Comment by JumpCrisscross
Comment by JumpCrisscross 2 days ago
> If, during America's war in Afghanistan, the Taliban had blown up pagers carried by American officers going about their lives in America it would be called terrorism. The nearby civilians injured in the blasts would be a key focus, not swept under the rug.
Because they’re a non-state actor. (Hezbollah doesn’t follow and isn’t bound by the Geneva Conventions, either.) Even if it only hit American military personnel, we’d call it terrorism.
You’re labelling usual acts of war as terrorism. That punts us from the uncomfortable discussion of the human cost of war to the much more palatable one of semantics. This is war. War resembles terrorism because they’re both violent and brutal and largely indiscriminate. If this is terrorism, then we’re essentially saying any warfare is terrorism. If that is the case, then states have a legitimate right to terrorism. Not sure that’s where we want to end up.
> If this is terrorism, then we’re essentially saying any warfare is terrorism.
terrorism is primarily violence targeted at civilians, while legitimate acts of war targets military personnel (but could have civilians as collateral).
In this particular case, the pagers are targeted at non-civilian personnel, but has some civilian casualties.
Hezbollah rocket attacks, on the other hand, seems to be targeting civilians first, and military personels second (if they are accurate enough for such).