Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] facism gaining ground in US

[Robin Green]

On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 08:41:06PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> If I guess right, Robin Green wrote:
> 
>     >> Terrorising people by the use of violence. That's pretty much
>     >> the definition of terrorism.
> 
> Circular, therefore not a definition.  It's missing a couple of
> crucial qualifications before it's useful in political discussion, as
> well.

Yes, I was not accurate.
The point I was trying to get at, though, was the distinction between
terrorisms, "theirs" and "ours" - "ours" which is, of course, almost
never called terrorism in the mainstream media.

> >>>>> "Pierce" == Pierce T Wetter, <Pierce> writes:
> 
>     Pierce>   I think that Terrorism is Terrorizing _a_ people by the
>     Pierce> use of violence is terrorism, but I'm just being nitpicky.
> 
> No, you're not.  You're awfully close to Wikipedia, definition 1,
> which _is_ useful.  The points the first definition lacks are that
> terrorism (a) has no military objective at all

How do you define "military objective"? Is it something that only a state
can have, and not any other kind of organisation?

If so, then you descend into "When they do it, it's terrorism; when we do
it, it's militarily necessary - and therefore, if not outright virtuous,
at least understandable". Which is the morality of the kindergarten.

If not, then the 9-11 attackers had a military objective of taking out
the WTC and (part of) the Pentagon - and therefore, by the definition you
gave above, necessarily were not terrorists?

Think carefully before you answer. (In particular, if any targetting of
civilian installations is forbidden, then any US targetting of civilian
installations is therefore, ipso facto, forbidden.)

Oh, and no-one can pretend that the word "terrorism" has nothing to do with
morality or judgement.
-- 
Robin

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