Comment by bjourne
Spreading fear is generally considered terrorism - not a proper military objective. You have to realize that the argument you're making goes both ways here.
Spreading fear is generally considered terrorism - not a proper military objective. You have to realize that the argument you're making goes both ways here.
Deterrence indeed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre
I have no idea why you think that is a comparable event.
What I think may be happening here is that my reply to Kasey is being read as a justification for attacks on civilian populations. That is not a thing I believe; as you know, from the rest of this thread, my contention is that this attack targeted combatants.
Deterrence happened to be the stated purpose of the Lidice massacre. And it probably "deterred" the Czech resistance. That in and of itself did not legalize the attack. Here we have an Israeli attack involving indiscriminate maiming. You are claiming that "inspiring fear" and "deterrence" legitimizes this attack. The attack targeted pagers and anyone in vicinity of those pagers. That's exactly equivalent of dropping a bomb in a trashcan and saying you targeted soldiers that may or may not pass by as the bomb detonates.
In every military conflict in the history of warfare, combatants have taken steps to inspire fear in their adversaries. You may be providing a definition of terrorism, but I don't think it's a useful one; I think you need to refine it more if you want to make it operable here.
In any case, where you use the word "fear" I would probably use "deterrence".