Misso

Spanish/Basque terrorist movement ETA is known for killing judges and polititcians. They also target civilians, but the times that they don't target civilians are still acts of terrorism. Of course it all depends on how terrorism is defined, but as far as I know, no current definitions of terrorism mention civilians.

Then why are the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon of September 11th, and the attacks of the Palestines on Israelis, seen (primarily) as terrorist acts? Martyrdom is a possible effect of a suicide attack, or any terrorist attack, but that doesn't mean it's not an act of terrorism.


As for the use of the word 'terrorism' I agree with Zar and Pomp, I think the word has, in public speech, been reduced to an empty fashion-word.

Ted Hoffman

Jesse,
I am not Me and Me.
For all your scientific brilliance, how could you use IRAQ-O-METER to support your argument?
Read this this "disclaimer" :
And from what I can see you saying, anything goes, so long as the enemy "feels" us.
Civilian casualties are merely collateral damage. We can even use Depleted Uranium - its heavier than lead - 40% more radiation isnt a big deal since we are exposed to radiation all the time.

Using iraqometer?
Tell me Jesse, how many inncocent civilians should die per bomb before we can judge that the US are making no effort to reduce civilian casualties?

Like I said, we cant know what their intentions are. Intentions are not facts especially given the propaganda and the political nature of this issue.
The facts are the numbers. And we only care about the people.
Civilians are being killed and terrorized. Havent you seen photos and videos of the hispitals?
You shift focus from civilian deaths to the number of bombs while our main concern is the number of civilians maimed/killed.
Who cares about the number of bombs anyway especially given the US has superfluous quantities of bombs that they simply want to shed away? They are getting rid of dead weight.

Oh Jesse, so now we have *true* terrorism? - and what exactly is *true* terrorism?

Whether civilians are killed or not, this war is unjust.
And we arent discussing Hitler here - at least he was honest about his fascism. Bush is masquerading as a saviour of the Iraqi and the whole world yet all he wants is the OIL.

faded_Glory

Rather than semantic hair-splitting about what is terrorism and what is not, so as to try and capture the moral high ground for the side one happens to support, we ought to concentrate on how to root out any and all violence, regardless of who deals it out and why.

In my view there is preciously little difference between suicide bombers, soldiers killing civilians and soldiers killing other soldiers. People die before their time at the hands of their fellow men. What has morality to do with that?

I believe that the world has the tools required for peaceful solutions. All that is sadly lacking is the will to use them and see it through to the end.

Those who resort to violence are the terrorists.

fG

Jesse

It's possible the IRAQ-O-METER's information is completely wrong, but their number for civilian casualties is the same as the upper limit given on iraqbodycount.net, which does document its sources. I don't know where they got the 29,000 bombs dropped figure, but I doubt they just made it up, and I'm sure it's in the thousands. I find it very hard to believe that that many bombs could result in 586 deaths unless we were making an effort to spare civilians.


Jesse:
Still, there are certain widely-accepted rules about what's an acceptable tactic in a war and what's a "war crime"--if you favor jettisoning those rules you're encouraging an anything-goes attitude which, if adopted by leaders, would make wars far more horrible than they already are.

IronMonkey:
And from what I can see you saying, anything goes, so long as the enemy "feels" us.

No, I am not saying anything like that. Once again, I am not making a statement about the overall morality of the war or the question of whether the civilian deaths are blood on our hands, I'm just saying that it's important to distinguish between the intentional targeting of civilians, which is a war crime, and unintentional civilian deaths resulting from weapons aimed at military targets. Think of my example of an alternate-universe Hitler who still tries to conquer Europe but tries to do it with minimal civilian casualties. Many civilians would still no doubt have died, and they would still be blood on Hitler's hands because the war was totally unecessary and a consequence of nothing but lust for power, but he would not be guilty of "war crimes", and I would say this alternate-universe Hitler is not as horrible as the Hitler of our own universe who intentionally killed huge numbers of civilians. Are you saying that it is useless to make these kinds of distinctions, that both Hitlers are morally equivalent, that killing a bunch of civilians in urban warfare is no different than rounding up civilians and sending them to the gas chamber? If so I think it is you rather than me who has an "anything goes" attitude towards war.

IronMonkey:
Civilian casualties are merely collateral damage. We can even use Depleted Uranium - its heavier than lead - 40% more radiotion isnt a big deal since we are exposed to radiation all the time.

If you want to debate depleted uranium, please use the Depleted Uranium thread. Suffice to say that the "we're exposing them to 40% more radiation!" argument came from a misunderstanding by Koyaanisquatsi, it has no factual basis whatsoever. Scientists seem to be in agreement that there is no radiation risk from depleted uranium, although some now think it could be chemically toxic.

Jesse:
On the other hand, in a war with thousands of bombs being dropped, with thousands of people involved, it's quite plausible that even a country that has a policy of trying to avoid civilian casualties could still end up incurring hundreds of them.

IronMonkey:
Tell me Jesse, how many inncocent civilians should die per bomb before we can judge that the US are making no effort to reduce civilian casualties?

I don't have a magic number, I just know that the current numbers are pretty unambiguous. Tell me, how many civilians do you think would have died if we had simply carpet-bombed Baghdad without any attempt to discriminate between military and nonmilitary targets?

IronMonkey:
Like I said, we cant know what their intentions are. Intentions are not facts especially given the propaganda and the political nature of this issue.
The facts are the numbers.

Yes, and the numbers are what makes it obvious we aren't intentionally targeting civilians.

IronMonkey:
You shoft focus from civilian deaths to the number of bombs while our main concern is the number of civilians maimed/killed.

Because they're relevant to deciding whether we were targeting civilians or not. If we only dropped 10 bombs and killed the same number of civilians then it wouldn't be plausible that we were trying very hard to avoid civilian casualties. But thousands and thousands of bombs would obviously kill a lot more than 500 people if they were being dropped at random. Take a look at this page on noncombatant deaths in world war 2, for example--800,000 German civilians killed by allied bombing, 42,000 in Hamburg in the month of July, etc. Or how about this article from ZNet which mentions we killed 12,000 French and Belgian civilians in the act of liberating them from the Nazis. As terrible as each of those 500-something Iraqi deaths are there is just no comparison between these numbers, and we'd be killing far more of Baghdad 5 million citizens (or Iraq's 22 million) if we weren't making an effort to avoid civilian casualties.

IronMonkey:
Who cares about the number of bombs anyway especially given the US has superfluous quantities of bombs that they simply want to shed away? They are getting rid of dead weight.

Each of those precision bombs costs tens of thousands of dollars, I believe, so if the total number of bombs used is also in the tens of thousands, they're probably costing us hundreds of millions of dollars. In any case, the idea that "getting rid of dead weight" would take precedence over military strategy is pretty silly.

Jesse:
we're not debating the general moral rightness of wars, we're debating whether there's a meaningful distinction between unjust wars that kill a lot of civilians unecessarily and true "terrorism".

IronMonkey:
Oh Jesse, so now we have *true* terrorism? - and what exactly is *true* terrorism?

I've said it a bunch of times on this thread--it's the intentional targeting of civilians.

IronMonkey:
Whether civilians are killed or not, this war is unjust.

I don't want to debate that. Again, think of my example of the real Hitler vs. an alternate-universe Hitler who invaded the same countries but did make an effort to spare civilians. Are you saying we should collapse all distinctions between the two and say all war tactics are equally bad? What would the consequences be if the leaders of all countries adopted this attitude?

IronMonkey:
And we arent discussing Hitler here - at least he was honest about his fascism. Bush is masquerading as a saviour of the Iraqi yet all he wants is the OIL.
Hitler never pretended as far as I know.

I bring up the example of alternate-universe Hitler because you guys keep trying to collapse the distinction between unjust wars and "war crimes" while I think it's a very important distinction to make. Alternate Hitler's war is just as unjust (and his motives just as bad) as the real Hitler's, but he is not a war criminal and he does not engage in terrorism. Treating them as morally equivalent would be a very bad idea in my opinion.

Jesse

faded_Glory:
I believe that the world has the tools required for peaceful solutions. All that is sadly lacking is the will to use them and see it through to the end.

Those who resort to violence are the terrorists.

And you don't think there are ever circumstances where violence is the only way to prevent even greater violence? Would you say that all those who participated in the war against the Nazis were "terrorists" as well?

Ted Hoffman

FG,
With all due respect, your pacifist stance is not a solution to violence on our planet. Man is born violently and dies violently. We even engage in violent sports and blood sports for fun.
Violent movies have sold big time. Violence is the basis of survival of/for the fittest. So violence has developed in us as a survival mechanism. I think, in some ways, evolution is to blame for our subliminal "love" for violence. And I dont think violence is going anywhere so long as we have scarce resources and greed.
So man is a violent animal. Thats a brute fact.

We need to abolish and eliminate all wars. But the UN has been kicked aside now. What we can do is minimize death of inocent civilians especially on the battlefield. Or impeach George Bushfire. Suicide bombing remains rare because self-preservation keeps it checked. Its the last resort - suicide is always the last resort.
So I dont think we need to worry too much about that. So long as we make life good to live for the potential suicide bombers, they will strive to stay alive.

Simplistic. Self-defence, for example, is not terrorism.
Gratuitous violence, like US waging war on Iraq, IMHO, qualifies as terrorism.

Gurdur

Neither the sordid recent past 100 years of the USA, nor its current policies, justify 9/11.

The actions may explain it partly, but they do not justify it.

However, given the current incredibly arrogant incompetence of the USA foreign policy, and the gungho nature of its overall national culture, we will most likely see more 9/11's and more reprisals spiralling away.

faded_Glory

I don't know, Jesse. My thinking is very much in flux at the moment. Maybe it is a function of getting older, who knows.

A few years ago I would not have hesitated to make a difference between those who initiate violence and those who respond to it. I was certain that hitting back when attacked is justifiable. I may still feel that way, but unfortunately I now see so much spin and newspeak about what constitutes 'being attacked' that I am starting to turn away from even that argument.

It appears too easy for politicians to create a climate of fear and panic. Words and meanings get twisted beyond recognition. I just posted on another thread here about Hitler and Bush, I don't think there is a 1-1 comparison (there never is), but the trouble is that even Hitler was motivated by the best interests for his country as he saw it. He made a pre-emptive attack on the USSR for reasons that to me appear awfully similar to what the present US govenment tables as justification for their current attack on Iraq.

If the US is justified to attack Iraq now, why was Germany not justified to attack the USSR in 1941?

In the end I am beginning to sympathise more with the small group of British veterans and their wives I saw interviewed the other day in their dancing class. You would expect them to support this war, but strangely enough they didn't. Even although they were proud of their past commitment and efforts in WW2 they were unconvinced by this war now.

As one of them said, 'I have reached the age where I recognise that violence actually solves nothing but only creates more violence'.

That is the problem, isn't it? If we were sure that this would be the end of it, maybe we could tally the victims of action vs. the victims of non-action and come to a conclusion on what is the best way to minimise the suffering.

Unfortunately, this is impossible. I don't know much, but I do know that this war will be used as justification for more violence in the future, violence that could possibly have been averted by dealing with Iraq in a different way. Since we will never know how many deaths will be caused by the aftermath of this war, we can't really say that war has been the best solution.

The solution of one problem is so often the cause of the next. See the endless Israel-Palestine conflict. Whoever dealt the first blow there is lost forever in the mists of time and has in fact become completely irrelevant. In terms of attack and defense, good and bad are indistinguishible from each other.

To me, what makes the difference between good and bad in such hopelessly entangled situations is the genuine will to compromise and give up a bit of one's position in order to enable a mutual relation that can lead to peace. I have seen indications of this working in a few cases, South Africa and Northern Ireland come to mind, and am beginning to believe that this approach may well be the only real, permanent solution to all of these problems.

And this is so far from George Bush's mind as to be unfunny.

fG

Me and Me

All despotic oppressives organisations or countries like al-qeuda, cubans to the rescue, KKK, U.S. govt, Iraqi govt, etc etc etc, all promote the idea of being threatened by something, this is to justify whatever actions it does to groups that they don't like, all people like this say that their actions are a retaliation, or "defense". So whenever an empire or a group says that it "Must attack" someone because of what they did to us first, all excuses for oppression such as that should only be taken with a grain of salt, because they A L L use that one.

The U.S. said that all countries that support terrorism are terrorist organisations, and they believe in attacking countries that supposedly support terrorism and they believe in striking them first without provocation. So according to those regulations the attacks on the WTC were under the accepted standards that the U.S. has said and follows. So on sept 11, a country with a terrorist supporting govt was struck.

Are you guys for or against terrorist nations being attacked?

Calling all apologists, word twisters, and back pedalers. hahahaha

Me and Me

Well????

hahahaha