Comment by stetrain 2 days ago
The definition of terrorism is controversial and political, so there isn't a hard answer.
But I think a general distinction is the targeting of combatants vs civilians.
There is a difference between infiltrating military or para-military organizations or operations and intentionally targeting mass casualties of civilians for attention.
Al Qaeda isn't a nation-state so by definition it falls into terrorism. It's like if Greenpeace sunk a military vessel because the sonar was killing sea life that would be terrorism. It would have some serious side effects if it was OK for private non-governmental actors being able to target militaries and be seen as legitimate in their actions.
> Greenpeace sunk a military vessel
Funny exemple knowing France sunk a Greenpeace vessel. That act has been called "state terrorism".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warri...
Of course, if we consider all actions by non-state combatants against state military actors to be terrorism, the US and Western Europe has frequently been a big sponsor of terrorism. A recent cause that many are sympathetic to of this nature that immediately comes to my mind are the Kurds in Syria during the Syrian civil war.
But by definition the founders of the USA were terrorists. And they knew it too, viz. Benjamin Franklin's famous line 'Gentlemen, we must all hang together or we shall most assuredly hang separately.'
Preemptively invalidating all non-state actors is just a way for people with power to avoid challenges to it. Every single oppressive regime describes rebels as terrorists and employs circular arguments to assert its own legitimacy. Using this to dismiss military attacks on military targets is, frankly, bullshit.
What Franklin said was true though. If the US revolutionaries had failed, they would have been rightfully hung for treason by the British. If you're some private actor attacking military targets in some country, you'd be a terrorist. I'm no fan of Iran for example but if somebody was caught launching rockets at an IRGC base the Iranian government could legitimately treat them as terrorists/traitors no problem.
Eh - that depends on how you do it, right?
If everyone in your ‘private actor’ group wears uniforms, acts in the open (ie marches in formation, operates tanks instead of setting boobie traps, etc), and then attacks military operations directly it’s going to require an extreme amount of squinting to call that group terrorists.
Whoever is running it would probably get a pretty fair title of warlord. But they’re different.
At the same time, it a gov’t organization runs around bombing civilian targets in a campaign to scare everyone in their opponents country out of their mind, pretty hard to not call them terrorists.
> But by definition the founders of the USA were terrorists
I don’t remember reading any attacks on civilians in the revolutionary war. The civilians would have all been Americans, so it wouldn’t make sense.
The British regarded them as traitors, and would have hung them for treason and sedition.
The entire US is going to freak out if a platoon of KGB soldiers flew into US and killed hundreds of bad guys. How objectively bad the "victims" might have been isn't going to matter.
You can't just walk across a recognized international border and do the "right" thing without a consent, regardless of how right or wrong it had been. That's an act of war, technically.
As far as I know in this case both sides have already attacked each other via bombs, airstrikes, rockets, etc. I'm not really making a judgement on whether this was ethical or justified.
There's just a distinction to be made from intentionally killing civilians for the purpose of causing terror versus targeting a group that you are in an open military hostility with. The second one, as you say, is basically just war. And war has historically also included civilian casualties.
Flying a plane full of civilians into a building full of civilians, or detonating a bomb in a public square full of civilians, are pretty clear examples of what "terrorism" is. They aren't actions meant to directly attack the capability of an enemy to wage war against you.
What governments and media choose to label "terrorism" or "terrorist groups" however is inherently political and not done following some agreed, objective definition.
If you look at the birth rates, it rather looks Israel will disappear at some point. There is a arab population inside of Israel that is growing fast and some already freak out over it.
Also no, they largely don't accept it. The fanatics on both sides dream of the day of final victory over the enemy. And then there will be everlasting peace and paradise or something like it.
This is a little ridiculous. Lets say all the Lebanese "grow up" and say they had it enough with these black ops by their enemies. And so each able man takes a gun in hand and goes to war against Israel. And lets say they lose the war badly. What now?
they should grow up and get rid of Iran‘s proxy waging war against civilian population from their territory and obviously also terrorizing the local population – they also built tunnels and invested hundreds of millions into terrorism infrastructure instead of investing into poor economy of Lebanon and make real jobs etc. etc.
>You can't just walk across a recognized international border and do the "right" thing without a consent, regardless of how right or wrong it had been. That's an act of war, technically.
You might want to read up on the killing of bin Laden, Entebbe raid, and many other similar operations.
Hezbollah does specifically exist to attack Israel. Of course that does matter, even if I ignore them firing rockets constantly.
They could decide to build up their country and Israel wouldn't interfere.
Hezbollah is the government in southern Lebanon so when you throw around "combatant" you're including a lot of civil servants, doctors, teachers etc.
Its not out of the realm of possibility something like that happened. In other countries, organized crime have been taken down using tactics somewhat like that (i.e. convince the person responsible for procurement in the gang to buy bulk cell phones from some black market dealer that was actually a cop and put listening devices in the phones)
> But I think a general distinction is the targeting of combatants vs civilians
When Afghans took up arms against occupying American soldiers, they were routinely called terrorists in American press and media.
When Muslims fight America or Israel, they are called terrorists. When the situation is reversed, that label isn't applied.
Not only were they called terrorists, they were kidnapped to be tortured in Guantanamo like this kid (he was 15 when his father dragged him to Afghanistan, took part in a skirmish, and might have killed in action a US soldier): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khadr
Let me guess, the ones you term to be "Islamists" are those who fight America or Israel.
Most of the Afghan fighters who took shots at American soldiers weren't motivated by some sort of boogieman religious extremism. They were simply shooting at armed foreigners who invaded their country. They weren't terrorists by any reasonable definition of the but were called so anyway because they happened to be Muslim and dared to defy America.
and supporting the narrative pushed by the Islamists is harming the Muslims, resulting in Islamophobia. The fact you are mixing the two terms to simply "mark these who attack America" is actually really bad for the normal people affiliated with Islam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Islamism
I don't know about that. When Al Quaeda attacked the USS Cole, a purely military vessel without a single civilian casualty, the US administration and the entire US military called it an act of terrorrism.