So the first big question I want to ask is: Why is terrorism so bad?

Let's go ahead and clarify that I am not defending terrorism. I am, if anything, more anti-terrorism than society in general, in that I consider myself a pacifist and classify all types of violence unacceptable. According to geneva conventions, war is acceptable, just as long as you only murder "combatants".

Quote :

"members of the armed forces but do not have any combat mission, such as judges, government officials and blue-collar workers, are non-combatants"

This means you can't kill the people building the war machine or the people running the war machine but only the people who are simply following orders. This seems more inhumane to me because I'd consider the people leading the war to be the most appropriate target. If this was WW2, I would consider Hitler to be target #1 even though he was a noncombatant. My argument is that the people who control weather or not the war goes on are the true combatants and that front line soldiers are simply pawns.

It seems as if the rules of war were created by the leaders of powerful countries to make sure they couldn't be killed and to also help keep them from losing war. If everyone follow the rules, the country with the more powerful military will win every war. Is that fair? Is that right?

Terrorism is supposed to be different than war because you are targeting "innocent" civilians but what if I made the argument that there are no innocent civilians in a democratic nation. In a democratic nation, aren't the people the centralized source of power? In a democratic nation waging total war, the people are the ultimate combatants and the ones who decide if the war goes on or not. If you subscribe to the idea that Hitler should be a target in WW2, then you should also accept terrorism as a valid form of war.

If Japan attacked pearl harbor, I would consider the emperor and every weapons depot worker to be combatants.

There is a huge gray area between cobatant, non-combatant and civilian in today's society.

7/22/2016 2:00:07 AM

That gray area only started to exist with the advent of modern warfare, around 1915. The idea of the "homefront" and everything you're talking about is an extension of the modern nation state and the modern war machine. Up until WWI limited warfare was a realistic goal, you could fight wars that could end in a reasonable amount of time and could be fought with prescribed limits.

Once the modern war machine started taking shape and the reality of what a nation state at war started to set in new rules had to be developed including how to deal with irregular fighting. A lot of what many people consider "terrorism" isn't really terrorism, it's irregular combat or guerrilla fighting.

There are lots of good books about this phenomenon and some good podcasts too. Listen to some of Dan Carlin's stuff, I'm thinking the "Logical Insanity" episode of Hardcore History and the whole "Blueprint for Armageddon" series.

Things like the Hague convention and the Geneva convention have attempted to deal with some of what you're talking about, defining military targets and such. It might be necessary to redefine at some point. It's also important to note that a government and the people of a country are very different. How many of the German people really had any choice in their involvement in ww2 or the Russians? It's more debatable when you get into supposedly democratic and representative societies like the US, but even then it's iffy.

An interesting thread that I'm sure others will come and shit all over.

[Edited on July 22, 2016 at 5:04 AM. Reason : Fggh]

7/22/2016 5:01:37 AM

It doesn't need to be shit on, because it's already shit. To put it plainly, any thought you have that includes "today's society" as a key phrase is a dog shit thought, and every word you utter is a turd that spills from your mouth into hot oil.

7/22/2016 7:24:40 AM

a post so edgy i need a band aid

7/22/2016 10:30:27 AM

Froshkiller would be annoying if he wasn't so painfully predictable.

7/22/2016 4:33:03 PM

Keep my name out your mouth.

7/22/2016 4:42:38 PM

Ignoring the unrelenting river of bile that is Froshkiller's TWW presence...

Quote :

"If this was WW2, I would consider Hitler to be target #1 even though he was a noncombatant."

From what I remember, Hitler (and Saddamn, etc.) would be excluded from "noncombatants" because they are a legitimate part of the military apparatus, ie command and control. When we talk about "government officials" in the context of Geneva or other international law, you're generally talking about, like, the Superintendent of Schools, legislators, judges.

Of course, even within C&C there's some question about whether you can single them out to kill, as we did with Yamamoto. We launched a mission with the sole purpose of shooting down his plane, which was accomplished in due course. Some people still wonder if that was legit. I am not one of those people.

I think the better questions about terrorism is how we define it (because at the moment, we don't, really) and whether that definition is just the strong side stacking the deck in their own favor. A group rarely uses "terrorism" unless it has no other recourse to wage war. You don't strap on a suicide vest when things are going really well, generally. The Japanese didn't use Kamikazes at Pearl Harbor. As far as I know, even ISIS was light on the suicide attacks during their rapid territorial expansion. The point here is that people don't generally choose terrorist tactics because of some special inclination towards underhandedness or evil. The only reason you hijack airplanes is because you don't have an air force.

So then we can talk about the targets rather than the means, and it can truly be said that terrorists like soft, civilian targets. But historically we haven't been too shy about firebombing the shit out of civilian populations, either. And again we have the question: do terrorists target civilians because they don't have a choice in targets? Hell of a lot easier to shoot up a nightclub than it is to shoot up Fort Bragg.

Another factor that gets brought up in defining terrorism is the intent of the act, which is usually described as "attempting to bring about political change." I don't like this aspect because it basically defines all warfare. You don't invade Normandy to leave Hitler in charge.

---

So as to your "original" question of why terrorism is so bad, there's a few answers. One, which is not terribly legitimate, is that it's something the West can actually fear. We're not afraid of WWIII, least of all in the US. Crazy as Putin is, we're clearly pretty distant from any situation that has Russian boots on American soil. Terrorism is the one way the outside world can hurt us, so we pour a lot of negative emotion into it.

Two, the prevailing thought is that the West has moved away from targeting civilians to actively avoiding them. Our record on this is spotty but, hey, I guess we're trying. Terrorists haven't caught up. Of course, we only made this pivot in the past few decades, and we only did that because of advances in technology that terrorists cannot hope to match. So I'm still not sure how legitimate this reason is, but for the half of Americans born after Vietnam and into a world where Joe Civilian is supposed to be off-limits, the idea of blowing them up is repellent in a way that did not afflict our grandfathers flying B-29s over Tokyo.

Three - and I think we might be getting closer to the mark here - terrorism, from most perspectives, is pointless. Suicide bombs don't win wars. No amount of Bataclan attacks is going to re-establish the historical caliphate. People have been able to wrap their minds around terrible acts that seem like they might be closer to winning a war and establishing peace (again, WWII is chock full of examples), but we know this isn't going to happen with terrorists now. And to the extent that it does have a point, beyond simply racking up body counts (which was supposedly Osama's main goal), that point is to draw in more people into the war. It's violence with a view to creating more violence. Terrorism is the ultimate crime against peace.

Four, when most of us think of "terrorism" we think of acts committed in furtherance of deplorable political goals. Notice the difference in reaction when we talk about ETA blowing up a police kiosk or the IRA shooting up a bar, on the one hand, and anything ISIS or al Qaeda does on the other. The ETA wants a Basque state. Americans can fundamentally get behind that. We like independence and self-determination. The IRA wants to free its Irish brothers from British oppression, and again, Americans understand that and think it kind of noble. ISIS wants to build a country where slavery is legal and crucifixion is a popular form of execution, where beards get measured and women are sold in markets. We don't understand that.

7/23/2016 10:22:55 AM

Get fucked, shitheel. Write another 10th grade essay about it.

7/23/2016 3:26:01 PM

Is that what you think a 10th grade-level essay looks like? Because that would explain a lot.

Or are you upset that people have quit copying and pasting that rant about college kids and religion from, like, fifteen years ago?

7/23/2016 3:38:17 PM

You're a clown.

7/23/2016 3:44:42 PM

In all seriousness, though, the "turd falling into hot oil" bit is pretty good and I intend to appropriate it.

7/23/2016 3:51:39 PM

That was probably the most thoughtful, content filled post i've ever seen in soap box. I have some questions about the last few paragraphs but am afk today and will be back in my office on monday.

7/23/2016 6:24:19 PM