(February 25, 2015 at 7:17 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote:(February 25, 2015 at 6:20 pm)Jacob(smooth) Wrote: Just to be clear, are we counting drone bombings as terrorist attacks?
As I understand it, terrorism is attempting to effect political outcomes by inspiring fear through attacks upon civilians. Military action is targeting military and possibly industrial targets of a country to blunt their ability to wage war.
By that definition, the KKK lynchings of blacks during the Civil Rights Era would be terrorism, Adolf Hitler's bombing of London and other civilian targets to try to get the British to back down would be terrorism but a guerrilla rebel force that restricts its attacks on military targets would not.
Whether drone bombings constitute terrorism depends on whether or not military (or insurgent) targets are selected. If we were to start bombing civilian targets with the intent to get them to back down through fear, that would qualify. Accidentally hitting civilians when going after insurgents would not.
So the bombing of largely civilian targets in germany, Japan, and north Vietnam would make land of the free and the home of strangely fearful brave the most prolific practitioner of technological terrorism in history.
