This is not as simple as it might be. We all have a perception or misspercetion of what terrorism is.

Most people have, not nesseraily here, have the perception of that terrorist is a muslim guy killing people for no apperent reason and just plain evil.

However no one have relly tried, there some acctually, that have tried to understand why they do it.

But I will wnat to know first of all, is tehre any clear definition of terrorism? Because in some cases can that be relative. During the WWII was the Danish or Frensh rebells freedom fighters for there country and that's what most would see them. Which I also saw them like. But those or who sympathise for the Nazis and in particuallry the nazis themselves, the germans, saw them as terrorists.

The same thing can be said about in the Veitnam war about Viet Cong. Fro some where they freedom fighters for some simple rebells, which we today would see as terrorists.

In Iraq today those who fight the troops over there is concidered terrorists, however they don't nessesaraily have to do with the killings of cilivians which some rebell groups do over there. Which of course don't get much support from the public. So is those who fight the troops terrorists or just rebells? It ofte depend which side your ask and who yo ask.

The 9/11 was a terrible act. Very terrible. That is classified as a terrorist act. Maybe that's is one of the real event that you can clearly say is a terrorism. They killed civlians wanted to create fear, which they casued, and perhaps that's is terrorism. Killing for no real reason or for very strange and far fetched reasons? To kill people for religious reasons is perhaps the only correct defintion of terrprism. Like the subway killings in japans so on.

Some tried to understand why this group did what they did during the 9/11. They appereantly didn't like america, maybe hate is a better word, but why did they do it. What was the motive? It was offically about religion and they wanted to punish america and the western world for som reason. However since Osama who from the beginning was a very intellegent man maybe had some kind of plan more then fear? I have hard to belive that he only intended to kill people and create fear. However his mind might have been deluded by religi8ous bullshit and perhaps thought it was rational to do. It's hard to know. Maybe he thought attacking an ecnomic target would make the economy unstable? Who knows?

Anyhow the act that american and many other western countries did after that was engaging Afghanistand and Iraq. As a war against terrorism, but also liberating the people. However the number of civilian causualties have never been so high as this war. We are talking % where most of those who have gotten killed (so far) is mostly civlians. Think the munber is like 80%. Is a milityary bombing of a city not as much terrorism as the 9/11 bombing. Or is the definition of terrorism also have to do with the motive or just killing civilians? Since the american troops has as ans objective to create fear in the cities by bombing them, isn't that the same thing as during 9/11?

What do you guys think?

I would have said that it was an act carried out with the simple aim of causing terror and usually are carried not just with disregard for human life but with the idea that the more carnage the better (it creates more terror).

As a general rule I think that rules most military operations out because they almost always have clear military goals and civilian damage is collateral but there are weapons that are designed to primarily terrorise (the WW2 German Stuka Dive Bomber would be an exmaple because it caused relatively little damage, was hopelessly inaccurate but it's screaming engines scared the living sh** out of those it attacked, the V1 & V2's are also accepted to be weapons of terror as far as I know).

Kyu

Might add that the Hiroshima bombings is by many concidered to be an act of terrorism.

Someone said that there's no diffrence between a sucide bombing and usual bombing. Which is quite correct. The only diffrence is that a usual bombing is done from distance.

(April 30, 2009 at 10:11 am)Giff Wrote: Might add that the Hiroshima bombings is by many concidered to be an act of terrorism.

True, an even better example is the bombing of Dresden. Kurt Vonnegut, who witnessed the bombing on the receiving end as a prisoner of war, wrote about it in "The blood of Dresden". Dresden was not prepared for an attack, wasn't a target of any military or industrial significance, but was laid to waste in a horrific bombing with incendiary bombs.

(April 30, 2009 at 10:11 am)Giff Wrote: Might add that the Hiroshima bombings is by many concidered to be an act of terrorism.

Atomic bombs generally perhaps (part of the "MAD" concept) but Hiroshima and Nagasaki no, the US was facing a long and protracted war across many islands in order to win against the Japanese and the bombs dropped so fatefully on those cities ended the war extremely rapidly as I suspect the US thought they might.

Kyu

Whatever the justification, it can still be called terrorism by definition. And now to be predictable I will add a dictionary definition.

terrorism -
ter⋅ror⋅ism
   /ˈtɛrəˌrɪzəm/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [ter-uh-riz-uhm] Show IPA
–noun
1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
3. a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.
Origin:
1785–95; terror + -ism

They used the A-Bomb to coerce Japan to surrender.

(April 30, 2009 at 12:06 pm)g-mark Wrote: Whatever the justification, it can still be called terrorism by definition. And now to be predictable I will add a dictionary definition.

Your point was already well made and I agree, quoting the dictionary wasn't necessary.

(April 30, 2009 at 12:06 pm)g-mark Wrote: The used the A-Bomb to coerce Japan to surrender.

For reasons already given I don't accept it applies to the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima & Nagasaki.

Kyu

So you believe that terrorism can be justified, depending on the circumstances?

Interesting. Can morality be taken into account when a country is at war.

As Japan started the conflict, you could justify yourself with this argumant. On the other hand, you could argue that killing civilians is immoral. How would you determine which is the the correct or morally correct position.

If you were Japanese, you would argue one way.

If you were American, you would argue the other.

However, back to the point.

Kyu Wrote:For reasons already given I don't accept it applies to the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima & Nagasaki.

Therefore, this statement can only be relative to yourself, and whoever else agrees with it, depending on your point of view.

I think people perception of a typical terrorist changes with what they see and experience, for example a couple of decades ago most British people would have told you that a terrorist is a Irish guy because of the trouble in Northern Ireland. So this current perception of the Muslim "Jihadist" is to be expected given the level of media coverage.



Again I think this point too is based on peoples perceptions as well as the clear cut defintion of a terrorist, it would all depend what your personal feeling on a certain point are. An intersting point to note is that the Viet Cong and French Freedom fighters where not considered terrorists (at least not in any material I have come across) they where malitia or paramilitary as there goal was not to terrorise but to achieve a valid aim i.e. the defense or recapture of their homeland from a foreign invader.




Terrorists are people who try to incite terror or fear in an enemy (usually among the civillian populace) so the majority of fighters in this theatre are paramilitary/rebels (admitedly a little misguided) as the vast majority take part in military style actions against soldiers rather than attacks on civillians.



I think the primary thoughs behind large scale terrorist acts like 9/11, 7/11 and so on is a twisted form of publicity as well as destabilizing the target. The ammount of media coverage surrounding these incidents gave alot of air time to Al'Qaeda and Co. which could be said to have attracted others to their 'cause' as well as helipng to promote the fear they aim to incite on top of this there is also the fact that they caused monetary and human loss etc... as you mentioned.

The case of large scale bombing of cities at war time has been ongoing since the advent of modern military aviation, personally I do not find these acts to be of a terrorist nature; the aim is to eliminate enemy hot-spots and bases which in theatres like Iraq are interwoven within the fabric of city it is also important to remember that paramilitary forces usually live within the main population and cannot be distinguished as easily as regular army forces so historically these kinds of operation lead to higher civillian casulaties.

Sam