Zar

The first rule of this conversation ought to be that the world "terrorist" has been emptied of all of its meaning by the Western governments trying like hell to ensure that nothing they do can be defined that way. (It can't be terror if we do it.) The word has become totally useless by now. Try a different mode of expression.

Vorkosigan

So if you believe that countries should be attacked just because some people in that country support terrorism, if you accept this false logic, than you yourself are condoning and justify the attack on a terrorist nation on sept 11.

With logic like this, I can see why you have to resort to frenzied rhetoric.....

I do NOT (hear that moderators?) [/QUOTE]

...........and false macho.

There's nothing in your statement that requires moderation, save for your bizarre ethical sense, and that, I'm afraid, is beyond my power to change.

Vorkosigan

Pomp

I concur with Zar. The abuse of the term "terrorism" to demonize anyone we (whoever "we" may be) disagree with or feel threatened by has reduced the term to a caricature.

In answer to the initial post, I have no idea. If acts such as the 9/11 incident are to be considered, as the US government would have it, acts of war then, yes, I think that Bush's logic does justify them, but only provided that the US posed a threat to the security of the group responsible for them. Remember, it's justified, in Bushland, to launch preemptive strikes against anyone who we feel threatens us. If we were a threat to Al Queda, then Al Queda had every right (again, in Bushland) to hit first. I'll leave the question of whether or not the threat posed by the US to Al Queda is as great as the threat posed by Iraq to the US as an exercise for the reader.

garraty

From Dictionary.com

Shock
-Something that jars the mind or emotions as if with a violent unexpected blow.

-The disturbance of function, equilibrium, or mental faculties caused by such a blow; violent agitation.

awe
-A mixed emotion of reverence, respect, dread, and wonder inspired by authority, genius, great beauty, sublimity, or might.

terror
-Violence committed or threatened by a group to intimidate or coerce a population, as for military or political purposes.

When a 4000 pound bomb hits a building, do you think it is the only thing to be damaged? When 20 or so of these bombs hit a building do you still think it is the only thing to be damaged? If you lived in Baghdad, across the road from some sort of strategic target (such as a TV station) you don't think you'd be feeling just slightly terrorised? When the bombs hit that building, you won't feel some mild bump in the night, you'll wake to find at the very least your windows are blown in, at the worst you won't wake at all.

No matter how accurate the delivery system is, you can't guide an explosion.

The main US tactic in this invasion is to terrorize the enemy into submission, to show them that they aren't safe anywhere and can be hit anytime.

Soldiers react to these tactics in the same way civilians do, they are both human after all.

garraty

And back to the OP, I would say that the Clinton Tomahawk attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan, were the pre-emptive strike.

September 11 was a counter attack.

(In crazy Osama/Bushland that is of course)

Me and Me

"Intention" is not judged in any court of law on whether the person is guilty or innocent, we judge him on his acts and their effects upon society. If two guys kill 10 people, one kills them without the intent to kill them and one does, how is one better than the other only because of what was going on inside the guys head, on whether it was his intention or not?

Jesse

But we weren't debating whether the US is morally responsible for civilian deaths, we were debating whether it "targets" them. I still maintain that terrorism=targeting civilians, therefore US actions in Iraq or other countries, however wrong or unjustified one may think they are, are not "terrorism". Likewise, I don't think that the bombing of the USS Cole or suicide bombers targeting soldiers qualify as "terrorism" either, but 9/11 definitely was.

By the way, "intention" most certainly does play a role in courts. Haven't you heard of the distinction between manslaughter and premeditated murder?

Sue Sponte

Although I tend to agree that the U.S. has degraded the term "terrorist" through expanding it beyond those who kill civilians, the U.S. is not acting as terrorists when unintentionally killing civilians.

The more interesting moral issue for debate, to me, is whether there is a signficant difference between intentionally killing civilians and knowingly engaging in acts that will end in the same result. We are not doing the former, but are we not doing the latter?

It is also arguable that the U.S. has, in fact, intentionally killed a number of civilians, through the bombing of goverment facilities such as the Ministry of Information, the Iraqi communications center. The inhabitants of that facility were not military personnel, but were governmental employees. The purpose was to eliminate the broadcasting of propaganda, at least a plausible jusitification. But the bombing of that facility was intentional and took the lives of non-military personnel.

This is a very gray area in my mind. Is it really all that significant a difference where someone kills another with specific intent or, alternatively, engages in actions that will likely result in the deaths of persons not specifically targeted? I struggle with this issue, as in both cases the victims are equally dead. One has, arguably, a higher moral justification, but given that innocent lives are losts, is the moral justification great enough for either act? I'd be interested in other's thoughts, as I am struggling to come to grips on this issue.

And for the record, I am talking only about bombing that results in deaths of civilians that were not specifically targeted but some number of which can be expected. The targeting of military personnel, in my mind, is justified provided the war itself is justified, a completely separate can of worms.

Ted Hoffman

Suicide bombing is not terrorism. Its martyrdom.

There is no collateral damage in attacking a country that has made no act of agression against you. Even the millitary targets are targeted as an act of terrorism.

The US only wants the oil fields. They intend to ride roughshod over the civilian population.
If they dont care about the UN (countries), why should they care about Iraqis?

Jesse, for all intents and purposes, we cannot tell what the US is targeting (we know they want THE oil however). Whats clear is that civilians are being killed. When you step on someones foot once and say "sorry I didnt mean that", step on it again and say "sorry there, didfnt mean that either" etc etc.
I think it becomes irrelevant what you are targeting.
Whatever it is they claim to target, civilians are dying.

Like one who is so unlucky as to be accused of 50 manslaughters?

Whatever we claim our intentions are, the moral goodness of those intentions can only be judged on the consequences of those intentions.

Is it okay if we go around bombing places we think terrorists are hiding even as innocent civilians die alongside them?
Isnt it IRRESPONSIBLE to dismiss human lives as collateral damage?

Jesse

Me and Me:
Jesse, for all intents and purposes, we cannot tell what the US is targeting (we know they want THE oil however).

According to the IRAQ-O-METER we've dropped 29,000 bombs on Iraq so far...how many reports of bombs hitting civilian areas have we heard? 5? 10? The total number of civilian casualties listed there is 582--with that many bombs I think it's pretty obvious that we're not trying to target civilians, and thus are not guilty of "terrorism".

I am not trying to dismiss civilian casualties, although I think it's hard to separate one's moral judgement about these casualties from one's view of the justness of the war (for example, would you condemn the US for civilian casualties in liberating France from the Nazis?) 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.

Jesse:
By the way, "intention" most certainly does play a role in courts. Haven't you heard of the distinction between manslaughter and premeditated murder?

Me and Me:
Like one who is so unlucky as to be accused of 50 manslaughters?

Bad analogy. If a person was accused of 50 separate manslaughters, it would be obvious that they could not all be accidents and that his intentions were not innocent. 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.

Me and Me:
Whatever we claim our intentions are, the moral goodness of those intentions can only be judged on the consequences of those intentions.

Yes, and looking at the consequences, for example the very tiny fraction of bombs that have killed civilians (even if we assume each civilian death was caused by a separate bomb only 2% of bombs could have killed any civilians at all, and since this assumption is unrealistic the true fraction must be much lower), I think the judgement should be obvious to everyone: the US is not intentionally targeting civilians (BTW, are you still arguing that the mere fact that we knew there was a risk of civilians being killed proves that we are 'intentionally targeting civilians' or have you dropped that line of argument? If you haven't, please address my earlier question about hunting and whether all use of weaponry counts as 'targeting civilians').

Me and Me:
Is it okay if we go around bombing places we think terrorists are hiding even as innocent civilians die alongside them?

Maybe not, but again, 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". Again, even if a war is completely unjustified and irresponsible it is still worth caring about whether a nation "plays by the rules". These rules can be described indepently of the question of whether we agree with the motives for the war or not. For example, I think Hitler's invasion of surrounding countries was wrong and unjustified, but I would not have accused him of "war crimes" unless his armies had policies of intentionally targeting unarmed civilians (which they did).

Me and Me:
Isnt it IRRESPONSIBLE to dismiss human lives as collateral damage?

It would be irresponsible to be totally dismissive of civilian death, as if human lives don't matter. And perhaps the euphemism "collateral damage" is dismissive in this sense. But it would be even more irresponsible to blur the line between nations that do obey the widely-agreed-upon rules of war and nations that don't care about these rules and are commiting war crimes left and right.