. I personally take sides but understand that I'm motivated in part by national and cultural norms to see my side as the only "good" guys.

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Originally posted by Fletch2:
Personally I'm far more comfortable viewing this as an eye of the beholder issue, there are two sides to every story and each side has to see themselves as the heroes. I personally take sides but understand that I'm motivated in part by national and cultural norms to see my side as the only "good" guys.

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by Fletch2:
Personally I'm far more comfortable viewing this as an eye of the beholder issue, there are two sides to every story and each side has to see themselves as the heroes. I personally take sides but understand that I'm motivated in part by national and cultural norms to see my side as the only "good" guys.

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Sooo, as I said earlier, a Terrorist is someone who attacks us...

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In October 1997 the authors of the initial letter wrote again to The Lancet, this time reporting that mortality rates in the follow-up study were "several-fold lower than the estimate for 1995--for unknown reasons." While the initial report of more than 567,000 deaths attracted major news coverage, the subsequent disavowal of those numbers passed unnoticed in the press. The two most reliable scientific studies on sanctions in Iraq are the 1999 report "Morbidity and Mortality Among Iraqi Children," by Columbia University's Richard Garfield, and "Sanctions and Childhood Mortality in Iraq," a May 2000 article by Mohamed Ali and Iqbal Shah in The Lancet. Garfield, an expert on the public-health impact of sanctions, conducted a comparative analysis of the more than two dozen major studies that have analyzed malnutrition and mortality figures in Iraq during the past decade. He estimated the most likely number of excess deaths among children under five years of age from 1990 through March 1998 to be 227,000.

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Personally I'm far more comfortable viewing this as an eye of the beholder issue, there are two sides to every story and each side has to see themselves as the heroes. I personally take sides but understand that I'm motivated in part by national and cultural norms to see my side as the only "good" guys.

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Terrorist - A person who uses violence, terror, and intimidation, primarily against non-combatants, to achieve an end.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
So, to get back to that definition of terrorism.

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Terrorist - A person who uses violence, terror, and intimidation, primarily against non-combatants, to achieve an end.

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I like the fact that the definition currently makes no distinction on the basis of means or funding. Just because Stalin had the entire secret police at his disposal didn't make his actions less terrifying to many Russians. In my opinion, state-sponsored terrorism is still terrorism. I also like that the definition includes torture as well as death. I like the exclusion of the whole "assisting" part. Too much of a slippery slope.

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have two issues with the defintion:

1) I'm not comfortable playing a numbers game with words like "primarily" or "almost exclusively". Do we look at the victims and parse out how many were combatants, how many were civilians and then if more than half were civilians do we then call it terrorism? What if 46% were civilians? (In Iraq, 46% of the dead were children under 15.)

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2) "For an end" While I was ready to exclude self-defense or defense of others, now that I think about it maybe there isn't ANY legitimate reason to target civilians. Excluding self-defense or the defense of others from the list of "permissible" reasons to target civilians would place Sherman's March to the Sea, and the bombings of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Israel's Palestinian policy into the category of "terrorism". Perhaps that's where they legitimately belong.

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So, if the definition becomes Terrorist - A person who uses or orders violence, terror, and intimidation against non-combatants is that overly broad? It would include ObL, Stalin, Saddam, Sharon, Kennedy, Milosevic, Lincoln, Hilter etc. as well as the soldiers, secret police etc who carried it out. Or do we give a "pass" the leaders who didn't use terrorism as their primary MO, but include the soldiers whose unfortunate duty was to drop "the bombs"?

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Also- one more question: Where do we place entities that cause massive death without causing massive fear? It's not terrorism because it doesn't cause fear, but it IS death-dealing.

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Originally posted by Fletch2:
My feeling, coming out of left field so to speak is that your opposition to the war has nothing to do with concern for the Iraqis, you are feeling guilt by association for what you see as a failed policy. Had Rumsfeld been right (how ever unlikely that seems) and we were now on our second year of reconstruction I think you'd be rar raring with the best of them. The only consistant part to your many arguments is the assertion that somehow there HAD to have been a bloodless alternative that absolves us from all responsability. There wasn't, in fact there was "blood on our hands" almost every year since 1991 you just never looked for it until now. No matter what we did it was never going to be clean. Our only real hope was that we could make it final.

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My feeling, coming out of left field so to speak is that your opposition to the war has nothing to do with concern for the Iraqis, you are feeling guilt by association for what you see as a failed policy-Fletch
That’s an excellent analysis. And sums up to a tee what I meant by a lack of perspective. Although I suspect there is more to it then just the Western condescension, I think there is a specific hatred of Bush among some who feel they were jilted in the 2001 election, and irrationally blame Bush for every ill they perceive since then. I started to make a similar comment several times, but I just don’t have the patience.-Finn

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Originally posted by SignyM:

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Personally I'm far more comfortable viewing this as an eye of the beholder issue, there are two sides to every story and each side has to see themselves as the heroes. I personally take sides but understand that I'm motivated in part by national and cultural norms to see my side as the only "good" guys.

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Huh. Usually it's the antiwar faction that's accused of moral relativism. I'm NOT comfortable with "eye of the beholder" interpretations.
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Originally posted by Fletch2:
And that's basically where I hit a bump. I'm pretty sure that the Germans saw the French as Terrorists, we didn't because the French were on our side and we saw their action as justified. In Iraq the bombers are not on our side and we don't think it justified. The point about the law is that it should be equitable but it is clear that this definition varies depending on your point of view. I therefore argue that this somewhat legalistic definition you are attempting to build is inherrently flawed because I don't believe it can be equitably applied.

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Originally posted by Fletch2:
The problem here is that the people fighting us in Iraq are not a single group with unified objectives and a single command but a number of groups with differing objectives. Therefore if group A kills civilians but group B only targets the coalition then I don't see that it's fair to brand group B because of group A's action.

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